Archaeology and the Bible

OVERVIEW

Archaeology is a science that recovers and studies what humans leave behind. What others may consider worthless junk, biblical archaeologists consider priceless clues to biblical history.
Some clues lie buried at different levels in mounds; others survive as ruins or weathered monuments. Many of the discoveries have descriptions in ancient languages. Other “finds” are the remains of everyday life: pottery, lumber, trinkets, toys, ornaments, occasional fragments of cloth, and rusted weapons. Each of these items is part of a story—the story of the people who once used or made it. These discoveries often turn theories about the way people lived into facts. Sometimes, these discoveries turn long-believed “facts” into fiction. Regardless, these discoveries form the basis for the study of archaeology.

DISCOVERIES

Many outstanding archaeological discoveries have been entirely accidental. At Ras Shamra in Syria, a peasant’s plow struck a tomb that led to the discovery of the ancient site of Ugarit. A Bedouin in search of a lost goat discovered the cave at Qumran that contained the Dead Sea Scrolls. In 1887 an Egyptian woman found the Amarna tablets while seeking decomposed bricks for use as fertilizer. In 1945 Egyptians hunting bird manure in caves near Nag Hammadi discovered important manuscripts about a popular religious trend called Gnosticism. Such chance finds, however, are not the norm.
In modern archaeology, scientists identify potential sites. These sites are carefully surveyed, photographed from the air, and tested for metals and other underground anomalies. Complex electronic equipment is a necessity. The recovered artifacts are dated according to the level where they were found in the site. Other dating methods are also used, including radiocarbon dating. The purpose is to present a chronologically accurate picture of the artifacts and also of the site itself.
The archaeologist and the Near Eastern scholar look at this testimony to ancient life in the realization that they are dealing with factual, objective data. Although there is obviously room for some speculation or difference of opinion, the objects are silent but real witnesses to people and events of the past. The relics, therefore, need to be understood in their own right as evidence and must not be manipulated to suit some speculative interpretation of history, culture, or religion. Near Eastern archaeology is able to help us understand Scripture by providing objective background data.
If, for example, an artifact containing pictures or other forms of writing is dated to around 3000 BC, that alone tells us that written communications in the area date back to that period. We now know the early authors of Old Testament material could easily have composed and written down all the narratives credited to them. Before these discoveries it was believed by some that Moses could not have written the Pentateuch because writing had not been invented in his day. In fact, archaeological discoveries have shown that Moses could have written in Egyptian hieroglyphics, cuneiform (from Babylon), and several Canaanite languages (of which biblical Hebrew is one).
It is sometimes difficult to reconcile certain accepted interpretations of archaeological data and the evidence of Scripture. Such conflicts, however, tend to diminish noticeably as new information is forthcoming. In principle the archaeologist has no particular interest in “proving the truth” of the Scriptures, and it is obviously impossible for a spade or a trowel to prove or disprove the spiritual revelations and assertions of Scripture. But it is fair to say that archaeology validates Hebrew history and explains many formerly obscure terms and traditions in both the Old and New Testaments. It thus provides an authentic background for the prophecies culminating in Jesus Christ.
God’s Word is truth, regardless of human discovery. However, it seems archaeology is often a means by which God allows us to peel back the curtain to see truth with our own eyes.

