Archaeology & the Bible #1



Archaeology & the Bible #36

A second perspective on the Great Flood from Evidence for Christianity by Josh McDowell

There are good reasons to believe that Genesis gives the original story. The other versions contain elaborations indicating corruption. Only in Genesis is the year of the flood given as well as dates for the chronology relative to Noah’s life. In fact, Genesis reads almost like a diary or ship’s love of the events. The cubical Babylonian ship could not have saved anyone. The raging waters would have constantly turned it on every side. However, the biblical ark is rectangular – long, wide, and low – so that it would ride the rough seas well. The length of the rainfall in the pagan accounts (seven days) is not enough time for the devastation they describe. The waters would have to raise at least above most mountains, to a height of above seventeen thousand feet, and it is more reasonable to assume a longer rainfall to do this. The Babylonian idea that all of the floodwaters subsided in one day is equally absurd.

Another striking difference between Genesis and the other versions is that in these accounts the hero is tranted immortality and exalted. The Bible moves on to Noah’s sin. Only a version that seeks to tell the truth would include this realistic admission.

Archaeology & the Bible #37

Portrait of St. Paul found?

In June 2009, while excavating in the Catacomb of St. Thecla near the “Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls”, Vatican archaeologist recently discovered some wall frescoes that included an icon of St. Paul – recognizable by his thin face and dark pointed beard, known from other early depictions. The portrait is dated to the 300s AD and is the earliest known image of the apostle. Fine lasers were used to remove layers of built-up limestone and clay from the frescoed walls.

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Ccatacombs, underground passageways easily dug into Rome’s soft tufa bedrock, were used by early Christians as secret gathering places and burial chambers – especially during times of persecution by the Roman emperors. More than 40 catacombs have been discovered in Rome.

The Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls marks the traditional burial spot of St. Paul following his martyrdom around the year 65. In 2006 the Vatican announced that a stone sarcophagus had been discovered beneath the church. Tests on some of the sarcophagus’s contents revealed carbon-14 dates n the first or second century AD leading to speculation that this was the sarcophagus of St. Paul.

Biblical Archeology Review January/February 2010 and timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6597914.ece

Archaeology & the Bible #38

Inscription Confirms Trade Between Judah and Sheba

Southern Arabia is 1,200 miles souith of Israel. Skepticism about the reality of trade between South Arabia and Israel in ancient times seems justified. Yet, the Bible documents this trade quite extensively – most famously in the affair between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. And the land of Sheba is referred to two dozen times in the Bible. A startling bronze inscription that has surfaced, South Arabian trade with “the towns of Judah” has been documented at or about the end of the 600s BC. The newly discovered inscription is apparently a memorial inscription that was displayed on the wall of a temple. The inscription is written Sabaean, the language of the South Arabian kingdom of Sabaea (Sheba) and adjacent areas. The author of the text is a man named Sabahhumu from the South Arabian city of Nashq, an ancient and long-known site now called Al-Bayda. Sabahhjumu is a messenger of the king of Sheba. Sabahhumu thanks the main Sabaean god Almaqah for having saved him from many dangers especially in wars, and he dedicates all his family and properties to the god. The text also dexcribes an important trade expedition to “Dedan (city in northern Arabia), Gaza, and the towns of Judah”. (at the right end of the second line from the top in the picture below). This is the first time “the towns of Judah” are mentioned in a South Arabian inscription and supports what the Bible has said for thousands of years.

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From Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 2010

Archaeology & the Bible #39

Evidence of the Exodus from Egypt…

William Dever is professor of Near Eastern archaeology and anthropology at the University of Arizona. He pointed out that during the period of the judges, about 300 new villages appeared out of nowhere in the central hill country of Palestine. The distinctly different design of the houses and villages match the living arrangements practiced in Israel at this time. Evidence, he noted, points to an increase in population that could only be accounted for by a rapid influx of people.

Furthermore, while pigs were a common staple at this time in Palestine, these new towns are unique in that they contain no pig remains. Farming also changed rapidly as hillsides were terraced. The introduction of iron affected daily life. And pottery styles changed rapidly as the culture developed. A monument erected in Egypt during the period of the judges mentions Israel as a distinct people. This is the Merneptah Stele described in Edition #12 of Archaeology & the Bible.

