The world today is deluged by opinions. Opinions that sound good become accepted as truth. Opinions that are widespread and widely accepted come to be considered incontrovertible, conventional wisdom.
One such opinion that is tossed around today and widely accepted is that the Bible is rife with historical error. Many so-called scholars have promoted this idea with enthusiasm. One must realize that these "scholars" have their own agendas: religious, anti-religious, anti-supernatural, anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, or very often political. One does not go around "disproving" the Bible without a reason.
As a trained interpreter of the Bible and a student of Biblical archaeology, I have never found a fact in the Bible, historical or otherwise, that has been truly disproved. Some events, like Creation, will likely never be proved to everyone's satisfaction. That is okay, since God never intended people to believe in him because of proof, but by a first-hand encounter with him through faith.
But a multitude of Biblical facts have been proved beyond reasonable doubt. It has been the habit of many Bible scholars to disbelieve anything that has not been proved three times over. Many still maintain that the bulk of facts in the Bible were simply made up. Again and again, archaeology proves them wrong, and the Bible right.
The destruction of Sodom and Gomorra (Genesis 13, 18, 19) was long considered a myth. No one could have inhabited the arid land south of the Dead Sea, they said. But archaeologist Nelson Glueck, believing the Bible, undertook a survey of the region in the years of 1933-46. He found many such sites of habitation, abandoned or destroyed in antiquity.
Kathleen Kenyon, the foremost excavator of Jericho (1952-58), reported finding no evidence of the miraculous flattening of its walls as recorded in Joshua 2-6. Scholars have long considered her opinion conclusive. I have visited the mound (tell) of Jericho, however. Only isolated portions have been unearthed -- but broad conclusions were nevertheless drawn by Kenyon. More recently, archaeologist Bryant Wood examined Kenyon's own evidence, and found her findings to confirm the Biblical record.
Scholars have assumed that many names of people and places in the Bible were simply made up by the writers. One of these names was that of Sargon, king of Assyria (reigned circa 722-705 B.C.). The name Sargon was found nowhere other than a brief mention in Isaiah 20:1, until French archaeologist Paul Emile Botta unearthed his throne room in Khorsabad in 1843. A number of inscriptions bearing the name Sargon were found.
Another discovery related to Sargon took place in 1989 at Nimrud (Calah). A royal tomb was found hidden beneath the floor of a palace room previously excavated in the 1950s. It contained the remains of Atalia, wife of Sargon; Yabay, wife of Tiglath-Pileser III (2 Kings 15:29); and a gold bowl bearing the name of Baniti, wife of Shalmaneser V, along with other artifacts. Elsewhere was found an inscription to the wife of Ashur-Nasirpal II. Other recent discoveries have yielded hundreds of cuneiform tablets which have yet to be deciphered.
On the subject of tablets (the clay slabs upon which they wrote in cuneiform), accounts of Creation and Noah's Flood, similar to the Biblical accounts, were found long ago and are well known. (The Flood story is universal, showing up in the the lore of such farflung peoples as the Aborigines of Australia and the Indians of North America.) The Mesopotamian Flood and Creation stories on the tablets are much longer than their Biblical counterparts, and contain multiple gods and outlandish occurrences. Scholars insist that the later Hebrews must have shortened these stories, making them monotheistic and less "magical" -- in which form they eventually found their way into the Bible. But this would be a singular and unlikely event, since stories are more often lengthened and elaborated upon than shortened, especially among pagan, polytheistic peoples. In other words, the pagans took the shorter, monotheistic accounts and added gods and mythological details.
I believe Abraham took these more ancient, monotheistic versions of the Flood and Creation with him when he left Ur of the Chaldees. He handed the stories down to his descendants, the Hebrews, who possess them today in the Bible. The proof of this theory will come if and when ancient tablets bearing the shorter, monotheistic versions of the stories are discovered.
Scholars and scientists have a way of giving the general public the impression that they already have all the facts, but this is not the case. They are often very protective of their theories, and resent having them questioned. But recent discoveries show that there are still a lot of facts left to dig up (literally). In my observation, new facts overwhelmingly confirm the validity and veracity of Bible history.
Part 2 will continue this discussion of archaeological proofs of the Bible.
Copyright 1996 Paul A. Hughes
Last updated October 1996. For more information, comments, or suggestions, write RevHughes@aol.com.