Jayco

As an actual ancient document, how much gravity is given to the Christian Bible by archealogists and ancient historians? While it is folly to declare that every city location or event in the Bible has not been validated or verified by extra-biblical sources (as, admittedly, I am prone to do), I am not aware of too much evidence to the contrary.

I understand that the Roman Empire did exist, but to what extent has the Bible's events been verified and what is its use in modern archealogy and ancient history?

Toto

Nothing in the Christian Bible is automatically accepted without some sort of corroboration from either archeology or non-Christian sources.

But many locations and secondary characters have been validated, which might be because the authors of the Christian scriptures used available historical records to construct their stories, in particular, Josephus's works.

The question of whether the gospels or Acts were even intended as historical records is debatable..

bacht

When I took my introduction to Near East studies, the prof explained that most of the OT was not verifiable historically. There are only tenuous clues before Omri (9th C), who is mentioned in Assyrian chronicles. I don't think there is much after that until Hellenistic times, which is near the end of the Hebrew canon (2nd C).

Theoretically Israel's neighbours could have made some mention. I don't know if there is much surviving literature from places like Syria, Moab or Edom.

spamandham

It's useful, but don't treat it as gospel.

Doug Shaver

Or it might be because among people educated enough to know how to write, those locations and characters were common knowledge at the time of the writing.

neilgodfrey

A very few years ago when I was exploring the Old Testament -- I assume the situation is not very different today -- there was a heated debate among "maximalist" and "minimalist" archaeologists of Palestine. Maximalists was the term directed at those who followed Albright and interpreted dug up artefacts in the light of what they read in the bible -- thus starting from a position that the bible was essentially a reasonably reliable historical document and if a Moabite or Egyptian stone could be found with the name of Israel engraved on it, then that was reasonable confirmation of the biblical story associated with that time. Minimalists was the term directed at those who sought to assess the meaning of any Palestinian artefact by the same methodological standards as used in nonbiblical sites like those of Greece or Italy or Egypt. They kept the bible out of their methods until they could find a mass of artefacts that pointed to a time and place when the bible could have been written -- i.e., a time when many scribes from various religious viewpoints could have been supported by government or other social institutions and in a way so that their writings were important enough to be sustained to much later periods. When they found that time in the archaelogical evidence (most dated this to the time somewhere between the 6th and 3rd centuries b.c.e.) then they deemed it appropriate to try to study the bible and its origins from the perspective of that particular period.

The maximalists have found the bible pretty much supported by archaelogical finds. The minimalists have found that the bible is a propaganda set of books from some time between the Babylonian-Persian-Hellenistic empires.

Neil

Jayco

Thanks, Neil, for your post -- very helpful! I'm doing further reasearch on that distinction.

Hrm. As for the OT, I should probably cross-check the Jewish records. I'm especially interested in their account of Mt. Sinai -- how do they even begin to add merit to it?

I'd be interested in an objective, third-party list of Bible inerrancies. I have no problem going through the Infidels library and finding many lists of errancies. However, the same is true if I go through Christian sites to have inerrancies. Do you know of a definitive list of Bible facts that have been proven true through archeaology?

bacht

The Exodus story is a can of worms. Trying to establish if it even happened at all hasn't been easy. Dating is a problem if you follow the OT chronology.

The idea that Sinai was a volcano is interesting (there were warnings to the Israelites not to touch the rocks).

Toto

The consensus from archeology is that the Exodus didn't happen.

Toto

I don't know of a definitive list for the NT, but I see the same names paraded in various Christian sites, such as this one. But note that the evidence for Nazareth is highly disputed, and there may be issues with some of the other claims.