The House of David Victory Stone
Also known as the Tel Dan Stele, this slab of stone that was found in northern Israel in 1993 provides proof of Israel’s most famous ruler. The Aramaic inscription carved into it offers the first evidence of King David’s dynasty outside of Biblical sources.
It has been dated to the eighth or ninth century BCE and appears to recount the victory of King Hazael of Aram-Damascus, Syria, over King Joram of Israel and King Ahaziah of the House of David. This account differs from the Book of Kings, which states Jehu killed Joram and Ahaziah before taking the Israeli throne. The fragmented inscription reads:
[…] and cut […] my father went up [against him when] he fought at […] And my father lay down, he went to his [ancestors]. And the king of I[s]rael entered previously in my father’s land. [And] Hadad made me king. And Hadad went in front of me, [and] I departed from [the] seven […]s of my kingdom, and I slew [seve]nty kings, who harnessed thou[sands of cha]riots and thousands of horsemen (or: horses). [I killed Jeho]ram son of [Ahab] king of Israel, and [I] killed [Ahaz]iahu son of [Jehoram kin]g of the House of David. And I set [their towns into ruins and turned] their land into [desolation …] other [… and Jehu ru]led over Is[rael … and I laid] siege upon […]”
Providing undisputed evidence of the rule of David, the Tel Dan Stele is perhaps the most important relic of Biblical significance to have ever been found in the Jewish state.
King Solomon’s Wall
A three-month excavation in Israel’s capital Jerusalem, just over a decade ago, uncovered a section of a wall that is believed to date from the tenth century BCE. Influential archaeologist Dr. Eilat Mazar of Jerusalem’s Hebrew University led the dig in a location known as the Ophel, close to the Temple Mount. The wall, which is an impressive 70 meters long and six meters high, appears to confirm the Book of the Kings’ account of King Solomon building a huge defensive barrier in Jerusalem (1 Kings 3:1).
There aren't very many kings during the tenth century that could have built such a structure, basically just David and Solomon. This is the first time that a structure from that time has been found that may correlate with written descriptions of Solomon’s building in Jerusalem. Other relics found at the site appear to support her assertion. They included figurines of women that symbolize fertility, as well as jar handles inscribed with the message “to the king” and seals that bear Hebrew names.
Hezekiah’s Tunnel
Charles Warren discovered Hezekiah’s Tunnel in 1867, after being sent to conduct excavations close to the Temple Mount. The tunnel, which was constructed around the eighth century BCE, formed part of a system used to transport water from the Gihon Spring to within the city’s walls. Its discovery also confirms the Biblical account of Hezekiah preparing the city for a siege led by Assyrians after the King of Judah offended Assyrian King Sennacherib. An inscription found on the tunnel wall confirms this feat of engineering was made possible by two teams using axes, who dug through rock and gravel from opposite ends until they eventually met in the middle.
Ketef Hinnom Amulets
Excavation works undertaken in 1979 at a tomb dating back to the seventh century BCE in Ketef Hinnom, southwest of Jerusalem’s Old City, uncovered something remarkable: Two tiny silver scrolls that would have originally been worn as amulets. It took three years for the scrolls to be carefully unrolled, and while most of the text on them was indecipherable due to how much they had disintegrated, experts quickly realized their significance.
They are the earliest written passage of the Hebrew Bible, even predating the famous Dead Sea Scrolls by around 400 years. Part of one inscription is a version of Numbers 6:24-26: “The Lord bless you and protect you! The Lord deal kindly and graciously with you! The Lord bestow His favor upon you and grant you peace!”
Jerusalem’s City Wall
Archaeologists working in the City of David National Park made an exciting announcement that confirms the Biblical description of the Babylonian invasion of Jerusalem led by King Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE, and the exile of the Jewish people that followed. The discovery of the ancient wall, which is five meters wide, proves Bible accounts of Jerusalem being fortified by a huge structure.
Dr. Filip Vukosavovic of the Ancient Jerusalem Research Center coordinated the excavations alongside Dr. Joe Uziel and Ortal Chalaf on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority. “When we exposed the first part of the wall, an area of about one meter by one meter great, I immediately understood what we had found,” Dr. Vukosavovic said.
In 1846—before archaeology even existed as a field—an Assyrian obelisk was discovered in what is today northern Iraq. It referred to Jehu, a ninth-century BC Hebrew king. For the first time, an archaeological find corroborated what was in the Bible, and Victorian society was electrified. But this was only the first in a torrent of similar discoveries that challenged secular claims that the Bible is a collection of made-up myths and folktales.
This trend of archaeology corroborating Biblical accounts continued so consistently that in 1959 Rabbi Dr. Nelson Glueck declared "no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference." Since then, the evidence has kept coming.
For example, in 1961 an inscription was found bearing the name "Pilate," the earliest known reference to this figure outside of the New Testament. In 1968, a first-century home in Capernaum was identified as that of the apostle Peter. In 1990 an ossuary was found bearing the inscription—and bones—of Caiaphas, the high priest who infamously pushed for Jesus's execution. In 1993, a stele mentioning the "House of David" was discovered, yanking King David out of the realm of myth and into the historical record.
