Endnote 16 – The Book Albright Never Finished

Albright, Archaeology, “Historical Analogy” and Early Biblical Tradition (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1966), pp. 42–65. It should be pointed out that the first of the three Rockwell Lectures, published in this work, entitled “The Historical Interpretation of Early Hebrew Literature,” pp. 3–21, is also based on material first written up in the unpublished manuscript on the history of the religion of Israel. However, the second Rockwell Lecture, “The Story of Abraham in the Light of New Archaeological Data” (pp. 22–41), is based on an idea which Albright had developed more recently. This new hypothesis, namely that Abraham was a donkey caravaneer, was first advanced by Albright in an article published in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 163 (1961), pp. 36–54. This view was rejected by nearly all scholars.