The Archaeology of the Bible

Come, behold the works of the Lord, how he has brought great feats on the earth.

He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear;

he burns the chariots with fire. “Be still, and know that I am God. 

I will be exalted among the nations,I will be exalted in the earth!” 

The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. -Psalm 46:8-11

In 2014 the magazine Biblical Archaeology put up a feature on its website that keeps a running tally of every person who appears in the Old Testament and has shown up in the archaeological record. It's been updated as more people have been confirmed. The current number is at 53, plus another 11 persons who are "almost" confirmed. That list includes everyone from David and twelve other kings of Israel/Judah, all the way to minor figures who are only mentioned once in the Bible such as scribes and officials like Shaphan (2 Kings 22:3) and Jehucal son of Shelemiah (Jeremiah 37:3). There's also a running tally of 23 New Testament political figures who are also confirmed archaeologically--with one additional person in the "reasonable but uncertain" category. There have been so many discoveries like this recently that even these lists are incomplete: Nathan-Melech might be sad to have not been included in Biblical Archaeology's list except that for one passing reference where King Josiah got rid of some horses that were located "by the chamber of Nathan-Melech" (2 Kings 23:11) he almost didn't make it into the Bible either. Last year his name was found on a seal at a site in Jerusalem.

EVENTS CONFIRMED IN THE BIBLE

If you've read your Bible through a few times, you might remember something about Judah's deportation to Babylon (where Daniel was thrown into a lion's pit). Not only have I read that story too, but I have the personal records of some of the families who were taken to Babylon sitting on my bookshelf. They were only recently discovered and then translated into English, just five or six years ago in 2014. The earliest of those records (dubbed the "Al-Yahudu Tablets" based on the name of one of the settlements mentioned in them) dates to only fifteen years after the deportation mentioned in the Bible. Those records also mention a settlement of Jews in a village around the Chebar River, which  independently explains what Ezekiel was doing there when he had his vision (Ezekiel 1:1-3). The timing of the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem (along with many details of the books of Ezra-Nehemiah) has also been confirmed by the existence of letters between a group of Jews living in Egypt who were trying to get permission to rebuild a place of worship close to home and officials in Jerusalem and Samaria (including two who are mentioned in the Bible, Jehohanan the High Priest and Sanballat).

A MIRACULOUS EVENT CONFIRMED

There are more confirmations of spectacular events in the Bible like this next one, but we'll stop here. The Bible records that in 701 BC the Assyrians came against Jerusalem and began a siege against it. About twenty years previous Assyria had carried off the northern kingdom of Israel into captivity leaving only the southern kingdom of Judah behind as a subject state. Now after rebelling against Assyria, King Hezekiah of Judah was facing down the Assyrian threat. In 2 Kings 18-19 and Isaiah 36-37 we're told that Sennacherib, who was ruler over the most powerful kingdom in that day, along with his large army of experienced city-conquering soldiers, had come from a successful campaign of conquest against many nations and walled cities and now had the city of Jerusalem totally surrounded and ready for the taking. Hezekiah had sent a large offering of gold and other goods to turn away the wrath of Assyria, but after accepting the offering they came against Jerusalem anyway. Kingdoms who lead rebellions against the empire can't be allowed to remain in place. The situation was hopeless. Then, in a desperate time, Hezekiah prayed for deliverance and the prophet Isaiah predicted that God would deliver Jerusalem the next day. That evening an angel killed a large number of the soldiers surrounding Jerusalem and Sennacherib turned tail and went back home. The city and the kingdom had been delivered. Jerusalem was surrounded by the most powerful king and the most powerful army in the world and then was let go after having led a rebellion against them. That's an incredible story, right? It's so incredible that it was bitterly disputed by skeptics of the Bible for years until Sennacherib's Prism was published in 1990, just 30 years ago, in which Sennacherib himself confirms many of the details of the story: "[Hezekiah] himself, like a caged bird I shut up in Jerusalem, his royal city. I threw up earthworks against him— the one coming out of the city-gate, I turned back to his misery." He had Hezekiah dead-to-rights and rejected any deal-making by the messenger who came out to meet him from the city's gates (the messenger who Sennacherib describes is named Eliakim [2 Kings 18:26]). And then, nothing. His long campaign of cities and nations conquered ends abruptly, and Sennacherib returns home. (Assyria doesn't record its losses.) While he tries to save face, those who are well-studied in these kinds of records describe this as a tacit admission of his failure to capture the city.

WHAT DO WE DO WITH THIS?

When you are trying to tell whether someone is telling you the truth about themselves or about something that has happened to them, you look at the details of what they're saying and look for little inconsistencies or for lots of little details that line up to confirm their story. That's what good detectives do when they investigate an important case and decide whether to bring a case against someone or when a jury is looking for evidence to acquit someone. The Bible's record has been confirmed in big details, in very small details that you might not even catch after reading the Bible closely for many years, in many of the events it records, and (especially, and this is the subject of tomorrow's post) in details where skeptical historians had long assumed it was definitely wrong or had finally been proven to be incorrect. This should give us greater confidence in what the Bible tells us; not only about different places and names and battles, but in its story about how God has cared for His people and revealed Himself to us. Not only is God part of the story of Israel, but He is the author of your story. You can have confidence in the details of what He has done before, and you can have confidence that he will continue to work "all things for the good of those who love Him" (Romans 8:28) today.