ARCHAEOLOGY AND DAILY LIFE

Archaeology reveals the kind of housing in which ancient people lived, as is seen in excavations at many Near Eastern sites. Neolithic (late Stone Age) homes and dwellings were often simple “wattle-huts” of interwoven sticks, though some showed evidence of artistic interior decoration. The elegant middle-class home at Ur in the time of Abraham was attractive even by modern standards. Ancient palace sites such as Knossos, Persepolis, Mari, and Qantir are beautiful—even in their ruins. Ancient people groups manufactured pottery, glazed and unglazed, some plain and some decorated.
Archaeology describes obscure social customs in Scripture. For example, Abraham had a child by Hagar, his wife’s servant. Local customs at Nuzi (in northeastern Mesopotamia) permitted it, and Abraham’s culture did not regard him as immoral. Also, consider the adoption of Abraham’s servant, Eliezer (Genesis 15:2-4). Nuzi texts describe how childless couples could adopt sons who, in return for certain duties to the parents, would inherit the family estate. Such “children” had the inheritance rights of the firstborn. However, if the adopting parents subsequently had their own children, everything changed. Texts from Nuzi, Ugarit, and Alalakh show that heads of families could disregard the natural order and choose any one of the sons to inherit firstborn rights (compare to Genesis 48:13-22; 49:3-4). Nuzi tablets indicate that such rights could be traded between various members of the family, which accounts for the transaction between Esau and Jacob where Esau sold his birthright to his ruthless brother (Genesis 25:31-34).
Many sources illustrate work of all kinds in the biblical period. The Beni Hasan tableau (1900 BC) shows traveling Semites bringing goods to Egypt. On one of the animals a set of portable bellows suggests that the travelers may have been metalworkers. Other trades and occupations illustrated from monuments and paintings include hunting, fishing, brick making, various types of agriculture, pottery making, and other domestic crafts. Such sources also provide valuable information about the way the ancients dressed. Bearded men pictured on the Beni Hasan tableau wore short skirts and sandals. Women had long, multicolored dresses fastened at the shoulder with a clasp. They wore shoes and kept their flowing hair in place by means of bands. Another Egyptian painting, dated five hundred years later and showing Semites bringing gifts to the pharaoh, indicates that clothing styles had barely changed at all. These illustrations come from lands other than Palestine; the Israelites were forbidden to make representations of human beings or God.
The most common traces of everyday life are potsherds, broken pottery pieces, which were discarded in great quantities in settled areas and can still be found today. Such fragments were often used as materials on which short messages were written, as illustrated by an important group of letters dating from the time of the prophet Jeremiah. The “Lachish letters“ were actually military dispatches written in 587 BC from an outpost north of Lachish to one of the officers defending Lachish itself. Centuries later, in New Testament times, potsherds were still popular as writing materials because they were more durable than Egyptian papyrus and more convenient than waxed writing boards. Rectangular wooden palettes with a slot for the rush pens and rounded hollows for the little tablets of red and black ink have been found in Egypt. Remains of some of the ink actually used in writing the Dead Sea Scrolls have been recovered from the settlement at Qumran.
Long ago, children and adults alike played games. From a tomb at Beni Hasan (about 2000 BC) came a painting of pigtailed Egyptian girls keeping several balls up in the air at once. A relief in a temple at Thebes showed Ramses III playing draughts (checkers) with a concubine. Egyptian children of a later period played a game using pebbles that was perhaps the ancestor of backgammon. From Megiddo came an ivory gaming board with holes, presumably for pegs (about 1200 BC). Children’s toys recovered from Near Eastern sites include whistles, leather-covered balls, model chariots, and animals on wheels, showing that tastes have changed very little over the ages. Adult sports such as wrestling, archery, and running were depicted in Egyptian tomb paintings.
The embalming of Jacob and Joseph (Genesis 50:2-3, 26) represented a social custom of long standing in Egypt and is thoroughly consistent with the background of the narrative. Jacob was buried in the cave of Machpelah with Sarah, Abraham, and others. Although the site is well known, it cannot be excavated because the Arabs consider it the sacred resting place of their ancestor Abraham.
Archaeologists found an inscription associated with an ancient Hebrew burial site in the Russian Museum on the Mount of Olives in 1931. At some point it had been removed from the grave site. It reads, “Hither were brought the bones of Uzziah king of Judah—do not open.” The inscription came from Christ’s time, suggesting that the original tomb of the great ruler had been found during excavations in Jerusalem and that the remains had been transferred to another site. Archaeologists have shown that the kind of stone door covering the entrance to Christ’s tomb was in fashion chiefly from about 100 BC to about AD 100, which is consistent with New Testament records.

ARCHAEOLOGY AND RELIGION

Archaeological excavations have done much to indicate the nature of biblical religion and worship. Long before Abram left Ur at the command of the one true God, pagan Mesopotamian peoples worshiped individual gods and recognized them as celestial deities or “sky gods.” A relief of Ramses II describes the worship of heathen deities in portable shrines. The relief shows the divine tent in the middle of the Egyptian encampment. In addition, seventh century BC Phoenician writings referred to a portable shrine pulled by oxen. The Israelite wilderness tabernacle thus fits properly into that kind of background and is not of comparatively late origin, as was once supposed.
Discoveries validate the tradition of singers participating in worship. Studies indicate that for centuries the Palestinians had been noted for their musical abilities. Tablets from Ras Shamra (Ugarit) are full of religious poetry, some of which contains phrases similar to expressions in the Hebrew psalms. Solomon’s temple was built by Phoenician (Canaanite) workmen according to a ground plan (compare to 1 Kings 6) similar to that of the eighth-century BC chapel found at Tel Tainat in Syria. The Wailing Wall in Jerusalem is thought to contain stones going back to Nehemiah’s time, but no traces of the temple foundations from the time of Solomon have yet been uncovered in the city. Pieces of masonry from the temple Herod built, demolished in AD 70, have come to light and furnish interesting factual information about the appearance of contemporary pillars and supporting structures. Though there were supposedly many synagogues in Palestine in Christ’s time, few remains of any significance have survived.
The majority of pagan temples and religious sites are nothing but ruins. Likewise, Christian sites have not fared much better. However, though dust is all that remains of many of the artifacts from the early Christian church, the faith of the early Christians is still alive. Pagan religions are as dead as their founders. Biblical archaeologists in the Near East find past evidence that testifies to a present and living faith—one that continues through the centuries. Pagan tablets and temple ruins only testify to the past—a dead-end religion.

