We are blessed to live in the 21st century with modern advances that provide so many conveniences that our grandparents never dreamed of. Indoor plumbing, electricity, the internet, and cell phones are all things most of us take for granted every single day. One of the other blessings we enjoy that our grandparents were not privy to is the enormous body of information that has been discovered by archaeologists. While this is not something that impacts our everyday lives like the above items, it nevertheless can inform our choices and bolster our faith.
The Popular Handbook of Archaeology and the Bible is a great resource that highlights many discoveries that confirm what the Bible has told us for thousands of years. While God’s Word is completely reliable and while we should trust it entirely, many skeptics have tried to cast doubt on it in various ways. As more and more evidence is dug out of the dirt, however, more and more of the Bible is affirmed. Let me share a bit of this evidence.
The book of Daniel has often been attacked by Biblical critics who have wished to discredit its truths. For many years, they claimed that Daniel 5:1 mistakenly referred to Belshazzar as a king. He was the one who to whom a hand appeared and wrote his doom on the palace wall. Then some clay cylinders were found on which King Nabonidus recorded various aspects of Babylonian history and mentioned his son, Belshazzar, who ruled while he was away confirming the Scriptures. This also reveals why Daniel could only be third in the government since there were already two above him.
Going further back in the Bible and time, many doubters have attacked Genesis with its records of a worldwide flood and people who lived for hundreds of years prior to it. While some still doubt these accounts, an ancient clay prism was unearthed in Iraq that lists kings who ruled before and after the flood, assuming all readers would automatically know which flood. Additionally, those who ruled before the flood lived much longer than those who came after.
Others have claimed that because Genesis was written many years after the events it describes, it was corrupted and became inaccurate. Then tablets were discovered at Nuzi, in what is now Iraq, describing many common aspects of daily life at that time including the adoption of slaves, marriage arrangements, deathbed blessings, the sale of birthrights, and more which are virtually identical to what we find in the Bible’s first book. Someone writing much later would not have known about such practices and could not have made them up. In addition, Genesis’s early chapters include loanwords from Babylon, as would be expected, while Egyptian words are found later in the book. Similar tablets were discovered in northern Syria in the ruins of Ebla that include names such as Israel, Ishmael, and Adam, and locations such as Megiddo, Nahor, Shechem and Jerusalem.
People have also been critical of Jewish claims to the land of Israel and even accuse God of genocide for how He commanded Joshua to cleanse the territory because of its wicked inhabitants. But when a Syrian farmer discovered a buried vault, the tablets within told how the Canaanites practiced child sacrifice, buried children alive, engaged in religious prostitution, and more. Other excavations have revealed similar evidence of a desperately depraved civilization where oppression, slavery, torture, murder, and suffering were common.
These are but a fraction of many archaeological discoveries that have all been entirely consistent with what the Bible has told us for thousands of years. It’s as if God buried this evidence until doubters would arise so that they could be proven wrong. Suffice it to say that you can trust God’s Word and depend on it completely, not only regarding historical information, but most importantly regarding His love for you and the gift of His Son Jesus. Reading and believing the Bible, George