Welcome to Calvary Albuquerque. We pursue the God
who is passionately pursuing a lost world. We do this with one another,
through worship, by the word, to the world. But what I thought
I'd talk about tonight is something that I think
is really important for us to understand in the
day in which we live, because the Bible
is under attack. Is it not? From every angle,
from every direction, the Bible comes under attack. And people who believe the
Bible are under attack. Archeology is the
single best means of confirming the physical,
historical reality of the Bible. Now, that should be
the case, shouldn't it? If the biblical text rises from
three dimensional space time reality, then we should be able
to go to that same territory-- that same real estate-- and find evidence for
the world it describes. Should we not? Yes, we should, and we do. And there's ample
evidence-- there's abundant evidence-- it's
growing and growing and growing. But people need to
find out about it. So, I thought I would do a
thing tonight, touching on-- pretty much going through
the entire Old Testament, with various archaeological
discoveries-- some in the past,
some very recent-- that have given evidence of
the historical credibility of the Bible. But before I do that, I
have another little, tiny announcement. This is very exciting. For those of you who've been
following the Sodom excavation project for-- I'd say it's been going
on now for 12 years-- this winter we'll be going into
our 13th excavation season. I'm very excited about
that, because we're excavating in the palace-- the palace of King Barra,
of the Sodom story. And we just got our first
radiocarbon dates back from the destruction
layer of Saddam. And I won't go into detail. I will just say it
absolutely confirms what we knew all along
from the ceramics, by that method of dating. And it confirms it, and
we are very, very excited. Only an archaeologists
would sit at his computer, see the technical report from
Beta Analytic laboratories, and shed tears of joy. So yes, I love it. We're very excited about this. We have lots more
carbon-14 dates coming, and it's been a
long time coming. Now, here's another
announcement-- there's just tons of stuff. We haven't announced
it because this is one of those things that we just-- you can't say anything about it. You can't even say "we
hope it's going to happen", because if it doesn't happen,
then you're disappointed and you have to explain
it to everybody. So we have kept mum about it. For the last two or
three years, I've been working with Veritas
Evangelical Seminary in Santa Ana, California-- it's
actually by the Calvary Costa Mesa campus. I've been teaching archeology
for them for a long time, as well as directing
the program here at DSU, and we decided about
three years ago that we wanted to go for a
fully-accredited Master of Arts PhD program in archeology
and biblical history. And to make a long
story short, we did all the accreditation's
stuff the last three years on it. This summer we had the
final accreditation meetings with the outside experts,
and all that kind of stuff-- examination. And we are now approved
by the accreditor's We have the only free standing-- this is amazing to me. With Veritas Evangelical
University's-- Seminaries-- I'll talk about
the name change in a second-- with Veritas, we now have
the world's only freestanding archeology program-- MA PhD program in an
evangelical institution, period-- on the planet. We're in. Now, there is
another PhD program in archeology, a terrific
one at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary-- one of my Alma mater's-- but it's under the
school of theology. It's a major under the
school of theology. We approached ours as a
freestanding archeology program. So we are, like, stoked. We are so excited to
have that program. By the way, Veritas is
changing its overarching name to Veritas International
University. And I'm excited
about that because, from an apologetics
point of view, when you go into
places like, you know, the Secular
American schools of Oriental Research and
the professional societies, and you're wearing a badge
that says "seminary" on it, sometimes that's a little-- you have to kind of
explain yourself. And you're looked
down upon because "oh, you know,
you're a Christian". You're somehow an evangelical. You're kind of spiritually
minded, which means you can't do good archeology. But with the "international
university" on there, it will be a little bit easier. And I have that experience with
Trinity Southwest University, as well. That's why we changed the
name years ago, to that. It just plays better,
and we do everything we can-- take everything
off the table that doesn't need to be there so
we can deal with the facts. So that's a whole
bunch of stuff-- just exciting stuff. If you're thinking
about going to get a seminary degree, a masters-- we even have a
B.A. Program now-- accredited BA, MA, DMinn,
PhD, MD, whatever you want, we have it available
right here in Albuquerque. We're the only accredited
evangelical seminary in an arc between Phoenix,
Denver, and Dallas. Think of that whole space