References: Biblical Archaeology Review, 3/4/00, pp. 28-35, 68, "Save Us From Postmodern Malarkey."

Archaeology & the Bible #40

Sodom & Gomorrah

(Genesis 13) Sodom, where Lot chose to live, was one of five cities (Sodom, Gomorrah, Zoar, Admah and Zeboiim) referred to in the Old Testament as the “Cities of the Plan” (Genesis 13:12, 14:2) These cities were not mythical places but historical sites, and there is evidence of their destruction precisely as described in the Bible.

The archaeological site of Bab-edh-Dhra, 10 miles north of Numeira, also was occupied during the days of Lot. This location had a significant settlement during the Early Bronze period. Recently archaeologists have focused significant attention on Babe dh-Dhra where they have found evidence of several Early Bronze Age occupation levels. Although a layer of ash and burned debris has been discovered there, the most dramatic evidence that this may indeed be the site of ancient Sodom comes from a nearby cemetery. The dead had been interred in charnel houses, or mausoleums, constructed above ground. Five of these structures were excavated and found to have been burned. A detailed examination of the largest of these indicated that the fire had begun on the roof. Geological investigations determined that an earthquake had added to the devastation. One of occupation level includes evident that points to its destruction by a combination of earthquake and fire in approximately 2350 B.C.

(Archaeological Study Bible)

Archaeology & the Bible #41

Pool of Siloam

Hezekiah, a king of Judah in the Eighth century B.C., built a tunnel through Mount Ophel in Jerusalem southward from the underground Gihon Spring through almost 1,750 feet of rock to channel water to the Pool of Siloam inside the city walls. It was to this pool that Jesus sent a blind man to have him wash his eyes in its water and receive his sight, according to John 9:7.

Until recently, only a small portion of the pool has been accessible. After the site was excavated in the late nineteenth century, the people of the village of Silwan (modern spelling of Siloam) built on the northwest corner of the little pool a mosque with a minaret, which still stands above it. However, excavations at the site in the first six months of 2005 have uncovered the eastern portion of a large pool, fifty meters in length, (its width not yet known) which lies only about ten meters south of the little pool. These two are undoubtedly a part of one larger complex that was called the Siloam Pool (like the Pool of Bethesda which had two sections). It has a series of stone steps for entering the pool, which, being fed by fresh running water from the Gihon Spring through a small channel discovered on the north side of the pool, was probably a major facility for ritual purification before entering the temple. This may be the reason Jesus chose this pool for the miracle. A stone pavement has also recently been discovered, leading from the pool up Mt. Ophel to the Temple Mount. ()

Large pools capable of serving many people are forms of mikvehs required for becoming spiritual “clean” in the Old Testament. Mikvehs were considered among the spiritual necessities of a Jewish community with the synagogue and religious school. You can learn more about the role of the mikveh at (Encyclopedia of Judaism).

Archaeology & the Bible #42

Tomb of Caiaphas

In November, 1990, a tomb was discovered in Jerusalem that contains an ossuary with the name of Caiaphas carved into it. The burial cave is located in the Peace Forest, south of the Gehenna Valley, near the Government House where the United Nations was located. The high priest before whom Jesus appeared just before his death was named Caiaphas (see Matthew 26:3,57; Luke 3:2; John 11:49; 18:13,14,24,28). Later both Simon Peter and John appeared before him in Jerusalem (Acts 4:6). Archaeologists have identified the site as the burial cave of the family of Caiaphas. ()

Archaeology & the Bible #43

Found/excavated: The pool of Gibeon where the forces of David and Ishbosheth fought during the struggle for the kingship of Israel (2 Samuel 2:12-32). About four centuries after David's men beat Saul's at the pool of Gibeon ("And they caught every one his fellow by the head, and thrust his sword in his fellow's side, so they fell down together"), Babylon's King Nebuchadnezzar rumbled down from the north to pillage.* When he withdrew, after raids in 598 and 587 B.C., the people of Gibeon must have found their city wrecked and the pool contaminated. Apparently they tumbled in boulders from the town's wreckage, then filled the well's broad stone shaft with earth, clay and bits of pottery. [pic]The city and the well were lost to history until this the summer of 1957, when—after two seasons of excavation at a site called El-Jib a few miles north of Jerusalem—the pool of Gibeon began to flow again.

