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struggles of fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, daughters, and sons. In some ways it is a typical family story, with all its joy and sadness, love and hatred, deceit and cunning, famine and prosperity. It is also a universal, philosophical story about the relationship between God and humanity; about devotion and obedience; about right and wrong; about faith, piety, and immorality. It is the story of God choosing a nation; of God’s eternal promise of land, prosperity, and growth.
    From almost every standpoint—historical, psychological, spiritual—thepatriarchal narratives are powerful literary achievements. But are they reliable annals of the birth of the people of Israel? Is there any evidence that patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—and matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, and Rachel—actually lived?
A Saga of Four Generations
    The book of Genesis describes Abraham as the archetypal man of faith and family patriarch, originally coming from Ur in southern Mesopotamia and resettling with his family in the town of Haran, on one of the tributaries of the upper Euphrates ( Figure 4 ). It is there that God appeared to him and commanded him, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing” (Genesis 12 : 1 – 2 ). Obeying God’s words, Abram (as he was then called) took his wife, Sarai, and his nephew Lot, and departed for Canaan. He wandered with his flocks among the central hill country, moving mainly between Shechem in the north, Bethel (near Jerusalem), and Hebron in the south, but also moving into the Negev, farther south ( Figure 5 ).
    During his travels, Abram built altars to God in several places and gradually discovered the true nature of his destiny. God promised Abram and his descendants all the lands from “the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates” (Genesis 15 : 18 ). And to signify his role as the patriarch of many people, God changed Abram’s name to Abraham—“for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations” (Genesis 17 : 5 ). He also changed his wife Sarai’s name to Sarah to signify that her status had changed as well.
    The family of Abraham was the source of all the nations of the region. During the course of their wandering in Canaan, the shepherds of Abraham and the shepherds of Lot began to quarrel. In order to avoid further family conflict, Abraham and Lot decided to partition the land. Abraham and his people remained in the western highlands while Lot and his family went eastward to the Jordan valley and settled in Sodom near the Dead Sea. The people of Sodom and the nearby city of Gomorrah proved to be wicked and treacherous, but God rained brimstone and fire on the sinful cities, utterly destroying them. Lot then went off on his own to the eastern hills to become the ancestor of the Transjordanian peoples of Moab and Ammon. Abraham also became the father of several other ancient peoples. Since his wife, Sarah, at her advanced age of ninety, could not produce children, Abraham took as his concubine Hagar, Sarah’s Egyptian slave. Together they had a child named Ishmael, who would in time become the ancestor of all the Arab peoples of the southern wilderness.

    Figure 4: Mesopotamian and other ancient Near Eastern sites connected with the patriarchal narratives.
    Most important of all for the biblical narrative, God promised Abraham another child, and his beloved wife, Sarah, miraculously gave birth to a son, Isaac, when Abraham was a hundred years old. One of the most powerful images in the Bible occurs when God confronts Abraham with the ultimate test of his faith, commanding him to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac on a mountain in the land of Moriah. God halted the sacrifice but rewarded Abraham’s display of faithfulness by renewing his covenant. Not only would Abraham’s descendants grow into a