ProJesus
“Dear JESUS, I have a problem...It’s me” “Dear child, I have the answer.....It’s ME”
ProJesus
“Dear JESUS, I have a problem...It’s me” “Dear child, I have the answer.....It’s ME”
ARCHEOLOGY:
We are fortunate to live in a time of history that is so very rich in archeological discoveries. Since the middle of the 19th century, the number of “digs” have increased dramatically. This is a marked contrast from previous centuries when there was little evidence. Much of the work ,or digs, have been in the area mentioned in the Bible.
There have been uncountable locations, names and treasures indicated in the Bible that have been verified with archeological digs. More than 25,000 sites showing some connection with the Old Testament period have been located. Not one of the archeological findings have shown the Bible to be wrong. On the contrary, when a dig involved an area of the Bible, it verified in detail, the description in the Bible.
Dr. W. F. Albright, late professor emeritus of John Hopkins University, could declare, “There can be no doubt that archeology has confirmed the substantial historicity of Old Testament tradition.”(a) Millar Burrows of Yale stated: “......archaeological work has unquestionably strengthened confidence in the reliability of the scriptural record.......This is a real contribution and not to be minimized.” For example: The discovery of the Ebla archive in northern Syria in the 1970s has shown the Biblical writings concerning the Patriarchs to be viable.
Documents written on clay tablets from around 2300 B.C. demonstrate that personal and place names in the Patriarchal accounts are genuine. A dig in 1923 discovered, without doubt, Ur of the Chaldees. Also found were clay tablets with Biblical names of that era. A few miles from Ur an inscribed foundation stone was found, laid by a king of unknown name, of the first Dynasty of Ur, which the scribes speak of as the third dynasty after the Flood.
Another find: Even though the Hittites are mentioned 47 times in the Bible, scholars doubted that they existed because no historical evidence of such people had been found. Then in 1876, Hugo Winckler uncovered 5 temples and 10,000 clay tablets. They were deciphered and shown that the Hittits did really exist in the area described in the Bible.
Also, the location of Christ’s trial, the “Pool of Bathesda” and the fact that there was a “census” at the time of Christ and that Quirinus was governor have all been verified with archeological discoveries. An excavation, by Avraham Biram and his team of archeologists in early 1990 at Tel Dan, near the foot of Mt. Hermon, found a remarkable inscription from the ninth century B.C. The inscription refers to both the “House of David” and the “King of Israel”.
During excavations from 1956 to 1962 James Pritchard found jars inscribed with the word Gibeon, a town north of Jerusalem. This find verifies the Bible account that the town actually existed. In 1902, John Peters found a tomb with an inscription “Maresha”, a town mentioned in Joshua 15:44.. It was once claimed there was no Assyrian king named Sargon as recorded in Isaiah 20:1, because this name was not known in any other record. Then, Sargon's palace was discovered in Khorsabad, Iraq.
The very event mentioned in Isaiah 20, his capture of Ashdod, was recorded on the palace walls. What is more, fragments of a stela memorializing the victory were found at Ashdod itself. (A stela is an upright pillar bearing an inscription)Undoubtedly, the most important mention of Israel outside the Bible is that in the Merneptah, or " Israel," Stela. Discovered in 1896 in Merneptah's mortuary temple in Thebes by Flinders Petrie, the stela is a poetic eulogy to pharaoh Merneptah, who ruled Egypt after Rameses the Great, 1212‑1202 BC. Of significance to Biblical studies is a short section at the end of the poem describing a campaign to Canaan by Merneptah in the first few years of his reign, ca. 1210 BC.
One line mentions Israel: " Israel is laid waste, its seed is not." Here we have the earliest mention of Israel outside the Bible and the only mention of Israel in Egyptian records. Cyrus the Great ruled the Persian empire from 559‑530 B.C. He is best known for his capture of Babylon in 539 B.C. Already in the 8th century B.C. Isaiah predicted this defeat (Isaiah 45:1‑3), and went on to say that Cyrus would "set my exiles free' (Isaiah 45:13). That Cyrus released the Jewish exiles from Babylon is not only documented in the Bible (2 Chronicles 36:22‑23; Ezra 1:2‑4), but also implied in the contemporary Cyrus Cylinder. This ancient record states, "I (Cyrus) gathered all their former inhabitants and returned to them their habitations."
Cyrus was buried in a simple gabled stone tomb outside his capital of Pasargadae in modern Iran. According to the historian Strabo, this inscription once graced the structure, "Oh man, I am Cyrus, the son of Cambyses, who founded the empire of Persia, and was king of Asia. Grudge me not therefore this monument". In an unprecedented discovery, an ancient text found at Deir Alla, Jordan, in 1967 tells about the activities of a prophet named Balaam. Could this be the Balaam of the Old Testament? The text makes it clear that it is. Three times in the first four lines he is referred to as "Balaam son of Beor," exactly as in the Bible. This represents the first Old Testament prophet to be dug up in Bible lands ‑ not his tomb or his skeleton, but a text about him.