ARCHAEOLOGY AND WARFARE

Understanding of ancient warfare, a prominent biblical theme, has been assisted greatly by the work of archaeologists. Ancient Near Eastern peoples regarded war as conflict between the gods of the opposing nations. Military service was therefore regarded as a sacred calling, and soldiers were members of an honored profession. In his capacity as Lord of hosts, God was the commander in chief of the Hebrew army; he could order a city to be given up to complete destruction (compare to Joshua 6:17, 24). War was waged according to well-understood rules. An enemy threatening the safety of a city would normally send its inhabitants a demand for surrender. If it was accepted, all lives were spared, though property, armor, and weapons would be plundered. If the demand was rejected, the besieged city dwellers knew that if their defenses were breached, they might all be killed. Frontal assaults, spies, ambushes, and armed patrols were all used in warfare. Sometimes the outcome of combat between champions determined a battle (1 Samuel 17:38-54).
Reliefs and monuments picture ancient armor, supplementing the artifacts that have been recovered. A magnificent golden helmet from Ur is an outstanding example of Sumerian military equipment, contrasting with the much smaller Hittite helmets depicted on a tomb wall at Karnak. Initially, only leaders in the Israelite armies wore metal helmets (compare to 1 Samuel 17:38). However, by Seleucid times, all Hebrew soldiers wore bronze helmets (1 Maccabees 6:35). Roman legionnaires commonly wore either leather or bronze helmets. The Hebrews used two kinds of shields: a large one protected the whole body and was designed for use by infantry; archers carried the other, smaller one (compare to 2 Chronicles 14:8). Such shields were generally of wood-and-leather construction, though they were occasionally made of bronze.
Warriors used coats of scale armor (compare to Jeremiah 46:4) in the Near East from at least the fifteenth century BC, as is indicated by the recovery of such scales from Alalakh and Ugarit. Swords and spears, a normal part of Hebrew weaponry, came in a variety of shapes and sizes, as is illustrated on monuments and reliefs. Furnaces used for manufacturing swords were found at Gerar; Bronze Age daggers have been recovered from Lachish and Megiddo. Discovery of names inscribed on arrowheads dating between 1300 and 900 BC seems to indicate the existence of companies of archers (compare to Isaiah 21:17). The New Testament says little about military equipment of that time.

ARCHAEOLOGY AND LITERATURE

Many types of biblical literature parallel other literature discovered in the Near East. Excavators at Ras Shamra found poetic and prose tablets containing grammatical and literary forms that occur in the Hebrew psalms. It is now incorrect to suppose that detailed law codes such as those in the Pentateuch were not compiled until after the time of Moses. Fragmentary Sumerian codes dating from about the nineteenth century BC exhibit the same legislative tendencies. The code of the Babylonian ruler Hammurabi (18th century BC), based on earlier Sumerian legislation, expanded the principles of justice into nearly three hundred sections. Hammurabi’s code was an attempt to stabilize contemporary society on the basis of law and order. It commenced with a poetic prologue, followed by the prose legal section, and concluded with a prose epilogue. This three-part literary pattern also appears in the book of Job (prose-poetry-prose), as well as in more modern writings.
The covenant found in Exodus 20:1-17 and its fuller form in Deuteronomy have been examined in light of the literary structure Hittite treaties from the same time. Officials drew up the treaties according to a standard pattern, the elements of which occur wholly or in part in the various Old Testament covenantal passages (Exodus 20:1-17; Leviticus 18:1-30; Deuteronomy 1:1-31:30; Jeremiah 31:31-37).
Hebrew wisdom literature such as Proverbs has been paralleled in Egypt by the “Instruction of Amenemope,” where Proverbs 22:17-24:22 in particular is close in content to the Egyptian material. Scholars have yet to decide if one depended on the other, or if both went back to an even earlier source that has not survived.
The epistle (letter) was a common feature of the ancient world (2 Samuel 11; 1 Kings 21; 2 Kings 5:10, 20; Ezra 4:6-7; Nehemiah 2:7). Many collections of Egyptian papyri, such as the Zenon documents, consisted of letters. Among the Greeks the letter form dated back to Plato. His Seventh Letter (about 354 BC) attempted to rebut contemporary misunderstandings of his teaching and personal behavior. Certain examples of the apostle Paul’s letters (Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, Thessalonians) also stand in that general tradition. Paul’s letter to Philemon corresponds closely to papyrus letters from Egypt of a purely personal nature.

