| Archaeology Always Confirms the Bible | |
All throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, Bible sceptics have tried to claim the that the Bible is not a true, historic record just because they hadn't yet found certain evidences for things written in the Bible. But during this time the science of archaeology has proven to be a very valuable tool in better understanding, confirming and illustrating the Bible. Before about 1800 very little was known about the events, background, and setting of the Old and New Testament Scriptures. Therefore, it was nearly impossible to externally confirm the reliability of the Biblical record. You simply believed it or you didn't. As a result, it was very difficult to answer the critics' attacks on the historical accuracy of the Bible. Fortunately, in recent years archaeology has given us tremendous insight into the culture and lifestyles of ancient peoples. In addition, our knowledge of ancient history, particularly relating to the Bible, has been greatly increased. This new information has served time and time again as an evidence of the reliability of the Bible.
The great value of archaeology has been to show, over and over again, that the geography, technology, political and military movements, cultures, religious practices, social institutions, languages, customs, and other aspects of everyday life of Israel and other nations of antiquity were exactly as described in the Bible.
As a case in point: King Sargon. In Isaiah 20:1 we read of Sargon II of Assyria. There he is referred to as "the king of Assyria". Before modern archaeology, this single Biblical reference was the only place his name was mentioned in any ancient literature. This fact influenced many critics to conclude that the Bible was in error on this point, and that there was no Sargon, king of Assyria, as recorded in Isaiah. The critics were proven wrong, however, when Paul Emil Botta discovered the remains of Sargon's palace in 1843.
Of course, the famous
Dead Sea Scrolls provided validation as to the authenticity of the original Bible scrolls. Whole books can and actually have been written on the subject. We here provide some exciting recent discoveries which further confirm the historical accuracy of the Bible.
 Coins bearing Joseph's name found in Egypt
September 2009. A team of Egyptian archaeologists have discovered ancient coins belonging to the era of Prophet Joseph bearing his name and image.
Researchers have managed to retrieve 500 coins among a multitude of unsorted artefacts stored at the Museum of Egypt.
The latest examination revealed that the year in which the coins were issued, their value or effigies of the then ruling pharaohs were minted on them.
Several coins belong to a period in which Joseph had lived in Egypt and bear his name and portrait.
The unprecedented find from the time of the Pharaohs, provides decisive scientific evidence Joseph was indeed a real ruler in Egypt at the time the Bible says he was, and disproving previous theories that ancient Egyptians conducted their trade through barter.
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 Nebo-Sarsekim Found in Babylonian Tablet
June 2007. Austrian Assyriologist Michael Jursa was doing what he has done since 1991, poring over the more than 100,000 undeciphered cuneiform tablets in the British Museum. But while analyzing records from the Babylonian city of Sippar, he made a startling discovery with Biblical implications. It came in the unlikely form of a tablet noting a one-and-a-half pound gold donation to a temple made by an official, or "chief eunuch," Nebo-Sarsekim.
Nebo-Sarsekim was a high Babylonian official named in Jeremiah 39:3. The mention of this individual in the Hebrew Bible is yet another example of an obscure “factoid” which demonstrates the historical accuracy and eyewitness nature of the Biblical record.
The time was the ninth day of the fourth month of the 11th year of the reign of Zedekiah (Jer 39:2), i.e., July 18, 587 BC. The place was Jerusalem. The event was the fall of Jerusalem and the Southern Kingdom of Judah to the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar after a siege of two and a half years, a very sad time in the history of God’s people. After the city wall was broken through, all the officials of the king of Babylon came and took seats in the Middle Gate: Nergal-Sharezer of Samgar, Nebo-Sarsekim a chief officer, Nergal-Sharezer a high official and all the other officials of the king of Babylon (Jer 39:3). The Book of Jeremiah relates that after Nebuchadnezzar took Jerusalem in 587 B.C., he committed the prophet Jeremiah to Nebo-Sarsekim's care.
