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By now you may have heard about a new archaeological discoverydetailing when camels came into usage in the Southern Levant. Dr. Ben-Yosef noted that the camels were not domesticated in that area until centuries after the time of Abraham. Passages like Genesis 24:10-33seem to disagree.

What should Christians do with this new data? Some of the extreme conservative theologians have reacted to this finding by denying the relevancy of this study on the specific possessions of Abraham. Others wish to dismiss the scientific discovery entirely and just depend on the Biblical text. However, are either of these approaches really the most logical? Several leading theologians have argued no.

One Old Testament professor, who spoke under condition of anonymity, said that what we see in Genesis 24 is actually a highly specialized sub-genre that no one has noticed before. He calls it the “Prophetic Anachronistic Idiomatic Narrative” (abbreviated as…