Archeology has never disproved a Biblical point

[MG1962]

But why do we even bother? Archaeology has demonstrated, and genetics have shown that the Israelites and Judeans were Canaanites, genetically identical to the Phoenicians. There appears to have been some sort of internal power struggle within Canaanite society, perhaps a popular uprising against elite oppression, which partially destroys Canaanite cities in the time period from 2200 to 1200BCE. The area is continuously settled, but evolves from a few city-states through a plethora of small villages to finally a kingdom. No escape from Egypt is required, or rather, the Bible is the only source that requires it.

Why not bother - I for one would love to know who Moses was, what his real story was, and how that story changed and was re-interpretated through history. We do the same thing for Robin Hood, King Arthur, dozens of great names from the past.

 

[TimCallahan]

As to the Yam Suph, the second word, like many words in Hebrew has a number of meanings. Along with meaning "reed" it can also mean "end," either the physical end of something - like a reed - or end as in death or exinction. Thus, Yam Suph could mean "Sea of Extinction" referring either to the demise of the Egyptian army or to the fact that the Red Sea led out to the ocean, which, as terra incognita, was part of the supernatural realm, the land of the dead. I agree that trying to make it the "Sea of Reeds" is yet another vain attempt to rationalize the miracle.

 

[I Ratant]

Archeology -- as in "remains of cities and towns" -- usually DOES fit well with what the bible says, which is unsurprising: the authors of the bible didn't invent nations, cities, or wars out of whole cloth.
...

.
The Amelekhites that Samuel had Saul eliminate exist only in the OT.
Having place names is merely a bullshipper's ploy to add versimilitude to his tall tail.
There is, after all, a 221B Baker Street in London, but no Sherlock Holmes.
There was a Jericho, and Babylon, etc.. just gingerbread fleshing out the campfire story.

 

[I Ratant]

Why not bother - I for one would love to know who Moses was, what his real story was, and how that story changed and was re-interpretated through history. We do the same thing for Robin Hood, King Arthur, dozens of great names from the past.

.
Jesse James... heroic thief.. but in reality, just a murderer and ne-er do-well.
Myths grow up and flesh out the strangest people for the strangest reasons.
Billy the Kid, a retarded murderer... nothing to care about there at all.
Moses may be a pastiche of several old-timey bullshippers who told tall tales for their living.
An actual single person, highly unlikely, as there is nothing else in the tale except the place names that have any existence in history.

 

[Elizabeth I]

So far, archaeology has disproven the Noah's Ark story. People have found petrified wood here and there on hills and such, and apparently some with animal fossils.
Archaeology can prove that the entire world was NOT covered with water, and if they do find a boat with animal remains, archaeology will prove that they didn't have every single type of animal on earth.
People in the Bible had no idea about buffalo, kangaroos, and penguins.

Do you mean the highlighted word to refer to bison? Because it seems that in the middle east there must have been a bovine species very similar to the true buffalo. Aren't oxen very close? Just curious, and I could be wrong.

A very intriguing idea that is just mundane enough to have legs. If we look at how songs are misunderstood today. It is hardly any stretch at all

So the whole Bible is just a series of mondegreens? Explains a lot.

 

[MG1962]

.
Jesse James... heroic thief.. but in reality, just a murderer and ne-er do-well.
Myths grow up and flesh out the strangest people for the strangest reasons.
Billy the Kid, a retarded murderer... nothing to care about there at all.
Moses may be a pastiche of several old-timey bullshippers who told tall tales for their living.
An actual single person, highly unlikely, as there is nothing else in the tale except the place names that have any existence in history.

Billy the Kid etc are important to learn about, because they teach us about public memory and the growth of these legends. Historian deal with this constantly. Not just the Bible, but every historical document has to be considered within these concepts

 

[shadron]

It is my understanding that the walls of Jericho did not come down in a catastrophic event. The archaeological evidence is that the city slowly failed.

Uh, no. At least three of the city-states of the Canaanites, Ai, Jericho and Hazor demonstrate destruction by intense fire. The problem is that Ai burned in 2200BCE, Jericho in 1500BCE and Hazor in 1200BCE, all with no signs of external invasions (like earthworks at sieges and so on). This sort of thing in archaeology is considered typical of internal rebellion. All of Canaan was then conquered and occupied by the Egyptians soon after 1200BCE, but the Arian invasion from Central Asia started just about that time and Egypt drew back, leaving the area open to the Kingdom of David at about 1000BCE.

 

[shadron]

The first personage in the Bible for which here is any external evidence is David. The Tel Dan stele^WP was erected by the King of Damascus in the Aramaic language at Tel Dan, and discovered by Gila Cook in 1993. It commemorates a successful raid, in which it says the king killed the "king of the house of David". The stele dates to the 9th or 8th century BCE (899-700BCE). It is thought that the E and the J sources were committed for the first time to writing at about the time of David.

 

[Jaxe]

"Archaeological excavations have shown that Bethlehem in Judaea likely did not exist as a functioning town between 7 and 4 B.C., when Jesus is believed to have been born. Studies of the town have turned up a great deal of Iron Age material from 1200 to 550 B.C. as well as material from the sixth century A.D., but nothing from the first century B.C. or the first century A.D." source

 

[boloboffin]

And the Israelites were all whistling "The Bridge Over The River Kwai" as they crossed the Red Sea.

 

[Beerina]

My friend made the claim that "archeology has never disproved a biblical point."

Nor have they ever disproved unicorns, fairies, dragons, leprechauns, or giant cyclopses.


