ALTHOUGH THE PRACTICE of digging up old ruins and relics has been undertaken for many centuries by curious seekers, explorers, treasure-hunters and the like, the discipline we now recognize as archaeology emerged in its more scientific, systematic form in the nineteenth century. Today archaeology utilizes a highly technical method of excavation for yielding historical information: Archaeologists typically excavate a selected site known as a Tell, consisting of layers of strata representing various past ages and containing everything from pottery shards and religious trinkets to official documents, monuments and inscriptions. American historians and explorers, and their counterparts in Europe, have been unearthing remains in the biblical lands in particular – Egypt, Palestine, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor – for well over a century.
The relatively novel discipline of biblical archaeology has enhanced knowledge of the Scriptures in a number of ways: Archaeology has, most importantly, confirmed the historical accuracy of numerous biblical narratives. Archaeology therefore builds confidence in the reliability of the ancient texts. At the same time archaeological findings illustrate, explain, and enhance the meaning of innumerable, sometimes difficult, biblical passages. As noted by Bernard Ramm and others, archaeology thereby aids in the related disciplines of biblical history, exegesis and hermeneutics (interpretation).
Nonetheless, archaeology has its limitations. It does not, and cannot, “prove” the divine inspiration of Scripture, a question which belongs more properly to the fields of philosophy and theology. The truths of the Bible, like anyone’s beliefs about anything, must be ultimately accepted on faith. As a field closely related to history, archaeology remains equally beyond the scope of empirical validation. Historical events, singular occurrences from the past, are by definition not replicable. As any other area of study, archaeology also depends heavily on the interpretation of data offered by its practitioners. Additionally, archaeologists must reckon with the reality of wholesale losses of data (as in the burning of the library at Alexandria) and often the paucity of actual workable material yielded from countless hours of digging and excavation.
Despite these caveats, archaeology has provided some magnificent confirmations of the biblical text, which indirectly validate the reliability of the Bible in general. As John Bright argues, “The history of Israel is the history of a people which came into being at a certain point in time as a league of tribes united in covenant with Yahweh… Since this is so, Israel’s history is a subject inseparable from the history of Israel’s religion.” The same holds for the history of the Christian church. If we cannot use archaeology to prove the hypothesis that the God of Scripture exists, we can at least reasonably suggest that no other hypothesis suffices to explain the phenomenon of a people whose history, as recorded in Scripture and largely confirmed by archaeology, is founded entirely on a commonly attested experience of God.
Archaeology in the Old Testament
One celebrated example of archaeological confirmation of the biblical record is the Hittite nation, mentioned in Genesis and elsewhere, and long considered a legendary fabrication by critical scholars. Beginning in 1876, evidence began to surface in and around modern-day Turkey confirming the existence of an ancient Hittite society. In 1906 investigations of the area eventually yielded temples, a citadel and sculptures, along with a storeroom stocked with hundreds of clay tablets. These described Hittite treaties, conquests and customs. The finds not only demonstrated the reality of the ancient Hittite nation, but corroborated many of the cultural peculiarities of the Pentateuch, such as the suzerainty treaty.
That the Hittites, or “sons of Heth,” are first mentioned in Scripture in connection with Abraham lends further support to the historicity of the Patriarchs, and by extension to the entire book of Genesis as historical narrative. The Garden of Eden, after all, sits at the convergence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which just happens to signify the regional birthplace of human civilization, Mesopotamian Babylon (modern-day Iraq). Quite apart from the considerable evidence for a universal flood and an extant Ark of Noah, historians and anthropologists have discovered dozens of “flood myths” surviving from a wide range of ancient cultures, in all of which certain core elements of the story are shared: A chosen family, usually with a host of animals, escapes, by way of a huge homemade boat of some sort, a massive flood brought on by the wrath of God or the gods against human sin and shame, then emerges to rebuild society once the waters have subsided. Apart from an actual universal flood embedded in the ancient memory of man, it becomes difficult to explain why and whence all these strikingly similar “myths” came into being.
Moreover, the Table of Nations, the branching development of human races and cultures from the three sons of Noah in Genesis 11, has been widely acknowledged as a plausible, if not entirely accurate depiction of human genealogy. All that really prevents a historical reading of even the earliest chapters of Genesis, it could be argued, is a modern intellectual commitment to some variation or another of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution – a theory which, in its turn, is being promoted on increasingly ideological rather than scientific grounds.
Another fascinating discovery related to the book of Genesis appears to be the actual site of Sodom and Gomorrah. Although critics had long dismissed the OT account of these cities as legendary, allegorical, or otherwise less than historical, excavations by William Albright and others eventually turned up cities along the Dead Sea that had been populated around the time of Abraham, and which had been evidently destroyed by a fire that began on the rooftops, that is, from above. Keller notes the fact that the region is not only notoriously subject to seismic activity, but also littered with the remnants of ancient volcanoes and huge mounds of rock salt, all suggesting the possibility that the descriptions of fire and brimstone, and the pillar of salt, associated with the destruction of Sodom may have had an earthly origin even if the events were divinely ordained.