ARCHAEOLOGY AND LANGUAGE

Recovery of many ancient Near Eastern languages has done much to clarify our understanding of the Old Testament. Expressions now known to be Sumerian and Akkadian occur not only in Genesis but elsewhere in the Scriptures. Thus in Genesis 1:1 the phrase “the heavens and the earth” is a Sumerian expression (an-ki) meaning “universe”; the pair of words opposite in meaning express totality. Revelation 22:13 uses this literary device to express the same concept in three different ways.
Ugaritic and Eblaic, both west Semitic dialects, are closely related to Hebrew and contain striking literary similarities. Reference to archaic Ugaritic expressions has made it possible to translate properly some obscure Hebrew poetic language that is now seen to have preserved genuine ancient Canaanite phrases.
Aramaic, another northwest Semitic language, was spoken in the third millennium B.C. The books of Daniel and Ezra were written in imperial Aramaic. Because of the Aramaic used, neither Ezra or Daniel can be assigned a late date of writing.
The New Testament was written in koine, or “common” Greek, the language of the Near East and the Roman Empire. New Testament common Greek differs from other Greek dialects. It contains underlying Semitic expressions, which are frequently unrecognized and therefore mistranslated by the unwary.
It is evident that archaeological discoveries have done much to enlarge our knowledge of the ancient world. Even with the limited data at our disposal it is possible to see the men and women of Scripture as real persons. We see such persons as they should be seen—not as mythical or legendary figures—but as true children of their age, grappling with life’s problems and following an all-powerful and all-holy God. Archaeology has shown that the Hebrews must never be studied separately from other ancient Near Eastern peoples but instead be seen as one element of a vast cultural complex

Fast Facts

Why?
Why is archaeology important? Each discovery tells us something more about our own history.
Where?
Where do biblical archaeologists dig? They study ruins and remains in the Near East.
What?
What language did Moses use to write parts of the Bible? He could have used hieroglyphics or cuneiform.
How?
How were the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered? A man searching for his lost goat stumbled upon the caves that contained the scrolls.
Who?
Who was one of the earliest checker players? Archaeologists have discovered drawings of an Egyptian pharaoh at play.

Digging Deeper

Agriculture
Amarna tablets
Armor and Weapons
Babylon
Brick
Canaanite
Covenant
Cuneiform
Egypt
Elephantine Papyri
Genealogy
Gnosticism
Gods and Goddesses
Greek
Hebrew
Hieroglyphics
Homes and Dwellings
Hunting
Lachish
Mesopotamia
Mount of Olives
Nag Hammadi
Nuzi
Pentateuch
Phoenician
Qumran
Syria
Tabernacle
Temple
Truth
Ugarit
Ur
Warfare
Wisdom Literature

Life Links

Faith
Truth
Worship

People Profiles

Abraham
Eliezer
Esau
Hammurabi
Herod
Israelites
Jacob
Jeremiah
Joseph
Moses
Ramses
Solomon
Uzziah

Wacky Wit

HOT LIST

Ten Things in the Bible Archaeologists Have Never Found
1. The Garden of Eden (@Bible - GENE_2_8@Genesis 2:8-17@)
2. Noah’s ark (@Bible - GENE_6_14@Genesis 6:14-16@)
3. Joseph’s beautiful robe [or multi-colored coat] (@Bible - GENE_37_3@Genesis 37:3@)
4. Aaron’s rod that budded (@Bible - NUMB_17_1@Numbers 17@)
5. Rahab’s scarlet jars (@Bible - JOSH_2_17@Joshua 2:17-20@)
6. Gideon’s broken jars (@Bible - JUDG_7_19@Judges 7:19@)
7. David’s harp (@Bible - SAM1_19_9@1 Samuel 19:9@)
8. Ezekiel’s wheel within a wheel (@Bible - EZEK_1_15@Ezekiel 1:15-21@)
9. John the Baptist’s camel-hair suit (@Bible - MATT_3_4@Matthew 3:4@)
10. Moldy bread left over from Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000 (@Bible - JOHN_6_13@John 6:13@)

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