Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Is the Bible true?

ARCHAEOLOGY: Is the Bible a True Story? Despite feverish searching with Scripture in one hand and cutting-edge technology in the other, evidence backing the Bible remains elusive. But there are some surprising anomalies (Nir Hasson, Haaretz).
Beauty and biblical evidence both lie in the eye of the beholder, it seems. No evidence of the events described in the Book of Genesis has ever been found. No city walls have been found at Jericho, from the appropriate era, that could have been toppled by Joshua or otherwise. The stone palace uncovered at the foot of Temple Mount in Jerusalem could attest that King David had been there; or it might belong to another era entirely, depending who you ask.

Archaeologists always hope that advances in technology will shed fresh light on at least part of this ancient mystery: Did the Bible really happen? So far, what discoveries there are, tend to indicate that at the least, the timelines are off.

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In general, the writers of the Bible were not very interested in the sorts of historical questions that interest us. And archaeology is often not well suited to answer our historical questions either. So much of the actual (in our terms) history of ancient Israel remains a mystery and it is likely only loosely related to the biblical narratives.

In any case, go get your favorite beverage and sit down and read this long, balanced, and informative article before it vanishes behind the subscription wall.

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