right here in Albuquerque, so you don't to leave. You can hang out here-- get all the degrees you
need for the ministry that you want to pursue. All right, is the Old Testament
historically reliable? I could say "yes", and sit down. I mean, we could sing
the rest of the time. That wouldn't be much
fun though, would it? All right, a couple
of quotations going in on the front end here. Israel Finkelstein--
I know Israel, well. We run into each other. We see each other all the time. He comes to my papers. I go to his papers
at ASOR, and so on. Israeli-- probably one
of the top two or three Israeli archaeologists. Here's what he
said, "Combination of archaeological and
historical research demonstrates that the biblical
account of the conquest and occupation of
Canaan by the Israelites is entirely divorced
from historical reality." And by the way,
that's pretty much the sentiment of the
majority of archaeologists. Niels Peter Lemke--
look at this. "The patriarchal narratives
are fiction, not reality. That world does not
represent a real world. It stands outside the
usual representation of time and space. As a matter of fact, neither
the narratives nor their world can be dated to any
precise period." In other words, it's
just pure fiction. That's the kind of stuff we
have to live with everyday in the world of archeology-- in
the discipline of archeology, because most of
the archaeologists take this position. They either don't care
period about the Bible-- they don't think about it-- or, if they do, it's
in this kind of vein. Now, I'm gonna' let Kenneth
Kitchen do some talking here, because Professor Kitchen, from
the University of Liverpool, is one of the top ancient Near
Eastern scholars in the world today. And let's let him-- I'm gonna' let him
kind of open it, and I'm gonna' let him
close it at the end, but let's just
read a quote here. I love this. By the way, his great
book-- this comes out of one of his books--
but his great book on the reliability of the Old
Testament-- just get that. If you ever can't sleep,
that's a go to go to for you. Here's what he says,
"Increasingly extreme views about the Old
Testament writings have been trumpeted loudly
and proclaimed ever more widely and stridently. In the service of
these views, all manner of gross misinterpretations of
original, firsthand documentary data from the ancient
Near East itself are now being shot
forth in turn, to prop up these extreme
stances on the Old Testament, regardless of the real
facts of the case. And so, we must firmly say
to philosophical cranks-- the politically correct,
postmodernist, or whatever else-- 'your fantasy agendas
are irrelevant in and to the real world, both of
today and of all preceding time back to the remote antiquity. Get real or-- alas-- get lost.'" I love it. We wish they would get
lost, but they don't, so we keep having to deal with them. I want to open a
little thing here that I like to call
"the Bronze Age Bible." Now, why do I call it
the Bronze Age Bible? Because the Bible,
the Old Testament, is divided into two
very distinct sections-- one belonging to the Bronze
Age, and the later section belonging to the Iron Age. Now, of course, the
Bronze Age-- we're talking about the
third Millennium, the second Millennium
BC-- and the Iron Age-- the second Millennium
to the first Millennium BC. The Bronze Age Bible
consists of Genesis through about the first
half of the Book of Judges. So it's Genesis into Judges. The Iron Age part of the Bible
goes from mid-point in the Book of Judges, down to
the end of the Bible-- the Old Testament. So basically from
Judges to Malachi-- Iron Age. Everything before that? Bronze Age. These are two very
distinct periods-- very different culturally. The world internationally
and locally is completely different in
these two periods of time, and so, you would
expect that each of those segments
of the Bible would be authentic to those particular
archaeological frames. So, I will introduce to you
now, some bits and pieces from what I call the
Bronze Age Bible-- first five books plus
Joshua plus about half of the Book of Judges. What I'm going to
introduce to you here are things from the text
that can be absolutely authenticated archaeologically,
geographically, historically, that demonstrate
the pristine accuracy of the biblical text to
the time frames in which it is allegedly written. In this case, we're going
to deal with the Bronze Age. Isn't it interesting that
Genesis chapter 10 correctly identifies the Fertile Crescent? That is that geographical
arc formed by Mesopotam-- I'm going to try to go your way. If I go this way, that's
backwards to you-- from Mesopotamia all the
way over to the Levant. OK. The Bible identifies that as
"the cradle of civilization." And if we look at it, we can see
that-- here's the ancient Near East, and there's
that Fertile Crescent. The Bible identifies that as the
place where civilization first emerges. Where urbanization--
where cities first come to bear in humanity. And so there it is. The Bible nails it. It's interesting that a book-- if like the critics
want to say-- it's written by late Iron Age