And that's not true, in any case. Archeology overlaps geology and history, and we know there were no Great Floods as there is no worldwide trauma that shows all cultures dying in the same geological strata, much less because of a flood.

Archaeology has also demonstrated, clearly, that humanity is several millions of years old, depending on what you consider a human and what a pre-human. Thus (ignoring the age of the Earth issue) we can conclude that humanity changed from animal to human when there were many of its species existent, and not because of just two. In other words, Adam or Eve may have been "human", but they had brothers and relatives, and possibly direct descendants, who were not.

 

[TimCallahan]

Uh, no. At least three of the city-states of the Canaanites, Ai, Jericho and Hazor demonstrate destruction by intense fire. The problem is that Ai burned in 2200BCE, Jericho in 1500BCE and Hazor in 1200BCE, all with no signs of external invasions (like earthworks at sieges and so on). This sort of thing in archaeology is considered typical of internal rebellion. All of Canaan was then conquered and occupied by the Egyptians soon after 1200BCE, but the Arian invasion from Central Asia started just about that time and Egypt drew back, leaving the area open to the Kingdom of David at about 1000BCE.

One of te big problems with biblical archaeology is that evidence of cities being destroyed violently doesn't support the conquest by Joshua, simply because the region was a crossroad for empire builders. If you start out in Egypt, intent on building an empire stretching to the Euphrates, you're going to go through the Levant, probably sacking cities on the way. If you start in Mesopotamia, intent eventually on conquering Egypt, you will pass through the Levant. Alexander the Great also went through the region on his way to Egypt. The Romans invaded in the process of conquering the Seleucid Empire. In later times they were followed by Arabs, Seljuk Turks, Crusaders, Mongols and Ottoman Turks.

Then, as you point out, there were internal revolts. There's also the problem of identifying the cities of the mythical conquest of the Book of Joshua. Ai, for exmple, means "ruin," not the most auspicious name people would choose for their city.

 

[Profwag]

"Archaeological excavations have shown that Bethlehem in Judaea likely did not exist as a functioning town between 7 and 4 B.C., when Jesus is believed to have been born. Studies of the town have turned up a great deal of Iron Age material from 1200 to 550 B.C. as well as material from the sixth century A.D., but nothing from the first century B.C. or the first century A.D." source

Just so you know, I'm on your side in this debate, but for the sake of argument, how can they say they don't have material between 550 B.C. and the sixth century A.D. when Constantine built the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in the 4th Century (330 AD to be more precise)? Am I reading that wrong or do these dates conflict?

 

[drkitten]

Just so you know, I'm on your side in this debate, but for the sake of argument, how can they say they don't have material between 550 B.C. and the sixth century A.D. when Constantine built the Church of the Nazarene in Bethlehem in the 4th Century (330 AD to be more precise)? Am I reading that wrong or do these dates conflict?

A church is not a city. If you have the Emperor of the Known World trucking stone into the wilderness, he can build a church Anywhere He Wants, but that doesn't mean that people will live near there.

 

[boloboffin]

A church is not a city. If you have the Emperor of the Known World trucking stone into the wilderness, he can build a church Anywhere He Wants, but that doesn't mean that people will live near there.

Well, let's grant that there was nothing there before Constantine built the church. There certainly would have been a plethora of pilgrims plodding a path to Bethlehem at that point. And a pilgrim's gotta eat.

 

[Profwag]

A church is not a city. If you have the Emperor of the Known World trucking stone into the wilderness, he can build a church Anywhere He Wants, but that doesn't mean that people will live near there.

Fair enough, but I would think that it would have been hard for an old lady from Italy to have found "the spot" if there wasn't some sort of civilization there already.

 

[drkitten]

Fair enough, but I would think that it would have been hard for an old lady from Italy to have found "the spot" if there wasn't some sort of civilization there already.

Rolling farmland and/or goat pastures are not "civilization." A little old lady from Italy who was willing to throw enough money around could probably have convinced the local neatherd to show her the cave where Gilgamesh was born. Which might well have been the same cave as the one Jesus was born in, since there's only one cave within easy guiding distance, if you know what I mean.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

The first personage in the Bible for which here is any external evidence is David. The Tel Dan stele^WP was erected by the King of Damascus in the Aramaic language at Tel Dan, and discovered by Gila Cook in 1993. It commemorates a successful raid, in which it says the king killed the "king of the house of David". The stele dates to the 9th or 8th century BCE (899-700BCE). It is thought that the E and the J sources were committed for the first time to writing at about the time of David.

That's about the impression I've always had. That everything up to about 1000 B.C. is just creative fiction. After that point, Biblical stories are at least based on actual history and people who were probably real.

 

[LyTinWeedle]

Well, when a mommy asshat and a daddy asshat love each other very much ....

You have a one in four chance of getting a hat.

LTW

 

[Profwag]

Rolling farmland and/or goat pastures are not "civilization." A little old lady from Italy who was willing to throw enough money around could probably have convinced the local neatherd to show her the cave where Gilgamesh was born. Which might well have been the same cave as the one Jesus was born in, since there's only one cave within easy guiding distance, if you know what I mean.

Good point and seems perfectly logical to me. Thanks for your thoughts drkitten.

On a side note, there is archeological evidence of another town in Galilee, also called Bethlehem, that appears to be more logical as Junior’s actual place of birth, but it was moved to Judea in the Biblical accounts to make it fit the prophecy that he would be descendant of King Dave. If a logical personal thinks about it, why would a 9-month pregnant woman ride a donkey for 90 miles just to follow her hubby to account for the census. Doesn’t make sense at all. Of course, proving that Junior wasn’t from Judea would bring Christianity to its knees and we couldn’t have that...