Archaeologists working in the City of David National Park made an exciting announcement that confirms the Biblical description of the Babylonian invasion of Jerusalem led by King Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE, and the exile of the Jewish people that followed. The discovery of the ancient wall, which is five meters wide, proves Bible accounts of Jerusalem being fortified by a huge structure.
Dr. Filip Vukosavovic of the Ancient Jerusalem Research Center coordinated the excavations alongside Dr. Joe Uziel and Ortal Chalaf on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority. “When we exposed the first part of the wall, an area of about one meter by one meter great, I immediately understood what we had found,” Dr. Vukosavovic said.
In 1846—before archaeology even existed as a field—an Assyrian obelisk was discovered in what is today northern Iraq. It referred to Jehu, a ninth-century BC Hebrew king. For the first time, an archaeological find corroborated what was in the Bible, and Victorian society was electrified. But this was only the first in a torrent of similar discoveries that challenged secular claims that the Bible is a collection of made-up myths and folktales.
This trend of archaeology corroborating Biblical accounts continued so consistently that in 1959 Rabbi Dr. Nelson Glueck declared "no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference." Since then, the evidence has kept coming.
For example, in 1961 an inscription was found bearing the name "Pilate," the earliest known reference to this figure outside of the New Testament. In 1968, a first-century home in Capernaum was identified as that of the apostle Peter. In 1990 an ossuary was found bearing the inscription—and bones—of Caiaphas, the high priest who infamously pushed for Jesus's execution. In 1993, a stele mentioning the "House of David" was discovered, yanking King David out of the realm of myth and into the historical record.
The destruction of Sodom
This peer-reviewed paper in the most respect scientific journal describes the cataclysmic destruction of a Middle Bronze Age city north of the Dead Sea and represented years of research and technical analysis by 21 scientists, who likely never expected to author a paper in one of the world's most prestigious scientific journals that mentioned the destruction of the Biblical city of Sodom. But in the end, the parallels proved impossible to ignore.
For starters, the archaeologist who excavated the site had been guided there by what the Bible said about Sodom. Dr. Steven Collins knew if the place existed, this site—today called Tall el-Hammam—must be it. In 2006 he began excavating. When he and his team got down to about 1650 BC—when Sodom was believed destroyed—they uncovered a five-foot layer of soot. Randomly scattered throughout this vast "destruction matrix" were bits of melted brick, burned fragments of human bones and other baffling detritus. No volcanic eruption—or fire or earthquake—could have produced this.
The day they found it, Collins discovered the shard of a jar. A seasoned ceramic typologist, he tagged it instantly as from about 1700 B.C. But one side of it had a strange glassy green glaze. The technology to intentionally produce anything like that would not exist for another 24 centuries. What could it be? A lab in New Mexico concluded that the pottery had been melted by super-intense heat lasting a very short period of time. What would do that?
Another perplexing fact: though the site was inhabited for millennia before the cataclysm, immediately afterward, there was a gap of 700 years before humans again settled there. Why would a site offering unmatched natural resources and military advantages be shunned for so long? It was unprecedented.
What Dr. Collins came to believe—and what the recent Nature article corroborated in extraordinary detail—is that what happened was a "cosmic airburst/impact event" very similar to what happened in Tunguska, Siberia in 1908. That's when an asteroid of about 180 feet in diameter entered the Earth's atmosphere at 34,000 mph, and exploded a few miles above that largely uninhabited region. The equivalent of 1,000 Hiroshima bombs, the 1908 blast flattened 80 million trees, and so disturbed the upper atmosphere that for three days people in London could read newspapers at midnight. The Nature article says the Tall el-Hammam explosion was likely even more powerful.
The destruction it wrought is hard to fathom. The most powerful hurricanes produce winds approaching 200 mph, but this explosion may have generated winds of 700 mph. Walls 15 feet thick were utterly obliterated. The heat was such that nearly all of the thousands of inhabitants were vaporized. In fact, Nature tells us that the temperature at the center of the Tunguska explosion was 18,000 degrees Fahrenheit; the Tall el-Hammam explosion was perhaps even hotter. Whatever charred bone fragments survived—along with melted pottery, plaster, and roofing tiles—indicate that for 25 seconds the temperature was roughly 3,500 degrees, hot enough to melt stainless steel and titanium.
The only events comparable to what happened at Tall el-Hammam are the atomic bomb tests in the New Mexico desert in 1945, which melted the sands into a glaze so similar to what Collins found on the Bronze Age pottery that when he first showed the fragment to the lab scientist she assumed it was from the Los Alamos testing site.
The Nature article concludes explicitly that what happened in 1700 BC bears inescapable parallels to what the Bible says about Sodom. And indeed, they are startling:
1) stones fell from the sky;
2) fire came down from the sky;
3) thick smoke rose from the fires;
4) a major city was devastated;
5) city inhabitants were killed; and
6) area crops were destroyed."
It even says that what happened "may have generated an oral tradition that...became the source of the written story of biblical Sodom in Genesis." That a prestigious journal of science would admit these things should at least make any critical thinking person sit up and take notice.
No comments:
Post a Comment