Can We Trust The Bible? (Part 3)

Now let's look at Old Testament and archaeology. Can we trust the Bible? The answer is yes. Let's look at why. So again, this is a four-part series. We're going to be looking at archaeology and the Old Testament in part three of this four point talk. But let's first look at what the skeptics have to say. Well first they've said that the Exodus never happened and that the conquest and judges and Joshua never happened. And that David, King David, he was not a real person. He was just myth. Well let's take a look at this. For me and for a lot of historians, in order to get our head around ancient history, we look at timelines, chronology, and specifically anchor points in history. So a couple examples in Old Testament history is in 2400 BC. Around that time we have the Flood, global flood covered in the book of Genesis. Or another anchor point would have been after that, in about 2200 BC, and this would have been the Tower of Babel. Now I'm not going to cover this in this talk, but I do have other talks that cover these these subjects. But what we are going to be focusing on are these five anchor points. The first one being in 1446 BC, the Exodus. Followed by 1406 BC to 1050 BC, and this is the conquest. This is basically the book of judges and the book of Joshua. And then 1000 BC, this is going to be the house of David. Then 722 BC, this is the Assyrian reign. And then finally our fifth bucket, our anchor point, is in 587 BC. This is the Babylonian reign. So archaeology in the Bible. What are some exciting discoveries in biblical archaeology? This is what we're going to take a look at. Again, my name is Jason. I'm not an archaeologist or a philosopher of science. I'm going to be referencing five PhDs that are. You can see on the slide at the top left, Dr. Doug Petrovich. He has a PhD in archaeology, followed by Dr. Bryant Wood on the top right. And then down the bottom left, we have Dr. Randall Price, and we have Dr. Titus Kennedy. These four men all have PhDs in archaeology. And then finally up on the top right is Dr. Stephen Meyer, and he has a PhD in the history of science. So let's look at the Exodus. But before we dig into the date of 1446 BC, let's look at what happened a little before that time period. So evidence number one, that there was the Jews lived in the Exodus time frame, is there's evidence that there was Israeli

architecture in the land of Goshen. So this city of Avaris, this dates back to 1876 BC, and Dr. Petrovich, Dr. Wood, Dr. Price, Dr. Kennedy, and Dr. Meyer all agree on that. And what we see in the book of Genesis, in chapter 45 10, is Joseph speaking to his brother saying, you shall live in the region of Goshen and be near me. So if we look at the map of Egypt, we can see ancient Egypt, the city of Avaris. It's located in the eastern part of the Delta where the Israelites settled during the lifetime of Jacob. This is around again 1876 BC, and the Israelites grew in size and prospered for several centuries. I want to introduce you to Dr. Betech. This is in 2002. He really broke some pretty cool ground in Egypt. He's an Egyptologist from the University of Vienna, and with his excavations in the city of Avaris, he was able to uncover Israeli architecture. So this city of Avaris was right nearby the biblical named city of Ramses, when you read through the book of Exodus. So we can see on the bigger, broader map, the city of Avaris right there in lower Egypt. And this would have buttressed it up right next to the Nile, and as the population continued to grow during that time, it would have expanded around that area. And again, it's mentioned in the book of Exodus, next to the city of Ramses, and Python. These are two storage cities that were being built by Egyptian slaves. So this is Israelite-specific evidence showing the architecture. It's distinctly Israelite four-roomed pillar house plan, which is discovered and excavated at Avaris. in Egypt. And just some pictures of the excavations that had gone on starting in 2002, some floor plans, here's a schematic of what this four-room architecture would look like. So evidence number two is that we have Israelites that were slaves in Egypt. So from the time of 1876 BC to 1446 BC we have a time of 430 years. Now this is going to get more specific in a couple slides. We'll go over why 430 years is so relevant in biblical history. So let's talk about the enslavement. You can see on the slide here people, slaves, are building with mud bricks. We have depicted here Semitic and Nibbian slaves making mud brick construction, etc. Basically the tombs of Egypt under Thutmose the third during the 15th century. This is also a papyrus here

