Historians, not just believers, should thank God for the Bible
Quin Hillyer
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As they might have said in the 1960s, here’s a kind of story I can “really dig.”
For years, I have loved news accounts showing more and more evidence that the Old Testament was almost as much an account of real history as of faith. In just the past two decades or so, we’ve seen archaeological evidence of real Philistine burial grounds. We have seen evidence of not just the existence but the details of the Bible’s stories about King Hezekiah and the prophet Jeremiah and, famously, of the fortress of and City of David.
AMERICANS SHOULD OPEN THEIR BIBLES
But now, modern technology has further confirmed what for 150 years was believed to be written records not just from Hebrews but from their foreign rivals that explicitly mention King David.
Until now, much of the lettering on a basalt stone slab, written in the language of the Moab kingdom, was too damaged or faded to be conclusively decipherable. Analysts suspected it referred to David, but they could not be sure because too many of the letters were missing.
Yet now, a technology called Reflectance Transformation Imaging — don’t ask me to explain it! — has enabled researchers to make “hidden, faint, or worn incisions become visible.” To quote one Israeli news site (there are several available), “the slab is etched with a lengthy account of King Mesha of Moab going to war with Israel. It describes events that correspond with a similar account in 2 Kings chapter 3 of the Hebrew Bible, including allusions to the Israelite god as well as the ‘House of David’ and the ‘Altar of David.’”
On one hand, it already was obvious that the existence of David was no mere myth but at least a reasonably well-grounded historical fact. Still, as more and more archaeological and other evidence is discovered, what is fascinating is that so many granular details from the Bible are being randomly confirmed in the physical record.
The record supports accounts in the New Testament, too. Obviously, the particular faith traditions and religious interpretations from the Bible can be neither proven nor disproven, but a believer can be heartened just by the reality that so many of the underlying facts appear more and more accurate. And even nonbelievers should take note, and at least feel the stirrings of wonder, that the basic events and people, religious gloss or truth notwithstanding, were depicted in the Bible so accurately.
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I offer no deeper insights on this other than that I think we should all consider this to be pretty cool — and for believers, not just cool but rewardingly reassuring.
On the other hand, if archaeologists produce a photograph of Bathsheba, it might go viral on Twitter and Instagram, but we can be pretty sure it’s a fake.