6 cool historical findings that help bring the Bible to life
Most people are aware that the Bible describes many historical events. But as far as biblical history is concerned, it might as well have been a different world. With 2,000-4,000 years or more between us and them, plus thousands of miles of distance for most parts of the world, it can seem like an impossible task to identify ourselves with and relate to the men and women whose stories are told in Scripture. It’s far easier to be enthralled by and empathize with characters in fictional tales of superheroes and ghosts than it is to immerse ourselves in the stories of Scripture. Some, of course, believe that the stories of the Bible should indeed be relegated to the category of myth and legend.
It’s easy to brush aside words on a page, whether you’re a skeptic or a believer. It’s easy to forget them. It’s easy for them to not come to life in your mind and change the way you think. But maybe with some kind of tangible connection, something more concrete and real than words on a page, we could start to see what we read as not just words on a page, but form a better picture of these events as real events happening in the real world.
Enter the field of biblical archaeology.
Some people have unrealistic expectations of biblical archaeology. It’s impossible to archaeologically prove that every event in the Bible occurred. Some people can’t even find out who their great-great-grandparents were 150 years ago. Would we really expect to be able to find physical evidence (outside of the Bible) for the existence of people 2000, 3000, 4000 years ago or more who were relative nobodies on the scale of the whole world? It would be an absolute shock to find archaeological evidence of someone like Abraham or Job.
Remarkably, though, there are many physical, tangible findings that help connect the words on the pages of the Bible to real objects and places in the real world today. They help bolster the case that the Bible is not just a bunch of made-up stories, nor a bunch of stories that we just can’t feel any real connection to, but a glimpse into God’s plan through real history. So I wanted to present six of them here, in no particular order:
The Shasu of Yahweh
The Soleb inscription, found on an Egyptian temple and written in the 15th century BC, contains an illustrated list of Egypt’s conquered enemies, and portrays a bound prisoner from each enemy people group. One part of the inscription lists enemies from “the land of the shasu of Yahweh.” Why is this important? A few reasons:
First, the exodus is traditionally believed to have occurred in the 15th century BC. The exodus probably falls into that category of “events that happened so long ago you’d be shocked to find any record of them.”
Second, “shasu” appears to be a word that meant those who move around on foot or who wander. This would obviously fit the description of the Israelites during and after the exodus.
Third, Yahweh is believed to be the personal, sacred name by which God revealed himself to Moses at the burning bush, also translated I AM (Exodus 3:14, 6:3). That these “shasu” are identified by Yahweh’s name indicates they were worshipers of Yahweh. This is, in fact, the oldest extrabiblical reference to the word Yahweh.
So what we could be looking at here is a description of the Israelites given not long after the exodus. It’s not a certainty that this refers to the Israelites. It could refer to other people groups in that land. The Bible identifies several of the neighboring people groups as descendants of Abraham and Isaac, so it would be no surprise that they worshiped Yahweh as well. But because many people are inclined to dismiss the exodus as pure legend, this is an important piece of evidence to consider. There have been many cases before where historians have claimed an event in the Bible was mythical, only to later find convincing evidence of its truth. The exodus could end up being another one.
Three Egyptian Inscriptions About Israel
The House of David
The Tel Dan stele, discovered in 1993 in northern Israel, contains an inscription that reads “[I killed Jeho]ram son of [Ahab] King of Israel… And [I] slew [the king] of the house of David.” It was written around 840 BC.
The writer of the inscription was probably King Hazael of Damascus, who had a bitter rivalry with both Israel and Judah at the time. He is probably referring to the events described in 2 Kings 8-9, where his troops wounded King Jehoram of Israel during a battle, forcing him to retreat. While he was recovering, his general Jehu assassinated both him and King Ahaziah of Judah.
Ancient kings loved little more than to brag about their accomplishments, and exaggerate them to the point of stretching plausibility. It’s easy to see how Hazael would be inclined to take credit for this, seeing himself as an indirect cause of the two kings’ deaths.
What’s most notable about this is the identification of a member of the “House of David.” Many secular historians used to deny the existence of King David as a mythical figure. But this inscription demonstrates pretty conclusively that he is not. It dates to only 150 years after David lived, too short a time for someone to have made up some legendary ancestor. (There would still have been people alive whose grandparents had lived under David’s reign.) So here we have strong concrete evidence linked to King David himself.
Isaiah’s signature?
This is a recent discovery near the temple mount announced just a couple of years ago. It’s a broken seal that reads “Yesha’yahu [Isaiah],” followed by the letters nvy (their Hebrew equivalents, anyway). Those are the first three letters in the four-letter Hebrew word navi’, meaning prophet. We can’t be sure, of course, what the fourth letter in the word on the seal was, but if it is indeed the last letter in the word for “prophet,” then the seal would read “Isaiah [the] prophet.” Isaiah the prophet is, of course, the one whose prophecies are recorded in the Old Testament book of Isaiah. Adding to the case for this being the seal of Isaiah is the fact that the seal of King Hezekiah, the king of Judah and a personal friend of Isaiah, was also in this excavation.
A seal in the Ancient Near East was essentially a stamp, something people would use to identify themselves and to sign official documents. If the seal is what it appears to be, we could be looking at the actual, physical signature of Isaiah the prophet himself.