that is showing, it's depicting the building of public projects by slaves, some Asiatic and some Semitic. In scripture it says the Egyptians appointed taskmasters over them to afflict them with hard labor and they built for the Pharaohs storage cities of Python and Ramses. This is in the first chapter of the book of Exodus and this is correlating with what these Egyptian papyrus are talking about with these slaves. These Semitic slaves were builders and brick makers with a quota to fulfill under the command of the taskmasters in the 16th to the 13th century. And we can see here on the slide a picture of an Egyptian with a rod in their hand whacking one of these slaves that they're building. It's depicted in this slide, the rod is in my hand be not idle. And so what we see here is in the book of Exodus chapter 5, but the quota of bricks which they were making previously you shall impose on them. So again we see in the literature of the Egyptians, in the depictions, and also in what is said in scripture, we have a lot of synergies there. And then also we have Semitic slaves in Egypt in the Egyptian turquoise mines. So if we move from lower Egypt over to the Egyptian Sinai, we have inscriptions in the Sinai in early Semitic alphabet dating back to about 1500 BC. So what this is showing, these inscriptions in Hebrew, are that the Jewish slaves were in the Egyptian Sinai in 1500 BC. And then further, talking about these slaves, is that this is a papyrus, a very famous papyrus scroll called the Brooklyn papyrus, and it lists over 77 slave names. This is dated to about 1740 BC, and what's really significant about the list of these names is at least 30 of them are Northwest Semitic. They're Hebrew, for instance, Issachar or Asher. These are very distinct Jewish names. I want to introduce you to Dr. Douglas Petrovich. Again, he has a PhD in archaeology and he has a two-minute talk here about Avaris, about the Hebrew slaves during Egypt's 18th dynasty. Let's just listen in. I want to show you quickly evidence of the first Passover in Egypt. So we go to Avaris, which is right here. That's where it is in northeastern Nile, and this is that area here. So the Nile River, the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, flows and kind of breaks off, as it does in the Delta, into a number of tributaries or

whatever they're called. And we want to look at this little box here because inside this box is an area called the palatial district, which means that's where the palace was. And in most cases, in most cities at most times, in most of the ancient Near East, there's always just one palace. But guess what they had here? Three palaces. Who needs three palaces? Talk about overkill. Palace F, right here. Palace G, the biggest one right here. Palace J, right here. Oh, and for good measure, you know what they built? They built an artificial lake between these two palaces. Talk about extravagance. I guess you need a lot of builders for this, don't you? Probably slave labor to build all of these. So, in this area, guess what they found? They found four types of animal burials. And not only were they animal burials, but they were, most of the burials were comprised of multiple animals in one grave, which is really weird. And the fact that this is in the palatial district. Why are animals like that buried? Where the king runs around, and the high officials, it makes no sense. What kind of animals were they? Guess what? Exodus 11 and 12, at the time of the first Passover, mentions four animals. Dogs, cattle, sheep, and goats, all four. Guess what animals they found in these graves? Dogs, cattle, sheep, and goats. And the very little pottery that was found in these burials, guess whose reign it was connected to? It's the pottery indicative for the reigns of Thutmose III and Amenhotep II, his son. Who's Amenhotep II? The Exodus pharaoh. Oh my goodness. So that's the time of the Exodus? Yes. And now let's look at evidence number three within the papyrus scrolls. So this is called the Admissions of an Egyptian Sage.

And this is recording the Exodus plagues. This is dated anywhere from the 18th to the 19th Egyptian dynasties, around 1450 BC. So this is the impure papyrus. It's a very famous papyrus that's housed currently in a museum in the Netherlands. And there's some controversy over this papyrus, when it was written and when it dates to. But I want to show you that this Egyptian papyrus, how it correlates incredibly close to the account in the book of Exodus, dealing with the plagues. So let's look at what the Bible says. In Exodus chapter four, it says, God told Moses to pour out the water from the Nile onto the ground, and it will become blood. Now, the Egyptian papyrus says, Behold, Egypt is poured out like water. He who poured water on the ground, he has captured the strong man in misery. For sooth, the river is blood. Let's see what the Bible says. Exodus 10 says, The locusts covered the land, and they ate all the herbs of the ground, and no green tree remained. The Egyptian papyrus says, No fruits or herbs are found. For sooth, grain has perished on every side. Our third example here is in Exodus 10. The Bible says, Moses extended his hand to heaven, and darkness fell upon the entire land of Egypt. The Egyptian papyrus says, The land is in darkness. Example number four. In Exodus 12, it says, It was midnight. God killed all the firstborn of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh and the firstborn of those in the dungeon. The Egyptian papyrus says, Children of princes are dashed against the walls.

