The History: What Does It Teach Us?

Introduction

I. The Bible as a Treasure Map

Genesis 14:1–3 NLT

1 About this time war broke out in the region. King Amraphel of Babylonia, King Arioch of Ellasar, King Kedorlaomer of Elam, and King Tidal of Goiim 2 fought against King Bera of Sodom, King Birsha of Gomorrah, King Shinab of Admah, King Shemeber of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (also called Zoar). 3 This second group of kings joined forces in Siddim Valley (that is, the valley of the Dead Sea).

Genesis 19:20–25 NLT

20 See, there is a small village nearby. Please let me go there instead; don’t you see how small it is? Then my life will be saved.” 21 “All right,” the angel said, “I will grant your request. I will not destroy the little village. 22 But hurry! Escape to it, for I can do nothing until you arrive there.” (This explains why that village was known as Zoar, which means “little place.”) 23 Lot reached the village just as the sun was rising over the horizon. 24 Then the Lord rained down fire and burning sulfur from the sky on Sodom and Gomorrah. 25 He utterly destroyed them, along with the other cities and villages of the plain, wiping out all the people and every bit of vegetation.

Sodom & Gomorrah

Sodom (Bab edh-Dhra)

Gomorrah (Numeira)

Admah (Feifa)

Zeboiim (Khanazir)

Bela (Zoar) [Safi]

There are two primary theories of where Sodom & Gomorrah are:

Tall el-Hammam

Located north of the Dead Sea, this is a large tel (i.e., mound of multiple layers of civilization).

Bab edh dhra & Numeira

Located south of the Dead Sea, these are two small tels whose civilizations seemingly ended abruptly.

The southern region of the Dead Sea is also littered with sulfur balls.

Southern Sodom & Gomorrah

Lot chose the valley of the Jordan and traveled as far as Sodom (Gen. 13:12).

Tall el-Hammam is much closer to Bethel and Ai

Abraham settled in Canaan whose borders “extended from Sidon as you go toward Gerar, as far as Gaza; as you go toward Sodom and Gomorrah and Admah and Zeboiim, as far as Lasha” (Gen 10:19).

Ezekiel 16:46 says Sodom is south of Jerusalem.

Tall el-Hammam is north of Jerusalem

Deut. 34:3 says Sodom is south of Mount Nebo.

Tall el-Hammam is north of Mount Nebo

Lot asks to run to Zoar because it is “near enough to flee to” (Gen 19:20)

Tall el-Hammam is too far

The location of Zoar is preserved on a map in Safi

It took Lot’s family a full day to reach Zoar (Gen. 19:23) which lines up with the sixteen mile distance between the two sites.

The primary key is the city of Zoar, which was not destroyed.

A southern Sodom and Gomorrah finds the city of Zoar directly in the middle of the four cities of the plain which were destroyed and never rebuilt.

The Implication

Some scholars and archaeologists treat the Bible as a flawed and unreliable document that cannot be trusted.

However, because the Bible is the Word of God, it has proven, is proving, and will continue to prove to function as a “treasure map”.

II. Extra-Biblical Evidence

The Moabite Stone (840 B.C., Discovered 1868, 2 Kings 3:4-5)

2 Kings 3:4–5 NLT

4 King Mesha of Moab was a sheep breeder. He used to pay the king of Israel an annual tribute of 100,000 lambs and the wool of 100,000 rams. 5 But after Ahab’s death, the king of Moab rebelled against the king of Israel.

The discovery

The Moabite Stone was first discovered by Frederick Klein, a medical missionary who enjoyed seeking out the past.

He had gained the trust of the Bedouins, and during a trip into Jordan, he was told of a remarkable ancient stone.

The stone contained thirty-four lines that closely resembled Hebrew.

Recognizing the immense significance of the find, Klein negotiated with the Bedouins to purchase the stone (100 Napoleons, ~ $400 in 1868).

The destruction

Klein returned to Jerusalem to secure the money, but the Bedouins learned of the intense interest in the stone.

Upon return, the Bedouins had upped their price to 1,000 Napoleons, an impossible sum, but they eventually settled again on 120 Napoleons.

However, another tribe refused to let the stone pass through its borders.

While negotiations took place, with the various countries (e.g., Britain, Germany, etc.) attempting to secure the prize for themselves, a French linguist named Charles Clermont-Ganneau learned of the stone.

Ganneau sent Arabs to make a squeeze (i.e., a paper mache impression) of the inscription on the stone.

