Archaeology Supports the Bible

People who doubt the authenticity of the Bible, whether unbelievers or liberal "Christians", will occasionally appeal to archaeology in their attempts to reject God's Word and continue riding the owlhoot trail. However, they are showing massive ignorance as well as relying on fallacious reasoning. Although the Christian's faith is based on the Word of God, there is evidence for our beliefs. Maybe I'm unusual, but I actually found the material I rounded up and presented below to be rather exciting.

Credit: Pixabay / Heather Truett

Archaeology is a newer science when compared to some of the more established disciplines. The subject matter requires careful excavation of unoccupied areas. This is a huge reason that Jerusalem and other areas are left alone, as not only do people live there, but buildings are erected on much older foundations. 

When some people claim that the Bible is historically inaccurate because certain things have not been discovered by archaeologists, they are committing a passel of fallacies. For one thing, they conveniently overlook the fact that archaeologists have verified many accounts in the Bible, and other historical documents have supported it as well. Also, if something has not been found, that proves nothing and is often times a fallacious argument from silence. Two additional areas of bad reasoning to keep an eye out for include arguing from incomplete or suppressed evidence, personal preference. Gotta watch out for tricky disbelievers, they suppress the truth and try to justify their rebellion against God (Rom. 1:18-23).

Scoffers are also arguing from presuppositions; they are biased against the Bible from the get-go. Add to that some arbitrary assertions, erroneous interpretations of other historical records, and you have people acting like evolutionists — they can't find evidence because they already expect the Bible to be wrong. 

Also, a frequent trick from atheists and liberal "Christians" is to try and put Bible-believers on the defensive. This includes utilization of the genetic fallacy, rejecting material they don't cotton to. They want evidence for the Bible from outside it, showing their ignorance again of what all the Bible entails. Atheists and other unbelievers make assertions with a "prove me wrong" attitude, but we need to call them out on their fallacies and have them back up their claims — and not just with the confirmation bias of, "I found a liberal scholar who agrees with my preconceptions" kind of thing.

Another area of bad thinking I need to mention is prejudicial conjecture. That's when someone has an uninformed, biased opinion and needs to express it. Atheists do this frequently, especially about biblical creationists. 

Now we come to some things that I really hope you'll examine, and mayhaps file away for when you need information on these examples of archaeology supporting the Bible.

Was the Bible written by men who were inspired by God or was it written by men who were telling tall tales, motivational stories, or trying to deceive in order to gain something for themselves? Were the authors of the books of the Bible who they claim to be? Because if they were not then we have a problem, how did men who were either delusional or deceptive write a book that, apart from authorship, contains evidences of divine origins? That is, how did writers who were lying or deceived get the details correct? That is one overall evidence that the Bible writers were authentic.

It is not possible to actually confirm that any particular individual wrote a book of the Bible, apart from what the Bible says and what has been passed down from tradition. The same is true for all ancient manuscripts. There are no signatures to compare, no fingerprints, just copies of what they wrote that have been passed down through the centuries.  What we have now is archeological evidence and old manuscripts.

To finish reading this first article, click on "Who Wrote the Books of the Bible". Then I have some more material below.

The above article focused on the authors of the Bible, and this next one goes into some fascinating detail on locations in the Bible. It's by an archaeologist, Dr. Bryant Wood.

As our Western culture increasingly abandons all semblance of Christianity, more and more people think the Bible is just a bunch of myths. . . . The short answer is encouraging. Archaeologists have found evidence that supports the Bible, but many times the evidence is ignored because of preconceptions about the Bible’s historicity, or their dates or places are wrong for the biblical events. The longer answer is even more exciting. Any supposed contradictions turn out to be human errors, not Bible errors. Consider five of the most common examples.

To read the rest or download the MP3 version, click on "Digging Past the Doubts". Also, I recommend this short article discussing the importance of how the Bible is historically accurate, and how it applies to our theology, "Genesis is both History and Theology".