( & time/magazine/article/0,9171,809995,00.html, )

Archaeology & the Bible #44

It was once claimed there was no Assyrian king named Sargon as recorded in Isaiah 20:1, because this name was not known in any other record. Then, Sargon's palace was discovered in Khorsabad, Iraq. The very event mentioned in Isaiah 20, his capture of Ashdod, was recorded on the palace walls! What is more, fragments of a stela memorializing the victory were found at Ashdod itself. ()

Archaeology & the Bible #45

House of St. Peter

There is very good circumstantial evidence that the house of St. Peter frequented by Jesus Christ is identified.

Buried beneath the remains of a Byzantine church, excavators found the ruins of a rather mundane dwelling dating to the first century BC. It was a simple structure supported by coarse basal fieldstone walls and roofed with none other more than earth and straw. The house was ordinary.

In the years immediately following Jesus’ death, the function of the house changed dramatically. The house’s main room was completely plastered over from floor to ceiling – a rarity for houses of the day. At about the same time, the house’s pottery, which had been basic domestic wares now consisted entirely of large storage jars and oil lamps.

Such radical alterations indicate that the house no longer functioned as a residence but instead had become a place for of communal gatherings, possibly even Christian gatherings. More important, the excavators found that during the ensuing centuries, the plastered room from the original house had been renovated and converted into the central hall of a church. The room was even replastered and painted over with floral and geometric designs of various colors. The Christian character of the building was confirmed by more than a hundred graffiti scratched into the church’s walls. Most of the inscriptions say things like “Lord Jesus Christ help thy servant” or “Christ have mercy” and sometimes accompanied by etchings of small crosses or, in one case, a boat.

This simple church survived for more than 300 years before it was replaced in the fifth century by a well-built octagonal church. Octagons were built to commemorate an important site. The inner sanctum of the octagonal building was built directly above the remains of the very room of the first-century house that had formed the central hall of the earlier church.

If not for its association with Jesus and Peter, why else would a run-of-the-mill first-century house in Capernaum become a focal point of Christian worship and identity for centuries to come?

(BAR, July-October 2009)

Today the site is covered by the structure in the photo below.

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Beneath the modern structure are remains of the 5th Century octagonal church. Within that structure is the original home as seen below.

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The modern structure is designed to allow visitors to see into the original home.

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Archaeology & the Bible #46

One of the most important contributions of the Dead Sea Scrolls is the numerous Biblical manuscripts which have been discovered. Until those discoveries at Qumran, the oldest manuscripts of the Hebrew Scriptures were copies from the 800s and 900s AD by a group of Jewish scribes called the Massoretes. Now we have manuscripts around a thousand years older than those.  Honestly, there are some differences between the Massoretic copies and the copies of the Bible found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.  But the differences are minor and do not affect the messages of the Bible.  The amazing truth is that these manuscripts are almost identical even though they were produced about 1,000 years apart!

Here’s the thinking.  The first person to copy the Bible MUST have made a few errors.  The person who copied the first copy MUST have copied the errors in the first copy and added more errors of his own.  Gosh, over time, since every scribe copied the MANY errors that accumulated over time and then added their own errors to the mess, the Bible MUST have changed tremendously over the years.  That means, they say, the Bible cannot be trusted as the very Word of God.

WRONG.  The thinking may be correct for other ancient documents but NOT for the Bible.  The Hebrew scribes were extraordinarily careful with God’s Word.  They took their duties very seriously and took great pains to make sure that Scripture was copied accurately.  

The idea that the Bible has gradually changed over time should be put to rest because the text changed so very little over the thousand years from the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Massoretic copies. 

We can have confidence that our Old Testament Scriptures faithfully represent the words given to Moses, David and the prophets.

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Also, some people have claimed that the early Christians changed the prophesies of the Old Testament to fit the teaching and life of Jesus. WRONG AGAIN. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls proves that the prophesices of the Messiah were the same before Jesus was born and after he died. This shows what we know by faith: Jesus is the Messiah!

Don’t you wonder what else God has hidden in the desert of Israel?

Some of the caves in which scrolls were found near Qumran.

A portion of the Psalm scroll.

