the so fallible Bible

[John V]

Well, this discussion has gone on for quite some time, and it's plain we all agree that the God represented in the Old Testament is an evil bastard. The only difference is that those who believe in him want us all to call evil good.

Moving on to the next question, I ask:

Q: How much reliability does the Bible have as a historical document?

A: Almost none.

Here is a summary of the findings of an important book on biblical archaeology. The Bible Unearthed: archaeology's new vision of ancient Israel and the origin of its sacred texts. Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman. The Free Press (Simon & Shuster), 2001. 385 pp.

There was no historical basis for the legends of the patriarchs recorded in Genesis. Here are a few historical discrepancies in the patriarchal narratives of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. By the biblical chronology these patriarchs would have to be dated to the Bronze Age, ca 1800 - 1700 BC. Camels regularly appear in these stories, but in fact the camel was not domesticated until about 1000 BC, and camel caravans were not common until the 7th century BC when these stories were written down.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel#Domestication
Dromedaries may have first been domesticated by humans in Somalia and southern Arabia, around 3,000 BC, the Bactrian in central Asia around 2,500 BC.[14][62][63][64]

http://archaeology.about.com/od/cterms/g/camels.htm
Dromedaries were probably domesticated in coastal settlements along the southern Arabian peninsula somewhere between 3000 and 2500 BC. The earliest reference to camels in Arabia is the Sihi mandible, a camelid bone direct dated to ca 7100-7200 cal BC, or about 8200 RCYBP. Sihi is a Neolithic coastal site in Yemen, and the bone is probably a wild dromedary. The earliest camels in Africa are from Qasr Ibrim, Nubia, 9th century BC.

Evidence for the domestication of Bactrian camels has been found as early as 2600 BC at Shar-i Sokhta (also known as the Burnt City), Iran.