The tablet is dated 595 B.C., the ninth year of Nebuchadnezzar II's reign. It was a mundane receipt acknowledging Nebo-Sarsekim’s payment of 1.7 lb (0.75 kg) of gold to a temple in Babylon. Dated to the tenth year of Nebuchadnezzar (595 BC), eight years before the fall of Jerusalem, the tablet reads in full:
[Regarding] 1.5 minas [0.75 kg] of gold, the property of Nabu-sharrussu-ukin, the chief eunuch, which he sent via Arad-Banitu the eunuch to [the temple] Esangila: Arad-Banitu has delivered [it] to Esangila. In the presence of Bel-usat, son of Alpaya, the royal bodyguard, [and of ] Nadin, son of Marduk-zer-ibni, Month XI, day 18, year 10 [of] Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon (Reynolds 2007).
The Hebrew spelling of the name is slightly different from the cuneiform, but there is no question that it is the same person. Although the NIV translates Nebo-Sarsekim’s title as “chief officer,” the literal translation is “chief eunuch,” exactly the same as in the tablet.
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House of David Inscription
 July 1993. More than a quarter of a century of excavations at Tel Dan in the north of Israel at the foot of Mount Hermon produced little in the way of written material. The excavations have been directed through the years since 1966 by Dr. Avraham Biran, distinguised Israeli archaeologist. Then on July 21, 1993, while work crews were preparing the site for visitors, a broken fragment of basalt stone was uncovered in secondary use in a wall. Surveyor Gila Cook glanced at the stone in the rays of the afternoon sun and saw what looked like alphabetic letters. On closer examination it turned out that, indeed, they had found an inscribed stone.. The discovery was of a fragment of a large monumental inscription, measuring about 32 cm. high and 22 cm. at its greatest width. Apparently the stone had been purposely broken in antiquity. It turned out that the stele fragment mentions King David's dynasty, "the House of David." As the preparatory work for tourism proceeded, two additional fragments of the stele were recovered in two separate, disparate locations in June of 1994. The partially reconstructed text reads as follows:
1. [ ... ...] and cut [ ... ]
2. [ ... ] my father went up [against him when] he fought at [ ... ]
3. And my father lay down, he went to his [ancestors]. And the king of I [s-]
4. rael entered previously in my father's land. [And] Hadad made me king.
5. And Hadad went in front of me, [and] I departed from [the] seven [ ...-]
6. s of my kingdom, and I slew [seve]nty kin[gs], who harnessed thou[sands of cha-]
7. Riots and thousands of horsemen (or: horses). [I killed Jeho]ram son of [Ahab]
8. king of Israel, and [I] killed [Ahaz]iahu son of [Jehoram kin-]
9. g of the House of David. And I set [their towns into ruins and turned]
10. their land into [desolation ... ]
11. other [ ... and Jehu ru-]
12. led over Is[rael ... and I laid ]
13. siege upon [ ... ] [6]
The pavement and the wall where the fragments were found was laid at the end of the 9th or beginning of the 8th century BC, according to pottery fragments recovered in probes beneath the flagstone pavement. Since the fragment and the entire pavement was covered by the debris of the Assyrian destruction of Tiglath Pileser III, in 732 BC, it could not have been laid latter than that year.
The surmise is that Jehoash (798-782), grandson of Jehu, or Jehoash's son, Jeroboam II (793, co-regent 782-753), and more likely Jehoash, was the monarch who had this reminder of Aramaean domination smashed (2 Kgs 13:25). It is further assumed that Hazael (844/42-798?) was then king of Aram- Damascus, because Hazael fought against Jehoram of Israel and Ahaziah of Judah ( 2 Kgs 8:7-15, 28; 2 Chr 22:5). Hazael was followed by his son and successor, Ben-hadad III, early in the 8th century BC
The discovery provides an archaeological connection to the biblical references to the ruling dynasty established by King David approximately two centuries before the events that are mentioned in the inscription. It is the first mention of King David and the earliest mention of a biblical figure outside of the Bible. The discovery is of particular importance in the face of those scholars who were either skeptical or denied the historical existence of King David.
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When Was the Bible Really Written?
By decoding the inscription on a 3,000-year-old piece of pottery, an Israeli professor has concluded that parts of the bible were written hundreds of years earlier than suspected by non-believers. |
King Solomon
 Jerusalem's ancient fortifications date back 3,000 years to the time of the Bible's King Solomon and offer evidence for the accuracy of the biblical narrative.
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http://www.6000years.org/frame.php?page=other
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