Archaeology & the Bible #47

Discovered at the Temple Mount is a smoothed and beautifully inscribed stone slab which had clearly fallen from the edifice of one of the Temple buildings above from the time of Herod the Great.

The Hebrew inscription reads, “To the place of the trumpet to…”

One may wonder, “So what?”

Josephus informs us that during the days of King Herod, the Temple priests would signal the beginning and end of the Sabbath with a trumpet blast from the roof of their quarters on the Temple Mount. The stone and its inscription, there fore, may have once marked the direction to the spot where the priests of Jerusalem announced the Sabbath.

Did it fall during the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by the Romans in 70AD?

(Biblical Archaeology Review, July-October 2009)

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Archaeology & the Bible #48

A seal has been discovered very near Jerusalem from the 500s or 600s BC (that’s 2,500 years ago) that is inscribed in ancient Hebrew script with the name “Palta”. That name appears in the Bible as the name of a high governmental official Pelatiah son of Beniah in English. He served under King Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, (Ezekiel 11:1,13) (BAR, July-October 2009)

In verse 1 of chapter 11 Ezekiel records that Pelatiah was one of the leaders of the Jewish people and was among a group of men at the east gate of the Temple. In verse 13 Ezekiel records that Pelatiah died as Ezekiel was in the act of prophesying! This caused Ezekiel to fall facedown and cry out in a loud voice.

Once again we find that the Bible is reliable even in its finest deals including the name of a government official who lived thousands of years ago.

Archaeology & the Bible #49

At Jerusalem the remains of a watchtower from the last First Temple period (600s and 700s BC) has been found which is now 45 feet below ground. The tower was still standing when Nebuchadnezzar’s men laid siege to Jerusalem in the early 500s BC.

Around the base of the watchtower, a thick layer of charred wood, ashes and soot bare witness to the raging fires that accompanied the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem.

Among the charred rubble, excavators found five arrowheads, four of iron which are typical of those used by the Israelites and one of bronze which is typical of those used by the Babylonians.

(BAR, July-October 2009)

It is common for find ancient ruins such as towers that obviously were built above ground now located underground. Cities, like Jerusalem were conquered and destroyed several times. The conquering army would often literally “throw down” the walls and towers. Later a new city would be built on the remains. Often stones from the destroyed city would be reused to construct the new city. Wouldn’t you do the same?

Archaeology & the Bible #50

The discovery of the Ebla archive in northern Syria in the 1970s has shown the Biblical writings concerning the Old Testament Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) to be viable.

The Ebla documents were written on clay tablets around 2300 B.C. That’s 4,300 years ago! These documents demonstrate that personal names and place names in the Patriarchal accounts are genuine.

For example, the name “Canaan” has been criticized by some who say that the word was not used so long ago. But, “Canaan” WAS in use in Ebla, verifying the Bible and discrediting its critics.

The word tehom (“the deep”) in Genesis 1:2 “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” was said to be a more modern word than was used at the time of Moses and earlier. If so, then it would help critics show that the Bible was really a more modern writing than it claims. In other words, people must have “made up” stories about the past like creation. But, “tehom” was part of the vocabulary at Ebla, in use some 800 years BEFORE Moses!

()

Again, archaeological evidence supports the Old Testament as an accurate recording of facts and not just another collection of fiction and legends.

Panoramic view of Elba in the modern country of Syria.

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Much more is available at .

Paul

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Archaeology & the Bible #51

Stone Seal Confirms Biblical Record

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An archaeological find in Jerusalem adds more proof of the accuracy of the Bible’s account of history.

A black stone seal found in an archaeological dig in Jerusalem adds more proof to a growing mountain of tangible evidence showing the accuracy of the Bible’s account of history.

The seal, found in excavations taking place in the City of David just south of the Temple Mount, bears the name “Temech,” listed in the biblical book of Nehemiah as one of the families of servants in the first temple of Solomon who were sent into exile to Babylon after the destruction of the temple in 586 bce.

In the 5th century bce, the Persian King Artaxerxes i made Nehemiah governor of Judah to return to Jerusalem and repair its walls, which had been left in ruins since the destruction of the first temple. As part of this renovation project, a tower was built along the eastern ridge of the top of the City of David. This tower, and the city wall adjacent to it, were erected very quickly on top of several layers of debris.

