Jericho & Archaeology: Replies to Atheists

Last updated on: December 30, 2023 at 6:28 pm By Dave Armstrong

[find out more about this book and purchase information]

In an atheist forum (which shall remain unnamed), a video critical of the Bible from a secular / minimalist archaeological perspective was posted. This video included a section about Jericho. So I posted much of the portion on that topic in my book, The Word Set in Stone: How Archaeology, Science, and History Back Up the Bible.

In a nutshell, I agued that the seeming absence of the archaeological layer dated around 1200 BC, when Joshua would have encountered Jericho, can be explained by a process called haloclasty, in which salt crystals become embedded in buildings and start causing them to deteriorate. Moreover, Jericho is in a desert climate, has rains for six months every year, was uninhabited for hundreds of years, and lies just 21 miles away from the Dead Sea, one of the saltiest bodies of water in the world (ten times more than the ocean), which is also the lowest elevation of any area on earth (Jericho being the lowest elevation of any city).

Then questions started being asked. I can’t quote them because then I’ll likely get in trouble (I may not even make it one day there anyway, because some are attacking me and implying that I should be kicked out). But I can summarize (and I’ll use italics for them).

One person inquired as to why remains from hundreds and thousands of years before Joshua’s conquest (as far back as 8000-7000 BC) still remain at Jericho, whereas the layer dated around 1200 does not?

It’s because (citing Wikipedia, “Jericho” for the purpose of a quick reply), “Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of more than 20 successive settlements in Jericho, the first of which dates back 11,000 years (to 9000 BCE).” But then, “Bronze Age Jericho fell in the 16th century at the end of the Middle Bronze Age, the calibrated carbon remains from its City-IV destruction layer dating to 1617–1530 BCE.” In other words, since it kept being inhabited and built over and over, on top of earlier settlements, the earlier sections were not exposed to the elements, so they have been preserved.

But then it was destroyed in c. 1530 BC, which is about 330 years before the time of Joshua’s conquest. The lack of building and preservation after that, haloclasty, the heat, and the rains would then have eroded the top layer. The article goes on to state that “There was evidence of a small settlement in the Late Bronze Age (c. 1400s BCE) on the site, but erosion and destruction from previous excavations have erased significant parts of this layer.”

This lines up with my thesis. If this small settlement, documented to c. 1400 BC survived till 1200 BC, then it was the city that Joshua conquered, but has since eroded to nothing, so that the minimalist archaeologists claim that it didn’t exist at all in 1200 BC. My thesis attempts to explain why it’s no longer there. The most recent layer simply eroded, in the unique environmental conditions that the city was subjected to.

It was objected that the Great Sphinx in Egypt (dated to the reign of Khafre, c. 2558–2532 BC) has also been subject to erosion, too, but it’s still there.

It’s not analogous because it hasn’t been subject to the same harsh environmental conditions as Jericho. This was my argument. The Sphinx is at an elevation of 85 feet above sea level, compared to Jericho’s 670 feet below sea level. Nor is the Sphinx 21 miles from the Dead Sea, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world and, with a salinity of 34.2 percent, the seventh saltiest body of water in the world—almost ten times more than the oceans. That’s why the Sphinx is still there, and 1200 BC-era Jericho ain’t. It’s not subject to the hyper-saline environment, as Jericho was.

Also, the walls of Jericho were made of mud bricks, which are especially subject to erosion from rain, as well as to salt. I was just perusing an article about ancient Babylon, that repeatedly referred to salt in the groundwater causing significant erosion to the mud bricks there. The Sphinx, in contrast, was made of limestone, and experts believe it was even under the sand for some 700 years. That would obviously help preserve it, just as I noted that older portions of Jericho under the ground and under subsequent developments of the city helped to preserve them.

Erosion happens everywhere. But other places aren’t the lowest city in the world, in extreme desert conditions, subject to yearly severe rains, and close to the seventh saltiest body in the word, which sits at the lowest elevation spot in the entire world. In other words, vastly different conditions apply in this instance.

Another atheist appeared to argue that wind conditions didn’t support my hypothesis, because they didn’t come from the south in the era, and Jericho is north of the Dead Sea.

