The numerous tablets found in Nuzi, in the south-east of Nineveh in Iraq, also confirmed the historicity of the book of Genesis, bringing splits on several customs in vogue at the time of the patriarchs. Thus, « it was a custom at Nuzi for childless people to adopt a son to serve them as long as they lived and to bury and mourn for them when they died. In exchange for these services, the adopted son was designated as an heir. If, however, the adoptor should beget a son after the adoption, the adopted must yield to the real son the right to be the chief heir » (tablet H V 7) ⁸. This explains the promise that Jehovah made to Abraham that his servant Eliezer — whom he had probably adopted — would not be his heir (Genesis 15:2-4). Similarly, « the marriage contracts at Nuzi contained a provision obliging a childless wife to provide her husband with a handmaid who would bear children. This explains the action of Sarah in giving Hagar to Abraham (Genesis 16) and of Rachel in giving Bilhah to Jacob (Genesis 30:1-3). (…) The offspring of the handmaid could not be driven out, which shows that there was a legal basis for Abraham’s apprehension over the expulsion of Hagar and her child (Genesis 21:11) » (tablet H V 67) ⁹. Several tablets found in Nuzi also corroborate the account recorded in Genesis 25:33 of Esau’s sale of his birthright. One of them (N 204) relates that « a man by the name of Tupkitilla transferred his inheritance rights (…) to his brother Kurpazah in exchange for three sheep (…). But just as Kurpazah exploited Tupkitilla’s hunger, so did Jacob take advantage of the famished Esau » ¹⁰. Another tablet (G 51) makes it possible to draw an interesting parallel between the story of Jacob’s tense relations with his father-in-law Laban (Genesis 29-31), and that of a man named « Nashwi and his adopted son called Wullu (…). Nashwi bestows his daughter upon Wullu, even as Laban promised a daughter to Jacob when he received him into his household. When Nashwi dies, Wullu is to be the heir. However if Nashwi begets a son, Wullu must share the inheritance with that son, and only the latter shall take Nashwi’s [domestic] gods (…) [and, therefore,] the leadership of the family. Since Laban had sons of his own when Jacob departed for Canaan, they alone had the right to have their father’s gods, [so] the theft of the teraphim by Rachel (…) was a serious offense » ¹¹. To what conclusion should the mention of all these archaeological documents lead us?

Perhaps to that expressed by the Hebrew scholar Harold Rowley: « In all of these cases we have customs which do not recur in the Old Testament in later periods, and which therefore are not likely to reflect contemporary society in the age when the [textes génésiaques] were written (…). Their accurate reflection of social conditions (…) in some parts of the Mesopotamia from which the patriarchs are said to have come, many centuries before the present documents were composed, is striking (…). Ít is now becoming increasingly clear that the traditions of the Patriarchal Age, preserved in the book of Genesis, reflect with remarkable accuracy the actual conditions (…) of the period between 1800 and 1500 B.C. » ¹². Therefore, it seems obvious that the « remarkable accuracy » of these customs and traditions would have been forgotten if the Pentateuch had been written long after that late date. Especially as the seniority of its writing is confirmed by many expressions which also testify in favor of a unique original work.

« When the writer has occasion to mention the titles of any official », explains the biblical scholar John Garrow Duncan, « he employs the correct title in use and exactly as it was used at the period referred to, and, where there is no Hebrew equivalent, he simply adopts the the Egyptian word and transliterates it into Hebrew. (…) So when he makes his brethren speak of Joseph as ‘the Man’ [Genesis 42-43], the writer employs a title then in use for the vizier or king’s double. As vizier Joseph was “the Man”, the foremost man in the kingdom. Again, when he speaks of Aaron as Moses’ “mouth” or spokesman [Exodus 4:16], he is employing an Egyptian official title in regular use. During the time of the Hebrew sojourn [in Egypt], (…) there was a body of high officials at court who acted as intermediaries between Pharaoh and his people. The “Mouth” was the title of the highest of these mediators, and he was generally the heir to the throne. In his use of ‘Pharaoh’, too, as a title, the writer is historically accurate. In fact, nothing more convincingly proves the intimate knowledge of things Egyptian in the Old Testament, (…) than the use of this word ‘Pharaoh’ at different periods » ¹³. It is true that this expression is particularly emblematic of the ancient disagreements over the historicity of both the Pentateuch and Moses as its editor. Many exegetes have denied both on the basis that the personal name of the Egyptian monarch is never mentioned in the early books of the Bible. Nevertheless, the defenders of the inspired text recalled that the expression « per-aa », literally « big house », was rising, in reference to the royal palace, « to the Old Empire, but as an epithet for the monarch, it only appears in the eighteenth dynasty (…) Until the tenth century, the term “Pharaoh” was alone, without a personal name juxtaposed. (…) In fact, the use of ‘Pharaoh’ in Genesis and Exodus is consistent with Egyptian practice from the 15th to the 10th century [BCE] » ¹⁴.