TT’s Reviews > The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Sacred Texts > Status Update

Among the descendants of Ishmael listed in Genesis 25:12–15, for example, are the Q(K)edarites (from his son Kedar) who are mentioned for the first time in Assyrian records of the late eighth century BCE

Edom did not exist as a distinct political entity until a relatively late period. From the Assyrian sources we know that there were no real kings and no state in Edom before the late eighth century BCE. Edom appears in ancient records as a distinct entity only after the conquest of the region by Assyria. And it became a serious rival to Judah only with the beginning of the lucrative Arabian trade.

We now know thru archaeological research that camels were not domesticated as carrier earlier than the late 2nd millennium and were not widely used in that capacity in the ancient N.East until well after 1000BC. And the camel caravan carrying “gum, balm, and myrrh,” in the Joseph story— the main products of the lucrative Arabian trade that flourished under the supervision of the Assyrian empire in the 8th–7th BC .