The text also represents the first prophecy of any scope from the ancient West Semitic world to be found outside the Old Testament, and the first extra‑Biblical example of a prophet proclaiming doom to his own people. Balaam was not an Israelite. He was hired by Balak, king of Moab, to curse the Israelites. They were camped on the east side of the Jordan river, about to make their historic entry into the promised land. Through God's intervention Balaam was obliged to bless the Israelites rather than curse them (Num 22‑24). Afterwards, Balaam seems to have been the cause of the Israelites' sin in Numbers 25 when they took Moabite and Midianite women and worshiped the Moabite god Baal‑Peor (Num 31:16).
Balaam was eventually killed when Moses sent the Israelites against the Midianites (Num 31). He is further condemned in Scripture in 2 Peter 2:15 (he loved the wages of unrighteousness), Jude 11 (ungodly men ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward) and Revelation 2:14 (he taught Balak to cast a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols, and to commit fornication). The remarkable text found at Deir Alla consists of 119 fragments of plaster inscribed with black and red ink. It was among the rubble of a building destroyed in an earthquake. It seems to have been one long column with at least 50 lines, displayed on a plastered wall.
According to the excavators' dating, the disaster was most likely the severe earthquake which occurred in the time of King Uzziah (Azariah) and the prophet Amos in about 760 BC (Amos 1:1; Zec 14:5). The lower part of the text shows signs of wear, indicating that it had been on the wall for some time prior to the earthquake. Written in Aramaic, the text begins with the title "Warnings from the Book of Balaam the son of Beor. He was a seer of the gods." It is in red ink, as are other portions of the text where emphasis is desired.
The reference to the "Book of Balaam" indicates that the text was part of a pre‑existing document and therefore the original date of the material is much earlier than the plaster text itself. Balaam goes on to relate a vision concerning impending judgment from the gods, and enters into a dispute with his listeners.
Below are additional items worthy of mention:
1. Most of the major cities of the Bible can be identified.
2. In 1975 a dig discovered 20,000 tablets at the city of Ebla, preserved by a fire, which indicated details of their culture.
3. In 1868 an inscribed stone was excavated at Dibon. The stone mentions Mesha king of Moab and his overthrow of Israel, King Omri and the God of Israel (Yahweh)
4. Sumerian tablets record the confusion of language as we have in the Biblical account of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1‑9).
5. Campaign into Israel by Pharaoh Shishak (1 Kings 14:25‑26), recorded on the walls of the Temple of Amun in Thebes, Egypt.
6. Revolt of Moab against Israel (2 Kings 1:1; 3:4‑27), recorded on the Mesha Inscription.
7. Fall of Samaria (2 Kings 17:3‑6, 24; 18:9‑11) to Sargon II, king of Assyria, as recorded on his palace walls.
8. Defeat of Ashdod by Sargon II (Isaiah 20:1), as recorded on his palace walls.
9. Campaign of the Assyrian king Sennacherib against Judah (2 Kings 18:13‑16), as recorded on the Taylor Prism.
10. Siege of Lachish by Sennacherib (2 Kings 18:14, 17), as recorded on the Lachish reliefs.
11. Assassination of Sennacherib by his own sons (2 Kings 19:37), as recorded in the annals of his son Esarhaddon.
12. Fall of Nineveh as predicted by the prophets Nahum and Zephaniah (2:13‑15), recorded on the Tablet of Nabopolasar.
13. Fall of Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon (2 Kings 24:10‑14), as recorded in the Babylonian Chronicles.
14. Captivity of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, in Babylon (2 Kings 24:15‑16), as recorded on the Babylonian Ration Records.
15. Fall of Babylon to the Medes and Persians (Daniel 5:30‑31), as recorded on the Cyrus Cylinder
16. Freeing of captives in Babylon by Cyrus the Great (Ezra 1:1‑4; 6:3‑4), as recorded on the Cyrus Cylinder.
17. The existence of Jesus as recorded by Josephus, Suetonius, Thallus, Pliny the Younger, the Talmud, and Lucian.
18. Forcing Jews to leave Rome during the reign of Claudius (A.D. 41‑54) (Acts 18:2), as recorded by Suetonius.
19. Peter Thiede states that the Magdalen Fragments date back to 70 A.D.
20. In Caesarea in 1961 two Italian archaeologists excavated an inscription, in Latin, that read ”Pontius Pilate, Perfect of Judea, has presented the Tiberium to the Caesareans” This was the first non-Biblical reference to Pilate.
Many more areas of discoveries could be listed. This study of Archeology may be sufficient evidence to show the truth and reliability of the Bible. However, much more evidence is to come.