Scott Ashley<\/b><\/p>\n
You\u2019ve read the articles. You\u2019ve watched the reports and listened to the stories. Routinely they allege or at least suggest that the Bible isn\u2019t really believable. By now everyone knows that these reports imply the Bible\u2019s stories could not have happened the way they are written. After all, plenty of reporters, professors, and scientists tell us such is the case\u2014that the Bible is mostly myth.<\/p>\n
But is it? Or is a different myth being foisted off on us?<\/p>\n
Surveys show that belief in the Bible is declining at an astounding rate. According to pollster George Gallup: \u201cAs recently as 1963, two [Americans] in three viewed the Bible as the actual word of God, to be taken literally, word for word. Today [1999], only one person in three still holds to that interpretation\u201d (1999:36). Only two years later, in 2001, the Gallup poll showed that only 27 percent of Americans\u2014barely one in four\u2014still believed the Bible to be the inspired Word of God and literally true in every respect.<\/p>\n
In other countries, belief that the Bible is the true Word of God is far lower. A 1991 survey found that only 25 percent of the Irish, 20 percent of Italians, 13 percent of Britons, Norwegians and Dutch, and 10 percent of former West Germans believed the Bible was absolutely true and should be taken literally. A 1999 poll in Britain indicated that fewer than half its respondents believed that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Even more startling, 14 percent said they knew nothing at all about Him. More than one in five believed He was \u201cjust a story.\u201d Almost half of those polled had never<\/i> attended a church service.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the time of Pekah king of Israel, Tiglath-Pileser king of Assyria came,\u201d says 2 Kings 15:29. The fierce monarch\u2019s portrait, carved in stone, was found in his place at Numrud 26 centuries later. He is one of many Biblical figures whose existence has been proven by archaeological discoveries.<\/b><\/p>\n
What\u2019s behind these trends? Only a generation ago, the common view among most Americans, and much of the Western world, was that the Bible was literally true\u2014and the direct revelation of God and of His will. Now why do so many people, including many professing Christians, distrust or disbelieve what the Bible says?<\/p>\n
A Shift to Unbelief<\/b><\/p>\n
For many centuries, people simply assumed that everything in the Bible was true. But then, from the late 1600s through the 1800s, a series of scientific discoveries came to light that many assumed contradicted the Bible. In reality they didn\u2019t contradict the Bible, but only the common assumptions religious leaders and others had made about<\/i> the Bible.<\/p>\n
However, the damage caused by these false assumptions had been done, and the Bible had been discredited in the eyes of many. In the mid-1800\u2019s, Charles Darwin proposed the theory of evolution which many intellectuals quickly latched onto as a way to explain the existence of a creation without a Creator. His theory quickly found fertile ground and paved the way for a widespread belief in a creation without a Creator.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t long before many intellectuals, particularly those teaching in European universities, began to \u201cdeconstruct\u201d the Bible. They soon concluded that, among other things, the books of the Bible couldn\u2019t have been written by their reputed authors\u2014and, for that matter, the Bible couldn\u2019t have been written until hundreds of years after their lifetimes. All in all, they decided, the Bible\u2019s stories and characters were simply a collection of myths and legends pieced together by writers many centuries after they supposedly happened.<\/p>\n
BSpade<\/i> 15:3 (Summer 2002) p. 93<\/p>\n
For them the Bible was only a collection of ancient fables no different from the timeworn myths of any other ancient tribal history. Sadly, their thinking not only persists to our day, but permeates the curricula of many universities. Students are saturated with these ideas by professors who aggressively promote an anti-Bible bias. That bias now pervades the mass media and most of the scientific community.<\/p>\n
Richard Dawkins, professor of zoology at Oxford University, is an aggressive proponent of evolution whose contemptuous view of the Biblical creation account is typical of those who dismiss the Bible as being the inspired truth of God. He writes,<\/p>\n
Nearly all peoples have developed their own creation myth and the Genesis story is just the one that happened to have been adopted by one particular tribe of Middle Eastern herders. It has no more special status than the belief of a particular West African tribe that the world was created from the excrement of ants (1986:316).<\/p>\n
Critics Formulate Their Own Myths<\/b><\/p>\n
So which is it? Is the Bible the revelation of man\u2019s Creator, as it claims to be? Is it an accurate history of ancient peoples\u2014men and women who lived long ago whose stories were recorded for us\u2014or is it a patchwork collection of fables?<\/p>\n
Critics of the Bible have long ridiculed its value as a historical document. For decades many vehemently argued that the Hebrew Scriptures couldn\u2019t be what they claimed to be since, according to these critics, the art of writing dated back only to about 1000 BC\u2014around the time of Israel\u2019s King David.<\/p>\n
