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Thomas Thompson (left) and John Van Seters (right) led the assault on Albright’s identification of a patriarchal age, claiming that such an age could not be identified in the archaeological record. Both Thompson’s The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives and Van Seters’s Abraham in History and Tradition swayed many of their colleagues. As Davies writes in the accompanying article, “Not a single speaker [at a recent academic conference on ancient Israel] defended the historicity of the patriarchal narratives in Genesis.” In addition, he says, “No one at the conference argued that he had any archaeological evidence of an Israelite presence in Egypt.” Much of the public, however, continues to assume the Bible reflects historical reality.