The offspring of nobility are laid out on high ground. The residence is overturned in a minute. And two more examples of this. In Exodus 12, it says, There was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not one house that was without the dead. And the Egyptian papyrus says, Men are few. He who places his brother in the ground is everywhere. And finally, in Exodus 12, The children of Israel did as Moses instructed, and asked the Egyptians their gold and silver and finest clothing. And the Egyptian papyrus says, Gold, blue stone, silver, malchite, carnelian, bronze ybit stone are all fastened to the necks of female slaves. Now, I could go on. I just picked six examples from this papyrus, this Egyptian scroll. But there are numerous examples of perfect correlations between what the biblical Exodus account talks about and what this non-biblical Egyptian papyrus is accounting for in history. Unbelievable. And then let's look to scripture in chapter 12, because scripture says, And at the end of four hundred and thirty years, to the very day, all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt. And there is where your four hundred and thirty years is, going from 1876 to 1446 B.C. Dr. Petrovich, he's written books on this. He's got the origins of the Hebrews, the new evidence of Israelites in Egypt from Joseph to the Exodus. Fantastic book. He's also published peer-reviewed journals on this. In the, for instance, here on the screen, the Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections, the article is Toward Pinpointing the Timing of the Egyptian Abandonment of Avaris during the middle of the 18th dynasty. So just some key points to take away from this. In the period following the death of Joseph, the Egyptians enslaved the Hebrews. And after two storage cities of Pithom and Ramses are built, Moses is born. Moses flees Egypt, but is commanded by God to return and lead the Israelites to Canaan. And then finally, convinced by the ten plagues, the Egyptians allow the Israelites to leave

and they begin their journey to Canaan. So this brings us to our point of the Exodus, what happens after the anchor point of 1446. So example number four is the Israelites start to appear outside of Egypt. This is an inscription in Egypt in an Egyptian temple and what's fascinating about this is if you look at the inscription and translate it, it says of the nomads of Yahweh. Well when you think of who are nomads, these are people that are adrift in the desert and Yahweh was the name of God in the Old Testament and the only people that referred to their God as Yahweh was the Israelites. So we have these nomads, these people wandering the desert that are worshiping a God named Yahweh. The earliest inscription is from 1400 BC and again this is in an Egyptian temple and these inscriptions place these nomads in the areas of Moab, Edom, and southern Jordan. Now both of these inscriptions were made during Ammohetep the third and no one else worshiped Yahweh except the Israelites and the name God Yahweh was only revealed to Moses shortly before the Exodus. So this gives an amazing tight window of time of when that inscription could have been inscribed in these Egyptian temples. So why would the oldest mention of God of the Hebrews be found in Egyptian monuments and why are the Egyptians talking about them in 1400 BC? Something has happened. They have left Egypt and they've become nomads. And this brings us to our second bucket, our anchor point of the conquest. So they have left Egypt, the Exodus occurred in 1446 BC, they wandered as nomads for 40 years in the desert and now under the general command of Joshua they begin the conquest and this starts in 1406 BC and the final settlement goes through until 1050 BC. So some key points to consider about the conquest. Before entering the land of Canaan, God commanded the Israelites to drive the Canaanites out of the land and settle it. With Joshua as the leader, the Israelites began the conquest by destroying and bringing Jericho on the west side of the Jordan River. The next city the Israelites destroyed by fire, that's significant, is the city of Ai in the central hill country. The third city to fall under the Israelites was, that they will also burn and destroy, is Hazor. And then during the judges period, the Israelites slowly gained control over

more of Canaan. So scripture mentions three specific cities that would be conquered during this conquest. Jericho, starting in 1406, and then Ai, and then finally Hazor. So we're going to look at these three cities, but first let's focus on the first one, Jericho Falls. Again in 1406 BC, 40 years after the sojourn, the wandering the nomads in the wilderness, now the walls of Jericho fell according to archaeological excavations. And these walls, they fell upon themselves, they weren't sieged like a typical battle, they fell outwards according to Dr. Wood and Dr. Kennedy. And then the walls, they were annihilated all around the city, again according to Dr. Wood and Dr. Kennedy. Highly unusual according to them. The book of Numbers, chapter 33, scripture says, when you cross over the Jordan into the land of Canaan, then you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land before you, and destroy all of their figured stones, and destroy all of their molten images, and demolish all of their high places. And you shall take possession of the land and live in it, for I have given the land to you to possess it. So if we want to look at the map, we have Jericho, and then a little bit to the left you have Ai, and then to the northern hill country is Hazor. So let's work through, let's look at Jericho first. Jericho was excavated first by a German contingent back in the early 1900s, and then a British archaeologist John Garstang famously excavated this area in the 1930s. 20 years later in the 1950s, Kathleen Kenyon, famous for her excavations in the 1950s, and then finally more modern research has been done by Brian Wood, Dr. Brian Wood in the 1990s. So Kathleen Kenyon, just want to introduce you a little bit to her. 20 years prior to her... her research in the 1930s when John Garstang was out there, Kathleen Kenyon was out there kind of as an intern. 20 years later, she led her own dig. And what's significant about this archaeologist is that she said that Jericho was unoccupied during the Israel conquest. Something was up.

