Episode 92: How Archaeology Supports the Bible

Throughout the centuries, archaeologists often claimed that the people and places mentioned in the Bible were not found anywhere outside of the Bible... that was until Israel became a nation again in 1948! Since then, archaeologists have found an incredible amount of evidence that shows the Bible is true and accurate. Check out some of the biggies in this episode!

- A great resource for more exciting evidence: "Unearthing the Bible: 101 Archaeological Discoveries That Bring the Bible to Life" by Titus Kennedy.

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Transcript

Unknown Speaker  0:06  
Welcome to the Truth Wins podcast where the truth hurts sometimes, but it could save your life. Our heart on this podcast is for you to know why you believe what you believe and to be able to give a defense for it. This is episode 92 called how archaeology supports the Bible. We've got a guy from way way back who does was actually found in archaeological dig himself, Stu richer, say, hey, Stu, hey, Stu. That's not a good way to start. I'm sorry. I love you, brother. This time. I'm right behind you, though. Getting older every day. But this is gonna be a fun one. Because I basically, people archaeologists said, especially in the 1800s and early 1900s, the Bible, most of the stories, we don't have any proof of those people or those events taking place outside of the Bible. So it's probably just a fictional read, then 1947 comes and Israel becomes a nation again, and they start letting archaeologist in to start digging. And lo and behold, we got a lot of stuff to talk about today. So I'm looking forward to talking about some of those many things that are out there that just add layers of support to the Bible being what it says it is the word of God. But before we do that, I would like to take some time to do what we call here.

Unknown Speaker  1:26  
On the Truth Wins podcast, time to stump stu.

Unknown Speaker  1:34  
All right, so we've got a question, slash more comment from Eric that says God also supposedly made Eve from Adam's rib. So she's a clone, which makes her a man, which makes her unable to have children. See why every point you crazies make is nonsense. Are you meant to say crazy that's plural singular because he thought he was talking to you, too. I'm not crazy. You is a  plural. Crazy, like Fox. But anyways, so Eric's pulling the gloves off here. So I'm gonna pull some gloves off on him. Because it's mean spirited. I get tired of listening to these idiots. So anyhow, Stu, you're not supposed to say that. So anyhow, I like he drops in supposedly because he knows better than God. How God made Eve. So she's a clone, she has to be a clone. So, Eric, basically what you've done there is you've made faulty reasoning, because you've decided she's a clone. So you said God had to make her a clone, which is incorrect. And you're wrong on that. And she's not a man. She's a woman because God made her a woman. Women are different than men. Eric, I hope you've learned that. And also it says she would be unable to have children. Eric, how do you know? Okay, so basically, your question is nonsense, Eric. So now where do we stand by?

Unknown Speaker  3:04  
Boom?

Unknown Speaker  3:05  
Yeah, very loving response there. You know, you know, he's upset when he keeps saying his name over and over again, too. I knew I was in trouble at school when they said now Todd, as I've told you before Todd Baba. All right, so not our most sensitive and compassionate time to stump stu. Sorry Todd, you have a you have a limit. Alright, and this is our third episode we recorded today so maybe the tanks a little empty. So I would we always get mad at parents when a kid's being unruly and they say well, he's tired. We say that's not a good excuse. So I just use that one for us too. But anyways, this is our time to stump stu

Unknown Speaker  3:48  
All right, Grumpy Pants. Before we talk about archaeology supports the Bible. I noticed your pinky finger you've got a looks like you got a little booboo on the fingernail like you smashed it with a hammer or something with a weight with weightlifting No, just let's say hammer because I wanted to do a segway into our sponsor for today's episode. If you are like Stu and you grab a hammer, and it's just a matter of time for yourself, you're going to hit your finger and turn it black and blue. Constructify is the company for you there you go to solution for home improvements and energy efficient projects where they construct it for you. They'll tackle windows, siding, roofing decks, painting projects, all along the front range of Colorado. So if you live in the Colorado Metro Denver area, probably even as far south. I need to find out for sure, but I think they'll go first south of Denver to maybe in the springs all the way up to Fort Collins is where the call though or a text to Joe and his team at 303-502-1096 You can check them out at construcfy.com or email info@constructify.com