While the squeeze was being made, violence broke out and one of the men grabbed the still wet squeeze, tearing it off, and returned to Jerusalem.

The Bedouins then took the steele, heated it up over fire, and poured water over it, shattering it into approximately one hundred pieces.

No one is quite sure why they did this. Perhaps it is because at this point the Ottoman Empire, enemies of the Bedouins, had gotten involved.

One theory is that they believed the stone contained gold, explaining the immense Western fascination with the artifact.

Another theory is that they believed they could sell individual pieces of the artifact for more money.

The reconstruction

Determined to have the stone, Ganneau managed to retrieve 38 of the original pieces.

An Englishman, Warren, retrieved 17 pieces, and a German scholar was able to retrieve 1.

Using the torn fragments of the squeeze and the 56 original pieces, a reconstructed stele now sits in the Louvre museum.

The Implication

Skeptics doubted the reliability of the Bible.

However, the Moabite Stone is spectacular proof that the events the Bible records can be confirmed outside of the Bible.

The stone says “I am Mesha … king of Moab”

The stone addresses the oppression of Moab by Israel

The stone also refers to “the House of Omri” (king of Israel)

The Mesha Steele is one of the greatest archaeological finds ever discovered. In the Bible, we have the Israeli account of what happened, while the steele provides the same account from the perspective of Moab, and they agree in the names of people and places.

The Nomads of Yahweh (1400 B.C.)

An Egyptian inscription from the Temple of Amun-Ra and Amenhotep III at Soleb, Sudan.

The list details various people groups that the Pharoah subjugated and conquered

Several cities and towns are named

One section mentions various nomadic peoples and associates them with different deities.

One phrase is the “land of the nomads of Yahweh”

This is the earliest extrabiblical mention of the name of Yahweh, dating to 1400 B.C.

The Implication

There is no other people group who worshipped Yahweh, and so this inscription is evidence of a nomadic (wandering) people (the Israelites) prior to the conquest of Canaan.

III. Using the Foolish to Confound the Wise

1 Corinthians 1:27–29 NLT

27 Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. 28 God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important. 29 As a result, no one can ever boast in the presence of God.

The Dead Sea Scrolls (1947)

A twelve-year-old Bedouin shepherd boy was tending to his flock near the Dead Sea.

One of his sheep disappeared, so the boy began looking for it in the crevices that lined the cliff.

At a particularly deep cave, the boy threw a rock into the cave, hearing the sound breaking pottery in return.

The jars contained scrolls.

10 nearby caves were found with similar treasures, resulting in over 1,000 scrolls of various writings (e.g., pseudipigraphical and extra-biblical documents).

The most important part of the discovery was 38 out of 39 books of the Old Testament.

Every book except Esther

Too many “coincidences” had to take place to preserve the text

The Location — the Dead Sea is 1,400 feet below sea level, making it a place of perfect aridity.

The Composition — for unknown reasons made of sheepskin, but without tanning materials which accelerate the deterioration of the parchment.

The Ink — made of soot or lampblack, which is inert and extremely lon- lasting.

The Caves — provided an environment of stable temperature and virtually no airflow.

In fact, once the scrolls were examined, even with man-made technology it was nearly impossible to recreate an environment as perfect as where they were discovered.

The age of the text

Among the oldest is a copy of the Book of Isaiah, dating to the 4th century B.C. (within three centuries of Isaiah himself)

The Implication

Critics had long stated the reliability of the Bible could not be trusted, that it had been changed in a grand conspiracy of involving the Church.

Critics also argued that the “prophecies” of the OT were simply invented to control the population.

However, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls laid to rest such claims. Not only did the late copies of Scripture prove to be remarkably faithful to those found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, but the prophecies they contained were certainly written before the events took place.

Hezekiah’s Tunnel (1880, 2 Chronicles 32:2-4)

2 Chronicles 32:2–4 NLT

2 When Hezekiah realized that Sennacherib also intended to attack Jerusalem, 3 he consulted with his officials and military advisers, and they decided to stop the flow of the springs outside the city. 4 They organized a huge work crew to stop the flow of the springs, cutting off the brook that ran through the fields. For they said, “Why should the kings of Assyria come here and find plenty of water?”

Sennacherib, king of Assyria, attacked Jerusalem

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 … I took as plunder 200,150 people, both small and great, male and female, along with a great number of animals including horses, mules, donkeys, camels, oxen, and sheep. 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.