The seal measures only 2.1 by 1.8 centimeters. On the surface is an engraved scene of two bearded priests standing on either side of an incense altar with their hands raised forward in a position of worship. On top of the altar appears a crescent moon, the symbol of the god Sin, the chief Babylonian god. Under this scene, inscribed are three Hebrew letters spelling Temech.

It is believed that Temech is the name of one of the families of the “Nethinim,” the temple servants, who were among those who returned to Jerusalem from the Babylonian exile. Nehemiah 7:6 reads, “These are the children of the province, that went up out of the captivity, of those that had been carried away, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried away, and came again to Jerusalem and to Judah, every one unto his city.” Verse 46 begins to list the family names of these servants, “The Nethinims,” and among them, in verse 55, are “the children of Tamah.”

“Perhaps it is not by chance that the seal of one of the members of the Temech family was discovered in our excavations that is located only dozens of meters away from the Ophel area, where the Nethinim lived at the time of Nehemiah,” said Dr. Mazar, referring to Nehemiah 3:26.

“The seal of the Temech family gives us a direct connection between archaeology and the biblical sources,” she said. “It is tangible evidence that relates to a known family mentioned in the Bible.”

“One cannot help being astonished by the credibility of the biblical source as seen by the archaeological find,” Dr. Mazar said of her latest discovery.

Based on and more information available at index.php?q=4704.2969.0.0 The Trumpet is a Jewish magazine.

Archaeology & the Bible #52

The Pool of Bethesda (which means "house of grace") was excavated in the 1950s. A spring-fed pool with five porches where invalids waited their turn to step into the mysteriously troubled waters that were supposed to possess healing virtue (John 5:2-4). Here Jesus healed the man who was lame for thirty-eight years (5:5-9).

Note that the excavation revealed five “porches” or colonnades, just as described in John 5:2. It was also found that the porches were covered just as described by John.

 

The historicity of this site was once in question. Scholars claimed the detail of the five prches was invented. They said John made it up to represent the five books of Moses, which Jesus came to fulfill. But recent archaeological discoveries have once again confirmed the Biblical account. In 1956, digging at the ancient Biblical site of Bethesda, archaeologists unearthed a rectangular pool with a portico on each side and a fifth one dividing the pool into 2 separate compartments.

 

This model of the Pool of Bethesda is as it may have looked at the time of Christ. This view is of the north wall of the Temple. You can see the top of the Temple in the background with the Royal Stoa just to its left. The four tours on the right are of the Fortress Antonio.

Here’s the view today. The pool is at the bottom of the excavation, much lower than today’s street level because of destruction and rebuilding of the city since the time of Jesus.

Paul

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Archaeology & the Bible #53

Papyrus 46

It is often said that our current Bible just can’t be accurate because so much time has passed since it was originally written.  Not true.  Papyrus 46 is one of many examples of early copies of the New Testament.

The earliest substantial (there are bits of the New Testament that are older) New Testament manuscript known to exist is Papyrus 46, a slightly mutilated codex of Paul's epistles from about the year 200 AD. (A codex is a book in the format used for modern books, with separate pages normally bound together and given a cover.  Cutting-edge technology when scrolls were in common use.) That means Papyrus 46 was written only about 140 years after Paul lived and wrote.  That’s like having in your hands a copy of a book originally written in 1870, just after the US Civil War.

It consists of eighty-six leaves, measuring originally about 11 by 6½ inches. It is thought originally to have contained 104 leaves, with eighteen leaves now missing from the front and back as often happens with old books.

The existing leaves contain (in this order) the last eight chapters of Romans; all of Hebrews; virtually all of 1–2 Corinthians; all of Ephesians, Galatians, Philippians, Colossians; and two chapters of 1 Thessalonians. All of the leaves have lost some lines at the bottom through deterioration.

Leaves of the manuscript first came to light in 1930 among the wares of a native antiquities vendor in Cairo, and these were immediately purchased by a private collector, Mr. Chester Beatty of London. Soon afterwards the rest of the manuscript was acquired from the same dealer by Beatty and by representatives of the University of Michigan. 30 of the leaves are now at the University of Michigan and 56 are in the Chester Beatty Collection in Dublin, Ireland.