If the point is that haloclasty proceeds primarily by means of wind, I think it’s incorrect. One article on “Weathering” noted:

Haloclasty (growth of salt crystals): Salt crystallization causes disintegration of rocks when saline solutions seep into cracks and joints in the rocks and evaporate, leaving salt crystals behind. These salt crystals expand as they are heated up, exerting pressure on the confining rock. It is normally associated with arid climates where strong heating causes strong evaporation and therefore salt crystallization.

Likewise, “About: Haloclasty” (DBpedia) opines:

Haloclasty is a type of physical weathering caused by the growth of salt crystals. The process is first started when saline water seeps into cracks and evaporates depositing salt crystals. When the rocks are then heated, the crystals will expand putting pressure on the surrounding rock which will over time splinter the stone into fragments.

None of this has to do — primarily or directly, as far as I can tell — with wind. But it could have quite a bit to do with a very salty local body of water, and to some extent, also rain. In my book I noted from experts that Jericho has a “long rainy season . . . (late October to April).” And I noted that the “water level of the Dead Sea has also greatly fluctuated over the last several thousand years—as much as 1,300 feet, the experts tell us. This means that during the time under consideration, it likely was in some periods much closer to Jericho than it is now, thus exacerbating the problem of haloclasty and the city’s erosion.”

I was asked if I found anything specifically from Jericho regarding the eroding capabilities of salt, per my thesis.

I found an article called, “Sources of salinity in ground water from Jericho area, Jordan Valley.” (Ground Water, March 2001). It stated:

One of the major problems in the lower Jordan Valley is the increasing salinization (i.e., chloride content) of local ground water. The high levels of salinity limit the utilization of ground water for both domestic and agriculture applications. This joint collaborative study evaluates the sources and mechanisms for salinization in the Jericho area. We employ diagnostic geochemical fingerprinting methods to trace the potential sources of the salinity in (1) the deep confined subaquifer system (K2) of Lower Cenomanian age; (2) the upper subaquifer system (K1) of Upper Cenomanian and Turonian ages; and (3) the shallow aquifer system (Q) of Plio-Pleistocene ages. The chemical composition of the saline ground water from the two Cenomanian subaquifers (K1 and K2) point to a single saline source with Na/Cl approximately 0.5 and Br/Cl approximately 7 x 10(-3). This composition is similar to that of thermal hypersaline spring that are found along the western shore of the Dead Sea (e.g., En Gedi thermal spring). We suggest that the increasing salinity in both K1 and K2 subaquifers is derived from mixing with deep-seated brines that flow through the Rift fault system.

As previously noted, the question of the rising or falling levels of the Dead Sea was only one tangential sentence in my book, with no documentation (my book has 393 footnotes: most from scientific articles). The overall argument doesn’t rest on this factor. The two paragraphs that I already cited above [in the thread, not here] from the National Geographic are about Petra, which is 123 miles form the Dead Sea. It explained how “Salt upwelling, the geologic process in which underground salt domes expand, can contribute to the weathering of the overlying rock.” Then it noted that “structures” in Petra “often collapsed” due to this very thing. If that can happen in Petra, all the more so in Jericho.

Add to that yearly rains for six months on end, a desert climate and a lack of maintenance of mud brick walls and buildings for several hundred years, and being 670 feet below sea level (almost the lowest in the world) and my explanation is perfectly plausible. There are many unique factors in play here. We see nothing now of that latest period of ancient Jericho. It doesn’t follow that Joshua saw nothing in 1200 BC.

I wrote earlier about how the layers were built on top of each other, as is the case in many other ancient sites. Jericho was destroyed c. 1550 BC according to Kathleen Kenyon. But there are evidences of a continuing occupation (which in my theory has to occur down to c. 1200 BC). Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Archaeology (“Jericho”) states:

One of the most interesting ﬁnds from the Middle Building (just east of it on the slope) is a cuneiform tablet, attributable to the fourteenth century B.C.E. Pottery vessels found by Garstang in reused tombs 4, 5, and 13, can be attributed to the same time. Actually, tomb 5 shows vessels as early as the second half of the ﬁfteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth centuries B.C.E.; tombs 4 and 13 , conversely, yielded vessels datable to 1375 – 1275 B.C.E. Tomb 5 also included a scarab of Thutmose III (r. ca. 1504 – 1450 B.C.E.) and one of Hatshepsut (r. ca. 1473 – 1458 B.C.E.) (a second scarab of Thutmose III was found in pit tomb 11 dating from the Iron I), while tomb 4 yielded two scarabs with the cartouche of Amenhotep III (r. 1417 – 1379 B.C.E.).