And she said she found evidence of a destruction, but it dated back to 1550 BC. Well, this is a bit of a monkey wrench in the chronology of time, because this would state that the conquest happened 150 years earlier. And she would say it was done by the Egyptians. So who's right and who's wrong? Well, let's look at the walls of Jericho. They were impressively fortified. If you look to the slide, this diagram of Jericho's walls, there was the stone retaining wall at the bottom. And then above that, a brick city wall. And these red brick walls were about three feet thick and about 12 to 15 feet high. And that's a pretty impressive tall and thick wall. But what makes it even more astounding is there was two sets of walls. So if you went up the tell or the hill a little bit, you would have a second wall that was three feet thick and about 12 to 15 feet high. So you can only imagine what these Israelites, as they were approaching this heavily fortified and very tall walls, were thinking, how are we going to get into this city and conquer it? So I want to introduce you now to Dr. Bryant Wood. He's an archaeologist with a PhD. And he's going to just talk to us for a minute about the different archaeologists dating the fall of Jericho. When we come to the site of Jericho,

the problem in trying to correlate the archaeological findings there with the biblical record is that the destruction level at Jericho has been misdated by Kathleen Kenyon, who excavated there in the 1950s. She claimed that the city was destroyed around 1550 BC by the Egyptians. Well, there's absolutely no evidence that the Egyptians were ever in the Jordan Valley at this time period. But nevertheless, that's her theory. And that's the dating she came up with. And her dating has been accepted by archaeologists and followed to this very day. Now, I've done a lot of research on Jericho. I've analyzed pottery from all of the expeditions, starting with Garstang in the 1930s, who, by the way, dated the destruction to 1400 BC and did a very fine job, in my opinion, of analyzing his pottery and coming up with that date. But that was overturned by Kenyon in the 1950s. I've studied her pottery. And there's a new expedition there run by some Italians. And they have found pottery from the time period of the destruction of the city. And all of this pottery, when you study it in detail, gives you the dating of 1400. It's late Bronze I. There's no question about it. It's late Bronze I around 1400 BC. So is this your interpretation?

Or is it becoming more accepted? Because people are still leaning towards Kenyon. When was Jericho destroyed? Let's talk about the evidence at the site. When did that happen? From our dating evidence that we have, we can date that destruction to the end of the late Bronze I period, around 1400 BC. And that's based on mainly pottery. But we do have in the cemetery some Egyptian scarabs that Garstang excavated in the 1930s. And these are scarabs of pharaohs who ruled in the 15th century BC. And so that is supporting evidence from a documentary source, you could say. But the strongest evidence is the actual Canaanite pottery that's in the destruction layer. And that is late Bronze I pottery. Who determined that? Or how was that determined? The dating of late Bronze I? That pottery there, yeah. The dating of the pottery is based on my analysis. Kenyon herself never did an analysis of the pottery she excavated. She only made some off-the-cuff statements in various articles she wrote about Jericho, about the dating. And in her final excavation reports, there is no analysis of that material.

Well, unfortunately, and so I have analyzed it, and I need to publish that, obviously, so that other scholars can look at it. So Kenyon also overlooked, just like Dr. Wood said, the Egyptian scarab seals of Queen Hpshetsu, Thutmose III, and Amenhotep III that Garstang had found in the cemetery. So you can see on the slide some examples of these, what are called scarabs. So they're typically in the form of a beetle, sounds kind of weird. The analogy I use is my son likes to collect baseball cards, but back during that time people didn't collect baseball cards, but they would collect things like these scarabs, and they would trade them and stuff like that, so keepsakes. And let's listen to Dr. Wood talking just a little bit more about specifically the walls of Jericho and how they fell. The falling of the walls is the Hebrew word takath ha. Now this is always translated flat, the walls fell flat, but the Hebrew word has a richer meaning and a more descriptive meaning. It actually means the walls fell beneath themselves. Well when the city met its end, these mud brick walls collapsed, and they actually fell down to the base of the stone retaining wall. Kenyon describes it very clearly and in detail in her excavation report, and she says the mud bricks at the base of the retaining wall came from the city wall, and for her it had no connection with the Bible because she dated the destruction of the city to 150 years before Joshua. But there is dramatic evidence for the walls of Jericho falling, just as the Bible says, and that Hebrew word describes it perfectly. They fell beneath themselves because they had to fall and then slide down that rampart and deposited at the base of that stone retaining wall. So some points of convergence. Number one, Jericho was a strong, fortified city with walls and a gate. The attack occurred after spring harvest because there was full grain stores found in the excavation indicating that destruction was soon after the harvest, and the walls collapsed outwards just as chapter 6 of Joshua talks about.

