By Pastor Dave Farmer
Summary
In this study, we look at how archaeology has proven the historical accuracy of the Bible. The people and places in the Bible were not figurative, as in Aesop's fables, but tell the story of real places and real people. Our Bible is reliable and historically accurate!
Archaeology and the Bible
One of the objections often raised against the Bible is that it contains statements that are contrary to historical facts. Our answer to the protest of the Historian is that the study of history has yet to say the final word regarding many persons and events of which little or nothing, as yet, is known.
Until a hundred and fifty years ago, little was known about biblical times except what appeared on the pages of Scripture and the few ancient manuscripts that had been preserved in classical history. There was nothing available to illustrate the accuracy of the Bible. Today we can say that all the vast archeological finds have simply confirmed the trustworthiness of Scripture. One hundred and fifty years of archeological inquiry has abundantly and compellingly confirmed the people and the places of the Bible.
Before the work of archaeology began the critics of the Bible laughed and scoffed at simple Bible-believing Christians like you and me. Their folly was compounded by speaking with pomposity and impertinence, puffing themselves up with every article, book, and treatise decrying and deriding the accuracy of Scripture. They got away with it because there was no collaborative evidence. It was as if God covered the evidence until man was finished with his damnable claims. They spoke as experts, "Moses could not have written the first five books of the Bible because Moses couldn't write." They concocted the weirdest of theories to challenge the creation narratives, the many miracles, and references to historical events. But they are wrong when they believe that the Bible is just another book. They are wrong when they do not believe the Bible is the Word of God and that it never errs. No, not even once!
They attacked the Scriptures with the fury of an Apache Indian on the warpath. They tore up the Bible with a hatchet method that would make Jack-the-Ripper seem like a juvenile delinquent. They viewed the Bible as legend, myth, and unreliable history. But they did not prevail! The Bible that was completed nineteen hundred years ago has stood up to every blatant attack fired at it. Satan has tried in every possible way to destroy the integrity of the Scriptures. However, God gave us cuneiform tablets. God gave us Dead Sea scrolls, and God gave us archaeologists, many who were not believers, but who could not deny the undeniable evidence that they unearthed. Their work substantiated this fact: the Bible is a faithful and accurate record of History.
THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRE
Archeology is filled with exciting stories of discovery. What have the buried cities and civilizations of the past taught us? It illustrates the trustworthiness of Scripture and the error of those who doubt it's veracity. This is the story of the Hittites, the forgotten empire. The Hittites lived in the Fertile Crescent for thousands of years having contact with Israel through many generations. They are mentioned about forty times in the Bible. The antagonists rejected the accuracy of the Scriptures arrogantly claiming that no such people ever existed. Uo to fifty years ago all you could find on the Hittites was a statement "a small hill tribe of Canaanites in Southern Judea."
An archaeologist of considerable stature, an Assyriologist, Professor Edward Chiera, from the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, said "What we have learned about Asia Minor since these tablets were discovered has been a GREAT SURPRISE (emphasis mine). According to history as we knew it, the Hittites HAD NO BUSINESS BEING IMPORTANT (emphasis mine). "1 (Chiera, page 204) The reason they were so surprised is that they ignored the Bible. The Word of God tells us that the Hittites were a great people and possessed a great empire.
BIBLICAL DOCUMENTATION
A very interesting story is told about four leprous men in 2 Kings Chapter 7. This event occurred during the ministry of Elisha the prophet (850 - 800 B.C.). The Northern Kingdom, under the rule of Jehoram (852-841 B.C.), was experiencing an economic catastrophe. A great famine struck the nation. Due to its weakened condition, the Syrians attacked the heart of the nation, Samaria the Capitol. The background for the siege of Samaria is found in 2 Kings 6:24 - 7:2
THE STORY OF THE FOUR LEPROUS MEN
2 Kings 7:3 Now there were four leprous men at the entrance of the gate; and they said to one another, "Why do we sit here until we die?
2 Kings 7:4 "If we say, 'We will enter the city,' then the famine is in the city, and we shall die there; and if we sit here, we die also. Now therefore come, and let us go over to the camp of the Arameans. If they spare us, we shall live; and if they kill us, we shall but die. "
Now there were four leprous men caught in the middle of a crisis. They sat outside the gate and did some thinking. Outside the city, the Arameans were assembling for their assault. If they stayed where they would be run over by a chariot, die by a spear or an arrow. This was not a safe place to be. Inside the city, there was a famine. If they go inside, they will die of starvation. So what did the leprous men decide to do? Surrender to the enemy.
THE SUPERNATURAL SOUND
2 Kings 7:5 And they arose at twilight to go to the camp of the Arameans; when they came to the outskirts of the camp of the Arameans, behold, there was no one there
2 Kings 7:6 For the Lord had caused the army of the Arameans to hear a sound of chariots and a sound of horses, even the sound of a great army, so that they said to one another, "Behold, the king of Israel has hired against us the kings of the Hittites and the kings of the Egyptians, to come upon us."
