The Bible & Archeology

The Dead Sea Scrolls

In 1947 a Bedouin shepherd-boy teaching his flock in the barren hills west of the Dead Sea noticed a hole in nearby cliffs. He tossed a stone inside and heard the sound of breaking pottery. Intrigued he went to explore and found a number of earthenware jars. Exploring further he discovered that inside the jars were rolls of leather parchment covered in ancient Hebrew writing.

Before the discovery of these scrolls, the oldest complete copy of the Old Testament in Hebrew was Codex Babylonicus Petropalitanus from A.D. 1008, more than 1,400 years after the Old Testament was completed. Fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls now closed the gap by a thousand years and proved that the original text had been transmitted accurately.

Eventually about 400 scrolls were found in the caves near a place called Qumran. They turned out to be the library of a Jewish religious organisation called the Essenes, and included parts of every book in the Hebrew Old Testament except Esther.

Modern scientific dating methods have shown that the Dead Sea scrolls were written between 200 BC and AD 70. The Isaiah Scroll is almost complete and is 1000 years older than our next oldest surviving copy of Isaiah; yet the two texts are almost identical. This shows how accurate the copyists were – and how seriously they took their job.

The Rosetta Stone

It was discovered in 1799 by a soldier of the French expedition to Egypt in the town of Rashid in the Nile Delta. This ancient Egyptian stone is inscribed with a decree issued around 196 B.C. by King Ptolemy V.

The inscription appears in three translations, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Egyptian demotic script and ancient Greek. Because it presents essentially the same text in all three scripts it was used by archeologists and historians to finally decode the Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The biblical account of the nation of Egypt and many of the Bible stories associated with this time period including specific kings names and Pharaoh dynasties have been substantiated to concur with the Bible.

The Ebla Tablets

Tell Mardika (North West Syria) about 55kms south of Aleppo is now famous for its finding of thousands of preserved clay tablets. Most of the tablets had records of trade with surrounding nations. It was dated around 2,500 BC (written in Samarian). This discovery found more clay tablets than all other discoveries combined.

They found a lot of writings concerning the patriarchs to be viable, they contained extensive trade records, they have the oldest reference to Jerusalem dating from before the time of Abraham (Abraham referred to the King Melchizedek as the king of Salem) Jerusalem was originally know as Salem. And the Bible concurs.

The tablets specifically mention Abraham, Ishmael, and King David proving these were not characters of fable from Hebrew mythology, Israel is mentioned, Esau, Saul is mentioned, Kings are named and bible cities are referred to. There were records of trade with Sodom and Gomorrah. (During the time of Abraham they were destroyed) mentioned in this same order “Sodom and Gomorrah”.

It speaks of Ur as the territory of Herod, it speaks of two territories of Ur, including Ur of the Chaldeans thereby confirming that the Bible writer distinguishing Abraham coming from Ur of the Chaldeans as correct. It also mentions Samarians, the Hittites the Amorites and the Canaanites. A great deal of authenticity was added to the bibles credibility with this incredible discovery.

The Jewish Nation

About 4,000 years ago, God called a man named Abram out of the country where he lived and gave him the promise of a great nation, a great nam, a blessing to all nations and a land which shall forever belong to his descendants. This promise (Genesis 12:2,3) came with a warning (Deuteronomy 28-33) that if they were disobedient then He would use other nations to remove them from that land and predicted they would be scattered across the whole earth.

How did they manage to survive being twice removed from their homeland, the first time in 606 B.C. by King Nebuchadnezzar then a second time for almost 1,900 years; survive the holocaust and repel the attacks of the Arab world in both 1967 and 1973? There is clearly a force greater than us protecting this nation.

The God of the Bible is faithful and has demonstrated His existence and faithfulness by His dealings with the nation of Israel as an objective sign to the world, testifying to His existence and verifying His promises.