Archaeologica.org

archaeologist wrote:sounds like a lotof baiting is going on and i didn't bring my fishing rod.

i have in front of me a couple lists of archaeological discoveries that support the biblical accounts (not all are recent), i will place in part some of these finds:

I. New Testament-- 1. archaeology has shown that the useof caves as stables in the holy land has been a common practice from very ancient times; 2. the city of Cana; 3. Bethsaida; 4. The synagogue of Capernaum; 5. Jacob's well; 6.thepontius pilate inscription; 7. caiaphas family tomb; 8. crucifixtion evidence (nail through the feet); 9. the galilee boat; 10. 10 cities of decopolis; 11. fragments of temple warning to gentiles; 12. earliest N.T. fragment; oldest copy of john's gospel, a.d.150-200; 13. greco-roman references to jesus, one by josephus and the other by tacitus

II. Old Testament-- 1. ben hasan tomb painting; 2. Boghazkoy, hittite capital; 3. Haran, home of the patriarchs; 4. horned alters (mentined in the O.T.); 5. Dan (laish); 6. ashkelon; 7. shiloh; 8. Beth shemesh; 9. pool of gibeon; 10. Gibeah; 11. Beth Shean; 12. King David's jerusalem; 13. The house of david inscription; 14. The gezer calendar; 15. House of yahweh ostracon; 16. seals from both israel's and judah's royal court; 17. The siloam tunnel inscription; 18. Sennacherib prism; 19. Carchemish, mentioned only 3 times in the Bible; 20 The tomb of the hezir family.

these are just a few that lend their support to the Biblical record, probably more evidence than socrates or plato ever had or will have and this is just a small list. it is too much to dismiss off hand .........

Canaanite Era:
Excavate the oldest and largest seaport yet known in Israel, and a thriving Middle Bronze Age (2000-1550 B.C.) metropolis of more than 150 acres, with commanding ramparts where the silver calf was found, including the oldest arched city gate in the world, still standing two stories high.

Philistine Era (1175-604 B.C.):
This huge seaport, from the era of David and Goliath, was fortified with thick mudbrick towers and battered slopes. It contained a seaside bazaar and winery, and was the last of the Philistine cities burned down by King Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian armies in 604 B.C.E.

In the time before the Israelites, the city was strongly fortified with a massive wall and glacis. After the Israelites settled here, the site was unfortified; Iron Age residences were found built into the earlier fortifications

In the course of the past eleven seasons of excavation (1990-2000) mainly remains from the Iron Age (periods of the Judges and the Israelite Monarchy, 12th-7th centuries BCE) were exposed. In the coming years, the expedition plans to excavate the remains of the Canaanite cities that preceded the Israelite ones.

The Pool of Gibeon?

The Bible references the "pool of Gibeon" several times. Apparently this was a prominent landmark in the city. On one occasion a deadly battle between David's men and Abner's men took place at this pool (2 Sam 2). Some believe that the cylindrical water shaft is to be identified with this biblical place, while others hold that the shaft was constructed later than the 10th century.

As a result of his excavations, William F. Albright concluded that five distinct levels of occupation could be discerned on the two acre site.

The Gezer calendar (named after the city in whose proximity it was found) is written in an old Semitic script, akin to the Phoenician one that through the Greeks and Etruscans later became the Roman script. The Gezer calendar is written without any vowels, and it does not use consonants to imply vowels even in the places where later Hebrew spelling requires it.

House of Yahweh Ostracon

The House of Yahweh Ostracon (a writing on pottery also known as the “House of God Ostracon”) was discovered in Arad, an ancient Judean city. Written in ancient Hebrew and dated to the early 6th century BC, it is considered to be one of the earliest references to the Temple in Jerusalem outside of the biblical accounts.

As for Hezekiah the Judahite, who did not submit to my yoke: forty-six of his strong, walled cities, as well as the small towns in their area, which were without number, by levelling with battering-rams and by bringing up seige-engines, and by attacking and storming on foot, by mines, tunnels, and breeches, I besieged and took them. 200,150 people, great and small, male and female, horses, mules, asses, camels, cattle and sheep without number, I brought away from them and counted as spoil. (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. His cities, which I had despoiled, I cut off from his land, and to Mitinti, king of Ashdod, Padi, king of Ekron, and Silli-bêl, king of Gaza, I gave (them). And thus I diminished his land. I added to the former tribute, and I laid upon him the surrender of their land and imposts—gifts for my majesty. As for Hezekiah, the terrifying splendor of my majesty overcame him, and the Arabs and his mercenary troops which he had brought in to strengthen Jerusalem, his royal city, deserted him. In addition to the thirty talents of gold and eight hundred talents of silver, gems, antimony, jewels, large carnelians, ivory-inlaid couches, ivory-inlaid chairs, elephant hides, elephant tusks, ebony, boxwood, all kinds of valuable treasures, as well as his daughters, his harem, his male and female musicians, which he had brought after me to Nineveh, my royal city. To pay tribute and to accept servitude, he dispatched his messengers..

