Historical Reliability of the Bible Part 2
written by Courtney Cole | February 21, 2021
Archaeology can be a difficult science to practice These experts are looking at pottery, fragments of documents, fossils, and more at ancient cities, burial sites, or sometimes just what looks like an old hunting lodge, and from these details they try to extrapolate a lot of detail. While there are certainly arguments using archaeology against the Bible, I believe there is enough evidence to suggest the opposite. This article examines some interesting observations from archaeology that confirm the historical accuracy of the Old Testament.
As with many modern sciences, secular, atheistic scientists are often eager to dismiss the Bible and “prove” its unreliability. There is one specific example that illustrates this. Daniel 5 describes King Belshazzar of Babylon. At first, there was no contemporaneous account of a King Belshazzar of Babylon, and this led many critics of the Bible to eagerly claim that this king was a mere myth of the Bible; this proved how unreliable the Bible was on historical accounts. However, since then archaeologists discovered the Nabonidus Chronicle which clarified that he was a co-regent with his father Nebuchadnezzar. There are now more accounts of Belshazzar in addition to the Nabonidus Chronicle. There are many archaeological finds that confirm many things in the Bible: references to a “House of David” confirming King David reigned and defeated someone named “Goliath”, confirmation of the Canaanites and their practices such as human sacrifice to the Baals, discovering cities that are indeed named what they were in the Bible, and more. I want to provide detail of one interesting city that was first excavated in the 1930s.
Jericho is the source of some controversy. There are two datings which either places in within the time that the Israelites were there or about 150 years earlier. The main facet of this debate is over missing pottery of the later period. An archaeologist who disagrees with the later dating said, “Kenyon based her conclusions on a very limited excavation area—two 26-foot-by-26-foot squares. An argument from silence is always problematic, but Kenyon’s argument is especially poorly founded. She based her dating on the fact that she failed to find expensive, imported pottery in a small excavation area in an impoverished part of a city located far from major trade routes!” (Bryant Wood) Wood later found this missing pottery in the affluent section of the city, instead of the poor district where Kenyon conducted her search.
Many findings at Jericho also only confirm the Biblical account. For one, they discovered the walls were hollow and allowed houses to be built into the walls. So, Rahab living on the walls and having an ability to lower the spies down the wall is completely congruent with the findings. They discovered this because one section of the wall where a house was built was solely left standing. As they excavated, they found that the walls were collapsed from the inside out! As if the defenders of the city had pushed over their own walls. What’s even more interesting is the construction of the walls. The walls were made with a low stone retaining wall backed by a slope and dirt with the actual city brick wall being built on top. Because of how the walls fell, the bricks of the city wall fell in such a way to create a ramp up the retaining wall so the attackers could simply run up the bricks and into the city! This is eerily similar to Biblical account we have of Jericho’s destruction.
The final piece that confirms the Bible is that the city was burned after being taken and it was not rebuilt, a very odd thing for that time. Afterall, it’s a city that you just took over. Why would you not simply reinforce and settle? In addition, they found many grain stores within the city burnt to the crisp. This means two things: the siege was short because the grain was not used and the attackers took none of the valuable grain stores. Thus, when someone laughs at the story that God made the walls of Jericho come tumbling down, we know that what finds we have, are eerily similar to that fantastical tale.
Child: Momma, Auntie told me that some of the stories in the Bible didn’t happen. Is that true?
Parent: Let’s sit down. Do you think God can knock down a wall, like we see in what the Bible says happened at Jericho?
Child: Well, she said that’s just silly. But you told me God is really powerful, so I think He could.
Parent: Do you know what? We know God knocked down Jericho’s wall because we’ve found Jericho! Some scientists found Jericho, and they found that the walls fell down just the way the Bible tells us.
Child: Really? How can they tell?
Parent: Well, the walls fell down in a way that either God did it or the people of the city knocked down their own walls from the inside. It doesn’t make much sense for the city to knock down their own walls, right?
Child: No, they would want their walls.
Parent: There’s more that was found, but all of it only confirmed what the Bible said.
Child: Do we have stuff like that for everything in the Bible?
Parent: Not everything. But God gave us stuff like this to help us believe. Even if He gave us none of this, we can still trust God. Sometimes it’s hard to believe God, but God wants to use those times to help us trust Him even more.
Child: Wow. That’s cool.
Parent: Yes, it is. Do you have any other questions?
Child: Not right now.
Elementary (1-4th grade)
Child: Hey, Mom. I was thinking about the Bible. How can we be so sure we actually know what happened? I mean, it happened so long ago, and I learned in history class how hard it can be to find out about how people lived and what happened a really, really long ago.
