POINTS TO CONSIDER

1.) Does this research definitively represent the total area of Israel, from its most sparsely to most highly populated areas? If not, then this research may simply suggest that domesticated camels were not in use at these sites until 900BCE.

To be fair, according to Sapir-Hen and Ben-Yosef's paper, the study encompassed quite a bit of Israel. In fact, they were confident that it did represent a good portion of Israel's history. However, perhaps later discoveries will show that camels were not in use in some areas while they were in others at various points in Israel's history.

2.) The word for camel gamal (גָּמָל) may be a substitute for the oral tradition's use of a load-bearing animal. Perhaps, according to oral tradition, the load bearing animal was a donkey or mule. When it came time to consolidate and 'canonize' the Torah, the scribes (being people of their time) assigned the word camel to the word load-bearing animal. (This is not unlike when we hear a story of a cowboy riding into town on an animal, we automatically assume the animal was a horse.)

Old Testament scholars have long suggested that the Torah was not finished in the form we have it today until well after the events they describe. Even if we accepted Moses as the author of the Torah, we must also remember that he was not present for a major portion of it (Genesis). Oral tradition must play some type of role in its formation, which is something Christians have believed for a long time.

3.) Could Abraham have acquired camels from Egypt and brought them to Israel without them becoming widely used until much later? Most of the articles claim that Abraham (among the other patriarchs) did not have camels in Israel until Egypt introduced them abruptly, perhaps due to trade. Archeological evidence suggests that Egypt did have domesticated camels

This assumes, then, that when Abraham went to Egypt, he did not acquire a single camel. On the contrary, is it possible that Abraham, during his visit to Egypt, acquired Egyptian domesticated camels? I think so, especially since Genesis 12:16 explicitly mentions Abraham's camels while in Egypt.

Of course, this depends on whether or not Egypt had domesticated camels during the time Abraham was in Egypt. Since Egypt was the trade center of the world at that time, it is entirely possible to see how domesticated camels were present in the first millennium BCE Egypt.[1]

AT THE END OF THE DAY…

This is such a great example of how hungry some people are to decry the veracity of the Bible. After all, a good amount of news organizations have heralded this research as a fatal blow to scripture. (Remember, we're talking about the domestication of camels in Israel. We're not talking about a Jesus ossuary.)

It is interesting to see how many media outlets rushed to declare the Bible false, seemingly without considering that there might be a logical explanation. I'm not sure they would have done the same for other types of archeological finds.