Archaeologists May Have Found the Prophet Isaiah’s Signature
Sennacherib’s Annals
Isaiah 36-37, 2 Kings 18, and 2 Chronicles 32 describe the invasion of kingdom of Judah by King Sennacherib of Assyria. The king of Judah was Hezekiah at that time, a righteous king who, as mentioned above, was friends with the prophet Isaiah. The Bible’s account says that the king of Assyria ran roughshod over most of the kingdom and besieged Hezekiah and the people in Jerusalem. Hezekiah, in an effort to persuade Sennacherib to leave him alone, paid a large tribute out of the temple treasury. Later, however, Sennacherib returned and invaded the kingdom once again, this time laying siege to Jerusalem. One night, though, an angel killed 185,000 (or 185 chiefs/units) of the Assyrian invaders overnight, and they withdrew back to Assyria.
Sennacherib’s annals are written on a clay prism, a six-sided structure that contains as much writing as the king’s chroniclers could fit on it. As would be expected for an ancient king, most of the contents of the prisms are Sennacherib bragging about himself. Of these events, he says in part:
“As for the king of Judah, Hezekiah, who had not submitted to my authority, I besieged and captured forty-six of his fortified cities, along with many smaller towns, taken in battle with my battering rams. … As for Hezekiah, I shut him up like a caged bird in his royal city of Jerusalem. I then constructed a series of fortresses around him, and I did not allow anyone to come out of the city gates. His towns which I captured I gave to the kings of Ashod, Ekron, and Gaza.”
As would be expected, Sennacherib glibly recounts the first invasion and his threat to Jerusalem in detail. He also records the tribute Hezekiah sent him (not quoted here). But he does not mention having captured Jerusalem. He of course doesn’t mention any retreat from Jerusalem after his army is wiped out, but that’s no surprise, since no ancient king would want to record such a humiliating defeat. While this doesn’t prove it happened as the Bible says it did, it fits well with the Bible’s recording of events and gives substantial backing to the claim that the Bible’s accounts are authentic.
Hezekiah’s Defeat: The Annals of Sennacherib on the Taylor, Jerusalem, and Oriental Prisms, 700 BCE
The ossuary of James, brother of Jesus?
At least two of Jesus’ brothers played important roles in the early church, but James was probably the most prominent. He is mentioned in Galatians as one of the three “pillars” of the church (Gal 2:9), and he is traditionally believed to be the author or source of the Book of James. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, he was executed in about the year AD 62 in Jerusalem at the order of the high priest Ananus.
In the early 2000s, archaeologists came into possession of an ossuary with the inscription Yaakov bar Yosef akhui diYeshua, which translates to “James son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.” The original finder of the ossuary said he found it in Jerusalem, the place where James was executed. Several lines of evidence date this ossuary to the 1st century AD, the time when Jesus and his family lived and died. While James, Jesus, and Joseph were common Jewish names in the first century AD, that these names are found in this specific combination is much more meaningful.
Quite importantly, Jewish ossuaries almost never mentioned the brother of the deceased. The fact that this one does indicates that James’s brother Jesus must have been a very prominent figure. All this adds up to the conclusion that there is a very good possibility that this is indeed the ossuary of Jesus’ brother himself.
There has been some controversy over the years as to whether part of the inscription may be a forgery, but the evidence has begun to lean heavily toward its authenticity.
The James Ossuary (contains an evaluation of the controversy over its authenticity)
Peter’s house?
The Bible indicates that Peter and his brother Andrew lived in the small fishing town of Capernaum, by the Sea of Galilee. Though the town is uninhabited today, numerous archaeological remains are extant and available for exploration. One of these remains was a 5th-century octagonal “martyrium” church built by the Byzantines. A “martyrium” was a structure meant to commemorate an important site in Christian history.
Underneath this martyrium, excavators found the remains of a simple house that stood in the first century AD. Not long after the time of Christ, it seems that this house’s function transformed from a simple dwelling to a community gathering place—perhaps a meeting place for a small house church. Over the next few centuries, the house was converted into a simple church building. Those who built the martyrium in the 5th century were very careful to place their structure exactly on top of the original, indicating this was a very important site. Graffiti on the walls makes it clear that this was a site venerated by Christians, as it includes numerous biblical phrases and images, some of which may refer to Peter.
So what could make a simple house in Peter’s hometown so important that subsequent Christians would choose that place to convert it into a church, and be sure to build a subsequent church directly on top of it? Here’s one good explanation: That it was the house of Peter himself.
While it can’t be proven whether or not this was Peter’s house, many have agreed that that’s the best explanation for what we observe. And if it is, that is quite remarkable. We may know exactly where Peter lived and have access to the remains of his house.
The House of Peter: The Home of Jesus in Capernaum?
Conclusion
So there are a few pieces from tangible history, outside of the Bible, that bring the Bible to life. Far from being a book of distant stories, we have today numerous pieces of evidence that provide a direct linkage to people whose lives we learn about in the Bible, including some of those closest to Jesus himself. It’s not going to prove that everything in the Bible is true. But it can help bring the Bible to life and help link the world that we read about on its pages to the tangible, visible world of today.