The same source states that the site was “unoccupied” after 1200 BC. But that is consistent with my account since that’s when Joshua’s conquest would have happened (which included burning of the city). I don’t have all the ins and outs worked out, as I am not an archaeologist and am only speculating, but if the city in this era was unoccupied for 3-4 centuries after 1200 (the above source says it may have been occupied again in the 9th c. BC and certainly was from the 8th-6th centuries BC), then being unoccupied for all that time could have been the cause of overwhelming erosion due to the unique environmental factors that I have enumerated.

Archaeologists Avraham Negev and Shimon Gibson, in their article on Jericho in Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land (New York: Continuum, 2003) opined that the city was not inhabited “during most of the 17th and 16th centuries” and that “if there were any buildings at this period they must have been washed away by the winter rains.” Then they state:

It is possible, however, that the Late Bronze Age II [1400-1200 BC] city of Jericho was conquered by Joshua, and that during the long period that elapsed before its resettlement . . . all remains were washed away by the rains.

They casually assume that rains alone could possibly have done all of that erosion, without even considering haloclasty. So I’m not just pulling these ideas out of thin air. One can reasonably suppose that they know a bit about erosion, and erosion by rain, since this is closely related to the excavation of archaeological sites.

More support for my view on Jericho:

Israeli archaeologist Amihai Mazar (b. 1942) has been since 1994 a professor at the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, holding the Eleazer Sukenik Chair in the Archaeology of Israel. His Archaeology of the Land of the Bible (Yale University Press, 1992) is a widely used textbook for Israelite archaeology in universities. His work has resulted in the Modified Conventional Chronology being the most widely accepted framework for the Israelite chronology during the Iron Age period. He was also one of the first archaeologists to normalize the use of radiocarbon dating in Levantine and Mediterranean sites. He wrote in the above book (p. 331):

At Jericho, no remains of the Late Bronze [1300-1200 BC] fortifications were found; this was taken as evidence against the historical value of the narrative in the Book of Joshua. The finds at Jericho, however, show that there was a settlement there during the Late Bronze Age, though most of its remains were eroded or removed by human activity. Perhaps, as at other sites, the massive Middle Bronze fortifications were reutilized in the Late Bronze Age. The Late Bronze Age settlement at Jericho was followed by an occupation gap in Iron Age I. Thus, in the case of Jericho, the archaeological data cannot serve as decisive evidence to deny a historical nucleus in the Book of Joshua concerning the conquest of this city.

John M. Monson, Associate Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages (doctorate from Harvard), and author of The Architecture of Solomon’s Temple (Oxford University Press, 2008), adds:

[T]wo points must also be noted. First, the presence of tombs nearby confirms that there was a settlement during the period of the Israelite conquest, however small it may have been. Second, whatever walls did exist were constructed atop those of the substantial Middle Bronze Age city structures. When one considers the arid climate of the Jericho region and the intense, sporadic downpours in winter, together with the ban that Joshua placed on the city, the likely erosion of most Late Bronze Age structures atop the ancient mound makes perfect sense. (“Enter Joshua: The ‘Mother of Current Debates” in Biblical Archaeology,” ch. 19 [citation from p. 437] in James K. Hoffmeier & Dennis R. Magary, editors, Do Historical Matters Matter to Faith? [Crossway, 2012]; cites in corroboration of his view, The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, edited by Ephraim Stern, 5 vols. [Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society and Carta, 1993], 2:679-81)

I have also seen somewhere (but I couldn’t track down the exact quote) that Dame Kathleen Kenyon, the renowned excavator of Jericho from 1952-1958 allowed for the possibility of a complete erosion of these Late Bronze walls in Jericho, in accordance with the other archaeologists whom I’ve cited.

Conclusion: there is solid archaeological support for my theory of erosion at Jericho, though the aspect of salt and haloclasty is not part of their analysis. To me, it simply strengthens the possibility, alongside annual torrential rains, as another form of known erosion, which is a plausible explanation for what we observe at the site. Moreover, LaMoine F. DeVries, in his book, Cities of the Biblical World (Wipf and Stock, 2006, p. 192) wrote:

Jericho was also ravaged by the forces of nature. . . . the city seems to have been devastated by earthquakes several times during its history. Jericho was occasionally crippled by forces of wind, torrential rains, and massive mud slides, which contributed to erosion and were potentially dangerous in a city that was built primarily of mud brick.