Complete translations of the records of Sennacherib

The Battle of Carchemish was fought between the Egyptian army and the Babylonian army. It was fought at Carchemish about 605 BC.

The Tomb of Benei Hezir is characterized by its free-standing facade with two Doric columns, all cut into the rock. It has a long Hebrew inscription carved on the architrave above the columns, identifying it as the tomb and nefesh of several members of the Hezir family who had served as priests in the Temple and were buried in the rock-hewn tomb below. The name appears in the Priestly Roster of the First Temple: ...the seventeenth to Hezir (1 Chronicles 24:15) and again among the priests serving in the Second Temple. (Nehemiah 10:20)

I. New Testament-- 1. archaeology has shown that the useof caves as stables in the holy land has been a common practice from very ancient times; 2. the city of Cana; 3. Bethsaida; 4. The synagogue of Capernaum; 5. Jacob's well; 6.thepontius pilate inscription; 7. caiaphas family tomb; 8. crucifixtion evidence (nail through the feet); 9. the galilee boat; 10. 10 cities of decopolis; 11. fragments of temple warning to gentiles; 12. earliest N.T. fragment; oldest copy of john's gospel, a.d.150-200; 13. greco-roman references to jesus, one by josephus and the other by tacitus

However when we look for historical confirmation of this hometown of a god – surprise, surprise! – no other source confirms that the place even existed in the 1st century AD.

• Nazareth is not mentioned even once in the entire Old Testament. The Book of Joshua (19.10,16) – in what it claims is the process of settlement by the tribe of Zebulon in the area – records twelve towns and six villages and yet omits any 'Nazareth' from its list.

• The Talmud, although it names 63 Galilean towns, knows nothing of Nazareth, nor does early rabbinic literature.

• St Paul knows nothing of 'Nazareth'. Rabbi Solly's epistles (real and fake) mention Jesus 221 times, Nazareth not at all.

• No ancient historian or geographer mentions Nazareth. It is first noted at the beginning of the 4th century.

Around the inner court was a balustrade three cubits high called the soreg; the soreg was probably a free-standing structure, separating the outer court from the inner court, and had warning signs regularly spaced along it advising gentiles that entrance into the inner court was forbidden on pain of death

In his Annals, Cornelius Tacitus (55-120 CE) writes that Christians

"derived their name and origin from Christ, who, in the reign of Tiberius, had suffered death by the sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate" (Annals 15.44)

no matter how many times the Bible has been provento be an accurate ancient source

2 cases in point: sargon and the hittites. for generations the only ancient source to mention these historical figures was the Bible and the claims were dismissed until, archaeologistys discovered the remains of both empires and people.

no matter howmany times the Bible has been provento be an accurate ancient source, the secular world goes back to the same old habit of dismissing the claims of the Bible because no one has hit them over the head with the throne of david

itis time to take the Bible seriously and not relegate it off to the out of date shelf.

Everytime you are asked to provide "proof" you get all huffy and claim that everyone hates your bible.

Archaeology has made its determination..

i do provide proof but you are never satisified. remember the article from U.S. News & World Report on the walking snake? you wouldn't be satisfied even if i brought in the actual 7-10,000 year old snake still walking and talking.

no, archaeology still supports the Bible it is those secular professionals who do not believe the Bible that have made a determination.

For that reason I am not satisfied merely to conclude (as is that “minimalist” Dever, for instance) that the stories of Genesis to Joshua are unhistorical. I also want understand what the stories mean to communicate and why. To discover “what the biblical writers knew” is both impossible and misguided; the question of one untrained in the interpretation of ancient texts and bound to literality as the only criterion of validity remains. What the writers said and meant, who they were, who were their audience, and why they said what they did: these are questions for biblical critics of a historical bent. My reasons for thinking that most of the biblical writings were composed in the Persian period by urban intellectuals are manifold. Essentially, I ask what motives the writers might have had for compiling, in stages, an epic history that went back to creation, for inventing a twelve-tribe nation that escaped from Egypt and annihilated the “Canaanites,” generated several portraits of an ideal society set in a mythical wilderness scenario, developed an aniconic monotheistic religion and assigned it to antiquity, and so on (for the arguments in more detail, see Davies 2001).

