Apologetics: Archaeology and the Bible, Part 2

Old Testament

The Dead Sea Scrolls

These were found in 1946 by a shepherd boy in caves near the Dead Sea. There are hundreds of such caves, and many are very difficult to reach. Fortunately, the boy’s goats wandered into a cave that held scrolls, leading to the greatest Biblical archaeological discovery of the 20th Century.

Scholars have only recently published the full texts of the scrolls, and they have shed tremendous light on Second Temple Judaism from about 200 BC to shortly after the time of the apostles.

The scrolls include nearly full texts of Isaiah and Daniel, demonstrating that, contrary to some theories, these books clearly predate the Hellenistic period.

The Dan Stele

In 1994, archaeologists excavating the City of Dan in northern Israel came across a stone inscription dating to the 800s BC. Of particular importance, the stele mentions David.

The Aramaean king [Hazael] refers to the kingdom of Judah by its dynastic name, a name frequently used in the Hebrew Bible as well: the House of David. This not only indicates that the family of David still sat on the throne of Jerusalem, but this inscription represents the oldest textual reference to the historical King David ever discovered! …

First, contrary to all of the ink spilled touting the silence of David and Solomon from the extra-biblical record there is now proof of a historical king of Israel named David.

Second, an Aramaean king would not brag about killing a king who was the relative of a guy who led a backwoods hick town. In order for Hazael to brag about killing a king descending from the House of David, David must have been a well-known and influential king even 150 years after his death.

Third, after Hazael was eventually defeated it looks like the inhabitants of Dan tore down the inscription, broke it up into pieces and reused the stone fragments to construct their new outer gate showing their disdain for the inscription and love for their historically rich country.

The Tel Dan inscription is amazing. It is made more amazing by the decades of ridicule which surrounded the silence of David and Solomon from the historical record.

Jericho

Kathleen Kenyon conducted extensive excavations of the ruins of Jericho in the 1950s. Her findings were published after her death. Most of her findings correlate with the biblical narrative:

• The city was strongly fortified (Joshua 2:5,7,15, 6:5,20).

• The attack occurred just after harvest time in the spring (Joshua 2:6, 3:15, 5:10).

• The inhabitants had no opportunity to flee with their food (Joshua 6:1).

• The siege was short (Joshua 6:15).

• The walls were leveled, possibly by an earthquake (Joshua 6:20).

• The city was not plundered (Joshua 6:17-18).

• The city was burned (Joshua 6:20).

In particular, she found large quantities of scorched grain held in storage. In a typical ancient siege, the city was surrounded by the enemy and forced to live on stored food. Surrender usually only occurred after food supplies ran out. But as described in Joshua, the siege of Jericho was anything but typical.

The biggest disagreement with the biblical account was Kenyon’s dating of the fall of Jericho — to around 1550 BC rather than 1400 BC. However, scholars analyzing her finding have disagreed with her dating and find the destruction to match the biblical record.

In other words, Kenyon’s analysis was based on what was not found at Jericho rather than what was found. According to Kenyon, City IV must have been destroyed at the end of the Middle Bronze Age (c. 1550 B.C.E.) because no imported Cypriote ware – diagnostic for the ensuing Late Bronze I period – was found at Jericho.

The authors point out that Kenyon excavated in a poorer part of the city that was unlikely to have expensive, imported pottery and that other evidence strongly points toward the biblical date.

The David scroll

In 1979, as part of the Dan excavation, a secret room was discovered by a hyperactive 13-year boy helping with the grunt work. He was told to clean a floor “as clean as his mother’s kitchen, even if he had to lick it.” He cleaned the floor so well that he broke through to a chamber underneath filled with archaeological wonders.

Among these was a silver amulet dated to the time of Jeremiah (the sixth century BC). After 3 years of intense labor, the tiny roll of silver was unfurled, revealing a quotation from the Torah —

(Num 6:24-26 ESV) 24 The LORD bless you and keep you; 25 the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; 26 the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

Obviously, this contradicts arguments that the Torah was only composed during the Persian or even Hellenistic periods. In fact, the Torah was obviously not only in existence, but considered of great importance.

The minimalist argument is that this benediction may have existed as part of a separate document or fragment only later edited into what we call the Torah.

Right …

The Shalmaneser obelisk

In 1846, archaeologists found an obelisk carved under the command of Assyrian ruler Shalmaneser describing tribute received from various vassals, including —

The tribute of Jehu, son of Omri: I received from him silver, gold, a golden bowl, a golden vase with pointed bottom, golden tumblers, golden buckets, tin, a staff for a king [and] spears.

Jehu was, of course, a king of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Omri was an earlier king, coming to the throne shortly after Jeroboam (1 Kings 16).

Mari

In the 1980s, archaeologists reported the results of their excavation of Mari in Syria. The city was destroyed at around the time of Abraham.

Some documents detail practices such as adoption and inheritance similar to those found in the Genesis accounts. The tablets speak of the slaughtering of animals when covenants were made, judges similar to the judges of the Old Testament, gods that are also named in the Hebrew Bible, and personal names such as Noah, Abram, Laban and Jacob. A city named Nahur is mentioned, possibly named after Abraham’s grandfather Nahor (Gn 11:22-25), as well as the city of Haran where Abraham lived for a time (Gn 11:31-12:4). Hazor is spoken of often in the Mari texts and there is a reference to Laish (Dan) as well.

In short, the excavation reveals a world exactly like the world described in Genesis during the time of Abraham. Rather than being filled with anachronisms and inaccuracies, the culture of Abraham is very accurately described.

Conclusion

Archaeology is hardly finished with excavating the biblical lands. Who knows what else may be found? But this much we know — the more we dig, the more evidence we find that confirms the Bible and less reason there is to support the speculations of 100 years ago.

In fact, the notion that the Bible should be doubted until proven otherwise looks more and more like anti-Semitism and not genuine scholarship.