Norman Herz and Ervan G. Garrison, in their book, Geological Methods for Archaeology (Oxford University Press, 1998) suggest that the erosion of mud brick structures is more or less constant, leading to many successive towns on top of each other (precisely as occurred in Jericho):

Tells in the Middle East are low hills containing the remnants of successive settlements. Much of the sediment forming the tell consists of decomposed remains of mud-brick houses that collapsed and over which new mud-brick houses were built. Over time, the accumulated debris and settlement of each succeeding occupation formed the tell.

This being the case, we can see that it is altogether plausible, and indeed likely, that the top level of Late Bronze walls at Jericho, abandoned after 1200 BC, would erode in the very unique climatic conditions of the region. It had, after all, some 3,100 years to do so before modern scientific archaeology and excavations commenced. Sam Kubba provided another relevant fact for my analysis:

It is often thought that heavy torrential rains will severely erode and damage the surface of an unprotected mud wall. The clay content inherent in the brick will resist wetting, except at the surface. Natural erosion rates for vertical surfaces have recently been determined to be about 2.5 cm in twenty years. (The Iraqi Marshlands and the Marsh Arabs [Trans Pacific Press, 2011], p. 194)

I did the math. Over 3100 years, the erosion would be 4.238 yards, or 12.7 feet. A source on “natural building” adds that “unprotected horizontal surfaces, such as tops of walls, will erode much faster.” Another related book similarly states:

If the material is soft, erosion is undoubtedly fast: it has been observed that massive mud-brick walls around ancient Egyptian cities have been completely eroded, and although some of the erosion was undoubtedly by water, most must have been by wind. (Ronald U. Cooke, Andrew Warren, Andrew S. Goudie, Desert Geomorphology, CRC Press, 1993, p. 292)

An archaeological work related to Turkey remarkably confirms the above data:

[M]ud-brick buildings can last from 50-100 years . . . the bricks could retain durability only if well maintained.. . .

Mud brick is a soft, pliable material, which is subject to erosion by wind, rain, and even to human touch. . . . most processes of deterioration are physical, including erosion, moisture penetrating the surface, and exfoliation due to soluble salts (which is a chemical action but has a physical effect).

Then it was claimed that my entire argument was a form of the ignoratio elenchi logical fallacy (“apparently refuting an opponent while actually disproving something not asserted”).

I have been contending that there is good reason to believe that the wall at Jericho in 1200 BC would have eroded away in the following 3100 years. I never set out to prove that there was a wall from that time period that can be examined today. In my book, I flatly stated, “The walls from the period in question (c. 1200 B.C.) are simply not there” (p. 126, italics in original).

That was my starting assumption, and then I proceeded to offer a theory as to why they are gone now. That’s perfectly legitimate and not unreasonable and not “unscientific,” unless someone believes that all things are eternal and don’t rot and decay and erode (which is absurd). Offering explanations as I did for their absence is not a stupid fallacy. I find it to be a fascinating discussion.

Contrary to the constant digs in this forum against Christians not giving a fig about facts, being fundamentally dishonest, relentless special pleaders etc. (which is standard boilerplate — and boorish — rhetoric in all atheist forums), I’ve never seen a Christian scholar claim that Jericho was not a problem that we had to explain. We freely admit it. It raises a difficulty. I then submit a possible explanation, and I back it up with the corroboration of several archaeologists: at least for the erosion of the walls, generally speaking.

I haven’t found support for my contention that haloclasty may have played a big role in that, except for the analogy of Petra. But that doesn’t immediately make the theory false. We know that it is a factor in the region, primarily due to the Dead Sea. The question then becomes, how much it affected the later (Late Bronze Age) exposed walls of Jericho.

*****

Practical Matters: Perhaps some of my 4,500+ free online articles (the most comprehensive “one-stop” Catholic apologetics site) or fifty-five books have helped you (by God’s grace) to decide to become Catholic or to return to the Church, or better understand some doctrines and why we believe them.

Or you may believe my work is worthy to support for the purpose of apologetics and evangelism in general. If so, please seriously consider a much-needed financial contribution. I’m always in need of more funds: especially monthly support. “The laborer is worthy of his wages” (1 Tim 5:18, NKJV). 1 December 2021 was my 20th anniversary as a full-time Catholic apologist, and February 2022 marked the 25th anniversary of my blog.

