Patriarchal age

The Patriarchal Age is the era of the three biblical Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, according to the narratives of Genesis 12–50. (These chapters also contain the history of Joseph, although Joseph is not one of the Covenantal Patriarchs.) It is preceded in the Bible by the Primeval history and followed by The Exodus.

The Bible contains an intricate pattern of chronologies from the creation of Adam, the first man, to the reigns of the later kings of ancient Israel and Judah. Based on this chronology and the Rabbinic tradition, ancient Jewish sources such as Seder Olam Rabbah date the birth of Abraham to 1948 AM (c. 1813 BCE) and place the death of Jacob in 2255 AM (c. 1506 BCE).

History known and dateable independently from the Bible first makes contact with the Scriptures during the era of the first Jewish kings. As such, the events before this period came to be disputed with the advent of biblical criticism in the 19th century. Little interest in questioning the biblical chronology existed before then, but with the development of the documentary hypothesis – the theory that the Pentateuch, including the Book of Genesis, was composed not by Moses but by unknown authors living at various times between 950 and 450 BC.

Out of this heated debate between the various theories of biblical criticism and traditional, religious interpretations was born biblical archaeology, a form of archaeology different from others in that it sought not to discover and interpret mute evidence, but to validate (or for some, invalidate) the historicity of the Patriarchs and the events surrounding their lives, as described within the Bible.

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