Unknown Speaker  5:00  
or you can go to our Facebook page, we have a link to them there mentions Truth Wins podcast and receive 15% off your next order. And if you today within the next 24 hours, say still gets grumpy, you'll get another 2% off your order as well. So I'll pay for that 2% Just because I throw that in there. All right, well, we're gonna be kinder and gentler with this because this one isn't really combative to anybody other than some archaeologists out there who say the Bible is just a made up book with all these events and people that we don't have any of this stuff outside of the Bible. Again, 1947 48 comes, they start dig in. And lo and behold, the last several decades, they found so much stuff that does support biblical claims. And we want to talk about just some of the many ones there. So where do you want to start today? My hopefully happier friend.

Unknown Speaker  5:56  
Okay. Basically, we're talking about the Qumran place in near the Dead Sea in Israel. When we were there. You and I were there.

Unknown Speaker  6:08  
If you're watching us on video, he just put up a picture. Yep. Have yourself when was that? When were you there?

Unknown Speaker  6:15  
Oh, that was probably 2013, something like that?

Unknown Speaker  6:20  
Do you have a jacket on there in the Dead Sea? It was uncharacteristically cool that day, I take Oh, you're sweating it out, or something had tried to hide the loss of hair, all the reflection in the desert, the bald head starting the fire. The other people in your group are saying do you cover that for us? Yes. Is that what's going on? All right. But anyways, you're in that. So it's basically right around the Dead Sea? Qumran, what is it? So people haven't heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls? Or any of that? What what what was the event? What did they find there?

Unknown Speaker  6:50  
So Dead Sea is the lowest spot on the surface of the earth. So there are these there's this high ridge of basically a plate that's pulling apart from another plate on the earth. And this huge valley where there's a wadi that goes down to the Dead Sea. And there's caves in the sides of these rocks, where, you know, people that were called the Essenes a long time ago, put some of their writings when the Romans were coming to take over Israel. So they stored them in these caves.

Unknown Speaker  7:24  
So in basically around the time of Jesus, and the decades right after him before Israel was, you know, finally destroyed at 70, or not finally, but kind of the big, biggest blow to them. Before they were dispersed later, they hid all these scrolls of Old Testament documents in the caves.

Unknown Speaker  7:43  
Right. Okay. And there are about I think, 190 different scrolls that they found parts of fragments, but they found one complete one, the scroll of Isaiah, which is in the shrine of the book

Unknown Speaker  7:59  
in Jerusalem, so that's pretty amazing sight to see because I think it's about 40 feet long when they unravel all of that around there. And it's amazing too because when the climate there's so that the pipe, I'm assuming they're all Papyrus, most of these were leather, there are some parchment ones, and there you go, Papyrus more were Egypt. Okay, so Okay. So the interesting thing is that, again, these have been hidden for 1900 years. And they weren't found until a little shepherd boy, trying to find one of the lost sheep throws a rock and and here's his, Ting Ting, ting, ting ting, like they're, so they're like, Wait, there must be something down there. And that was in 1947. And right after World War Two, all the nations were debating on whether Israel or Jews should be allowed to have Israel again and become a nation again. So yeah, it was it was close 5149 kind of vote there in the United Nations. But right at that time, is when I believe God orchestrated the finding of that, that, hey, here's the book of these people that have been persecuted and dispersed for 1900 years to say, yes, their story is true. And it's really kind of a cool cloak and dagger thing. This professor Sue kunik finds this thing that this little kids trying to sell. And he looks at and he knows what it is. Because Oh my goodness. And so he's trying to figure a way to get it from this kid and buy it and not let on that he knows what it is because the kid who found it didn't know what it was. And he was an Arab kid and he didn't care. And he just want to make little money. I just wanted to make some money. And so So did he go to the Antique Roadshow? Is that where he grew to see the Antique Roadshow and the guy in that thing said oh, let's see what you have their little Muhammad and just pale British guy on PVS Oh, this is extraordinary. I don't believe we've ever seen anything like this before. This is a boy of his fortune.

