Recent Finds

The insular world of biblical archeology always seems to be waiting with the proverbial "bated breath" for the next big find that will stun the world. More than a hundred years ago, the great archeologists of the day publicly proclaimed that they undertook their expeditions to the then-remote and backwater Near East to "prove the Bible" to an increasingly skeptical world. By the middle of the twentieth century and down to our own time, the pendulum has swung to the other extreme. Now some atheistic archeologists are bent on disproving the Bible—or at least minimalizing its influence on the field of archeology—even to relegating the biblical narrative to "unreliable" status as source material.

Before proceeding any further, we need to realize that no archeological find will ever prove the Bible. Should even the Holy Grail of biblical artifacts, Noah's Ark, be discovered and verified as the real deal, we could not say conclusively, "Now there can be no doubt that what the Bible says is true!" Such a find would certainly galvanize our confidence in Scripture, but such a find would not, by itself, erase all uncertainties. Finding Noah's Ark would prove that the biblical story happened—but few of its details, other than the Ark itself, would be authenticated.

Archeological finds may not prove the Bible to be true, but they do verify its historicity, that is, its general authenticity in reporting the events and culture of its day. To use a hypothetical example, a dig that uncovers a plethora of pig bones in a Philistine city and a nearby excavation of an Israelite city that finds few confirm the general historical understanding that the Israelites kept the food laws of Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14, while their neighbors, the Philistines, did not. If the pig bones are absent at the Israelite city in, say, an earlier Bronze Age layer rather than an Iron Age layer, it may indicate that the clean-unclean laws are older than some scholars have been willing to date them. Beyond that, the find may lend limited credence to the traditional view that the Pentateuch was essentially complete soon after Moses died.

However, such finds do not prove anything conclusively. Notice some of the words in the above paragraph: "general," "may indicate," "limited credence," and "essentially." These are hardly terms of complete confidence in the discovery and the deductions from it. Archeologists cannot honestly claim anything with certainty because so much of what they do is based on educated guesses. Sometimes they are not even sure of the name of the city they are digging into!

Archeologists meticulously measure and record where an artifact is found, but they may not be certain that it actually belongs to the layer it was found in (it could have slipped into a layer below its true provenance or someone may have dug a hole and placed it there). The layer itself may not be dated correctly, since most dating relies on matching pottery shards to "known" dates of other layers (but pottery styles can vary from location to location). And, of course, no artifact is going to be stamped with "© 857 BC"!

Archeological finds, then, even the most spectacular ones, are of limited rather than absolute value. They are similar to the circumstantial evidence in a murder mystery: While the clues by themselves mean little, together they have the potential of amounting to a fairly convincing case. A judge or jury may not be able to be absolutely certain that the defendant committed the crime, but the evidence points in no other direction. In this way, the bulk of archeological discoveries in the Near East and Egypt positively affirm the Bible's historicity.

There have been several finds over the last few years that have added to the already large mass of evidence for Scripture's faithfulness to history. Jerusalem is always a focal point of excavation, and lately, large-scale digs have taken place in the City of David. Dr. Eilat Mazar, granddaughter of famed Israeli archeologist Benjamin Mazar, has conducted several seasons of digs in this early-settled area of Jerusalem.

In 2005, she announced that she had discovered the foundation walls of the ancient palace of King David, which is now skeptically called "the Large Stone Structure" by the scholarly community. Her find is a large public building dating to the tenth century BC, as well as pottery from around the same time, a copper scroll, and clay bullae (inscribed seals) from biblically known individuals. Some believe that the Large Stone Structure is actually the Fortress of Zion, which David captured early in his reign (II Samuel 5:6-10).

Mazar also claims that, in 2007, she found part of Nehemiah's Wall just outside the Dung Gate and the Old City walls facing the Mount of Olives. The wall, which was erected swiftly over 52 days (Nehemiah 6:15), dates to about 445 BC, when Nehemiah came to Jerusalem as the Persian Empire's governor of the area. Two years ago, Mazar announced that she had unearthed the remains of a Solomonic wall, an assertion that is contested by several of her colleagues. Even so, her discoveries have generally supported the biblical text.

