Hi Randy,
Our mesora provides a good list back to Abraham. Research (archaeological or otherwise) has not yielded a compendium of names that bridge gaps in biblical generations in a literal fashion. If you'll indulge me for a moment I can elaborate, if verbosely.
If the many biographies of Abraham Avinu are to be believed, reconstructing the period in which he lived is easy. According to historians who have attempted to construct a timeline based upon generations, Abraham lived within the Hittite Empire roughly 1,800-1,650 BCE (during the time of Hammurabi). Abraham lived among the Hittites (Heth) – the empire which controlled Canaan during Abraham's time – and from the Hittites (Ephron in particular), Abraham (a geir) purchased that cave of Makhpelah. A verbal contract was entered into between Ephron and Abraham resulting in exchange of 400 shekels of silver. Thus we can infer that Ephron and Abraham communicated in a language acceptable to both. Perhaps it was Aramaic, perhaps Assyro-Babylonian...we do not know what language(s) Abraham spoke. But we are inclined to accept that Hittites and their vassals spoke Nesian, Akkadian AND Assyro-Babylonian (their trading partners) still others spoke Hurrian, writing it in cuneiform (Sumerian was extinct by 1,800 BCE).
What is especially important about Abraham's agreement with a Hittite, is the nature of Hittite agreements of that period. The Hittites, and the Assyrians for that matter, did not incorporate sprinkling the blood of slaughtered animals, on the parties to the agreement, in order to seal the agreement. If you'll recall, Bereishit tells us Abraham sacrificed a ram as a burnt offering whereby the ram was a proxy for Isaac – sacrificing children/people was at that moment replaced by sacrificing an animal. So we see two very important shifts in human behavior with regard to buying/selling property agreements AND abandonment of human sacrifice to attain favor from haShem. We can thank the Mittani of that period for the patrician attitude such agreements engendered among men. In that period of human history, such a purchase of property within the Hittite Kingdom rendered Abraham a protected Vassal of the Hittite Kingdom (Northern Syria)....protected from the Egyptians who were in the south of present-day Syria.
I describe the foregoing to make a point – there is no written text (clay tablet) which pre-dates that period, noted above, which elucidates such benevolent, and patrician, attitudes among men. The reason we know so much about Abraham Avinu was because Moshe Rabeinu told us Abraham's story as “the legacy of Kol Ya'akob”...there is no other source for the story. There are clay tablets which describe the time period in which Abraham lived, yet, academically speaking we have no evidence that he existed outside of our Shalshelet haQabbalah.
The Ebla/Tel Mardikh tablets tell us about the historic period in which Abraham thrived, yet they make no mention of Abraham or his father...on over 20,000 tablets. The Mari Tablets make no mention of him either on over 24,000 tablets. Why would we expect Abraham to be mentioned? Abraham's father was idol fabricator for King Nimrod of Shinar – a character described, in Bereishit, to be the great-grandson of Noach. This is difficult to accept since Bereishit tells us that Abraham is “10 generations” removed from Noach. Please keep in mind that “Land of Nimrod” is a biblical synonym for Assyria/Mesopotamia. So, is Abraham an Archetype for a law-giver who promotes the 7 laws of Noach (the 6 laws of Adamah + 1 law of Noach)? Is he literally a man? Is Nimrod a real person or an archetype of “Assyrian King Tukulti-Ninurta I”? No king named “Nimrod” is to be found anywhere in the ancient and extensive Mesopotamian records, including the Assyrian King List, nor the king lists of the Sumerians, Akkadian Empire, Babylonia or Chaldea. If Nimrod is an archetype, then what are we to make of the archetype's idol-maker and his son?
What does all this mean? Academically, there is no credible way to build a chain of names and heritage that reaches beyond Abraham Avinu. We run into problems with Abraham because of the religious fervor that surrounds the name “Abraham”...as father of the Abrahamic religions.
In the way I was taught - Adamah, not Adam, was the first self-aware human – we don't know if he lived 90,000 years ago or if he lived 5,000 years ago. However, Torah tells us that his son, Seth, carried his tradition of six (6) laws that were taught to all of his progeny. Therefore, I was taught Adamah was a person who formulated the foundational principles guiding organized civilized societies as we evolved from hunter-gatherers to domesticators of plants skilled in animal husbandry.
We then see, in Bereishit, a number of people carrying forward this Shalshelet haQabbalah until Noach. The six (6) laws of Adamah persist until Noach who then adds another law...that humans cannot eat meat cut from a living animal then leaving the animal to suffer its wound. Such was a common practice until then.
Bereishit tells us about the generations between Noach and Abraham...but it says nothing about new laws...only that the seven (7) Laws of Noach were carried forward to Abraham. This Shalshelet haQabbalah persists until Abraham Avinu...who is a game-changer. Abraham teaches this Shalshelet haQabbalah to his offspring...Yitzhak and Ishmael (to name a couple). Yitzhak teaches his Shalshelet haQabbalah to Ya'akob....Ya'akob has difficulty with these laws, constantly wrestling with them. This constant wrestling with the Laws earned him the name 'Israel'.
To be certain, we have no authentication of these stories outside of our mesora but our mesora tells us something important that lends credibility to the proposition that Abraham, Yitzhak and Ya'akob were literally men – our mesora tells us that the Torah (Law) conveyed by Moshe was the legacy of the community of Yakob...that Moshe memorialized the corpus of laws that were formulated between the time of Abraham and the Exodus from Egypt.
In the end, if the world's oldest extant texts offer no insight into methods of authentication of bilbical figures, we are left to accept them on faith...albeit with a great deal of circumspection :)
