About 5,000 family-archive tablets from Nuzi document Hurrian household law that explains otherwise puzzling Genesis customs: a childless wife giving her handmaid to her husband to bear an heir, the legal weight of a deathbed blessing, the way a household could buy or sell its inheritance birthright, and adoption of an heir when no son existed. Each appears in Genesis exactly as Nuzi law would predict.
Why this matters
These customs disappeared from the ancient Near East after about 1400 BC. Genesis preserving them argues for the patriarchal narratives being genuinely ancient, not invented during or after the Babylonian exile (a popular skeptic theory).
Scripture references
Genesis 15:2-4Genesis 16:1-4Genesis 25:29-34Genesis 27:33-37
Location
Yorghan Tepe, Iraq