Judah high priests sometime around the fifth-sixth
century BC-- if it's written
really late-- if it's a piece of concocted,
fiction, then how in the world did they somehow broaden
their scope of origins to include everything
that modern anthropology and archeology knows
to be the case? How did they guess that? Most native people, by the way,
see the creation of the world-- all the great events, everything
leading up to their time, as happening in their locale-- like the Native
Americans, right. "Everything happens
right below our feet. We come out of the ground." But this is not what
happens in the Bible. It shows the grand,
international-- entire spectrum of what we
know to be true historically as to the rise of civilization. Moving right along. Abraham's covenants
with Yahweh-- Genesis 15 and 17-- and with
Abimelech in Genesis 21, match the unique structure
of Middle Bronze Age treaties and
contracts, not those of earlier or later periods. It's interesting that the
structure, and details, and outlines of covenants,
contracts, and treaties change through time
in the ancient world. The ones in the
early Bronze Age are different from the
Middle Bronze Age, which are very different from
the Late Bronze Age, and totally differ
from the Iron Age. And guess what? When you analyze Yahweh's
covenant with Abram, and Abrams covenant
with Abimelech, they match no other period
of time other than the Middle Bronze Age-- the authentic time for Abraham,
according to the Bible. I think that's fabulous. Here's another one-- oh, Sodom
had to come up didn't it? I just want to read this. By the way, all of
this stuff tonight is coming out of
a chapter that I wrote for the new Harvest
Handbook of Christian Apologetics. The chapter that they
asked me to write on this title, tonight, "Is
the Old Testament historically reliable?" And so, if you want to
get a copy of that book when it comes out in the
next few months, all of this is in that chapter. Well, the Cities of
the Kikkar, Sodom itself, we now know,
in spite of the fact that so many scholars
through the centuries or through the
last two centuries have said it didn't
exist at all, we now know that it was
located in Tal Hamon in Jordan. We know that it was the largest
continuously occupied city in the southern Levant
during the Bronze Age. It had a lot of cities
and towns around it. It's over 100 acres in
occupational footprint. It has massive
defenses, and ramparts, and gates, and palaces, and
administrative buildings. It has a 2000 year history as
a city-state, which matches up with Genesis chapter 10. And it met a
horrible destruction toward the end of the
Middle Bronze Age, in the time of Abraham. And the Bible says
"burning stones and fire, from Yahweh out of the
heavens, destroyed the city." It's exactly what we found. It was destroyed by a cosmic
air-burst that wiped out an entire civilization 400
square kilometers north and east of the Dead
Sea, in a flash. All that's being confirmed
by the archaeological record. So this well-watered
landscape was thus destroyed, and it laid barren and without
any agriculture or settlements for the next 700 years. It was a complete and
utter annihilation. Well, just a quick look at some
of the excavation at Sodom-- just a peek on the Acropolis. I love this. Leen Ritmeyer's recent
cutaway reconstruction drawing of what we now call the
grand gate way of Saddam. And also, our model, based on
our excavations of 12 years on the city of Saddam-- what it looked like with its
upper city and its lower city. So there it is. Not only did we excavate it,
but we can also extrapolate what the city looked like. Now, The Mosaic Law. Remember, we talked about
Abraham's covenants. Abraham's covenants match
the Middle Bronze Age. That's the time frame
in which he lives. It's interesting that The
Mosaic Law code conforms to a very distinct configuration
of Hittite treaties from the Late Bronze Age,
and no other time frame. Joshua and Moses belong
to the Late Bronze Age. Moses's law code matches
only literature, covenants, and treaties from that
period, and none other. It's an amazing thing. By the way, why Hittite? How does Moses get hooked
up with the Hittite's? Come to my archeology seminar
on Tuesday night, 6:13 to 09:30, which meet every Tuesday
night throughout the year, and you can discover how
Moses got hooked up with the Hittites. The Bible doesn't tell us, but
the historical record does. All right, so The Mosaic
Law is authentic only to the Late Bronze Age. It can not have been
written any time later. It is authentic to
that one period, and that one period alone. The price of Joseph's slavery-- I like this one. Joseph was sold into
slavery for 20 shekels, according to Genesis 37. Now, according to
the Bible timeline-- the Bible chronology-- Joseph lives also in
the Middle Bronze Age. If you take all of the
contract and treaty documents, from all the
cultures of the Near East in that period of time, and
you analyze the price of slaves in all those trade documents-- you know what the average
