Recent Archaeological Discoveries - The Historicity of the Scriptures

[Resource Manager]

Recent Archaeological Discoveries That Lend Credence To The Historicity of the Scriptures

Michael Grisanti
 
6/9/2014 1:51:42 PM

"For one who loves biblical studies and is intensely interested in its intersection with history and archaeology, the potential impact of the latter on the former deserves attention. In various academic and popular settings, numerous scholars in these fields make sweeping statements about the disjuncture between archaeology and/or history and the Bible. Those statements are made with authority and have widespread impact, even on an evangelical audience. How do the plain statements of Scripture fare when related to what seem to be the objective facts of archaeology and history? According to Ron Hendel,
 

Archaeology did not illumine the times and events of Abraham, Moses and Joshua. Rather, it helped to show that these times and events are largely unhistorical. The more we know about the Bronze and early Iron Ages, the more the Biblical portrayals of events in this era appear to be a blend of folklore and cultural memory, in which the details of historical events have either disappeared or been radically reshaped. The stories are deeply meaningful, but only occasionally historical. Archaeological research has—against the intentions of most of its practitioners—secured the non-historicity of much of the Bible before the era of the kings.¹

 

In this paper I hope to consider a few examples of intersections between the Bible and archaeological excavations. My primary intended audience is the evangelical world. This paper has a clear apologetic function. It offers a different “take” on the intersection of the Bible and archaeology than one often hears in academic and popular settings. Although this paper has a clear apologetic core, let me make this important point very clear. The archaeological evidence cited below and in any similar study never provides certifiable proof that a given individual lived or that a certain event took place. Our confidence in the accuracy and historicity of the people and events referred to in God’s Word draws on other evidence, primarily theological statements the Bible makes about itself. Regardless, one should recognize that the archaeological evidence does not rule out the people or events described in the Bible. As a matter of fact, archaeology provides a “picture” that points to the feasibility or plausibility that the people and events described in the Bible lived and occurred just as they are described.^{2"
 
 
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