PayPal donations are the easiest: just send to my email address: [email protected]. Here’s also a second page to get to PayPal. You’ll see the term “Catholic Used Book Service”, which is my old side-business. To learn about the different methods of contributing (including Zelle), see my page: About Catholic Apologist Dave Armstrong / Donation Information. Thanks a million from the bottom of my heart!

***

Summary: I reply to several atheist biblical skeptics regarding my thesis as to the erosion (mostly by salt) of the Jericho of 1200 BC that was conquered by Joshua & the Hebrews.

“Inspired!: 198 Supposed Biblical Contradictions Resolved”

Last updated on: January 23, 2025 at 11:49 am By Dave Armstrong

0 Comments

Photo Credit: Direction Paradox Contradiction, by CDD20 (12-3-21) [Pixabay / Pixabay Content License]

[completed on 3 June 2023; 146+ pages; all biblical citations from RSV; available for FREE via linked installments on this page]

Table of Contents

Introduction [read below]

Chapter One: How Do Atheists Define a “Biblical Contradiction”? [read online]

Chapter Two: Critics’ Misunderstanding of Biblical Idiom, Language, Theology, or Culture (#1-35) [read online]

Chapter Three: Alleged Factual and Historical Discrepancies (#36-89) [read online]

Chapter Four: Supposed Contradictions and Errors with Regard to Science (#90-95) [read online]

Chapter Five: Manufactured “Contradictions” Based on Ignorance of Logic (#96-120) [read online]

Chapter Six: God’s Revealed Nature and Character (#121-134) [read online]

Chapter Seven: Allegedly Contradictory Accounts of the Infancy of Jesus (#135-138) [read online]

Chapter Eight: Supposedly Clashing Reports of Jesus’ Passion and Crucifixion (#139-158) [read online]

Chapter Nine: Claimed Inconsistencies in the Stories of Jesus’ Burial and Resurrection (#159-191) [read online]

Chapter Ten: Reputed Biblical Moral Difficulties & Internal Confusion (#192-198) [read online]

Appendix: Anthropomorphism and Anthropopathism [read online]

Introduction

Atheists, particularly of the “anti-theist” variety: those who specialize in a constant criticism of Christianity, Christians, and the Bible, are very fond of asserting ad nauseam that the Bible is chock-full of alleged “contradictions.” This, of course, is a disproof, as they see it, of Christian claims that the Bible is God’s inspired revelation, and/or infallible and inerrant. If it’s full of such errors, then clearly (I agree) it couldn’t and wouldn’t be inspired revelation. And then Christians would have a huge problem, since our faith is based on this Bible.

Christian apologists like myself, as a result of these polemical and aggressive, even relentless attacks, have a duty to respond and to disprove a great number of the accusations of alleged massive self-contradiction. This duty flows not only from intellectual principle and the courage of one’s convictions, but also from the responsibility to those within the Christian community who may be stumbled or even lose their faith as a result of these attacks. And we need to be assured and confident that our faith and our Bible are harmonious with reason, including logic.

I have taken up this challenge, and my solutions or resolutions in this book came about and were stimulated as a result of direct challenges from atheists: either personally to me or expressed in articles that I have (I think) refuted. The material found herein is entirely of that nature: based on becoming familiar with a charge made by an atheist and then responding to it with a rebuttal.

There are no “hypothetical” atheist objections in this book. What is here was actually expressed by an atheist or other sort of biblical skeptic. Readers will see for themselves, how such critics reason, and (here’s the good news) how invariably weak – very often, downright foolish and silly — their reasoning is, again and again and again.

I respond in part because Christians, generally speaking (but especially Christian teachers, apologists, catechists, priests, pastors, theologians, etc.), are commanded to defend the faith and by extension, the Bible when they are attacked:

1 Peter 3:15 . . . Always be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence;

Jude 3 . . . contend for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.

And I enter into a controversy like this with a robust faith in the power of Holy Scripture to bear witness to itself:

Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

That makes my job much easier. If indeed a set of books is inspired revelation, and therefore, powerful and moving, due to the fact that they are ultimately the product of not only an omniscient but an all-loving God, then in a sense this collection of canonical books, the Bible, can in effect fully defend itself. It is what it is. The work I am doing, though assuredly necessary, is merely laying out the internal consistency and coherence in the Bible that has always been there, as an inherent aspect of its majesty.