going price of a slave is in the Middle Bronze? Age You guessed it. It's 20 shekels. It's exactly as it should be. Nobody living 1,000 years
later in an Iron Age would be able to
guess such a thing, because you know what the
going price of a slave was in the Iron Age? Upwards of 120 to 160 shekels. There was inflation, lots of it. The Exodus events. Egypt's greatest
dynasty in their history was the 18th dynasty. Now, the 18th dynasty
is spectacular-- I wish we could talk
about it-- but just a couple of sentences about it. It collapsed as a result
of the Exodus event. The greatest dynasty
in the history of Egypt came crashing down, as a result
of all those terrible things, that the Bible describes,
that occurred to Egypt in the time of the Exodus-- the plundering of
Egyptian wealth, the loss of a large labor
force, the decimation of Egypt's northern
military forces, and the loss of
Pharaoh himself-- none other than Tuthmosis IV. By the way, we just
got some confirmation from the Jericho excavators
about some very key things that absolutely support that
Tuthmosis IV is, in fact, the Pharaoh of the Exodus. We don't have time to get into
that, but we now know him. We know him well. This is the only dynastic
collapse in Egypt, during the entire
Late Bronze Age. I don't care whether you take
an early date for the Exodus or a late date for the Exodus,
in all that time frame, there is only one
collapse of Egypt-- Egypt is flying high
the rest of the time. There's only one time
of disastrous collapse, and that's after the
death of Tuthmosis IV. So this is exactly-- this dynastic collapse is
exactly what one would predict, if the events of the
Exodus actually occurred. What's interesting about this
is it's precisely, exactly happening-- collapsing when the
Bible says the Exodus occurred. It's amazing, isn't it? Is that a coincidence? I don't think so. Love this guy-- he's a
little beef jerky-ish, but he looks pretty
good for a mummy. This is Tuthmosis IV. Wow. How many pharaohs--
how many kings in the history of the world
can you look into their face? How many Bible
characters can you look into their actual face? That's the mug to which Moses
expressed "let my people go." Those pierced ears
heard Moses's voice. There he is. Is it cool or what? I love this guy. There is one of his monuments. You see there's some
artistic liberty. And I love his name. By the way, you can go to
the Museum of Archeology here at TSU, and you
can see a scarab, or a natural seal from his
time, with his name on it. And the seal name
here says "min"-- see the bug? "Min." That's how you pronounce it. "Min." I'm sorry, the comb is "min"-- the comb, which I don't need. See little comb? "Min", then the bug, "kefir",
then the three little lines, "ooh", and then the
sun symbol at the top-- you always go to
the top-- "rah." His name is "Min-Kefir-Ooh-Rah." That's his throne name. They had five names
actually, each pharaoh. This is his throne name-- Min-Kefir-Ooh-Rah, Tuthmosis
IV, Pharaoh of the Exodus, and it is exactly right. We're going to see some more. Look at this-- the
Exodus itinerary. That is all of the places-- the named locations-- through
which the Israelites passed, as they took this rather crazy
circuitous route out of Egypt, and all around it,
eventually wound up at Sinai. That Exodus itinerary
in numbers 23-- numbers 33-- tracks
along known trade routes, that are well-attested
from Egyptian map lists of the Late Bronze Age. We have lists from
Ramses the Great, and going back to
Amenhotep the Second. We even have some lists going
back to Moses the Second, I believe. So several map
lists on monuments. And what they do
is they track roots going out from Egypt
in various directions, and the Canaan route actually
lists every location mentioned in numbers 23, in
the exact same order, going all the way up to Nebo. It's really incredible. So the Exodus story,
geographically, is confirmed by the
Egyptians themselves. It's really amazing. Slave costs, and we've
looked at slave costs in Joseph's time,
which was what? 20 shekels in the
Middle Bronze Age, a few hundred
years before Moses. Let's get down to
the time of Moses. According to Exodus
21, in the Mosaic Law, the cost to replace a
slave was 30 shekels. Guess what? The average going
price of a slave during the Late Bronze
Age was 30 shekels. What's interesting about
this is the Bible writer even records the subtle
inflationary curve of slave prices from
the Middle Bronze Age to the Late Bronze Age. It's amazing. Now, nobody can guess
this kind of stuff. He can't go centuries
and centuries later, and have Israelites
concocting stories like this, and getting it all right--
getting these details. It's not possible. And there it is-- one of many proofs of the
accuracy of the biblical text. I love this one. A lot of people haven't
thought about this. I've never seen
anybody write about it. You can read about
it in the museum. Israelite literacy. Do you know, there was no
public literacy for Moses? Isn't that interesting? Why was the lack
of public literacy a help to the great
empires, and to the kingdoms of the ancient world? Why was it preferred to
keep the masses illiterate? Because information is power. And power, in
