The Importance of Archeology

“ In a letter to Biblical Archeology Review (May - June 2016, professor Amihai Mazar of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem states, “If we would have to rely on archeology alone, we would not be able to say anything about Israel until the ninth century B.C.E., except the one mention in the Merneptah Stele in the late 13th century.”    

The Bible mentions cities and peoples otherwise unknown to history, Speaking about unidentified Iron and Bronze Age settlements, Professor Mazar believes that “It is only the Biblical tradition that provides clues to the identity and context of these archeological phenomena.”

One of the cultures mentioned by the Bible which archeology and history declared to be mythological was the Hittite Empire. That is, until the Hittite capital, Hattusas, was identified near Bogas Koy, Turkey in 1884. It was then realized that other ruins discovered in 1834 were also Hittite.  

Opinions about the historicity of the Bible vary wildly depending on numerous factors: educational level, religious background, preconceived biases, etc.  They range from the utterly ridiculous, "2/3 0f Bible is fictional," to the extreme literalist, to the skeptical, to those who give a somewhat grudging acknowledgment.

Ken Ham, writing on the website, Answers in Genesis, quotes from a letter he received from the Smithsonian Institution in response to a question about the historicity of The Flood recounted in Genesis. ’In the best analysis, the Bible is a religious book, not an historical document.’

The historicity of the Bible is the message of the massive apologetic work The Bible as History, written by Werner Keller. Dr. Keller recounts thousands of archeological and scientific items which point to the fact that the Bible is accurate in its historical assertions. Kings and cultures are mentioned in the Bible in the same order and historical context as established by secular sources. The cultural contexts spoken of are consistent with known facts.

The apparent historicity of the Bible is not proof of the truth of the religious claims of Christianity or of Judaism. It does, though, add to the overwhelming evidence pointing toward that truth.