Originally Posted by PhilosopherJay

I remember seeing a lecture by a noted Israeli archaeologists a few years ago. He spent about an hour telling the enthralled young college audience how archaeology had proved the Bible to be amazingly historically accurate. The audience treated him like a holy man, practically singing hallelujah, with every miraculous find he described.

When I pointed out that no evidence had been found for a united kingdom of Israel and Judea and that no evidence for the exodus had been found, he treated me as an ignorant and blasphemous unbeliever. He did concede that perhaps the exodus did not involve 500,000 people but only a few thousand, but this too could be explained without doubting the basic truthfulness of the biblical texts.

The session taught me that the archaeologist with the bible in one hand and a spade in the other is still very much alive and thriving.

Originally Posted by Vorkosigan

That's one of the things that struck me about the Mesha Stele. The strong resemblence of "moabite" to Hebrew, as though a forger was working from a known example....

Originally Posted by S.C.Carlson

Not exactly because the forgery involved Christianity, but because Golan's previous forgeries were basically first-temple period forgeries and the James Ossuary represented a foray into a new field he did not know well at all.