Parent: Ah, well, while we might not know everything, we actually do know enough about the ancient world and the Bible.
Child: Really?
Parent: Yes! And you know what? Almost everything discovered about the ancient world seems to confirm what we see in the Bible.
Child: Wow, really? How can we know that?
Parent: Remember what you’ve learned about archeologists; they have excavated a bunch of sites mentioned in the Bible. The more they discover, the closer it matches the Bible. There are so many examples! One I really love is the discoveries at Jericho.
Child: How could we know that God knocked down the walls?
Parent: That’s actually really interesting. So, when the city was discovered, they found that almost all the walls except one little section had been knocked down! And the walls weren’t knocked into the city, like what we’d see if an army had done it, but all of the walls had fallen outward. And the one section of the wall that was up had a house in it, just like the Bible describes of Rahab’s house.
Child: Really? They really discovered that?
Parent: Yes, and there’s even more discoveries about the Bible and archeology. There’s even a whole discipline within archeology called Biblical archeology.
Child: That’s so cool!
Parent: Does that answer your question?
Child: Yes, but I might want to know more later.
Parent: Come tell me any time, and we can talk about this more.
Junior High (5-7th grade or older)
Parent: Could you come here for a few minutes? I want to talk to you about something.
Child: Sure. What is it?
Parent: Well, as you grow older and meet more and more non-Christians, you might hear people say the Bible isn’t true; that’s it’s just myths. I want you to hear this false claim from me first.
Child: Really? Alright.
Parent: You know, the world really doesn’t like us because we follow Jesus and the Bible. The Bible even says anyone who does not follow God is an enemy of Him and His followers. This means that sometimes people can get aggressive or dismissive of you when you talk about your faith. They might even tell you things that can make you doubt God, but it’s normally either that they don’t even know the truth because they haven’t looked into it or even that they’re lying because they don’t want to believe the truth.
Child: That’s sad. Why are they so determined?
Parent: When an artifact is found that appears to discount the truth of the Bible, some people believe that. In fact, some people want everyone to believe the Bible isn’t true and they look for any evidence to support their opinion.
Child: They really do that?
Parent: Yes. There’s a king mentioned in Daniel, and for a while, we couldn’t find any reference to him outside of Daniel, and a bunch of archeologists and historians declared that must mean he’s a fictitious character in Daniel, and it proves that much of the Bible isn’t historical, but do you know what we’ve found now?
Child: What?
Parent: We’ve now found over 20 references of this king that Daniel mentioned! So, now we know that Daniel was telling the truth about this king, and all those archeologists and historians were just wrong.
Child: That’s so cool we’ve found references to him though.
Parent: Yes. Not everything in the Bible has support for it, but the more we find, the closer and closer it matches the Bible. It’s not necessary to have evidence for everything; part of faith is believing things unseen which includes things for which we don’t have direct, specific historical evidence.
Child: We have other things?
Parent: Yes! An amazing discovery is Jericho. So, you remember the story, right?
Child: Oh, yeah. The Israelites marched around Jericho for seven days just like God told them to. After seven days, they all gave a great cry and God knocked down the walls of the city for them; all except Rahab were defeated. Then they burned the city to the ground after only taking the gold to the tabernacle for God; they took nothing else for themselves.
Parent: Great job! Yes, that’s exactly what happened. And archeologists have found Jericho now.
Child: Did they find it matched the Bible?
Parent: Yes, almost creepily so. The walls were all knocked down except one portion that had a house in it, and all the walls had been knocked down as if someone from the inside knocked them down. The walls fall from outward and because of how the city was built, the fallen bricks made a perfect ramp up into the city! They even found that the city had been burned, and they found grain stores inside the city burned. This mean two really important things: the conquering army only spent a short time in the city because there was still grain and the army didn’t take the valuable grain stores! Now, how close does that sound to what the Bible records?
Child: Wow! That’s so close!
Resources:
Uncovering the Bible’s Buried Cities: Jericho – Watch Jerusalem
Biblical Sites: Three Discoveries at Jericho – Bible Archaeology Report
The Essence of the Old Testament, a Survey by Ed Hindson and Garry Yates
The Old Testament in Archaeology and History by Jennie Ebeling, J. Edward Wright, Mark Elliott, and Paul V.M. Flesher
The Archaeology of the Old Testament: 115 Discoveries that Support the Reliability of the Bible (Biblical Archaeology) by Dr. David E. Graves
https://welcometotruth.com/blogs/apologetics/old-testament-biblical-archaeology