The bullae may be the most fascinating of the finds, and many have been found in and around Jerusalem. Most of the time, these bullae were made when a lump of wet clay was affixed to an object (such as a cord that secured a lid to a pot), and then the face of a signet ring was impressed into the clay, identifying the owner, seller, or sender. These seals become especially important when they can be matched to an individual named in Scripture, and several of these have been found. For instance, the seal of Jehucal (also known as Jucal), who is mentioned in Jeremiah 37:3—"And Zedekiah the king sent Jehucal the son of Shelemiah . . . to the prophet Jeremiah, saying, ‘Pray now to the LORD our God for us'"—has been identified.

Famed Israeli archeologist Yigal Shiloh discovered a number of bullae in the Babylonian destruction layer at Jerusalem, and one of them reads, "belonging to Gemaryahu ben Shaphan." This may well be the Gemariah mentioned in Jeremiah 36:10: "Then Baruch read from the book the words of Jeremiah in the house of the LORD, in the chamber of Gemariah the son of Shaphan the scribe." These bullae verify that the Bible is telling the stories of real people in actual historical events.

Even finds outside the Middle East can be helpful. A recent discovery of a trove of gold rings in northern Germany may shed light on Israelite migration. The four pounds of gold, shaped into an early form of bullion, dates to about 1300 BC. Testing has determined that the gold originated in mines just east of the Caspian Sea, and scholars are wondering how the gold made its way to the North German Plain. While we cannot be certain that Israelites brought it with them on their westward journey, we know that it is at least a possibility.

These finds, though they are not conclusive proof on their own, give us additional confidence in the Scripture that has been transmitted to us down through history.

James Cameron's Lost Integrity

This past Sunday, March 4, the Discovery Channel aired Titanic-producer/director James Cameron's controversial documentary, The Lost Tomb of Jesus. The documentary—gleefully rechristened as a "crockumentary" by its detractors—purports to reveal scientific evidence that archeologists had found the actual tomb of Jesus' family in Jerusalem. Within this particular tomb, which had been discovered and excavated in 1980 by Israeli archaeologist Amos Kloner, ten ossuaries—small limestone caskets for storing bones—were found, and on five of them were hastily inscribed names in Aramaic: Jesus, Matthew, Joseph, and two forms of Mary.

For Cameron, no stranger to blockbusters, this was heady stuff, and his production company, Associated Producers, along with award-winning investigative journalist Simcha Jacobovici, University of North Carolina at Charlotte religious studies chair James Tabor, and British-born archeologist Gibson Shimon, set out to bring this spectacular discovery to the attention of the world. Once the Discovery Channel signed on to the project, it became a major television event. It would present their allegedly scientific findings step by step to an amazed viewing public.

The problem is that, though long on the sensational and hypothetical, they were quite short on scientific facts. The Jerusalem tomb that they claim to be that of the family of Jesus of Nazareth is not—and certainly cannot be proven to be—His sepulcher. In fact, had the family of Jesus owned such a tomb, it would not have been anywhere in Jerusalem but in Nazareth, their hometown.

First, the biblical evidence is squarely contrary to the documentary's claims. After Jesus' crucifixion, Joseph of Arimathea begged Pilate for the Savior's body, burying it in his own newly dug tomb (Matthew 27:57-60; Mark 15:42-46; Luke 23:50-53; John 19:38-42). Notice that each of the four Gospels mentions this fact. Jesus, then, was never buried in His family's tomb, but in another family's crypt. Besides, Jesus rose from that grave after three days and three nights, and the Gospels are equally clear that no bones were left behind (Matthew 28:6-7, Mark 16:6; Luke 24:3, 6, 12, 22-24; John 20:5-7).

To swallow the story of The Lost Tomb of Jesus, one must believe that Jesus did not rise from the dead, that His disciples stole the body from under the noses of the guards (a lie spread by the Jewish leadership of the day; see Matthew 28:11-15), and that His body was reburied later in His family's tomb. This last assumption is especially ludicrous, considering that His body's presence in such an obvious place could have—and would have—been used by enemies of early Christianity to disprove the apostles' claims of Jesus' resurrection. However, for nearly two millennia, the world has had literary evidence of Jesus' bodily resurrection, supported by more than five hundred eyewitnesses, in I Corinthians 15:3-8. There are no bones to make a case about!