Anything earlier than a few centuries BC, they argued, was unreliable oral tradition at best and wildly exaggerated mythmaking at worst. Thus they could safely dismiss the entire Old Testament as any sort of reliable historical document. The events of Genesis, the Exodus from Egypt, King David and his exploits, stories of armies and empires, the kings of Israel and Judah and so much more\u2014all, they said, were nothing but fable.<\/p>\n
Although critics of the Bible still abound, fewer and fewer are willing to make the same arguments on those same grounds. Why? The evidence grows daily that the modern-day mythmakers were wrong\u2014spectacularly wrong.<\/p>\n
Empires Emerge From the Sands of Time<\/b><\/p>\n
Rather than accept the Bible\u2019s witness as true until proven wrong, critics took the position that the Bible is untrue until proven otherwise\u2014a way of thinking that, regrettably, permeates the minds of many scholars and thinkers to this day. But is their bias justified?<\/p>\n
Evidence for the authenticity and accuracy of the Bible began to surface virtually the instant archaeologists started to scratch the surface of the Biblical lands in the mid-1800\u2019s.<\/p>\n
One of the earliest of these scientific explorers was the American Edward Robinson. He identified the location or ruins of literally hundreds of Biblical towns and cities by a remarkably simple method: He simply talked to the Arab inhabitants, who had preserved the traditional names of the locations in their own tongue for centuries. Subsequent excavations at many of these sites have proven they were correct; the names were indeed passed on accurately over many generations.<\/p>\n
Shortly after Robinson\u2019s first forays into the Holy Land, English, German, and French excavators began to explore ruins in what is today Iraq. Their finds were staggering. They uncovered not only the great cities of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires mentioned in the Bible, but palaces and monuments of the very kings recorded in the Scriptures. Some even contained accounts of military campaigns that matched the Bible\u2019s, as well as carvings depicting the actual battles.<\/p>\n
A Lost People Emerges<\/b><\/p>\n
Another major shock to those who maintained that the Bible was myth was the 1876 discovery of proof of an entire empire that had been lost to history. Though they are mentioned 47 times in the Bible, many scholars had come to regard the Hittites as simply a fable.<\/p>\n
However, the discovery of inscribed clay tablets at a Turkish site led to an excavation that uncovered a fortified citadel, five temples, enormous stone sculptures and a room containing more than 10,000 tablets.<\/p>\n
Says archaeologist and author Randall Price:<\/p>\n
Once they were finally deciphered it was announced to the world that the Hittites had been found! [The site] had in fact been the ancient capital of the Hittite empire … The rediscovery of this lost people, one of the most outstanding achievements in Near Eastern archaeology, now serves as a caution to those who doubt the historicity of particular Biblical accounts (1997:83).<\/p>\n
By no means are these the only people and empires mentioned in the Bible whose existence has since been proved by the archaeologist\u2019s spade. As more sites have been explored, many more peoples and even specific individuals recorded in the Scriptures have been verified as real.<\/p>\n
Proof that Biblical Figures were Real<\/b><\/p>\n
As recently as a decade ago, some argued that Israel\u2019s most famous king, David, was but a myth. The record of the Bible wasn\u2019t good enough, they insisted; proof of his existence must be found elsewhere.<\/p>\n
In 1993 that proof emerged when Israeli archaeologists discovered an inscription that referred to the royal dynasty David founded. Recorded on a monument some 150 years after David\u2019s death, the inscription commemorates the victory of the king of Damascus over the forces of Israel and their king, who was \u201cof the house [dynasty] of David.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the years, dozens of artifacts and inscriptions bearing the names of individuals mentioned in the Bible have been uncovered. In 1982 a cache of 51 ancient baked-clay seals that were used to bind papyrus or parchment scrolls was uncovered in a Jerusalem excavation. One bore the impression of the seal of \u201cGemaryahu [Gemariah] the son of Shaphan.\u201d This same \u201cGemariah, the son of Shaphan,\u201d was a scribe in the court of Judah\u2019s king Jehoiakim as mentioned in Jeremiah 36:10\u201312, 25\u201326.<\/p>\n
In 1975 another hoard of seals emerged, apparently uncovered in unauthorized digging in Jerusalem. One bore the name of Ishmael, the man who assassinated Gedaliah, the governor appointed by the Babylonians after they destroyed Jerusalem (2 Kgs 25:25),<\/p>\n
Even more surprising, another seal bore the name \u201cBerekhyahu [Baruch] son of Neriyahu [Neriah] the scribe.\u201d This man was none other than \u201cBaruch the scribe,\u201d trusted friend, confidant and scribe of Jeremiah the prophet (Jer 36:4\u201332; 43:1\u20136; 45:1\u20132).<\/p>\n