Critics likewise have long portrayed the biblical conquest of Canaan as a fairly uneventful, nonviolent, slow and spotty takeover of selected sites around Palestine, such as Jericho. Kathleen Kenyon’s widely reported assurance (passed along to me by my professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Texas many years ago) that the walls of Jericho had already fallen prior to the time of Joshua seemed to confirm such a notion. However, Bryant Wood more recently (1990) demonstrated in the Biblical Archaeology Review that Kenyon’s dates were based on faulty assumptions. Contrary to Kenyon’s conclusions, discoveries of Egyptian amulets found at the site – of Pharaohs dating from the late Bronze Age – correspond to the later, biblical date of Jericho’s destruction (around 1400 BC). Significantly, all the major players in these excavations agree on one fact: The huge walls of Jericho (except for an intact section on the North side) had been demolished, and the remainder of the city burned – just as described in the Bible.
For many years, skeptics had alleged that a prominent figure in Israel’s history, King David, was actually a mythical tribal figurehead anachronistically proposed by Jewish apologists for a historically weak monarchy. In 1993, however, Dr. Avraham Biran discovered a “royal plaza” near the foot of Mt. Hermon in Northern Galilee. Amid the ruins was a black basalt stele featuring Aramaic inscriptions, which included the phrases “King of Israel” and “House of David.” Subsequent discoveries of inscriptions referring to Jehoram, son of Ahab king of Israel, and Ahaziah, king of Judah, reveal that the House of David (Judah) and Israel were indeed notable powers in their day.
Archaeology in the New Testament
It makes sense to begin examination of archaeological support for the New Testament with the historical confirmation of Jesus Christ himself. In a widely scrutinized first century text, Josephus in the Antiquities of the Jews mentioned Jesus by name, as “a wise man,…a doer of wonderful works, a teacher…of the Jews and many of the gentiles.” Although critics make much of the idea that the passage in question represents an “interpolation” by later Christian scholars, the core material (along with various other references by Josephus) makes it clear that Josephus was at minimum aware of the historical identity of Jesus. In a letter dating to 112 AD, a request for advice from the Roman emperor Trajan, Pliny the Younger, ruler of Bythynia, commented on the Christian community: “They were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang an anthem to Christ as God…” Here “Christ” has been described in terms of an exalted man, “as God,” i.e., “in the same way as to God.” The implication for church history is clear: the early Christians worshipped a flesh-and-bone man as God Almighty.
Another corroborating source is the Roman historian Tacitus, who in 115 AD wrote disparagingly of the Christian faith: “Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate…” Tacitus goes on to complain that this served to check “for the moment” belief in Jesus, what he called a “mischievous superstition.” Tacitus thus appears to provide unwitting testimony to the core beliefs of the early church, that Christ had not only been crucified but had resurrected – or at the very least, had somehow managed to convince the church that he had done so. Along with other early sources, such as Lucian, Thallus, and the rabbis of the Tinnaitic period, these historical sources confirm, quite apart from the solid historical evidence of the Gospels themselves, that Jesus Christ was a genuine historical personage. F.F. Bruce points out that the rabbinical charge of “sorcery” against Christ reveals the miracles recorded in the Gospels to have been simply too well attested to ignore or dismiss.
The historical veracity of the Gospels themselves has been progressively confirmed through archaeological discoveries. Fairly recently, for example, locations of the four coastal cities along the Sea of Galilee mentioned in the Gospels (Capernaum, Bethsaida, Chorazin, and Tiberias) have been tentatively established. Skeptical scholars have often dismissed Herod’s slaughter of the innocents as a fiction, but research into Herod’s ruthless activities establishes that such an atrocity would be thoroughly consistent with his character and conduct.
Further examples of NT confirmation include an inscription in Corinth which refers to the “meat market,” evidently the same one discussed by Paul in 1 Corinthians. Like so many of his other references, Luke’s mention of the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus has been vindicated with an archaeological dig yielding a temple with an area of 3400 square feet. Another interesting bit of supporting evidence for the NT concerns the healing of a blind man near Jericho. Mark writes that the man was leaving Jericho, whereas Luke says the healing took place as Jesus approached the city. Recent excavations have revealed “twin cities” of Jericho, with a road between them. As suggested by Bernard Ramm, the authors evidently referred to both.