And then the city was not looted because there was numerous full jars of grain found intact. The city was destroyed by fire, just as scripture says. And then the conquest of Jericho dates to 1446, just as 1 Kings chapter 6 in Joshua talks about. So our second city is the city of Ai. Now there's multiple points, locations being proposed, but Dr. Wood has focused on Qurbet al-Marqada, and it may fulfill the occupation and the geographical requirements of the 15th century. There was a fortress and it was destroyed by fire, just like Joshua 8 talks about. In the slide here, you can see in 2009, Dr. Wood and his team of archaeologists out there and graduate students and people that have offered to help out there on the dig site. We have ancient pottery. We have evidence of fire and massive destruction of this proposed location. And then our third city as we march north is Hazor. So this is the last and the largest city destroyed by the Israelites, and it was destroyed by fire, just like Joshua 11 records. This was dated to the late Bronze Age too. It was either a palace or a temple that was excavated with evidence of fire destruction. What I think is most significant besides the fire destruction is the mutilation of the statues. So there are Canaanite and Egyptian statues that had their heads and limbs broken off, which indicates that neither the Canaanites nor the Egyptians would have destroyed this city. So this is evidence of the Israelites and their conquest. And just as Deuteronomy 12 says, cut down the idols of their gods and wipe out their names from those places. Next up, I want to introduce you to a very famous archaeological find, which dates back to 1209 BC. This is the Merneptah Stele or Merneptah Stele, and the reason why this is so significant

in biblical archaeology. is when archaeologists look down to the bottom right of this stelae, it says Canaan, which is Israel is laid waste without seed. Now this is obviously propaganda of the time because we know that the Israelites were not laid without seed. They were abundant in this area at that time. What's significant is the stelae in 1209 BC is talking about in Canaan there's the Israelite people that are out there. So it records an attack in areas of Canaan by Pharaoh Menefta in 1209 BC and it mentions Israel as part of a settled population. Canaan as a land has three cities, the people of Israel, this stelae is mentioning, and it implies that Israel was a dominant nation in Canaan around this time period. Okay, let's move to our bucket number three, which is the house of David. We're looking right around the time frame of a thousand BC. So the King David and the house of David. Did you know that until 1993 there was no archaeological evidence that David existed? And everything to do with David in the Bible was considered a myth in the same level as King Arthur. He was often mocked by the archaeological and the historical community as nothing more than just made-up fairy tale. But then in 1994 in the northern city of Dan in on a tell they found this stelae and inscribed on the stelae was the house of David and this changed everything. The tell Dan stelae with the house of David inscription was testifying to the historicity of David and the reality of his dynasty. I want to introduce you to Dr. Titus Kennedy. Again, he has a PhD in archaeology and he's talking now with us Sean McDowell about the tell Dan stelae. Let's check it out. The tell Dan stelae, what's this find? This stelae completely changed the perspective of many archaeologists and scholars in the 90s. So up through the 80s and into the early 90s many archaeologists, ancient historians, even some biblical scholars were saying that David never existed because we have no evidence from ancient times for him. We just have the biblical narrative and then later writings. But in 1993 while excavating at the site of tell Dan, thus the name the tell Dan stelae, the archaeologists found a fragment of this

broken Aramean victory stelae. So it was a stone monument that the Arameans had set up after they had defeated the Israelites at Dan and they inscribed on it about their accomplishments. And this first major section that was discovered mentioned some Israelite kings and then it said that they were from the house of David. So this is a phrase that comes from the Bible, from the book of Samuel and Kings even, and it indicates that David was the founder of the dynasty of Israelite kings. And so you had the Arameans acknowledging the existence of David and his role as the founder king. This demonstrated and established and really changed the perspective on the historicity of David. So as I said before this, many scholars were questioning it. This made everyone change their minds, almost everyone. And so now David is accepted as a historical figure. And again this shows the historical reliability of the biblical text and again that David was a real king and the founder king of the Israelites just as we see in the Bible. And then we have the Moabite stone, also known as the Misha inscription shown here on the slide. And this is dated back to the 9th century, written by a Moabite king at the time. It collaborates with 2nd Kings chapter 3. Now in 1994 when the house of David was found, this inscription, archaeologists reanalyzed this Moabite stone and they found an inscription saying Yahweh as well on the stelae, which further cooperates that not only David and his dynasty was historicity of David, but also that the Israelites and their worship of the god Yahweh were in fact written in stone. And then also David and his son Solomon had massive building project that has been unearthed by archaeology. Things like King David's palace and then Solomon's building projects are continuing to be excavated. There's an archaeologist, Dr. Scott Stripling, and in a talk he was doing on biblical archaeology, he has mentioned that only about 5% of Israel has been excavated. So over 95% is still under stone, dust, and dirt, and rock, waiting to be excavated. All right, our next bucket of anchor point history is the Assyrian invasion, and we're looking at a time period of 722 BC and then forwarding to 701 BC. But before we get

