GOD, SCIENCE & THE BIBLE
What Does Archaeology Tell Us
About the Bible?
How has the Bible fared when archaeologists have compared their findings with the record of Scripture? by Noel Hornor
A
rchaeology is the recovery and study of the material remains of past people’s lives and activities. It involves the excavation and systematic study of their tools, weapons, cookware, inscriptions and other objects and remains. Biblical archaeology is a smaller subset of the broader field of archaeology, limited to the study of ancient civilizations in the ancient Middle East, the geographical setting of the events recorded in the Bible. Modern biblical archaeology is a fascinating and sometimes controversial subject. Its aim, in general, is to compare the findings of archaeology to the writings of the Bible. Biblical archaeologists seek to establish the historicity, or the lack thereof, of the people, places and events of the Bible. For many centuries the events of the Bible were accepted as true history. The great sagas of the Bible were approved as accurate down to the smallest details. However, with the arrival of the “Enlightenment” of the 17th and 18th centuries, this outlook began to change. Scholars began to exalt human reason and scientific exploration above the Bible, mounting a frontal attack on Scripture. Biblical heroes and other towering
personalities, as well as their experiences as recorded in Scripture, came to be considered by many scholars as mere myths. The existence of mighty empires, some of which were recorded in the Bible as having ruled for centuries, was doubted or even denied. Skepticism became the rule of the day among “critical” scholars. Where previous generations had taken the Bible at face value, now a supposedly enlightened generation viewed it with doubt. The net effect was to deal a staggering blow to the credibility of the Bible in the minds
as suspect by many historians. English historian Arnold Toynbee summed up their view when he referred to the Old Testament as merely “human compositions of varying degrees of religious and historical merit.” He further stated that those who accepted it as factual “set a religious premium on an obstinate stupidity” (A Study of History, Vol. 10, 1957, p. 260). Given this mindset, archaeologists who sought to excavate and evaluate the ruins of past ages and to report the credibility of the Bible in an honest manner faced an uphill struggle.
Some archaeologists are among leading critics of Bible history—yet those who have challenged the Bible have often done so without all the facts still being discovered. of many people. Earlier, when the Bible was translated into several languages in the post-Reformation era after the comparative illiteracy of the Middle Ages, the Bible had become for many people their one and only textbook of ancient history. They regarded it as the unerring Word of God. But, after the tinkering of critical scholars, the Bible began to be viewed
The field of science in general had grown biased against the Bible, with some archaeologists themselves among the leading critics. The testimony of history Sir William M. Ramsay, first professor of classical archaeology and art at Oxford, was a product of a mid19th-century education and of this pervasive antibiblical bias. He had
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