Unknown Speaker  10:01  
Where did you find it? Anyway, sorry, but we're doing our impersonation. So yeah, there goes the audience.

Unknown Speaker  10:09  
You have offended everybody, of course, crazy.

Unknown Speaker  10:13  
But anyhow, they finally figure out what it is. And then they want to get all of them try to catch and they find there are other caves to where they found other of the scrolls. So there are over 800 fragments. And then there is one Complete Book of Isaiah. There's every book of the Old Testament, except for Esther, they found parts of in the, in the scrolls, so Wow, pretty amazing.

Unknown Speaker  10:42  
Yeah. And we've said on other episodes, just how reliable the Bible is than like this, the other skeptics, the textual critics are saying, Oh, good. Finally, we're going to see these and see how much the Bible the errors that are supposedly there, and they were basically less than one half of one percent was

Unknown Speaker  11:00  
wrong again, critics.

Unknown Speaker  11:02  
Yep. All right. What else? What's another one you want to talk about over in his because we got lots to

Unknown Speaker  11:09  
well, there's this house of David Stone. That was another one people used to say, well, you know, we've never ever found any evidence of David outside of the Bible. I don't know why I'm going into

Unknown Speaker  11:19  
Star Wars emperor said,

Unknown Speaker  11:21  
somebody said that. But they didn't believe that, you know, David was a real historical person. He was kind of a Jewish creation to make. They're like George Washington. And so then in 1993, Avraham Baron is digging at Tel Dan, where you and I have been up there and northern Israel, and he found a stone that has on it House of David bate Dahveed. And that's the first archaeological evidence of David outside the Bible. So it's pretty cool because it's on a stone and you can go see it in the Israel Museum.

Unknown Speaker  12:02  
Yeah. Well, another thing with David too, they found in recent decades is David's Palace, just south of the Temple Mount. And it's an amazing as they continue to dig, it's just yeah, that it fits. One of the thing that struck me and we did a little bit of filming with the unexpected Messiah there because they have different things that you know, support David obviously being the owner of that place, but also it's it's down the hill from the Temple Mount, but still on a hillside because I always wondered you know, how was peeping David be able to see Bathsheba taking a bath? Well, if you're over in Israel, you see, there's just hills everywhere in Jerusalem. And there's hills. So when you're on the top of your roof, if you're up higher, you can see all the houses below you. And so it fits that narrative too it's not a huge proof for the Bible, but it's just one more layer to Yeah, that fits the story.

Unknown Speaker  12:55  
Yep. No, it's, to me, that's one of the more powerful archaeological proofs of the Bible's veracity. I mean, there's so many and we're gonna go through several of them today.

Unknown Speaker  13:07  
So yeah, what about Pilates, people outside the Bible? I mean, they're in the Bible, but from a different country. But people said, Yeah, this pilate guy who's a pretty pivotal character, Jesus's crucifixion, obviously. But there's no writing about him outside of the Bible either as what critics had said for for centuries.

Unknown Speaker  13:26  
Yeah, there is a Pontius Pilate, you guys have heard of if you've read the accounts of Jesus crucifixion. He's the Roman governor who was judging Jesus at that crucifixion. And while people said, well, we've never found any real evidence outside the biblical account that Pontius Pilate existed. And then in 1961, when they're digging at Sasurya at the amphitheater there they found like this step, and they pulled out the step and underneath on the other side was written, and it says, Pontius Pilates prefect, UA Orem, prefect of the Jews. And it says, Tiberius, on the top of it. And Tiberius was the Roman Emperor at that time. He started in 26 ad. And so, you know, you've got in Latin, it's written to not in Hebrew, this is Latin. And so it's evidence that Pontius Pilate was a real personage he's, you know, archaeologically there he is, boom. Sorry, critics wrong again. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  14:37  
One of the other things that they didn't doubt or at least I didn't know if critics doubted it, but I think it it was something that brought to light. A biblical passage was when we went to Capernaum. It was the the town that Jesus probably visited the most and taught at the most. There was a huge synagogue there for a small little town, it would be like having Mile High Stadium in a town of 50,000 people, you know something crazy where it just didn't match, you would see that kind of synagogue somewhere else. But that speaks to something in the gospels, does it not?