to 722 BC, let's just kind of take a stop for a second at 858 BC to 824 BC, and I want to introduce you to the Black Obelisk. This is a famous archaeological find. It's depicting King Jehu bowing before a king of Assyria, and the inscription reads that the tribute of Jehu, son of Omri, I received from him silver, gold, and a golden bowl. Now this is the earliest archaeological picture of an Israelite king. Now it's not casting a real great fortune on the Israelite king. He's bowing before his oppressor, the Assyrian king of the time, but this is in fact a king that correlates with 2 Kings chapters 9 and 10. All right, so as we move into 722 BC, that anchor point, I want to introduce you to this guy with the big beard. This is the Assyrian king, King Sennacherib. And you know, on and off over the years, I've heard of Sennacherib. I've heard of this account in the Book of Chronicles, and really just in passing, I really just never really paid too much attention to it. Until more recent times, I've heard here on the slides, you can see Dr. Stephen Meyer, PhD in the history of science, and he has an hour-long talk on the Assyrian conquest, and specifically this king, King Sennacherib. So I want to share this with you because it's fascinating, not only biblical history, ancient history, but the archaeology that backs this up is just incredible. So you can see on the slide the map. So up on the top, you can see all the purple, and if we kept on going north, you would see lots of purple. This is the Assyrian Empire. It was the superpower of the day. And in 722 BC, they knocked on the northern kingdom, the kingdom of Israel. In the map, it's green. Knocked on their door and said, we're gonna conquer you right now. And they basically just took it. And then shortly after that, they said, hey, southern kingdom, king of Judah, we're gonna conquer you too, because we're fed up with dealing with you, so we're just gonna conquer you. So what I've recognized looking at Sennacherib and the king of Judah, his name was Hezekiah, is that if Hezekiah lived in modern-day United States, I think he would live in Texas, because he basically told the big bag wolf of the north, King Sennacherib, come and take it. I dare you to come down here. And so the Assyrian king was not happy with that and said, you know what,

I'm gonna burn all of your fortified cities on my way down to Jerusalem, and I'm gonna take your city. So in 2nd Chronicles chapter 32, God tells the king, Hezekiah, you need to build a massive wall, because the armies of the north are coming, and they're not gonna play nice. And so what's amazing about archaeology in the city of Jerusalem is archaeologists have uncovered this wall, which is called Hezekiah's wall. It is huge. I mean, you can just see in this picture how massive Hezekiah's wall would have been. And this is just a piece of that structure. And then the second thing that God tells King Hezekiah to do is to secure a water supply. Now he had some water in the city of Jerusalem, but he really needed to reroute the water supply so that when the siege began, would begin, with the Assyrians surrounding Jerusalem, they would be able to hold out. And one of the most important things, if you're being sieged, is that your city has lots and lots of water, because when you're surrounded by the Assyrians, you can't go out of your city. You're surrounded. And so leading up to this siege, what King Hezekiah did is he had his engineers go in and dig a tunnel. A group of men from one side and a group of men from the other, with basically picks and axes, cut through solid stone until they finally met each other in the middle. And this is a replica of an inscription from Hezekiah's the moment when the tunnel was completed. It was originally carved into the tunnel. So when these two groups of men met from one side and the other and met in the middle, and there was a huge celebration, obviously, because they completed the mission, but they had really overcome incredible engineering obstacles. Somebody had inscribed this description in the side of the tunnel saying exactly what had happened. It said, this is a little thing of what it says, it says, the stone cutters struck each man towards his fellow, axe against axe, and the waters flowed from the source to the pool for 120 cubits, which is about 1,750 feet. If you go to Jerusalem today, you can still see and walk through Hezekiah's tunnel, and it still has flowing water through it. Unbelievable archaeology that attests to what happened back at that time. The Assyrians were known for being absolutely brutal conquerors. This is the Assyrian saying, as for Hezekiah, the Judean who did not submit to my yoke, so this is King Sennacherib saying, I surrounded and conquered 46 of his strong walled towns