My conviction that the writings are not to be approached as history is based not on some obscure prejudice and does not imply that there are no historical elements whatsoever: only that the picture as a whole is ideal, not real, that there never was a society (more strictly, societies) such as the Pentateuch or Joshua or Judges depicts. My theory is that the canonized writings represent a monumental project, partly conscious and partly unconscious, of defining the origins and nature of a society re-established in a small province of the Persian empire, a society composed of a group of Aramaic-speaking immigrants and a large number of indigenous, Hebrew-speaking “people of the land.” The process of creating a nation, a religion, a society, took centuries but began essentially after the period of independent statehood had disappeared. (I have spelled out my account of the growth of the biblical canon in Davies 1998). You will not find a critique of this rather detailed argument in any of the writings of Dever or Shanks because it has little to do with archaeology and goes far beyond simple-minded questions of “is the Bible true or not?”

Here, arch, an essay from Phillip Davies. You'll love the part where he rips into Dever....although probably for the wrong reason.

You keep saying that and then come up with something that Albright wrote in 1922.

when it is pointed out that they've been superceded you claim that modern science is wrong

archaeologist wrote:

Here, arch, an essay from Phillip Davies. You'll love the part where he rips into Dever....although probably for the wrong reason.

don't mis-understand me, i found a few things i liked in what davies said which illustrate or support the points i am making. i do not whole hearily support him or blindly accept everything he says.

You shouldn't. He thinks your bible is a much bigger bag of fertilizer than Finkelstein. I guess I have to read his book.

You keep saying that and then come up with something that Albright wrote in 1922.

not always but i have to use the evidence i find besides albright and some of those early pioneers were a lot smarter than the ones working today

Pretty much. You find things which support your position, and those things were pretty much in the ascendancy early in the 20th century, and then think that science should stop trying to improve because to do so casts doubt on your mythology. Science does not work that way....but mythology does.

when it is pointed out that they've been superceded you claim that modern science is wrong

i am usually saying that modern science is not infallible and has been proven wrong and allows too many influences to corrupt its processes. you automatically disqualify anything that disagrees with finkelstein or modern science, so i guess you are talking about yourself there as well.

AS I've said: Science improves its methods in every field EXCEPT archaeology because it makes you uncomfortable? That's asinine. Now it is true that Finkelstein battles constantly with other archaeologists. What you refuse to understand is that even were he to be proven wrong the difference in chronology between the two sides is at most 125 years...not 2,000. As Dever pointed out, no one is even looking for the Exodus or patriarchs any longer....those fantasies have been dumped. Somehow, you think that by denying that, you change archaeology. There is still no one outside the lunatic fringe of Noah's Ark Searchers who are even looking. Get over it.


to digress for a moment and illustrate a couple points that may have been touched on or not. it is a common criticism to say the Bible is in error when all the facts are not spelled out in a manner acceptable to scientists. which leads to offhand dismissal in most cases:

"Some scholars have faulted the Bible for not naming the pharaohs involved with abraham, joseph and moses, andhave used this silence as evidence that the Bible's early history is suspect. Egyptologists have, however, established that until the 10th century b.c., the title of pharaoh stood alone in egyptian texts. It was only then thatt the title began to be followed by the name of the specific king. The biblical writers were simply following Egyptian precedent."

Who said that? Here is a translation of part of the Merneptah Stele - the only one in Egypt which mentions Israel. Note that Merneptah's name is prominently mentioned....and Merneptah followed Ramesses II at the end of the 13th century BC...not the 10th.

And there was world peace, and all the people who just couldn’t sit still were tied up somehow by the handless but marvelous bull-sun-king Merneptah!

then off to the chronolgies , though not discussed are used as criticisms for timing, etc.:

"Until the first millenium b.c., the Bible contains only a handful of date pegs. Then by contrast, the books of kings and chronicles are very rich in chronological detail...But whenthis wealthof information is carefully studied, various disharmonies seem to exist within the biblical text. Charges of obvious error were raised by liberal scholars and corrected chronologies were proposed.

Then in the 1950s the scholar edwin r. thiele demonstrated that the Old Testament followed several chronological practices in use in the ancient near east."

taken from Bible Archaeology by hoerth and mcray 2005, pg. 19

Then in the 1950s the scholar edwin r. thiele ( ! ) Exactly, back to the 1950's for your proof. I rest my case.

these offhand dismissals, much like what you do, end up giving you the wrong information and the wrong conclusions. which is why i cannot go along with modern science nor finkelstein and dever among others.

The bible is a load of horseshit from the 7th century or perhaps later.
Understand that science does not give a damn what you think and I only argue with you for the fun of it. You are a hopeless case with your devotion to that old book but if you want to waste your life believing it, that's fine.....just don't expect to throw such nonsense out here and not have it challenged.

there are toomany secular methods employed that muddy the waters and your hatred is one such example.

then think that science should stop trying to improve because to do so casts doubt on your mythology

Who said that?

Exactly, back to the 1950's for your proof

Understand that science does not give a damn what you think and I only argue with you for the fun of it.

You are a hopeless case with your devotion to that old book but if you want to waste your life believing it, that's fine