Camels in the Bible

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s writeup of this 12th-c painting of a camel found on the walls of the monastery Church of San Baudelio de Berlanga in Spain somewhat charitably declares that the painter “could have been inspired by an actual camel”. After all, there is the single hump of the dromedary camel, and this animal did eventually make its way into the Iberian Peninsula from the Middle East. There are much, much worse drawings of camels from the Medieval period. The over-emphasis of the long neck might be because in the symbolic Christian interpretation of animals, the camel stood for humility — the lowered neck was supposed to demonstrate that attribute.

Camels may have played a symbolic role in the Hebrew Bible/Christian Old Testament as well. The great foundational figure of Abraham in the book of Genesis was supposed to have been around many camels. However, the dates of the camels’ existence in the Eastern Mediterranean don’t match up with the story’s chronological setting.

In the Bible, the accounts of Abraham’s life take place around 1600 BCE. However, a 2014 archaeological study by Erez Ben-Yosef and Lidar Sapir-Hen of Tel Aviv University argue that the Eastern Mediterranean, the homeland of the Israelites/Abraham, only got the domesticated camel around 930 BCE.

There are other problems with chronological consistency in the story of Abraham. The Philistines (Israelites’ enemies) were supposed to be around during the patriarch’s lifetime, but they weren’t in the Eastern Mediterranean until 1,200 BCE.

Most scholars think that the Book of Genesis wasn’t assembled until after the 500s BCE, which is hundreds of years after the events they describe were supposed to have happened. Thus, Abraham’s use of camels symbolized his wealth or his communication with other parts of the Middle East.