In other words, what I present is nothing new. People simply had to become aware of it. It’s a matter of “revealing the hidden treasures.” When a thing is true, it’s easy to defend, and I have found that to universally be the case in the course of this work (not to deny that some aspects of biblical defense involve more complexity and labor and probing than others). Truth possesses intrinsic power in a way that falsehood never can.

My book, The Word Set in Stone: How Science, History, and Archaeology Prove Biblical Truth (Catholic Answers Press, 2023) was devoted to external objective, scientific and historiographical verification of biblical accuracy and trustworthiness. This one is sort of a companion-piece or parallel work in relation to that volume, and it examines the internal objective logical verification of the Bible.

Is Holy Scripture able to “pass” both of these tests? I think it does so with flying colors! And I have provided readers with 198 separate arguments and abundant intellectual justification and warrant for believing this to be the case.

*
***
*
Practical Matters: I run the most comprehensive “one-stop” Catholic apologetics site: rated #1 for Christian sites by leading AI tool, ChatGPT — endorsed by popular Protestant blogger Adrian Warnock. Perhaps some of my 5,000+ free online articles or fifty-six books have helped you (by God’s grace) to decide to become Catholic or to return to the Church, or better understand some doctrines and why we believe them.

PayPal donations are the easiest: just send to my email address: [email protected]. Here’s also a second page to get to PayPal. You’ll see the term “Catholic Used Book Service”, which is my old side-business. To learn about the different methods of contributing (including Zelle and 100% tax-deductible donations if desired), see my page: About Catholic Apologist Dave Armstrong / Donation Information. Thanks a million from the bottom of my heart!

*
***
*

Photo Credit: Direction Paradox Contradiction, by CDD20 (12-3-21) [Pixabay / Pixabay Content License]

Summary: Book by Dave Armstrong (6-3-23), in which he examines 198 examples of alleged biblical contradictions and demonstrates that they actually aren’t that at all.

Last updated on 23 January 2025

Judas’ “Thirty Coins of Silver”: Archaeology & History

Last updated on: June 18, 2023 at 6:17 pm By Dave Armstrong

0 Comments

Atheist charge: According to Matthew 26:15, the chief priests gave “thirty pieces of silver” to Judas. But how is that possible, since there were no silver coins used as currency in Jesus’ time, and there had not been any for about 300 years?

This is untrue. The shekel was made of silver, and was in use in Israel in the first century A.D. The silver shekel (94% or more pure) was first produced in Tyre (present-day Lebanon) in 125 BC and continued up through 66 AD. In the same book of Matthew, “the half-shekel tax” was referred to in 17:24. If atheists won’t accept that because it’s from the Bible (a most irrational attitude, given the Bible’s proven historical accuracy, again and again), then we can submit the Jewish first century historian Josephus, who referred to the half-shekel temple and civil tax or “tribute” (Wars of the Jews, VII, ch. 6. Sec. 6):

Caesar . . . laid a tribute upon the Jews wheresoever they were, and enjoined every one of them to bring two drachmae every year into the Capitol, as they used to pay the same to the temple at Jerusalem. And this was the state of the Jewish affairs at this time.

The drachma (primarily Greek) was made of silver (see also, Robert B. Strassler, The Landmark Thucydides, New York, Free Press [1996]. 620). A half-shekel (biblical Hebrew) was the equivalent of 1.676 drachmae (biblical Greek). New Bible Dictionary (ed. J. D. Douglas, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1962, “Money”) states:

The basic Greek coin was the silver drachme . . .

*

The drachme is mentioned only in Lk. 15:8 f. . . . where it is translated ‘pieces of silver'(EVV) [RSV: “ten silver coins”]: . . . It was regarded as approximately equivalent to the Roman denarius . . .

*

The didrachmon or 2-drachm piece was used among the Jews for the half-shekel required for the annual Temple tax (Mt. 17:24). . . .

*

The stater, tetradrachmon, or 4-drachm piece, is found only in Mt. 17:27 [RSV: “shekel”], where it is the coin which would pay the Temple tax for Jesus and Peter. . . .

*

Most numismatists agree that this was the coin in which Judas received his thirty pieces of silver (Mt. 26:15 . . .). (p. 840)

Jesus also referred to the denarius, made of silver (Mt 20:2, 9-10, 13).

