*“To some extent, there is dependence on biblical traditions (as in other areas of early Islamic religion), as Jews and Jewish Christians were active in the Arabian peninsula in the time of Mohammad; for example Khadija’s cousin Waraqa ibn Naufal ibn Asad ibn ‘abdul ‘Uzza was a Christian familiar with a supposed Hebrew gospel text (Sahih al-Bukhari 1.3).  But also the biblical authors were themselves familiar with the existence of various Arabian tribes and how they were related to each other.  The genealogies in Genesis posit different levels of relatedness of the different tribes to the Israelites. The closest were the offspring of Abraham via his wives Hagar and Keturah; the former giving rise to the Ishmaelites and the the latter originating the Midianites and others.  These were largely peoples of NW Arabia.  More remote are the sons of Joktan (= the Qaḥtani, a group of autochthonous Arabian tribes distinguished from the descendents of Ismā‘īl in Islamic tradition), the great great grandson of Shem, which include tribes further south in the Arabian peninsula including Yemen, and then furthest are the tribes reckoned as offspring of Ham.  Yet there is little consistency and doublets abound; Keturah’s son Jokshan is a variant of the Joktan that was the son of Eber, Sheba and Dedan were both the sons of the Shemite Jokshan and the Hamite Raamah, and Havilah appears both as a son of Cush and a son of Joktan.  So Israelite conceptualizations of how the Arabian tribes were related to each other were contradictory and may reflect varying affiliation and historical groupings.”*

*”The sons of Ishmael in Genesis 25:13-15 correspond to the Shumu’il coalition of Arabian tribes that existed during the period of Assyrian hegemony from the late 8th century to the late 7th century BC. The tribes of Shumu’il mentioned in Assyrian cuneiform texts are identical with the names listed in the biblical text: Nebayot, Qedar, Massa, Teima, etc.  I don’t know however if there was any historical connection between these tribes and the Banu Kinanah and Quraysh of Late Antiquity, who lived further south in western Arabia.  What we do know is that Pliny the Elder in the first century CE mentioned the Qedarites as the Cedræi but located them further south around Al-Ḥijr (Historia Naturalis, 5.12), which is where the ancient kingdoms of Thamud and Dedan existed.  This probably represents the southward push of the Nabatæans in the Roman era, controlling trade routes in the Arabian peninsula (however Pliny also mentions the Nabatæi as a separate people to the adjoining the two other regions).”*

Do you have any way to demonstrate that this is not true? If the biblical account is contradictory and anachronistic, this casts a lot of doubt on the validity of the rest of the text, especially considering that this, the story of the patriarchs, is one of the most important of the entire book. I hope you’re able to answer soon.