Unknown Speaker  15:16  
Right. And it's like one of those things were when we were talking about the differences between the Sadducees, who live down by Jerusalem and Jericho. And the Pharisees who are up in that three city triangle core is in Capernaum, and Bethsaida, that in Capernaum, you have one of the largest schools of antiquity, I think it's four times bigger than anything up until the 1500s. I mean, so Jesus isn't going out to the, you know, villages. He's dealing with the prime intellectual guys of his time, this a theologian, who studied and cared about the Word of God, because they believed it. So he's right in their, you know, midst right there, and it's in Capernaum,

Unknown Speaker  16:05  
because the Pharisees were up north in Galilee, because they didn't like Jerusalem and the Sadducees were more the sellouts to Rome. Right. And so they were more liberal in their theology as such, but the Pharisees learning and Capernaum and other areas in that, that region, yeah,

Unknown Speaker  16:23  
the Sadducees were the ones who they didn't believe in the resurrection. They didn't believe in angels, they didn't believe in supernatural. You know, there. If I can't see it, it didn't really happen. And so they only believe the first five books were actually gods were the others were just kind of, you know, fluff. It's kind of like liberal theologians of today. And then the Pharisees, they said, We don't want to be like these guys. We think the Bible is true, the whole Old Testament, the Tanakh. And so they call them the separated ones. So Jesus even refers to them, you know, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees. In other words, he's you wouldn't pick somebody who's like Adolf Hitler, unless your righteousness surpasses all everybody's, you know, it's like, no, these guys were viewed as we care about God's word were righteous. They they tried. The problem for the Pharisees, a lot of them was their hearts. You know, you're cared about the word so much, but you didn't live it. You did good

Unknown Speaker  17:28  
theology, but not the heart piece. But why was the why was that such a big in copernaum? Why was the synagogue being so big? How does that play into the Gospels?

Unknown Speaker  17:41  
Because when Jesus goes to Capernaum, that's where he deals with a lot of the different. There's a Roman that he heals his daughter, there's all these guys like we talked about the schools of Pharaoh sake, thought you had Hillel. And you had Shamai. You know, the ones. They all viewed the Bible as God's word, but some of them had a one command. What was the greatest commandment? So they'd say, you know, hero, Israel, the Lord is our God the Lord, alone, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. And then what's your second greatest commandment? Because that was the kind of delineation between the seven different schools. And so like the Hillel school, the second commandment was Love your neighbor as yourself. This is what Jesus said to me. And he fits right into that kind of school, Shamai said, the second greatest one is to keep the Sabbath holy, because that's about God. So they would have viewed Romans and anybody else foreign to them. As you know, there's no hope they're never getting in. But the Hillel school at least was similar to Jesus's Council.

Unknown Speaker  18:57  
But there's a little clue in there when he when he heals that Centurions daughter, because the local said, Hey, and his disciples say, he's been kind to us. And he's like, he's helped us. So he's worth distracting you from the Jews to go help this Gentile in so many believe that he's the one who funded. He's like the benefactor who put in the huge auditorium, the huge synagogue in a small town like that. And so it just fits. It's not a slam dunk. And you remember

Unknown Speaker  19:27  
this rock the difference? Because there was that bass part that was actually probably from Jesus telling. Yeah, which is the real dark, basalt rock. And then there was the part that was built, added later, which was the lighter rock. So when you walk across that floor, you're probably walking somewhere where Jesus walked his sandwich. That's where he says in John six, I'm the bread of life. He taught it from that synagogue tells us Yeah, which is so cool.