A particularly impressive archaeological confirmation of the NT is the discovery of the Pool of Bethesda, long thought to represent a mistaken topological reference on the part of the author of John. Just as described in John 5:1-15, the pool was found complete with the five porticoes mentioned by John. A similar story can be told of the Pool of Siloam, discovered in 1897. The historicity of Pontius Pilate, Jesus’ interrogator and judge, has been confirmed in passages from Tacitus and Josephus, as well as by an inscription bearing his name found at the theater at Caesarea.
It has been long recognized that crucifixion was a popular Roman method of capital punishment, and discovery in 1968 of a gravesite containing the remains of crucified victims whose bones had been pierced and agitated by nails, and whose lower legs had been smashed, just as described in the Gospels. In 1878 an inscription at Nazareth from Emperor Claudius threatened the death penalty for anyone found disturbing graves or removing bodies. This probably coincided with the Apostles’ incessant preaching of the resurrection and the theory that the body had been stolen. Another bit of evidence related to the crucifixion is found in the historian Thallus, who attested to the darkness and earthquake at Jerusalem but attributed it to an unseasonable and extremely rapid “eclipse of the sun.”
Because there appeared to be no extrabiblical evidence for many of his historical allusions and references, scholars had long taken Luke to be an untrustworthy historical source. That situation has changed dramatically, largely owing to archaeological discoveries, so that now Luke is regarded by scholars (believing and unbelieving alike) as a first-rate historian. His references to numerous obscure politicians, places and events have been repeatedly verified in precise detail. Some of the historical figures mentioned only by Luke and only recently confirmed by archaeology include “Lysanius, tetrarch of Abilene;” Gallio, tetrarch of Achaea; Erastus, a civic authority in Corinth; and Publius, “first man” on the island of Malta.
Biblical Reliability
There are three generally recognized tests by which to assess the value of historical sources: the bibliographical test (or the evidences and traditions tracing the extant manuscripts to the originals); internal evidence (what the document claims for itself); and external evidence (how the document compares with sources of evidence external to the document itself, such as inscriptions, artifacts, and writings of contemporaries). Biblical reliability has to do with textual criticism, or the study of the texts and related traditions to assess the quality of the manuscripts in terms of accumulated errors or deviations. One factor in favor of the reliability of the Old Testament is the training and tradition of the scribe. It was understood by the Hebrews that the Torah was the very Word of God, and therefore they took tremendous pains to ensure that they retained the original writings verbatim. The Hebrew Massoretic text, dating to the 10th century, compares extremely well with the Greek Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate, for example.
It was only in the mid-twentieth century, with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, that scholars were able to compare the Massoretic text with a much earlier edition of the Hebrew text. Scholars were astounded to discover that when the earlier text of Isaiah (dating to around 100 BC) was compared with the tenth century version, representing a thousand year span, only 17 letters in the entire book had been changed, none of which caused any considerable difference in the message of the text.
As for the New Testament: Over 4,000 ancient Greek manuscripts survive to the present, written on either parchment or papyrus. In the early years of the church most mss were of papyrus, reeds rolled out into thin sheets and glued together. A somewhat more durable material, parchment was made of sheepskin or goatskin, and due to its cost was reserved for important documents. Two of the best mss in our possession are the Codices Vatincanus and Siniaticus, which date to the 4th century. Older mss include the Chester Beatty and Bodmer Papyri, dating to the late second and early third centuries. Almost the entire NT can be found within these mss. Older still is the Rylands Papyrus (or P52) from Egypt, which contains a fragment of the Gospel of John and dates to the early second century.
Additionally, ancient translations in languages such as Syrian, Latin and Coptic and exist by the thousands. Moreover, quotations by early church fathers constitute almost the entire NT, less about 20 verses. These also serve as helpful corroborating material lending credibility to the textual integrity of the extant manuscripts. In any event, the sheer quantity, and quality, of NT mss put all other ancient documents to shame. All this tells us that our modern day Bible has been passed on to us almost exactly as it was originally written.
References
Bock, Darrel, & Wallace, Daniel B. Dethroning Jesus: Exposing Popular Culture’s Quest to Unseat the Biblical Christ, Nashville, Thomas Nelson, 2007.
Bright, John. A History of Israel (2nd ed.), Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1974.
Bruce, F. F. Jesus & Christian Origins Outside the New Testament. Eerdman’s, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1974.
Keller, Werner. The Bible as History (Rev. Ed.), Barnes & Noble, 1980.
Kreeft, Peter, & Tacelli, Ronald K. Handbook of Christian Apologetics, Intervarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois, 1994.
Ramm, Bernard. Protestant Biblical Interpretation, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, 1970.
Strobel, Lee. The Case for Christ, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1998.
Zukeran, Pat. “Archaeology and the New Testament.” Probe Ministries International, Richardson, Texas, 2000.
Zukeran, Pat. “Archaeology and the Old Testament,” Probe Ministries International, Richardson, Texas, 2000.