How could Genesis call the city Dan in Abraham’s day, when it was named Dan only in the time of the judges?

Genesis 14 is written for readers who knew the land by later names, and it shows this openly. The same chapter speaks of “Bela, which is Zoar” (14:2), “the vale of Siddim, which is the salt sea” (14:3), “En–mishpat, which is Kadesh” (14:7) and “the valley of Shaveh, which is the king’s dale” (14:17). Old names are kept and explained by the names the reader would know. To say that Abram chased the kings as far as Dan tells the reader where that was, as a historian today may write that Abraham came from what is now Iraq.

If this Dan is the city of Judges 18, then the name was brought up to date after the Danites took Laish. Gill allowed that it might have been put in by Samuel or another inspired writer after Moses. Many conservative scholars accept that some place-names in the Pentateuch were brought up to date in this way, whether by an inspired writer or by those who later handed the text on; either way the new name is not a mistake, since it names the same place. The place Abram reached was the place the reader knew as Dan, and the verse is true of it.

Others think Genesis means a different place altogether. Keil argued that the Dan of Judges 18, at the central source of the Jordan, did not lie on either road from the Jordan valley to Damascus, near which Abram’s pursuit ended (14:15). He took Abram’s Dan to be the Dan in Gilead named in Deuteronomy 34:1 (“all the land of Gilead, unto Dan”), probably the ‘Dan-jaan’ of 2 Samuel 24:6. Haley lists a long line of scholars who held this view. On either answer, Genesis is not misdating the name: it uses a name to show where a place was.

An older name restored

Wayne Jackson (Apologetics Press) reports the view that the town was already called Dan in Abraham’s day, was renamed Laish by its later inhabitants, and was called Dan again when the tribe took it; he also allows that the name may have been given in Genesis in advance, by inspiration.

The spring called Dan

Gill cites Josephus, who says that Abram fell on the kings at Dan, the name of one of the springs of the Jordan. Le Clerc (cited by Haley) suggested that the spring bore the name Dan, meaning ‘judge’, and that the Danites, finding it matched the name of their tribe, gave it to the town.

A sign of late writing

Many critical scholars take the name as evidence that Genesis reached its present form after the time of the judges. The conservative reply is that one updated place-name shows at most that a later hand brought a name up to date; it says nothing about when the account was first written.

Christians are divided between the two main answers, an updated name for the city of Judges 18 and a different town called Dan. The question cannot now be settled, since the site of Dan in Gilead, if it was a separate place, is unknown.