The Arameans heard a noise and dropped everything and fled. Notice "for their lives!" Why? The noise was associated with the Hittites and the Egyptians. The syntax demonstrates that the Hittites were greater than the Egyptians because they are mentioned first. Now this doesn't sound like "a small insignificant hill tribe of Canaanites in southern Palestine," does it? How does the Bible describe the Hittites? It describes them as a great nation, even greater than Egypt.
The scoffers said, "The Hittite never existed." They were wrong. The Bible was right! These self-righteous censors said the Hittites were "A small, insignificant hill tribe in southern Palestine." They were wrong. The Bible was right! What is written in 2 Kings 7:4-7 is perfectly accurate in all of its details. The noise of this passage is the sound of a chariot charge made up of 2500 chariots drawn by two or four horses. After one hundred years of Hittite attacks, there was one noise the Arameans feared the most- a HITTITE BATTLE CHARIOT CHARGE! Archeology has filled in the story for us and reveals how the Hittite Empire was built by its great military chariot army. The Hittite chariot corp was more formidable than the Egyptian for in each chariot there were three men. An Egyptian tank only had two passengers.
THE REST OF THE STORY
On July 18, 1834, a short time before the battle of the Alamo, there was a French explorer of antiquities named Charles-Felix-Marie Texier. He was looking for a very famous Roman city in central Turkey and what he discovered was the Capitol of the Hittite Empire, BOGHAZKEUI, a city eight miles in length. He found a road in the city that was lined by pictures of men with swords, axes, and chariots. Texier made drawings of them to take back to France. They confounded him! C. W. Ceram explains why Texier was so puzzled by what he found:
"In 1839 Texier published in Paris the several volumes of his ambitious travel book "Description of Asia Minor" in which he confessed to being totally mystified. For as far as historians of the nineteenth century knew, no such mighty people had existed in Asia Minor. "2 (Ceram, p.12)
No one expected to find the Hittite Empire or any great kingdom in Asia Minor because there was no evidence that it existed. Texier was looking for Tavium, a Roman city, which is why he is in Asia Minor. But there was proof! The Bible said the Hittites were a great nation feared by the Syrians and in Elisha's day was more powerful than the Egyptians. Before Texier's stumbling upon the Hittite Empire, archaeological interest at the close of the eighteen hundreds was focused in Mesopotamia and Egypt.
Then a very interesting thing happened. A brilliant, young archaeologist named A. H. Sayce delivered a lecture in 1880 before the Society of Biblical Archeology in London. Professor Sayce ascribed the recent discoveries in Asia Minor to the Hittites. Ceran characterizes the lecture in this way, "The talk was chock-full of reference to the Bible and presented a thesis that seemed, from the scientific point of view, utterly reckless."
There is one passage, however, which would have given historians pause long before Sayce if nineteenth-century science had not been so wary of the Bible as a sourcebook for history. This was 2 Kings 7. When they rejected the Bible, they were wrong, but when someone took the Bible as factually true and historically accurate, they were right. This was unpopular and created a heated debate, but in the end, Professor Sayce's faith in the Word of God was vindicated. I might also mention that Dr. Sayce was dubbed the "inventor" of the Hittites. (Ceran, p. 22). He was laughed at and scorned, but a floodgate of archeological support emerged and confirmed Sayce's view.
In 1906-1907 and again in 1911-1912 Professor Hugo Winckler of Berlin discovered about ten thousand clay tablets at BOGHAZKEUI 3 (Unger, p. 92). Some he could translate, but World War I broke out, and this examination stopped. However, on outpost duty in this area, was a man who had been drafted by the Germans, a Czech named Bedrich Hrozny. He worked for four years on the Hittite language, and after the war was over, he published a book "A sketch of Hittite grammar." 4 (Wycliffe, p. 323)
Archeology finally recognized what the Bible already stated. We have the whole story of the Battle of Qadesh on the Orontes River, where the Hittite and Egyptian armies met in battle in 1297 B.C. We have the names and policies of the kings of the Hittites. There is now a branch of archaeology called Hittitology.
The evidence of archaeology has vindicated our faith in the Bible. When the Bible speaks about historical times and events, it can be trusted. Historians have had to correct their views and interpretations of history on a number of occasions. The Hittite example is a powerful testimony to the accuracy and reliability of the Word of God.
ENDNOTES
1. Chiera, Edward. They Wrote On Clay. 12th Ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1960.
2. Ceran, C.W. The Secret of the Hittites. Trans. Richard and Clara Winston. 7th Ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970. This was originally published in German, and I am glad someone translated this for there is an extensive historical summary of how the Hittite Empire was first discovered up to today.
3. Unger, Merrill F. Archaeology, and the Old Testament. 22nd Ed. Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1980.
4. The Wycliffe Historical Geography of the Bible Lands. Editors Charles F. Pfeiffer and Howard F Vos. 4th Ed. Chicago: Moody Press, 1974.