ABSTRACT
The understanding we have of the significance and historical reference of the patriarchal narratives in Genesis may be said to have undergone a complete upheaval in the last three decades. Not so long ago scholars could write quite seriously, if not of the historical truth of the stories with reference to the succession of events in the life of each character, Abraham, Isaac or Jacob, then at any rate with confidence in the verisimilitude of the stories within a Bronze Age cultural milieu. That is, leaving open the issue of whether, for instance, Abraham really did twice allow his wife to be put in a compromising position to preserve his own life, the stories purported to deal with a world preceding the supposed settlement of the Israelites in Palestine after a sojourn in Egypt, and did in fact do so. We are more likely to discover in more recent studies that the patriarchs are entirely fictitious, literary characters, who now roam a promised land which is in the minds of exilic readers, keening for a lost home which they hope may be restored to them in the not too distant future on the strength of divine promises.