Second, the names found in the tomb may seem to be prima facie evidence that we are dealing with biblical figures, especially since the one ossuary reads, "Jesus son of Joseph." What could be more conclusive? However, such reasoning is just plain shallow. Jesus was not the son of Joseph, and His family, most of whom soon became Christians, would not have recorded this falsehood. In such a situation, they would have instead proclaimed that He was the Son of God, as He Himself declared (John 3:18; 9:35-37; 10:36; etc.). In addition, other than the disciple, who was not related to Jesus, there is no known Matthew among Joseph and Mary's clan. Such a brother, grandfather, son, uncle, or cousin must be assumed.

Also, that a "Mary," even in the form of Mariemene e Mara ("of Mariemene, known as the Master," as the TV show disciphered it), should not be surprising, as nearly a third of the known names of Judean women of the time were also forms of "Mary." It is probable that most, if not all, of the tombs from that time held bones of some Mary. That this one contained the bones of a specific Mary, Mary Magdalene, is statistically implausible, especially since there is no record anywhere that the biblical Mary Magdalene ever held this title. One must bestow credence on the Gnostic gospels—and only specific ones of those—to come anywhere close to such a title. Further, there is simply no evidence that after Jesus' death Mary Magdalene lived in close proximity to Jesus' family or that she died in Jerusalem.

The documentary claimed that their statistician, the University of Toronto's Andrey Feuerverger, calculated the odds of the tomb being that of Jesus' family at 600:1. However, what he told them was actually that there was a one in 600 chance that another family tomb would have the same specific names. In other words, the producers misrepresented their own scholar's findings. Tal Ilan, compiler of the Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity, which was used as the basis for statistical research regarding these names on The Lost Tomb of Jesus, contends, "[These names] are in every tomb in Jerusalem. . . . But my research proves exactly the opposite [of the documentary's claims]—these are the most common names that you could expect to find anywhere." Yeshua, for instance, was the name of about one in twenty Jewish men of the day. In essence, then, that these names appear together in one tomb proves nothing.

Third, the DNA findings that were supposedly the most significant of the documentary team's findings have absolutely no meaning. According to the program, a scientist took swabs from the "Jesus" box and the "Mariemene" box, tested them for mitochondrial DNA (which would show maternal genetic similarity or dissimilarity), and the results conclusively showed that this Jesus and this Mary were not related. Their conclusion: These two must have been married! Talk about a leap of faith!

The test means nothing of the sort. All it shows is that the two DNA samples were from people who were not related. It does not show that the unknown donors of the samples were even of different sexes, far less that they were married! Moreover, over the course of a few centuries, several individual's bones could have been stored in the ossuaries; there is no way to match any DNA sample to the names scratched on the boxes. And there is certainly no baseline DNA from the real Jesus or Mary to compare the samples to. The test is meaningless, except to inform us that whoever belonged to the DNA did not have the same matrilineal descent.

With this documentary, James Cameron and his team of researchers have revealed only that they have no integrity, ethical or scientific, and thus that they have no credibility. Jesus warned us that at the time of the end charlatans would be claiming, "Here is the Christ!" or "There [He is]!" (Matthew 24:23). Take Jesus' own advice: "Do not believe it."

Society of Skeptics

The last few issues of Biblical Archeology Review (BAR) have reminded me why I cancelled my subscription in frustration several years ago. Whether it is an article on who "the disciple whom Jesus loved" was or one about the possibility of a clay tablet hoard at Hazor, the magazine's authors take their jibes at the Bible's historical veracity. And this is in a magazine that purports to defend biblical archeology! However, it is clear that BAR is really a supporter of archeology in Bible lands, not the Bible itself. Its editors and authors are clearly more driven by current scientific thought and attitudes than in any kind of faithful defense of God's Word. In fact, they would probably take umbrage at describing the Bible as God's Word.