As if that were not astounding enough, another seal in a private collection in England was found to bear not only Baruch\u2019s name but a fingerprint along one edge\u2014apparently Baruch\u2019s own fingerprint from when he impressed his seal into the soft clay some 2, 600 years ago!<\/p>\n
These are only a few of the finds that prove specific people mentioned in the Bible\u2014many only in an incidental way\u2014were indeed real and lived at the exact time and in the exact location in which the Bible places them. A complete list of such finds would fill many pages of this magazine.<\/p>\n
An Ancient Inscription Proves King David Was Real<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
For many years, some critics have asserted that many Biblical figures, including King David, are nothing more than myth. But in 1943 a dramatic find again forced Bible critics to retreat. A team of archaeologists digging in northern Galilee found an inscription dated from me ninth century BC that referred both to the \u201cHouse of David\u201d and to the \u201cKing of Israel\u201d (see \u2018\u201cDavid\u201d Found at Dan,\u201d Biblical Archaeology Review,<\/i> March\/April 1994:26).<\/p>\n
This discovery was sensational enough to make the front page of The New York Times.<\/i> The inscription also shows that Israel and Judah were important kingdoms in the ninth century BC, disproving the position of scholars who claimed Israel and Judah were never nations of significance and even disputed that there had ever been a united monarchy under David.<\/p>\n
Although this is one more piece of evidence that refutes the arguments of those who have rejected Biblical history, we must realize it is impossible to verify every Biblical event through archaeology. Much of the original evidence no longer exists. Many perishable materials have long since disappeared. Looking for physical evidence of a particular person is like looking for a needle in an enormous haystack.<\/p>\n
In spite of those difficulties, David joins many other kings of Israel and Judah whose names were recorded in inscriptions that have been found from neighboring nations, among them Ahab, Ahaz, Ahaziah, Hezekiah, Hoshea, Jehoiachin, Jehu, Manasseh, Menahem, Omri, Pekah, and Uzziah.<\/p>\n
This inscription, found at the Biblical city of Dan and referring to the dynasty founded by David, silenced many outspoken doubters.<\/b><\/p>\n
We must keep in mind the relatively small amount of the archaeological record that scientists have uncovered. Excavations will, without a doubt, continue to uphold the events of the Bible. In spite of the relative paucity of evidence that has been uncovered, that which has been found has supported the Bible.<\/p>\n
British historian Paul Johnson observes a shift in thinking concerning even the most ancient events recorded in the Bible:\u201d… The science of modern archaeology and historical philology actually provides verification of the most ancient Biblical texts. Whereas … throughout the 19th century and almost up to the Second World War, systematic criticism of the Old Testament texts tended to destroy their historicity, and to reduce the Pentateuch, in particular, to mere myth or tribal legend, the trend over the last half-century has been quite in the opposite direction. The Flood, for instance, has been restored to history. Archaeological discovery provides now a firm historical background to the patriarchal society described in the Book of Genesis\u201d (Johnson 1996:12).<\/p>\n
BSpade<\/i> 15:3 (Summer 2002) p. 94<\/p>\n
Other Finds Foil Critics\u2019 Claims<\/b><\/p>\n
What about the critics\u2019 assertion that the Bible couldn\u2019t have been written when it claimed to be because the ancient Hebrews didn\u2019t know how to write at that time? This assumption was demolished in 1979 when, in the course of excavating a tomb in Jerusalem from the seventh century BC, archaeologists discovered two tiny gray cylinders.<\/p>\n
The objects turned out to be silver foil amulets covered with delicately etched Hebrew characters. When deciphered they were found to contain most of the words of the blessing recorded in Numbers 6:24\u201326. This remarkable find proved that not only did the ancient Hebrews know how to write centuries earlier than critics said they did, but one of the oldest portions of the Bible was obviously in use at a time well before the critics maintained it had been written!<\/p>\n
What Does This Mean For You?<\/b><\/p>\n
One by one the claims of the critics have fallen as new archaeological discoveries have come to light. These finds have repeatedly demonstrated the truthfulness of the Bible. This article has touched on only a few of the discoveries that verify the Biblical record; many books and articles have been published that catalog many more.<\/p>\n
We can be sure that even more evidence will emerge as the sands of time continue to be sifted in that ancient land. As the distinguished Jewish archaeologist Nelson Glueck eventually came to conclude,<\/p>\n
no archaeological discovery has ever been made that contradicts or controverts historical statements in Scripture (Henry 1979:31).<\/p>\n
But what does this mean for you?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s bad enough that so many people are drifting away from belief in the Bible, as noted at the beginning of this article. But an equally disturbing trend is the growing number of people who claim<\/i> to believe the Bible but know little of what it says or reject its authority over them.<\/p>\n
