Aaris the Great

The Archaeological Evidence

What if you and I decided to sit down over coffee and hammer out more than two thousand years of ancient history? Wouldn’t it be fun to make up detailed accounts of kings and kingdoms, wars and revolutions, geographic details of cities and countries, economic and currency particulars, social customs, pagan gods, and religious activity? Well, I can’t speak for you, but I’d have fun! I can imagine a great queen named Aaris who ruled the empire of Thoran and the Thorian people. Throw in some subplots and a conspiracy or two and it would be a great story. We might even get published and find our epic tale in the fiction section at the bookstore.

Sounds like something from “Lord of the Rings” doesn’t it? If we tried to claim that all that was true and historically accurate that would be something totally different. It would be easy for archaeologists to prove that there is no such place other than in our imagination.

Unlike the stories listed above, the Bible is a historical book. Forty authors over a period of 2000 to 3500 years ago wrote it. They recorded thousands of daily activities of living concerning political, social, economic, religious and military and cultural activities. Are the details accurate? Is there any evidence to support the details in the Bible?

Archaeology has helped show the amazing accuracy of the cultural accounts found in the Bible. In previous centuries, Bible critics dismissed many of the claims of the Bible as outlandish fairy tales of civilizations that never existed. By the middle of the twentieth century the ever expanding world of archaeology had left of trail of evidence supporting the Bible accounts. CSI’s all over the world are proud!

Of course not everything in the Bible has been able to be verified through archaeology but none that have been found to date have discredited the biblical accounts. Some apparent discoveries that left holes in the biblical account have later been filled in by archeological discoveries. Below are just a few of these discoveries.

• There were some doubts that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible (called the Pentateuch) because there was doubt that any form of writing was around. The books were dated around the 14th century B.C. and there was evidence that Moses was alive at that time. Then in 1975, the Elba Tablets were discovered in northern Syria. These writing were dated nearly a thousand years before Moses.
  
• The existence of the Hittite nation in the Bible had been a source of contention until an extensive archeological dig turned up the place where the Bible said they lived. It is reported that the Hittite nation was relieved that the report of their demise was greatly exaggerated.
  
• Babylonian records reported that Nabonidus was the last king of Babylon. This conflicted with the Bible account that Belshazzar was the final king of Babylon. It was later discovered that Nabonidus has taken himself out of the question and went on holiday for 10 years to Arabia and acting king was… you guessed it..Belshazzar. Just as Daniel had written. After all, Daniel was there and not the archaeologist.
  
• Luke, the noted historian and doctor extraordinaire who wrote the New Testament books of Luke and Acts list Lysanias as the tetrarch of Abilene (not Texas) during the time of John the Baptizer (Luke 3:1). Many historians regarded this as a mistake because only the known ruler name Lysanias was executed by Antony in 36 B.C. many years before the time of John the Baptizer. Then a Greek inscription was found in the area of Abila, which records a dedication to Nymphaeus, “free man of Lysanias, the tetrarch,” dated between A.D. 14-29—the same time period given by Luke.

Archeology confirms the historical accuracy of the Bible. In the book “God Wrote a Book” archeologist W.F. Albright of Johns Hopkins University says, “The excessive skepticism shown toward the Bible by important schools of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries…has progressively been discredited. Discovery after discovery has established the accuracy of innumerable details, bringing increased recognition to the value of the Bible as a source of history”

Archeology cannot prove the God of the Bible, but it can validate and substantiate the Bible itself as an accurate and important record of history. The Bible can no longer be written off as a collection of myths and fairy tales without any basis in history. Queen Aaris and Frodo are works of fiction but the Bible is a true history of a divine God.

The Bible reveals over two thousand years of history, the daily activities of people, culture and mores pointing toward their relationship with Yahweh, El Shaddai, the Great I AM and his great acts.

Read James 1:19-25