their minds, needed to reside solely in the
hands of their monarchs, and of their Royals. That's it. You keep the people ignorant. God wanted the
Israelites to have the power in their own
hands, and the power was the word of God-- especially the law. How do we know
that God demanded-- God commanded literacy
of the Israelite? Let me just read this
little paragraph. Yahweh required
literacy of Israel-- that's Deuteronomy 27,
I'll quote it in a second-- in preparation for which the
Semitic alphabet was invented in Egypt during the centuries,
when the Israelites sojourned there. Remember? From the time of
Joseph and Jacob, okay? From that time, the
alphabet was invented. And that same alphabet
chronologically followed the Israelites
into the Sinai wilderness and into Canaan, tracing their
biblical presence thought to all these locations. Now, I thought writing was
invented way back around 3,000-3,300 BC. Hieroglyphics, Mesopotamian
cuneiform-- all of those are not alphabets. Those are writing systems,
and they're very complex, with hundreds of characters-- very difficult to learn. In fact, nobody can learn
it, except for a scribe who, from the time of
being a young child, learns for many, many years
how to write those systems. An alphabet is a
simplification, somewhere between 20 and 30
letters, reflecting the range of human
vocalization, so that you can write in any
language with an alphabet. A small number of
characters in a fixed order, so that an adult of
average intelligence can learn to read and
even write in a weekend-- in a week. In two weeks, you can do it. Now why would such an
alphabet be invented? By the way, how many
times has an alphabet been invented, in the
history of the world? One. Okay, the Cherokee alphabet,
but that's artificial. One. One time in the history
of the world, the alphabet comes forth. And every other
alphabet we know of-- from Arabic to Hebrew
to Russian to Greek-- all is a derivative of that
same initial alphabet-- Semitic alphabet. All comes from the same
root, that that alphabet. That alphabet is invented when
the Israelites were in Egypt, follows the Israelites
around in into Sinai, into the Sinai wilderness, and
up into Kayna wherever they go, according to the proper date
that the Bible describes. It's exactly it. Now, why? Now, let's go back
to Deuteronomy 27. Yahweh said to
Joshua and Moses-- he said, "When the Israelites
get ready to cross the Jordan, on the opposite bank-- on the
West Bank in the promised land, I want you to set up three
large standing stones. And I want you to plaster
them over with plaster. And I want you to write upon
them all the words of the law." That's a command of literacy. He says, "as the
Israelites go in, each Israelite will read
the words of the law." It's a big billboard-- all the words of the law. By the way, now you know why
Hebrew goes from right to left, because it must have
been on the right side as they come in on
the shore, right? "Oh, we're going this
way, so we gotta' read it right to left as we
move into the promised land." And by the way,
ancient languages can be read left to
right, right to left, up, down, sideways,
and diagonally. They just somehow
settle on right to left. So, God wanted the Israelites
to be able to read. Why? Because he wanted the
Israelites to read the law, memorize the law, know the
law, and hold their leaders accountable to the law. First-- a first in history. And that alphabet is the
key to accomplishing that. It's amazing to me. All right, Canaanite
religious practices. You go to the law-- to the Mosaic Law-- and all through the
Mosaic Law there are prohibitions left and
right, dealing directly with the religions of Canaan-- the practices of these
religions-- child sacrifice, ritual prostitution. All kinds of stuff
you really can't talk about children's Sunday school. But it's all laid out
in the Mosaic Law. It's very clear. Now, Bronze Age
religious practices are detailed in Genesis
through Joshua-- we see it. Not only did the mosaic
narratives accurately depict the gods, goddesses,
and cult practices of Canaan, but also the books
of Joshua and Judges reveal how the Israelites
rebelled against Yahweh to embrace these
very pagan beliefs. All of this is
confirmed dramatically in the archaeological record. Everything the Bible talks
about-- every god, every pagan god, every goddess,
every practice, everything about
the Canaanite cult's is confirmed in the
archaeological record. We see it. And unfortunately, and sadly, as
the biblical record describes, we see it in the
Israelite communities. So it's exactly what the Bible
describes, Joshua's conquest. Joshua conquered an
Egyptian-less Canaan. Remember, all the way from
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and Joshua,
God promised-- here's what God
said to all of them, "I am going to bring
you into a land-- a promised land-- in which
there are Canaanites, Amorites, and Hittites--" those
are the three biggies. And then you got, you know,
Hibites, Jebusites, parasites, termites, all
those other folks-- "but never Egyptians." Never are Egyptian's mentioned