by leveling with battering rams and by bringing up siege engines. 200,000, 150 people I brought away from them and counted as spoil. What he has done is as the Assyrian king, King Sennacherib, marched south, he brutally destroyed these 46 strong walled fortified cities. The last one standing in his way between him and Jerusalem was Lachish. Lachish was probably the most fortified city besides Jerusalem. What's fascinating in archaeology is archaeologists have uncovered these, what are famously known as the Lachish reliefs, showing the assault on the city walls and the Hebrew soldiers defending from the towers in the city of Lachish. They were the final stopping point before Sennacherib would approach Jerusalem. Now Lachish did fall, but these reliefs are recorded not on posters, but on stone posters that the king of Assyria would have all throughout his palace. In the city of Nineveh, where this king's palace was, these reliefs have been excavated by archaeologists and they are prominently displayed in different museums around the world. Again, these are famously known as the Lachish reliefs. You can Google them for a more fascinating look at the actual reliefs, but they stand anywhere from 12 to 15 feet high and they would have run the whole span of a room, specifically the hallways of the palace and the throne room. These are massive propaganda pieces that the Assyrian king would show visitors, you must yield to my yoke or you will turn into cities like, for instance, Lachish. Now let's look at what the Bible has to say in 2 Kings. The king of Assyria required of Hezekiah, king of Judah, 300 talents of silver and 30 talents of gold. Hezekiah gave him all the silver which is found in the house of the Lord and in the treasures of the king's house. So Sennacherib required of Hezekiah, I want money and Hezekiah said, you know what, I'm going to give you all the money, all the gold you want. But what happened next? And then Sennacherib sent out his officials to taunt Hezekiah and the Lord God. Now in history, when that happens, it never ends well for those that are taunting the God of the Bible. So let's see what happens next. King Hezekiah and the prophet Isaiah, son of Amos, cried out in prayer to heaven about this and the Lord sent an angel who annihilated all the fighting men and the commanders and officials, officers in the camp of the Assyrian king. So he withdrew to his own land in disgrace and he went into the temple of his God. Some of his sons, his own flesh and blood, cut him down with the sword. And this is the biblical account. And we can see in second Kings chapter 19, the scripture states that there was 185,000 Assyrians in that camp that were killed on that very night. Now this is where people would think, especially skeptics of the

Bible and biblical history would say, there's no way some angel came and killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers and officers in one night. That's just, that's miracle. We can't believe that. We can only believe in naturalistic principles. Well, let's see what the Assyrians said. According to archeology, this is the famous Taylor prism. This is the, it records the the Assyrian account. So in very small writing on these clay tablets are the Assyrians documenting exactly what happened in history. Now there were three complete copies of these prisms that were sent all around the Assyrian Empire. And this was powerful propaganda, which the king and his people would use at that time to send around the empire, to basically scare people into submission. But there's a conspicuous silence because the prism says, he himself, I shut up in Jerusalem. This is Sennacherib talking about the Judean, the Israelite King Hezekiah. Shut up him in Jerusalem, his royal city, like a bird in a cage. Now the Assyrians never documented any losses or defeat in battle. And it would have been beneath them to mention any kind of disgrace. So this conspicuous silence is that even though Sennacherib was at the walls of Jerusalem to conquer it, he never took the city. Now, the next thing that archeology shows in this stele here on the slide

is that Sennacherib was assassinated. So Sennacherib's assassination by his sons is recorded in an Assyrian stele. This is outside of what the Bible says. It's even recorded in stone. You can see here in this depiction, there is a King sitting on his throne. There is some, maybe his sons standing behind him with very large sharp objects and the King no longer has his head. So we have a convergence of testimony. We have a pattern of evidence that's happening between Hezekiah, what the Bible says and what the Assyrian and Sennacherib say. Hezekiah had fortified the walls according to 2 Chronicles. He secured the water supply and he paid tribute according to 2 Kings. The Assyrian, the non-biblical account records that they conquered walled cities of Judah. They did not conquer Jerusalem and that Sennacherib was killed by his rebellious sons. So if Sennacherib would have captured Jerusalem, he would have put that on his palace wall, but he didn't. So the next best thing was to display the Battle of Lachish. Now, finally, let's look to Babylon and the invasion and exile at 597 BC. So this is the Babylonian Chronicle for the years of 605 to 594 BC. And these set of tablets describes Nebuchadnezzar