Unknown Speaker  19:55  
Yeah. Another cool one that jumped out at me is when we went to Nazareth There's this little village that the nonprofit or church bought years back, when it's so they read basically made it look like Nazareth would have loved 1000 years ago. But in that couple acres, there's a rock quarry there. And so you can see where they chiseled chunks of the rock out. And if you know, and we think we brought this up in the past too, but it says Jesus was what we call a carpenter. So most thing he's putting together the Anwar, but near the dining room table for the family, but it's actually Tekton. So he was more like a Mason, he worked with rock, there aren't a ton of trees in Israel, especially that area, so wouldn't have had a lot of work. Yeah, so you're building houses and things out of rock, not wood like we do here. And so to see that rock quarry right there where Nazareth is like, Jesus could have been chiseling out of that too. And, again, speaking of Jesus, he's not the milk toast Jesus. He was, he worked with rock, he worked hard. He was pleasing to his parents. And so he helped, you know, his dad and keep the business going. So he was in there, just muscles going at it in that rock quarry,

Unknown Speaker  21:08  
and there's a Roman village not too far away from that Zephyrus, which is about 300 yards from Nazareth. And there was a that was where we saw that mosaic stone that you could see, I forget what they call it, but it's a beautiful woman that's in mosaic in the stones. And so Jesus and Joseph probably worked in sephorus, you know, while they were there in Nazareth, because as a risk, wasn't that big. A town in those days? I mean, it may be, you know, 300 people.

Unknown Speaker  21:40  
Yeah. Yeah, he could have done the mosaic then too. Yeah. What else, any other ones that you have on your list, we've

Unknown Speaker  21:49  
just, we're just starting to touch a few of these, the 1979 in one of the ossuaries. Now, the ossuaries where the stone, like small sarcophagus things, where they would leave the dead person in the tomb for a year. At the end of the year, they would come back and take their bones and put them into these ossuaries. And they found one that said Caifas which was in also another person from the Bible, and ossuary, but in 1979, they found one that had these two Silver Scrolls wrapped up in it. And they unrolled these scrolls, but it took them three years to unroll these scrolls, because they're so old. I mean, it's from probably the some of the oldest archaeological things we have in Israel, and it has on it, they started deciphering the writing. And it said on it. The Lord bless you and keep you the Lord, make his face shine upon you, and be gracious unto the Lord lift his countenance upon you and give you peace. It's like, I've heard that before. That's the erronic blessing from number six. And it's on those Silver Scrolls are small, they're only about, I think, a couple inches long, five, six, you know, something like that, you know,

Unknown Speaker  23:13  
little baby bones in the scrolls inside. Even typography, the typography over there, especially the first time I went, but both times too. It just fits all the stories from, you know, the robbers road from Jericho over to Jerusalem, or the Good Samaritan story and in how we showed in the unexpected Messiah, that there's just a small path. So for the guy who goes around the guy, it's not like he's on i 25 goes to the other side, he had to step over the guy, and you see where he could easily be robbed. And so that was amazing. The Valley View law I think was a one for me, where you see this battle between David and Goliath. And so it says that the Philistines were on one side of the valley and the Israelites were on the other. And you see these two bluffs there. And then you just come down, you know, however many feet down into the valley, and you could see the big battle after David slew Goliath, all the battle happening in there, but you could see them camped out for weeks or however long, but it's it's far enough where you can see him. And you could hear him, but you couldn't like throw a spear out. I'm kind of thing. So I thought, yeah, that's pretty crazy to be in that spot. But it fits the story of David Goliath as well. And in

Unknown Speaker  24:25  
the unexpected messiah. You and I did a thing when we were down underneath the Temple Mount area where the road was, and you could see the indentations in the road from those stones that they rolled down. But there were these like shops and stalls where we were talking. We did a little thing there. Yeah. And there's also at the very end, they found this one stone that was from the corner. And it was it said on it in Hebrew, the place of the trumpeting and it's the corner of the Temple Mount from which they would blow the shofar to announce the new moons, the you know all the different things. And it said it in Hebrew and that the place of you know, it's like, wow, that's right there. It's like you see it? No, this happened.