as being part of Canaan. Now, this is
interesting because-- let me just finish
reading this-- because precisely at the
right historical moment, in the midst of the
18th dynasty collapse, and withdrawal from Canaan as
a result of the Exodus event, we have an Egyptian list Canaan. The first half of
the Late Bronze Age, from around 1550
to about 1,400 BC, is known as the Egyptian
domination of the Levant. It's known as the time-- books are written
about it-- the time of the Egyptian
domination of the Levant. It wasn't just
Egyptian domination. The Egyptian border
had been moved from the Palusiak
branch of the Nile, north to the Euphrates river. Egypt. It became Egypt. It was controlled
by an iron-fist for much of this period. By Egypt. It was the collapse
of the 18th dynasty at the time of the
Exodus that caused the Egyptians to withdraw
entirely from Syria and Canaan. So that by the time
Joshua came into the land, there were no Egyptians. None of the promises of Yahweh
to give this land to Israel ever mentioned
Egyptians in Canaan, and neither are Egyptian
troops mentioned in Joshua's campaigns. If Joshua had entered into
Canaan three or four years before he did, he would have
had to fight Egyptians, not local Canaanites. He'd have had to
fight the Egyptians. But they are now gone. It is no coincidence
that in the decades following the death of
Pharaoh Tuthmosis the Fourth-- the Pharaoh of the Exodus-- during who's short reign the
terrible events had occurred, Egypt withdrew from its
Asiatic territories, leaving Joshua to
take the promised land with no threat of Egyptian
interference or retaliation. I think it's stunning
to realize that when Joshua came into Canaan, he
took Canaan at its low ebb. By the way, the
Egyptians had kept Canaan depopulated on purpose. Slave raids-- just go through
and murder a bunch of people to keep those
Asiatic numbers down. Keep them under control. And in the process,
the Egyptians weakened Canaan so that,
when the Egyptians leave, Joshua shows up on the
doorstep of the promised land, crosses the river, and is able
to conquer a land that has been depleted by the Egyptians. But the Egyptians are long gone. God promised them an
Egyptian-less Canaan, and they got an
Egyptian-less Canaan. That's a stunning
historical fact. It's also an amazing fulfillment
of biblical prophecy. The battle of Jericho. Joshua takes Jericho in
the mid-14th century, 40 years after the death
of the Exodus Pharaoh Tuthmosis the Fourth. It's an archeological fact that
there was no Late Bronze Age settlement at Jericho in the
first part of the Late Bronze Age. There was nothing before the
14th century BC at Jericho, and there was nothing after
the 14th century BC Jericho, all the way down
to about 1,000 BC. Jericho has no occupation,
except for a short period of time. In fact, about a
50 year occupation, from sometime around
1,400 to sometime in the middle of
the 14th century. That's it. In other words, there is only
one possible fortified Jericho that could have been
the city of Rahab. "Rehab" as we say in Oklahoma. Ray-hab. Rah-hab. That's historical precision. That's amazing. The Bible says exactly
when Joshua comes to town. It just so happens that
that's the only Jericho available to destroy, in
the whole Late Bronze Age. Just that little period of time. Voila. The people of Israel. Merneptah Stela-- around 1210
to 1205, somewhere in there. This is Ramses the
Great's 80-year-old son, who finally came to
the throne after Ramses the Great rule for 64 years. One of his younger
sons, Merneptah's. In the 80s, he
comes to the throne. He puts up this stela. And what he wants to confirm
is that-- he conquers everybody around. It's just a brag. It's not really true. But, he confirms that Israel
was well-enough established in Canaan to be
recognized by Pharaoh Merneptah as one of
the perennial enemies, or "Nine Bows" of Egypt. On this stela,
Israel is designated, by a very particular
hieroglyphic symbol, as a people-- not a nation with a King. A people group. Which is spot on. It is exactly correct. Now, here's the Merneptah Stela. And on this, by the
way, it's a brag. It's not true. By the way, this is 1210. This is not too far after
the time of the Exodus. Israel, by this time-- by the way, if Yul Brynner is
the Pharaoh of the Exodus-- if you catch my drift. If Ramsay's the greatest
fear of the Exodus, and the Israelite Exo-- which
would make the Israelite Exodus some time around 1250, or so. 1210? I mean, somewhere in the 1200s. How can his son's stela
confirm Israel as one of the nine perennial
enemies of Egypt already, if it just
barely happened? Well, you have to move
that Exodus backward. You have give the
Israelites time to forge out their territory. And to flesh it out,
and to control it, and to be recognized as a
perennial enemy of Egypt. Here's what it says. It says, "Israel,"-- and
again, this is a brag-- "Israel, his seed is no more." It's what Merneptah
says about Israel. This is the first mention of
Israel in an ancient document, outside the Bible. I title this one
"Smite, Smote, Smitten." Do you love verbs? English ones-- they're just