and his campaign against Jerusalem in 597 BC. Now there's a series of these tablets that detail the history of the kings of Babylon, including the fall of Jerusalem under King Nebuchadnezzar in 597 BC. Now the temple would be destroyed 10 years later. And in 605 BC, the first deportation of Jews occurred, including people like Daniel. And then the second deportation occurred in 594 BC. It was during this time that Nebuchadnezzar appointed a vassal king in Jerusalem, King Zedekiah. And he took heavy tribute of the treasure back to Babylon. Now these series of tablets record all of this history. All of these biblical details are confirmed on these ancient Babylonian clay tablets. And they even give the exact date of the fall of Jerusalem. It's March 16th, 597 BC. That is stunning archeology and history. I wanna introduce you to the Cyrus Cylinder. It contains a declaration by Cyrus the Great, allowing people captured by the Babylonians to return to their homelands and to rebuild their temples to their gods. Now at this point in history, Babylon has fallen. Persia has taken over and King Cyrus, Cyrus the Great, is the new big king in town. And there were all sorts of captured people that were in exile in Babylon, not just the Jews. But Cyrus let them go free. In Ezra chapter one, the Bible talks about Cyrus

letting the Jews return to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple. And the items that were taken from the temple could be returned back as well. So in the 1800s, if we fast forward to more modern times, biblical skeptics and scoffers scoffed at the idea that an ancient king would let a captured people go free, like the Bible declared. So what we now know is that this was in fact the exact public policy of Cyrus the Great. So this archeological find confirms that point as well. And then in history one, we talked about the Dead Sea Scrolls in a lot of detail, but I just want to highlight just a couple of key points. key points. This brings us to a time period of about 250 BC. Some of these scrolls are now even dating back to 400 BC, but around the 250 BC time period, we have things like the Dead Sea Scrolls and specifically things like the Great Isaiah Scroll, just incredibly well preserved. And these papyrus scrolls, they were able to be so well preserved because so many of them were put in these clay tablets, these clay jars that you can see on the slide. These clay jars were able to preserve the scrolls just incredibly well. In fact, you can look at a close-up look at chapter 53 of the Great Isaiah Scroll, and you can just note how well the Hebrew text was preserved. I mean, to me, it almost looks like it was written just recently. I want to introduce you to Dr. Randall Price. He's got a PhD in archaeology. He is an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls, and he's just talking here for a couple of moments about the Dead Sea Scrolls. Well, the Dead Sea Scrolls represent about 1,100 documents that were found in 11 caves that were along the shores of the Dead Sea at Israel. The Dead Sea is known as the lowest spot on earth, about 1,350 feet below sea level. That sea level came up to probably the area of a plateau that is where a community formed itself called the Qumran community. These are the people that were a priestly community, which meant they were also involved with scribal activity. So they studied the Bible. They copied the Bible. They actually created a library of stored documents at Qumran, wrote their own commentaries

on the Bible, as well as on other things as well. And it's because they hid those things very well, preserved them within jars that were, once the scroll was put in a jar, and a scroll, by the way, is made of either animal skin, known as parchment, or it's made of a type of paper called papyrus, both of which don't usually are well preserved over time. But in a very dry climate like the Dead Sea, and put inside of jars with a lid and sealed, they actually did survive over 2,000 years. And so now we have the oldest copies of the Bible that we know. Almost every book of the Bible is represented among the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as these sectarian writings that give us an insight into the times of this community. And this community existed from 150 years before the birth of Jesus, through his life, and through the beginnings of the early Jewish church. So that's a very pivotal time in history. And we had no information of that time whatsoever. The writings we had about that, that paralleled the New Testament, came to us between 200 and 600 years later with the rabbinic writings. And so to actually find a window on the past, like the Dead Sea Scrolls, was phenomenal. And finally, in the book, Archaeology in the Bible, by Dr. Holden and Dr. Geisler, they say about the Dead Sea Scrolls, the scrolls proved to be an important link in the unbroken chain of texts that contribute to establishing the textual reliability of the Old Testament scriptures. And finally, some resources I highly recommend. At the beginning of this talk, I recommended, talked through origins of the Hebrews, the new evidence of the Israelites in Egypt from Joseph to the Exodus. This is by Dr. Douglas Petrovich. And then Dr. Randall Price has a fantastic book, The Secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls. If you reside in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, every November, there is a biblical archaeology conference hosted by ICR, Institute of Creation Research, and they have archaeologists that come in and talk about these different archaeological finds and new research that's being done in the area of biblical archaeology. Thank you so much for your attention.