BAR does not stand alone, by any means. It could be lumped into a huge class of institutions that have Christian or Jewish roots and links but are actually humanist and scientific in their approaches to their fields of endeavor. In other words, while pretending to be religious or at least supportive of the religions to which they are connected, they are really skeptical, liberal organizations. They present a veneer of faith but at heart are agnostic, and thus they express doubt about the historicity and reliability of the Bible. In reality, they dismiss its authority.

For example, Joshua's account of the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites lists the towns that were conquered, some of which were burned and some of which were not. It is all very straightforward. According to their own scientific surveys and digs, archeologists know that many of the same towns suffered burning during the late fifteenth or the early fourteenth century BC. However, these same towns are not known to have been burned in the thirteenth century, when modern critical scholars say Israel came into the land. These scholars, then, assume that Joshua's account is wrong. They say what probably happened is that the author (not Joshua, of course), writing long afterward, either made up which towns were burned, or because local history remembered that certain towns had been burned in conquest in the distant past, applied those conflagrations to Joshua's conquest, when in fact they belonged to an earlier destruction.

Their first instinct is to call God a liar! His Word through Joshua is unreliable as a historical account of events during Israel's return to Palestine. These are the actions of skeptics.

Someone who really had faith in God's Word, though, would look at it the other way around. He would reason, "The archeological record shows that there is no burn level at city X for the thirteenth century BC. The Bible says there should be. This means one of three things: 1) Our dating of this level is wrong. 2) The Israelites did not invade during the thirteenth century (late date) but in the late fifteenth or early fourteenth century (early date) when a burn level exists. Or, 3) the biblical account is wrong." A biblical scholar would at least give the Bible the benefit of the doubt.

Another example of Bible-bashing is a recent "discovery" published in a Canadian scientific journal that Jesus did not walk on the water of the Sea of Galilee but strode confidently across on ice. Seriously! A news account of their findings reports:

A research team of oceanographers from Florida State University, Colombia University in New York and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem said it has found data to refute the biblical account. . . . The study said there was a rare combination of optimal water and atmospheric conditions for the development of a unique freezing phenomenon that the researchers called "springs ice." During the time of Jesus—when the temperature in the region was several degrees colder than it is today—this type of ice could have occurred every 100 or so years. . . . It would have been difficult to distinguish such an ice patch floating on the surface of the small lake from the unfrozen water surrounding it along the lake's western shore in Tabgha—the area of the lake where many archeological finds from the time of Jesus have been documented.

Clearly, it was their intention to debunk the Bible's account because they are unwilling to admit that miracles happened—and perhaps, that God exists. The end of the article says that this same group came up with another scheme to disprove the parting of the Red Sea. Obviously, they are skeptics.

What is so maddening is that these broadcasters of doubt are part of the mainstream of our society. The media pick up these stories and spread them as "truth" over their airwaves, often in accepting tones. Few rise up to defend the faith, and those who do are shot down with barbed labels like "fundamentalist," "right-winger," or "extremist." Even "biblical literalist" has become a bad word among the postmodern, tolerant set.

This phenomenon is not just confined to biblical studies, either. On college campuses, conservative political and cultural opinion is often not even allowed to be presented, as it is considered so reactionary as to be ridiculous and unworthy of discussion. Therefore, what passes for debate on college campuses is really friendly argument between progressives who differ only by degree. For example, Roe v. Wade is allowed to be debated only between those who favor it in the first trimester and those who favor it throughout pregnancy. Those who desire to have it overturned are considered Neanderthals.

It comes down to this: We are living in a post-Christian culture, even here in America. Despite three-quarters of Americans claiming to be Christian, this nation has moved beyond belief into doubt. Most would probably say they believe, but their behavior belies their profession of faith. For real Christians, this means we face a steadily diminishing influence on the course of this nation's culture. The optimist in me shouts that, if we stand strong, we will eventually turn matters to God's favor, but the more pessimistic side says that it will probably take Christ's return to set matters straight. I am leaning pessimistic.