weird, the way they do that. The phrase in the Bible
"to smite with the edge of the sword" is an idiom,
derived from the single-edge, curved battle axes of the
middle and Late Bronze Age-- the final form of which
was a very elegant weapon called a sickle sword, because
it's shaped like a sickle, with a cutting edge
on its outer curve. These were hacking,
or smiting swords, with no thrusting point. They just have a
curved-edge, like a scimitar, and a single edge. And you don't stab somebody with
it, you hacked them with it. Thus, to smite with the edge-- singular-- to smite with
the edge of the sword was an apt description of
this class of weaponry. By the end of Iron Age
I, around 1,000 BC-- that'd be about the beginning
of King David's reign-- the sickle sword was
completely extinct. I'd say all but extinct, but
it's pretty much done for. It's gone from history. It was replaced, of course,
by the straight, pointed, double-edged sword. The typical sword that we
think of from antiquity. Now, it's no coincidence
that this idiom of smiting with the edge-- singular-- of the
sword is connected only with passages of scripture
that belong to the Bronze Age part of the Bible, not those
that belong to the Iron Age part of the Bible. It appears 24 times
in the Bronze Age scriptures, but
trails off shortly after the Book of Judges. It's not found again-- hardly at all. It's interesting. The idiom dies out in common
use after its namesake "sickle sword" disappeared from history. Is that a coincidence? Now, here's a sickle sword. You can see this
one in the museum. You can hold it in your hand-- just don't cut yourself. "To smite with the
edge of the sword"-- the sickle sword. Here's one you
might not guess at. The Philistines and
our buddy Homer-- Iliad. Odyssey. All of those? Homer's Iliad confirms
the authenticity of an Aegean-style
ritual sequence enacted by the Philistines
and 1 Samuel 5-6. Wow, that's weird. I mean-- I don't have
time to go into it, but there's a ritual sequence,
with about six points of ritual, that's
described in 1 Samuel 5-6. By the way, it has
to do with the-- remember when the Philistines
stole the ark of the covenant from Israel? That's this. And in every place the
ark of the covenant went, in all the cities of the
Philistines, God struck the-- God has a great sense
humor-- he struck them with-- I love the good-old King
James rendering of that-- hemorrhoids. So every place the ark
went, the Philistines were not sitting comfortably. So they pushed it off
to another location. And it did this little
tour around Philistia until it got to the city of
Ekron, and they had had enough. They said, "send this
God begging thing back to the Israelites." But how do we-- we stole
this from their God. How do you return
such an object? Well, we know from
the Book of Homer that the Mycenaean Greeks had
a very specific ritual sequence for returning a stolen
object to a God or a King. And it's mirrored
precisely, even to the sacrifice of the
bowls, to the placing of the golden mice and
tumors on the oxcarts-- all this kind of
stuff, it's all there. Guess what? The Philistines,
we know for a fact, are the descendants of
the Mycenaean Greeks. It's amazing. How did you think you could
connect the Bible with Homer? It's amazing. All right. Quickly, on our last
couple of minutes here, the Iron Age Bible. David and Solomon. If you take David and Solomon's
little mini-empire that they carved out between
Mesopotamia and Egypt-- if you look at that, we
could predict its existence, if the Bible didn't even exist. Take the Bible
away, we would still predict a kingdom would exist
in that territory, exactly where David and Solomon's
kingdom is located. How do we know that? Because we know where all
the kingdoms are around it. We know their territory
is historically, and there's a big gap
right in the middle. So scholars who say, "well,
the size of King David's and Solomon's
territory is just-- it's nonsensical. It's not historical." Yes, it is. We would even predict that
such a kingdom would exist, even if the Old Testament
were not in our possession. The Davidic dynasty was long
pooh-poohed by various scholars as completely mythical--
completely legend. David's name had
never been found outside the text of the Bible
until, back in the 1990s, guess what? A little text came. A fragment of an
Aramean text called the Tel Dan Stela, or
the Tel Dan Inscription, mentions the house-- that is to say the
dynasty of David-- and an Egyptian inscription
refers to the heights of-- that's one in Egypt-- mentions the "heights
of David", that is the central highland location
of Hebron and Jerusalem, two of David's capital cities,
confirming that King David was a historical figure. The Egyptians talk about
the heights of David, and the Aramean
inscription, which also mentioned several
other biblical characters, talks about the
dynasty of David. Even the Mesha Stela, which is
a 19th century stela which I'm not going to get into tonight-- it mentions the Israelite King
Amri, but in that same stela, it also likely refers
to the House of David. It has, not just the