Moreover, at Horvat ‘Ethry in Israel (22 miles southwest of Jerusalem), between 1999 and 2001, Boaz Zissu and Amir Ganor of the Israeli Antiquities Authority discovered a half-shekel coin from the 2nd century A.D., with the words “Half-Shekel” in paleo-Hebrew on it. It had a silver content of 6.87 grams. See their article, “Horvat Ethri — A Jewish Village from the Second Temple Period and the Bar Kokhba Revolt in the Judean Foothills,” Journal of Jewish Studies 60 (1), Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, London 2009, 90-136, pp. 96; 118.

But there is more. Smithsonian Magazine, in an article dated September 16, 2022 (“Ancient Coin Made in Defiance of Roman Rule Returns to Israel,” by Ella Feldman), noted that an ancient Jewish silver quarter-shekel, dated 69 A.D., had been found at an auction in Denver.

So much for this atheist objection . . . I feel like I just crushed a grape with a sledgehammer.

“Coins” (International Standard Bible Encyclopedia)

“Coin” (McClintock and Strong Biblical Cyclopedia)

Resurrection #19: When Was Judas Paid? [4-30-21]

Resurrection #20: Motivation of Judas’ Betrayal [4-30-21]

Resurrection #21: Chronology of Judas’ Evil Plans [5-1-21]

Resurrection #22: Did Judas Repent Or Not? [5-2-21]

Resurrection #23: How Did Judas Die? [5-3-21]

Resurrection #24: Judas & the Potter’s Field [5-3-21]

***

Practical Matters: Perhaps some of my 4,300+ free online articles (the most comprehensive “one-stop” Catholic apologetics site) or fifty-three books have helped you (by God’s grace) to decide to become Catholic or to return to the Church, or better understand some doctrines and why we believe them.

PayPal donations are the easiest: just send to my email address: [email protected]. You’ll see the term “Catholic Used Book Service”, which is my old side-business. To learn about the different methods of contributing, including 100% tax deduction, etc., see my page: About Catholic Apologist Dave Armstrong / Donation Information. Thanks a million from the bottom of my heart!

***

Photo credit: Loren Bider, Judas [public domain / PublicDomainPictures.Net]

***

Summary: Atheists and other biblical skeptics object to Judas “thirty coins of silver.” I document how various coins made of silver in 1st century Israel have been established.

The Queen of Sheba, Solomon, & Archaeology

Last updated on: April 27, 2023 at 2:36 pm By Dave Armstrong

0 Comments

1 Kings 10:1-2, 10-11 (RSV) Now when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the LORD, she came to test him with hard questions. She came to Jerusalem with a very great retinue, with camels bearing spices, and very much gold, and precious stones . . . Then she gave the king a hundred and twenty talents of gold, and a very great quantity of spices, and precious stones; never again came such an abundance of spices as these which the queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon. Moreover the fleet of Hiram, which brought gold from Ophir, brought from Ophir a very great amount of almug wood and precious stones.

The Hebrew Sheba is understood by all to be the equivalent of Saba“: a kingdom (the Sabaeans or Sabeans) in the southwest of the Arabian peninsula (current-day Yemen). Joel 3:8 refers to “the Sabeans, . . . a nation far off.” Isaiah 45:14 also makes mention of “the Sabeans,” as does Job 1:15, while Job 6:19 has “the travelers of Sheba” and Psalm 72:10, “the kings of Sheba” (cf. Ezek. 38:13). They were exporters of gold (Ps. 72:15: “gold of Sheba”; Isa. 60:6: “those from Sheba . . . shall bring gold and frankincense”), as well as of precious stones and spices (Ezek. 37:22: “The traders of Sheba . . . traded with you; they exchanged for your wares the best of all kinds of spices, and all precious stones, and gold”), and incenses and perfumes (Jer. 6:20: “frankincense . . . from Sheba”). Jesus assumes her historicity as well as Solomon’s:

Matthew 12:42 The queen of the South will arise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here. (cf. Lk 11:31; almost identical language)

Sheba is mentioned in conjunction with four other peoples and trading and commerce in Isaiah 60:6-7. Midian was located in northwestern Arabia. Ephah is also believed to be Arabian, and may have been near present-day Median (Yathrib in ancient times). Kedar, or the Qedarites, attested since the 8th century B.C., were located in northern Arabia, as were the people of Nebaioth, descendants of the Ishmaelites. These were likely associated with Sheba in the Bible because of their being on the incense trade route, which flourished on the western and southern coasts of Arabian peninsula, by the Red Sea and Indian Ocean.

