The Bible and Archaeology

As Christians, we depend on the Bible as God’s inspired communication with us.  Some of the evidences the Bible is reliable are internal.  That means the statements made in Scripture can be checked against world history and especially archaeology to see if these claims are accurate.  Is there hard evidence for the reliability of Scripture?  Let’s look at a few of the more recent discoveries.

The Dead Sea Scrolls.  The first of these scrolls were found sometime between November of 1946 and February of 1947.  They contain manuscripts of the entire Old Testament along with some manuscripts of other types.  All together, there have been 972 manuscripts found thus far – they’re still looking..  These scrolls are dated from the third century b.c. to about 68 a.d.   The Isaiah Scroll, one of the first scrolls found and the most intact, is radiocarbon dated at least 100 years before Christ.

The importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls is at least two fold.  The first is the fact the manuscripts we had prior to the discovery are nearly exact duplicates of the Dead Sea Scrolls manuscripts. This shows the accuracy of the copying process of the Old Testament scribes.

The second is that scholars prior to 1947 claimed Isaiah chapters 52 and 53 were inserted by Christians since they so clearly describe Jesus as the suffering Messiah..  Isaiah chapters 52 and 53 appear in the Isaiah Scroll in their entirety.  The Scholars were wrong.  Physical evidence exists for the accuracy of Scripture.

 Pontius Pilate.  Prior to 1961, Pilate’s name was mentioned only in a very few ancient manuscripts.  Since liberal scholars believe ancient Christians inserted the names of Biblical characters into manuscripts of their time to prove the existence of these characters, these scholars doubted whether Pilate ever lived and demanded proof when challenged.

In 1961, a stone was unearthed in Caesarea Maritima with the name of Pilate etched into it.  It seems the stone was a part of an important building dedicated to Tiberius called a Tiberium and dated 26 to 37 a.d.  Physical evidence exists of Pilate.

King David.  Prior to the mid 1990s, the name of King David appeared nowhere in the ancient world but in the pages of the Old Testament.  Then at Tel Dan Stele in Northern Israel, a triumphal inscription was found written by Hazael of Aram-Damascus boasting of the king’s victories over the king of Israel and his ally the king of the “House of David.”

This stone shows both both Israel and Judah were separate kingdoms at the time and David the King did exist contrary to some “biblical scholars” prior to the discovery.  Physical evidence exists of David and his kingdom.

Crucifixion.  In 1968, the ossuary (burial box) of “Jehonanan ben Hagkol” found in East Jerusalem was opened.  Inside was a full skeleton.  Both the wrist and right heel bone still had the Roman seven-inch crucifixion spikes intact. 

Prior to this find, crucifixion was only recorded in ancient documents.  Wooden crosses did not survive 2,000 years of decay, so there was no physical evidence for crucifixion.  Of course, scholars doubted.  Jehonanan’s skeleton is dated to the first century.  This is evidence of first century crucifixion and of crucifixion being done just as the Bible describes it.  Physical evidence exists for biblical crucifixion.

Ebla.  Ebla is an ancient city now in Northern Syria and one of my favorite finds.  Ebla’s hay day was around 2,300 b.c. and had a population of about 260,000. The location or population are not so impressive as are the 15,000 tablets found there in 1975.  It appears at one time,  the King of Ebla was a little obsessive compulsive.  He kept written records of everything, of trade with other cities, major events, even the furniture purchased for his palace.

In these tablets Sodom and Gomorrah are mentioned as well as Carchemish (Isa 10:9).  The tablets record dealings with the Hittites of the time.  Hittites were doubted until these tablets were found.  According to Dr. Clifford Wilson, one of the first to work on these tablets, the tablets also record a prophet who entered the city of Ebla and preached the God, Yah.  “Yah”, we know, is an abbreviation of the name of God, “Yaweh.”  We see it most commonly in the word “alleluia” (Rev. 19:1-6) and in many Jewish names such as Elijah.  Physical evidence exists of Sodom and Gomorrah and of prophets of our God 400 years before Abraham.

Why is this important?

 Many will doubt the validity of the Bible.  They believe Scripture is nothing more than fairy tales, that it’s made up, even that the Person, Jesus, never existed.  Because God has led the archaeologists to digs, we have physical evidence of the Bible’s reliability. 

We need to stand by our Bible and our faith, it is being validated almost daily as scholars dig in the Holy Land.  God is Good!