Opinion is at variance regarding the patriarchal narratives as a whole. To deny their historical character is to reject them as trustworthy accounts of the age to which they are ascribed, and even those scholars who claim that they are essentially historical already go so far as to concede idealization and the possibility or probability of later revision. The failure to apprehend historical method has often led to the fallacious argument that the trustworthiness of individual features justifies our accepting the whole, or that the elimination of unhistorical elements will leave an historical residuum. Here and frequently elsewhere in biblical history it is necessary to allow that a genuine historical tradition may be clothed in an unhistorical dress, but since many diverse motives are often concentrated upon one narrative (e.g. Gen. xxxii. 22-32, xxxiv., xxxviii.), the work of internal historical criticism (in view of the scantiness of the evidence) can rarely claim finality. The patriarchal narratives themselves belong to the popular stock of tradition of which only a portion has been preserved. Many of the elements lie outside questions of time and place and are almost immemorial. Some appear written for the first time in the book of Jubilees, in "the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs" (both perhaps 2nd century B.C.) and in later sources; and although in Genesis the stories are now in a post-exilic setting (a stage earlier than Jubilees), the older portions may well belong to the 7th or 6th cent. This question, however, will rest upon those criteria alone which are of true chronological validity (see further GENESIS).