The leaf shown here, from the University of Michigan, contains 2 Cor. 11:33-12:9. Click here for a larger image with transcription and comments on the text. To view high resolution images of all the pages at the University of Michigan go here.  (Isn’t the internet great!)

Archaeology & the Bible #54

Archaeologists have identified Jezreel of the 800s BC located on a strategic summit not far from an ancient international highway. This is where Queen Jezebel met the grisly death foretold by the prophet Elijah. A tower, on the northeastern corner of the enclosure faces the Gilead Hills, where the new king Jehu had been anointed King. We can assume that the watchman who discovered Jehu and his cavalry approaching Jezreel stood on the roof of this tower since it faces the direction from which they would approach the city. The entrance gate was discovered as well where, according to 2 Kings 10, the heads of the descendants of Ahab whose kingdom Jehu replaced, were stacked as directed by Jehu. BAR July/August 2010

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The fertile Jezreel Valley. One can see why it was coveted and fought over again and again and protected by fortified cities like Jezreel and Megiddo.

Archaeology & the Bible #55

Nehemiah’s Wall Found in Jerusalem

Archaeologists who reject the biblical narrative or who believe the historical account is, at best, grossly exaggerated sometimes point to the wall Nehemiah is said to have built around Jerusalem during the 5th century b.c. and ask why none of its remains have ever been discovered.

Now those remains are beginning to turn up.

In 2007 Dr. Eilat Mazar reported that she uncovered a massive wall on the eastern side of the royal complex, measuring 5 meters in width.

Adjacent to the palace wall stood a large stone tower archaeologists believed to be built during the Hasmonean dynasty (142-37 b.c.). Early last summer, a section of that tower, which was built on a steep slope just outside the palace, began to give way, indicating it was on the verge of collapse. “Under the tower,” Dr. Mazar said, “we found the bones of two large dogs—and under those bones a rich assemblage of pottery and finds from the Persian period [6th to 5th centuries b.c.]. No later finds from that period were found under the tower.” The pottery is what clearly dates the time period for the tower’s construction. Had the tower been built during the 2nd or 1st century b.c. as previously believed, 6th-century pottery underneath the wall would leave a chronological gap of several hundred years. Therefore we know, based on the pottery dating, that the tower would have been built three to four centuries earlier than previously thought, during the Persian Empire’s heyday, which is precisely when the Bible says Nehemiah rebuilt the wall around Jerusalem.

Skeptics maintain that a wall built about 100 BC could have been built over artifacts buried about 450 BC. It is likely that the foundation necessary for construction of a tower would have destroyed what had been buried 350 years earlier.

In Nehemiah 3, you can read a detailed account of the wall’s reconstruction. Nehemiah refers to 10 gates in the chapter. In verse 1, he mentions the northern entrance to the city—the Sheep Gate, where animals were brought into the temple for sacrifices. After that, Nehemiah describes the rest of the gates on the wall in order, moving around the western side of the city in a counter-clockwise direction and then up the eastern side back to the north end of the city.

index.php?q=4418.2665.0.0 (Verified by two other sources.)

Archaeology & the Bible #56

The Hittites were once thought to be a Biblical legend, until their capital and records were discovered at Bogazkoy, Turkey.

The Hittite empire dominated the central plateau of Anatolia (the Asian portion of modern-day Turkey) from about 1800 BCE to 1200 BCE, and survived until about 700 BCE as a series of smaller kingdoms based in southern Turkey and northern Syria.

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Remains of the Hititte presence are found at the Royal Gate of Hattusa in Bogazkoy, Turkey. (GIANNI DAGLI ORTI/CORBIS)

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The Hittite kingdom was to Israel’s north with the Egyptians to Israel’s south.

Again, the biblical record is later supported by archaeology. Yet, most articles on the Hittites give full credit to archaeology and do not mention the Bible in which the words Hittite and Hittites are found fifty-eight times! Granted, some modern articles include a casual mention that the Hittites were first identified in Scripture - like its is not big deal.

The first mention of Hittites in Scripture is found in Genesis 10:15 where we learn that the Hittites are from the lineage of Canaan who was the son of Ham the son of Noah.

(, entry/Hittites, archaeology.od/hittites/Hittite_Civilization.htm )

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2 Corinthians 11:33-12:9 from codex written about 200AD.

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