Kosh

Here is the actual quote from that book:

"We know through archaeological research that camels were not domesticated as beasts of burden earlier than the late second millenium, and were not widely used in that capacity in the near middle east until well after 1000 B.C."

A small prepositional phrase, but significant enough that it should not be left out. While there are many webpages out about camels (search on "domesticated camel") that claim domestication dates from 4500 bc to 8000 bc (none of them list any support for such claims), it appears that Finkelstein is making a differentiation between "domestication" and "domestication as beasts of burden". (Don't ask me what else you'd use a domesticated camel for if not a beast of burden. Milk?).

Note also that his point is that they were not widely used as such until after 1000 bce. His book specifically points out a dramatic increase in archeological camel bones around 7th century BCE.

Here's the reason for his argument:

"...the Joseph story - reveals an obvious familiarty with the main products of the lucrative Arabian trade that flourished under the supervision of the Assyrian empire in the eighth-seventh centuries BCE" (page 37)

To kick this camel one more time, he is not claiming that Camels were not domesticated until after 1000, he is claiming that the level of domestic camel use for caravans, as described in the OT stories, did not exist until the 7th century BCE.

Tercel

Evidence of people riding on and leading camels counts as them being domesticated as beasts of burden. (Anyone want to argue with that?)
If Free and Clayton are correct, then Finkelstein and Silberman are simply wrong.

Nogo brings up an interesting point. Who is more a priori believable: Finkelstein and Silberman, or a fundamentalist apologetics website?

Vorkosigan

Look carefully at the dates cited in the reference. They are from the 1940s and 1960s. No doubt this evidence has either been redated or revised since the time of that writing. It is an old apologetics trick to cite out-of-date references as if they were still on target. I suspect the reason a 1944 reference was used is because later references would not support this.

But, I may be wrong, because....

....a little web sleuthing brought up this much more interesting paper, in which the author says he discovered evidence of older camel domestication himself.

http://www.aiias.edu/ict/vol_26B/26Bcc_457-477.pdf

Use the search function to locate the word camel and read from there.

• My own research, however, and that of several other scholars, has shown that there is actually plenty of evidence for domesticated camels from the second millennium BC. Some of this evidence includes a bronze figurine of a camel in a kneeling position found at Byblos and dated to the 19th/18th centuries BE; a gold camel figurine in a kneeling position from the 3rd Dynasty of Ur (2070-1960 BC); a petroglyph at Aswan in Egypt which shows a man leading a camel by a rope (writing next to the picture suggests its dates to 2423-2263 BC); and a figurine from Aabussir el Melek, Egypt showing a recumbent camel carrying a load (dated to the 3rd millennium BC). To these examples, I can take pride in adding another that was discovered by myself (Younker 1997), along with colleagues, Dick and JoAnn Davidson
  (our children), William Shea and David Merling during an excursion into the Wadi Nasib in the Sinai during the month of July 1998. There I noticed a petroglyph of a camel being led by a man not far from a stele of Ammenemes III and some famous proto-Sinaitic inscriptions discovered by Georg Gerster in 1961. Based on the patina of the petroglyphs, the dates of the accompanying inscriptions and nearby archaeological remains it would seem that this camel petroglyph dates to the Late Bronze Age, probably
  not later than 1500 BC. Clearly, scholars who have denied the presence of domesticated camels in the 2nd millennium BC have been committing the fallacy of arguing from silence. This approach should not be allowed to cast doubt upon the veracity of any historical document, let alone Scripture.

The comment "let alone Scripture" is a signal that the writer is probably heavily biased, but nevertheless, it is hard to argue with someone who says he has seen the elephant himself.

The writer's website is here:

http://www.andrews.edu/SEM/faculty/younker.htm

He is a Seventh-Day Adventist, and does actual fieldwork in the Middle East.

Vorkosigan

Layman

It's an old trick many people use. Doherty relies on a commentary on Hebrews from the 1800s to support one of his convenient transations of that text. And many Jesus-Mythers referring to the "pagan copycat" stuff rely on outdated secondary sources for their arguments.

NOGO

Why are you confused, Tercel?

Please take time to read this site and tell me if they appear to you as a credible source of informaiton.

Celsus

What, like my namesake?

Layman

Nah, ancient secondary sources are a different matter. I'm talking about histories written in the 1800s and early 1900s.

Radcliffe Emerson

Finkelstein's very clear in his book that their findings are based on the last 20 years of archaelogical excavations.

Bobzammel

Finkelstein is also director of archaelogy at a university in Israel. So being so close to the actual digs themselves and being an archalogist, it seems that he would know better than an apologetic.
Also, apologetics tend to jump the gun when it comes to "archaeological discoveries" that support their beliefs. Take the Ossurary, the Shroud, the human/dinosaur footprints, and the "Pictographs" of "Dinosaurs". All have been pretty much revealed to be either phony or misinterpated.

Bede

Dogs aren't camels, but this research applied to camels might answer the question of both where and when they were first domesticated.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason