Commenting on Gen 24:10:
The camels here and elsewhere in Genesis are a problem. Archaeological
and extrabiblical literary evidence indicates that camels were not adopted as
beasts of burden until several centuries after the Patriarchal period, and so their
introduction in the story would have to be anachronistic. What is puzzling is
that the narrative reflects careful attention to other details of historical
authenticity: horses, which also were domesticated centuries later, are scrupulously
excluded from the Patriarchal Tables, and when Abraham buys a gravesite, he
deals in weights of silver, not in coins, as in the alter Israelite period. The
details of betrothal negotiation, with the brother acting as principal agent
for the family, the bestowal of a dowry on the bride and betrothal gifts on the
family, are equally accurate for the middle of the second millennium B.C.E.
Perhaps the camels are an inadvertent anachronism because they had become so deeply
associated in the minds of later writers and audiences with desert travel. There
remains a possibility that camels may have already had some restricted use in
the earlier period for long desert journeys, even though they were not yet
generally employed. In any case the camels were are more than a prop, for
their needs and treatment are turned into a pivot of the plot. (Robert
Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton & Company,
2019], 1:78)
Further
Reading:
Martin Heide and
Joris Peters, Camels in the Biblical World (History, Archaeology, and
Culture of the Levant 10; University Park, Pa.: Eisenbrauns, 2021)
See also the following
records from the B. H. Roberts Foundation on “camels”
in the Bible