"bytvd", but the "bytd". byt-- "house of"-- d-- we
just have the first letter. There's nothing
else it could be-- it's probably house
of David, as well. So now we have at least two,
and probably three, references to King David as a
historical figure. Here is the Tel Dan Stela. We have a replica of
this in the museum. And you can see here-- and you can read it, "bytdvd." There it is. House of David. Solomon's wealth. After King Solomon died,
Shoshenq the First, our biblical
Shishak, came racing in during the time
of his son Rehoboam He plundered Jerusalem's
palace and temple, and, according to
Egyptian records, Shoshenq died just one year
after plundering Jerusalem. His son, Osorkon the First,
after barely three years of being on the throne, made
some very spectacular gifts to the Egyptian gods, including
one offering that equaled 383 tons of silver and gold. That's a lot. At this rather depressed
time in Egyptian history, where did all of this
vast wealth come from? This is not a high-part
of Egyptian history. This is the low, very
bad, terrible time in Egyptian history,
called the Late period. So at this depressed
time an Egyptian economy, where does Osorkon get
this massive wealth? It is very likely from
Solomon's treasures, that his Father
brought back to Egypt. Is this a coincidence? No, I don't think so. I think it matches up with the
historical record quite nicely. Hezekiah and Sennacherib. The Prism of Sennacherib
records an Assyrian invasion of 46 fortified Judean
cities, including Jerusalem under Hezekiah, also recorded
in 2 Kings 18 and 19, and Isaiah 36 and 37. In this account that is
on the Sennacherib prism-- in this account of
his third campaign, Sennacherib describes
his victories over several Levantine
kingdoms, after which he encountered the Egyptian Army. The Egyptian commander is not
named in Sennacherib annuls, he is named in the Old
Testament as Taharqa, in 2 Kings 19 and
Isaiah 37, who was a Nubian ruler, who later
became Pharaoh Taharwa of Egypt. Look at that intertwining
of the historical record-- the Egyptian record,
the biblical record. The Egyptian record
giving us insight into the biblical record. The biblical record
given us insight into Sennacherib's
identification of the Egyptian general
that he encountered. It's really amazing Here's Sennacherib's Prism. Here's what he says about
Hezekiah on the prism. He says-- by the way,
there's at least three of these in different museums. They made copies of
them in antiquity-- "As for Hezekiah, I shut
him up like a caged bird in his royal city of Jerusalem." By the way, the
Sennacherib's Prism does not say that's Sennacherib
conquered Jerusalem, or that he destroyed it. It says he laid siege to it. What does the Bible say? Overnight, the angel
of Yahweh destroyed-- killed all of his troops. Whoops. Through that prism, he
says, "I went to Judea. I conquered this
city, and that city. I conquered it. I destroyed it." Over, and over, and over. He get's to Jerusalem, he
says, "I laid siege."-- never says he destroyed it. Never says he conquered it. Why? The Bible gives us the reason-- the angel of Yahweh destroyed
the army of Sennacherib. Pretty amazing. Last one. Daniel and Belshazzar. The Nabonidus Cylinder
sets the record straight on the
accuracy of Daniel, by confirming that his
son Belshazzar was, in fact, the last ruling
monarch in Babylon the night it fell to the Medes
and the Persians. That's confirmed in the
record, but it was never known before the discovery of
this set of cylinders mentioning Nabonidus, his son,
and his rule over Babylon-- his son Belshazzar. The name Balshazzar
in the book of Daniel was laughed at as
being non-historical because that name
had never been seen in any other historical
source, except the Bible. And it was finally
confirmed by archeology that Belshazzar was, in
fact, the last ruling monarch in the city of
Babylon when it fell to the Medes and the Persians. Now, here are the
cylinders of Nabonidus. And there are bunches of those. I'm going to Kenneth
Kitchen's close us out here, with this little quote. "The theory's current in
Old Testament studies, however brilliantly
conceived and elaborated, were mainly established
in a vacuum with little or no reference to
the ancient Near East, and initially too
often in accordance with the a priori philosophical
and literary principles. It is solely because the data
from the ancient Near East coincides so much
better with the existing observable structure of Old
Testament history, literature, and religion than with the
theoretical reconstructions, that we are compelled-- as happens in ancient
oriental studies-- to question or even to
abandon such theories regardless of their popularity. Facts, not votes,
determine the truth. And the Bible stands true. And as I always say,
the Bible and the spade do go hand in hand. God bless you. Thank you. What binds us
together is devotion to worshipping our Heavenly
Father, dedication to studying His word, and determination
to proclaim our eternal hope in Jesus Christ. For more teachings from Calvary
Albuquerque and Skip Heitzig, visit calvaryabq.org.
