Postcard73

Welcome to IIDB Sposam. I do hope you'll stick around and continue to participate...

I am far less informed on the subject of the Bible as history than a lot of the people on this board. However, I started reading William Dever's Who Were The Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From? about 3am this morning. In chapter three, Dever mentions a couple of archaeological excavations that might interest you.

The first took place at Heshbon (Numbers 21:21-32) and was conducted by a team of Seventh Day Adventists between 1968 and 1976. The team found that the town was settled in the late Iron II period, long after the events described in the Old Testament supposedly took place.

In the second study, a team of devout Southern Baptists excavated the site of Dibon, which is mentioned several times in Numbers. The specific goal of this excavation was to confirm Biblical accuracy, yet once again, no early Iron Age or Late Bronze Age remains were found.

I mention these studies here because both were performed by biased groups seeking to confirm the Bible, and both resulted in throwing it into even greater doubt. The location of the sites are not contested, but they were not inhabited until long after the Exodus and Conquest supposedly took place. Thus, even Christian archaeologists with a definite agenda have been forced to admit that the Bible is questionable as a history book.

As an aside, Dever also notes that only one site in the Transjordan region shows signs of major destruction in the period the Conquest is supposed to have occurred. It is at Tell el-'Umeiri on the outskirts of Amman. However, there are no signs of early Israeli habitation after the destruction, and the site is not mentioned anywhere in the Bible.

Since I just read all this stuff this morning, I thought I'd toss it out there...

Wayne Delia

So? He was "born again." nyuk nyuk.

WMD

Ebonmuse

If anyone's interested in more information about Heshbon and Dibon, I have a draft of an article about archaeology and the Old Testament up on my website:

http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/otarch2.html#heshbon

Comments and criticisms are welcome.

This isn't quite accurate, as far as I know. Several sites mentioned in connection with the conquest narrative do indeed have destruction layers dating to the Late Bronze Age - Hazor and Bethel, most notably, and apparently also Jericho, though during the LB Jericho was a small, unfortified and rather poor settlement, not a mighty walled city as the Book of Joshua depicts it. However, merely because a site was destroyed at some point during the appropriate period does not mean we can automatically attribute this destruction to the Israelites. There are plenty of possible causes for any city's destruction - accidental fire, internal revolt, or invasion by other nations. Most notably, the Late Bronze was also the time when a coalition called the Sea People (the Philistines were among them) sailed out of the west and invaded Egypt and Palestine, causing considerable havoc.

EDIT: Rereading this, I see you said Transjordan and not Palestine - my mistake. You were correct when you said that no Transjordanian sites show destructions dating to the conquest period; still, some major sites in Palestine do, and we'd be well advised to be able to respond to that.

Postcard73

Hey Ebonmuse- thanks for the link and the clarifications of my post. I haven't gotten very far into the book yet, so hopefully it will present the same points you did. The next chapter focuses on the Conquest west of the Jordan...

Doctor X

Sposam:

While I appreciate the accolades of the Honorable Members, they provided far more "meat" than I did. Understand that you face the same problem any "newbie" faces--raising issues that are new to you but not so new to many here. Sometimes people can get "snappy" over yet another "Science Proved the Would is Only 10,000 years Old and Discovered Jesus' Foreskin!"

They are not "assumed." They are demonstrated. Very important use of the terms.

Please do. While a lot of us [Strawmen--Ed.] are atheistic or agnostic or some combination that seems to generate far too much bandwidth to explain, usually the question of whether or not a deity or deities exist does not arise on this particular forum. Indeed, you can criticise texts and keep faith. It does not work for me, but that is just me. Remember, most biblical scholars--even current ones--started with a faith.

Well, some such as McDowell are rather biased. For what it is worth, I wish I picked up the probably "vanity press" rantings of an atheist who tried to argue that "666" was intended to be YHWH . . . bias is a two-edged sword.

Anyways, based on your opening post here are some good starts which you can find in the Recommended Reading--point 'n click:

The Bible Unearthed
Archaeology and the Bible

These are both great resources and very readable. They are not 500 page tomes that require a Ph.D. in obscure languages [Like Hebrew?--Ed.]

For the OT, Who Wrote the Bible? is a very good introduction to the multiple sources. Scholars can quibble about the actual dating and do. I have not read his more recent work that is, I think, described above. None of these books take the "AND BECAUSE THE BIBLE IS WRONG!" tactic--Friedman makes that point clear in his introduction--as well as obliquely skewering Harold Bloom [For pretending the J author was female. This really is a useless tangent.--Ed.]

For the NT, I recomment Who Wrote the New Testament by Mack. There are other good resources, but this is a "short-and-sweet" introduction.

This may seem like a "lot" to read. I think it is fun, but then I spend my night alone talking to my imaginary friend Timmy who tells me to take Mr. Axe and [GET ON WITH IT!--Ed.]

. . . er . . . right . . . I would recommend starting with your interest. Your post suggests Archaeology--start with the slim Archeaology and the Bible.

--J.D.

Doctor X

I must note that while "Would" is not 10,000 years old it could. . . .

--J.D.

external solipsism

To reference back to something mentioned earlier, I have also heard of suggestions about finding Egyptian chariots at the bottom of the Red Sea. I've heard it from a few different people, but I do remember actually reading something about it. And I recently came across an article that addressed the supposed parting of the Red Sea and have posted a thread about the subject in this forum. The title of the thread is obvious enough.

I wanted to respond to the assertion

As was already said, quantity does not equal quality. The question, I think, isn't so much an issue of how much of the bible's claims can be confirmed. Yes, there are a good deal of claims in the bible that have been demostrated to be true. There are locations mentioned that actually existed. In fact, TLC aired a documentary some time ago of an archeological search to find the Eden and it's famed garden. They didn't produce any conclusive evidence, but damn near close enough for all intensive purposes. But then again, Homer's Iliad mentions places to have really existed. We don't conclude that Poseidon really existed.

The 1% you mention (though I would imagine that it would be a bit more) is the most important part. Jesus may have been crucified, but that doesn't mean that he was the Son of God. There may have been a place called Eden, but that doesn't mean that God made Adam out of clay and Eve from his rib. There may have existed an Ark of the Covenant, but we cannot prove that the two tablets on which the ten commandments were originally written were actually in there (seeing as it was forbidden to open the Ark) or even if there were two such tablets that doesn't prove that they were given to Moses by God. The things in the bible that can and have been verified to be true, are the things that do not require the existence of God to be true. If we were to find that Kind David truly existed, that doesn't verify anything of the bible. In fact, we ought to expect that anything mentioned in the bible that is not directly relevant to a divine action (such as the existence of a place, or various occurrences that are not attributed to divine causes) will be true. After all, if someone was going to write a document and suggest it to be the word of God, they wouldn't be expected to completely make up a radical history would they? Theists of today often will cite various accurate historical data in attempting to establish their conclusions. I would expect that this would have happened back then as well.

sismofyt

Finding egyptian chariots at the bottom of the red sea only proves that the eqyptians had chariots in the vicinity of the Red Sea. Hardly surprising since it's/was egyptian soil.

People dump cars in the ocean. Doesn't mean they were chasing a bunch of israelis, does it?

Marduk

“Finding egyptian chariots at the bottom of the red sea only proves that the eqyptians had chariots in the vicinity of the Red Sea. Hardly surprising since it's/was egyptian soil.”

From what I remember of that claim, it consisted of one picture of a round object under water that looked like it could have been a chariot wheel. Not very impressive.

Amaleq13

Based on this article, there appears to have been a great deal of faith involved in the claims:

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ar...TICLE_ID=33168