Unknown Speaker  25:15  
Pretty crazy. Mount Carmel, the tastiest place and all of Israel if I'm not mistaken. Yes. Tasty. I just always get hungry when I think about Mount Carmel. But that's where Elijah and the prophets of bale. And you can see when you're on the top of the hill now it's got the ball high. Faith owns that regents was like this pretty beautiful rose garden, or flower gardens going all the way down. But you could see where the battle would happen. And then it said that afterwards, Elijah kept sending his servants see if there was rain coming because God told him to rain. And he'd go and he'd see the tiny cloud over in the Mediterranean. But you see that from there? You're up high. Yeah. And you can see all over the Mediterranean, because you can see have you come down that valley, and then he would be off to the races and Ahab would be chasing him. And

Unknown Speaker  26:05  
then when you look towards the inland part, you see the Jezebel Valley and that thing goes all the way down to Megiddo. Yep, I mean, that's gonna be where the big final showdown is. It's in that plane somewhere. We

Unknown Speaker  26:19  
Yeah. Was it Napoleon who said this would be a great spot for? Or yeah, he's like, yeah, and there have been probably more wars in that valley, right through the centuries than any other plot of land. And obviously, the final battle will be in that spot. And yeah, we both been at the Megiddo there where you look over that, and you think, wow, it's only what, like seven miles wide. Like that. It's, it's, it's really long, but you could see where they're just stuck in there, and you gotta go out last man standing in that whole valley is gonna be full of blood someday. And yeah, pretty crazy thought.

Unknown Speaker  26:54  
Then there was the fact that when they found the Crucified man, in first century AD, they found this guy who had been crucified in the first century. It's not Jesus, you know, but of course, they found the nails that were driven, you know, these like, copper kind of nails that they would use to drive through. And most people think it was through their wrist that they would do this because if you put it in your hand, your bodyweight would cause that you couldn't hold yourself. But the, the myth method of crucifixion was verified by this archaeological finding.

Unknown Speaker  27:35  
Because they even questioned that, like crucifixion was made. Oh, yeah,

Unknown Speaker  27:38  
of course. I mean, people that don't believe the Bible will go to any lengths to try to discredit it. Yeah. Like Eric's question at the beginning. But let's get back

Unknown Speaker  27:48  
to that. Yeah, we're back to there. Okay. Yeah, no, that's, that's a great when did they find those?

Unknown Speaker  27:56  
I don't remember the time when they found those I

Unknown Speaker  27:59  
can't get no, it's okay. Reason past Hezekiah's tunnel Did you? Did you do the walk through that?

Unknown Speaker  28:06  
Where you walk through that and get like, wet they're, you know, you're up to your thighs, basically. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  28:12  
So basically, Jerusalem, within the old walls, didn't have a water source. So Hezekiah knew that we had to get water in here. Because if we're ever trapped, and you know, basically, people are trying to starve us out, if we don't have any water, we're not going to last more than a couple of days. And so it says in Second Kings 2020. As for the other events of Hezekiah, has rang all his achievements and how he made the pool. And the tunnel by which he brought water into the city, are they not written in the book of the animals of the animals of the king of Judah. And so you go there today, and you can, you can sign up to do the walkthrough thing, and it's amazing. It's actually an engineering marvel, because they dug from both sides, I think it's a mile total. So they dug about a half mile from both sides, and just chiseled through the rock for years and years and years. And then finally met in the middle, which even if you were off, what like a quarter of an inch at the beginning, you're gonna be off by feet or 10s of feet by the time you meet, right. But when you you saw when you get to that middle point, you see where the the two met, it's off by like a quarter of an inch. Just incredible. Is that a little quarter of an inch? You see a little zig in the wall, but it is just an amazing Marvel, but it talks about it in the Bible, and you can go see it today and walk that tunnel yourself.

Unknown Speaker  29:37  
So that crucifixion that was 1968 and it was discovered by an archaeological team led by Bustillos Sofia Sofia Barris. All right, there we go. So that's you know, let's

Unknown Speaker  29:50  
get you techie. I did I found techie looking up stuff. I never would have thought that's just weird. All right, one more for you. And then I want to have done one that I think is the coolest one to add on anything else you wanted to get to?