Could you fall into this category?<\/p>\n
Predictions of Our Age?<\/b><\/p>\n
Ironically, at a time when the Bible is more widely available than ever before, fewer and fewer people are willing to put it to the ultimate test of its accuracy\u2014by actually accepting<\/i> and living<\/i> by its instructions.<\/p>\n
When it comes to open-mindedness to Biblical teaching, the book of Acts (17:10\u201311) commends the Bereans, who \u201creceived the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures<\/i> daily to find out whether these things were so\u201d<\/i> (Scripture references are from the NKJV unless otherwise indicated). Paul urged the Thessalonians to \u201ctest<\/i> all things; hold fast<\/i> what is good\u201d (1 Thes 5:21). God wants us to be sure of our beliefs, that they are rooted and grounded in His Word.<\/p>\n
We shouldn\u2019t be surprised, though, that so few are willing to put the Bible to the test by putting it into practice. Jesus Himself prophesied that, just before His return, people would have the same mind-set that characterized Noah\u2019s day. They would be \u201ceating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage\u201d\u2014going about their everyday lives blissfully unaware of their Creator and the growing danger\u2014\u201duntil the day that Noah entered the ark, and … the flood came and took them all away…\u201d<\/i> (Mt 24:37\u201339).<\/p>\n
In other words, Jesus warned that people of our modern world also would be living comfortably and normally, with no growing sense of concern or alarm, until they were overwhelmed by catastrophe.<\/p>\n
Paul, too, wrote that in the end time, people would have their minds focused on self<\/i> rather than on God and His Word. \u201cBut mark this,\u201d he warned.<\/p>\n
There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive.., not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God\u2014having a form of godliness but denying its power (2 Tm 3:1\u20135, NIV).<\/p>\n
Paul states that in the final \u201cterrible times\u201d people would focus not on God but be wrapped up entirely in themselves. Ironically, he pointed out, they would have a \u201cform of godliness\u201d while \u201cdenying its power.\u201d People want to be thought of<\/i> as basically good, but they don\u2019t want to dig into God\u2019s Word to find what it takes to actually be<\/i> good.<\/p>\n
This mind-set, says Paul, will ultimately lead to disaster for the majority of mankind. He tells us that a great end-time religious system and leader will arise that will captivate virtually the entire earth (2 Thes 2:1\u20139). The majority\u2014perhaps even you if you are not careful\u2014will be taken in, ensnared in its trap. Why? Because \u201cthey did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved\u201d<\/i> (verse 10).<\/p>\n
Does It Matter?<\/b><\/p>\n
Does it matter whether the Bible is true? Absolutely, Without it we are left clueless as to where we came from, why we are here and where we are going. Without the Bible we can only stumble in the dark and search in vain for answers to these questions.<\/p>\n
Jesus Christ promises to return to teach humanity God\u2019s way of life. At that time, says the Biblical prophet Isaiah, \u201cthe earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea\u201d (Is 11:9). No longer will people doubt and scoff at God\u2019s Word. Yet, to those who willingly and humbly seek God and His guidance now, He promises they will reign forever with Christ in His world-ruling kingdom (Rv 5:9\u201310; 20:6; 22:5).<\/p>\n
BSpade<\/i> 15:3 (Summer 2002) p. 95<\/p>\n
But before then a time is coming when the overwhelming majority of mankind will follow a path to disaster because of disbelief in and ignorance of the Bible.<\/p>\n
Will you be the exception?<\/p>\n
(Reprinted with permission from The Good News<\/i> 7.2 [2002].)<\/p>\n
Bibliography<\/b><\/p>\n
Bleibtreu, E.<\/b><\/p>\n
1991 Grisly Assyrian Record of Torture and Death, Biblical Archaeology Review<\/i> 17.1:52\u201361, 75.<\/p>\n
Dawkins, R.<\/b><\/p>\n
1986 The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design.<\/i> New York: Norton.<\/p>\n
Gallup, G., Jr., and Lindsay, D. M.<\/b><\/p>\n
1999 Surveying the Religious Landscape: Trends in U.S. Beliefs.<\/i> Harrisburg PA: Morehouse.<\/p>\n
Henry, C.F.H.<\/b><\/p>\n
1979 The Authority and Inspiration of the Bible. In The Expositor s Bible Commentary,<\/i> vol. 1. ed. F. E. Gaebelein. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.<\/p>\n
Johnson, P.<\/b><\/p>\n
1996 The Quest for God.<\/i> New York: Harper Collins.<\/p>\n
Magnusson, M.<\/b><\/p>\n
1977 Archaeology of the Bible.<\/i> New York: Simon and Schuster.<\/p>\n
Price, R.<\/b><\/p>\n
1997 The Stones Cry Out.<\/i> Eugene OR: Harvest House.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Scott Ashley You\u2019ve read the articles. You\u2019ve watched the reports and listened to the stories. Routinely they allege or at least suggest that the Bible isn\u2019t really believable. By now everyone knows that these reports imply the Bible\u2019s stories could not have happened the way they are written. After all, plenty of reporters, professors, and … Continue reading “THE
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