Taylor Prism, qtd. by Eric Metaxas in Is Atheism Dead? (Salem Books: Washington D.C., 2021), 160.

Knowing water was essential for an attacking force, Hezekiah undertook an ambitious engineering project to divert the water from the Gihon Spring.

The tunnel’s discovery

Though the tunnel was known for years, it was seldom explored due to superstition that it was haunted.

In 1880, when Jacob Spafford (adopted by Horatio Spafford [It is Well With My Soul]) played hooky from school, he and a friend set out to explore the tunnel, each starting from a different end.

Jacob made it through, returned to school, and confessed to his teacher, German archaeologist Conrad Schick where he had been.

While retelling his account, Jacob mentioned how he had slipped and noticed an inscription cut into the limestone wall.

Set close to the water level and covered in mineral deposits, it is no wonder those before him had never noticed it.

… and this is the story of the tunnel while … the axes were against each other and while three cubits were left to (cut?) … the voice of a man … called to his counterpart, (for) there was ZADA [unknown word] in the rock, on the right … and on the day of the tunnel (being finished) the stonecutters struck each man towards his counterpart, ax against ax and flowed water from the source to the pool for 1,200 cubits. And 100 cubits was the height over the head of the stone cutters …

Inscription found in Hezekiah’s Tunnel, qtd. by Eric Metaxas in Is Atheism Dead? (Salem Books: Washington D.C., 2021), 171.

The Implication

Critics claimed there was no archaeological evidence for the feat described in 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles.

However, the discovery of the inscription put to rest skepticism concerning the reliability of these portions of Scripture.

The Ketef Hinnom Scrolls (1979, Numbers 6:24-26)

Ketef Hinnom was a burial site featuring several stone-cut tombs.

In antiquity, the dead were buried with valuables.

This made tombs a target for grave robbers.

Even though there are thousands of tombs are Jerusalem, it is the great frustration of archaeologists that almost no valuables are ever found in tombs.

The structure of ancient tombs.

Tombs were often used generationally.

The top “floor” of the tomb housed the bodies for approximately one year.

After the bodies had decomposed, the bones were retrieved and placed the repository underneath the burial benches.

In 1979, Dr. Gabriel Barkay (Bar-kai) was examining chamber 25, a family tomb, at Ketef Hinnom.

Lacking funding, Barkay utilized help from the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, who provided local 12 and 13-year-olds who belonged to an archaeology club.

“Thirteen is a dangerous age.” Dr. Barkay, qtd. by Eric Metaxes in Is Atheism Dead? (Salem Books: Washington D.C., 2021), 172.

One particular student, Nathan, turned out to be less than helpful.

Finding him annoying, Dr. Barkay told him to clean the repository (the room underneath the burial benches).

For unknown reasons, Nathan brought a hammer with him into the repository, and after getting bored, began smashing away at the floor.

He broke through the floor, revealing a “hidden” chamber containing over 1,000 pieces.

At some point in the past, the ceiling of the repository had collapsed and created a false floor, sealing and protecting the valuable contents.

This is the only repository that was found intact to date in Jerusalem.

The Silver Scrolls

As the repository was excavated, they discovered two tiny objects resembling cigarette butts.

These turned out to be silver scrolls inscribed with Hebrew characters.

The first word Dr. Barkay deciphered was YHVH (yod, he, vah, he)—the unpronounceable tetragrammaton.

The scrolls are two short versions of the priestly blessing given in Numbers 6:24-26 and are dated to the 7th century B.C.

Numbers 6:24–26 NLT

24 ‘May the Lord bless you and protect you. 25 May the Lord smile on you and be gracious to you. 26 May the Lord show you his favor and give you his peace.’

The earliest quotation of the biblical text ever discovered, dating 500 years before the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Implication

The prevailing theory was that the Torah was not written until after the 586 B.C. destruction of Jerusalem.

However, the existence of these scrolls place the biblical text in preexilic times.

The Cross & the Empty Tomb

1 Corinthians 1:22–29 NLT

22 It is foolish to the Jews, who ask for signs from heaven. And it is foolish to the Greeks, who seek human wisdom. 23 So when we preach that Christ was crucified, the Jews are offended and the Gentiles say it’s all nonsense. 24 But to those called by God to salvation, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 This foolish plan of God is wiser than the wisest of human plans, and God’s weakness is stronger than the greatest of human strength. 26 Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you were wise in the world’s eyes or powerful or wealthy when God called you. 27 Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. 28 God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important. 29 As a result, no one can ever boast in the presence of God.

Conclusion