Egyptologist and archaeologist Kenneth Kitchen provides the basic background:

In the late eighth and early seventh centuries we have Assyrian mentions of Itamru (Yithas’amar) and Karibilu (Karibil) as kings of Saba . . . Before that, Assyrian sources record Sabaean trade caravans explicitly for the later eighth and implicitly for the early ninth centuries, little more than half a century after Solomon [r. c. 970-c. 931 B.C.]. As they traveled freely north, so could she have done. (1)

Does trade from Sheba date to the Queen of Sheba or even further back, according to secular science? One historian offers near-proof:

In the ancient period, it would seem that South Arabia and the Horn of Africa were the major suppliers of incense, . . . Early ritual texts from Egypt show that incense was being brought to the upper Nile by land traders, but perhaps the most spectacular evidence of this trade is provided by the frescos dated to around 1500 BC on the walls of the temple at Thebes commemorating the journey of a fleet that the Queen of Egypt had sent to the Land of Punt. Five ships are depicted in these reliefs, piled high with treasure, and one of them shows thirty-one small incense trees in tubs being carried on board. (2)

The “Land of Punt” is generally agreed to be in eastern Africa: modern-day Somalia and/or Ethiopia: directly across from ancient Sheba in present-day Yemen. If Egyptian ships could make it to Punt via the Red Sea, they could just as easily stop by Sheba on the other side of the water. And the queen of Sheba could have (and probably did) travel mostly by water, with a relatively short land journey to get to Jerusalem.

Keall uncovered zoomorphic and anthropomorphic figurines from the site of al-Midammam on the Red Sea in ancient Sheba, dated to between c. 2500 B.C. and the tenth century B.C. (3) Gunnar Sperveslage (4) summarizes an abundance of research findings that establish a date of trade between ancient Yemen and Egypt to some dozen centuries before Solomon and Sheba:

At the end of the 2nd millennium BCE [1000 B.C.] the camel was domesticated on the Arabian Peninsula . . . (5) (6) and it replaced the donkey as a pack animal on long distance trade routes. The ability of the camel to get along without water for days increased the efficiency of trade in desert regions. Although watering holes and wells occur frequently, only the large oases, which are not less than a few days’ ride apart, were capable of supplying large caravans with enough water. The overland trade of aromatics, and especially of frankincense, was the most important source of revenue for South Arabia, resulting in prosperity and wealth. . . . not long after the domestication of the camel, the ancient South Arabian Kingdom of Saba arose as an ancient civilisation of high culture. (p. 305)

*

According to recent archaeological fieldwork, the time span of intercultural contacts can be projected back at least as far as the late Old Kingdom. [which ended c. 2200 B.C.] . . . The Italo-American excavations at Mersa Gawasis on the Egyptian Red Sea coast exposed detailed information on the ancient harbour site and its use from the late Old Kingdom to the early New Kingdom (7) (8) . . . Ship timbers and naval equipment, such as blades of steering oars, ropes, anchors and cargo boxes have been found, as well as some fragments of exotic pottery, indicating the wide network of naval activities around 2000 BCE. A few pottery sherds occurred that originated from the Yemeni Tihama and the Aden region. They were found in assemblages dating from the late Old to the late Middle Kingdom [which ended in 1782 B.C.] (9) (10) . . . the presence of South Arabian pottery in Middle Kingdom Egypt illustrates beyond doubt aspects of long distance trade and exchange of goods conducted by people from ancient Yemen long before the rise of the Sabaean Kingdom. (p. 308)

A very recent discovery is even more directly relevant to the question of Solomon and Sheba. Daniel Vainstub, of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, summarizes:

In Eilat Mazar’s excavations in the Ophel in Jerusalem, a partially preserved inscription engraved on the shoulder of a pithos was found in 2012 in a context dated to the 10th century BCE. . . . In this study, it is argued that the inscription was engraved in the Ancient South Arabian script and that its language is Sabaean. The inscription reads “ ]šy ladanum 5.” The aromatic ladanum (Cistus ladaniferus),. . . [is] the second component of incense according to Exod 30:34. The inscription was engraved before the locally made vessel was fired, leading to the conclusion that a Sabaean functionary entrusted with aromatic components of incense was active in Jerusalem by the time of King Solomon. (11)

Our knowledge of the ASA [“ancient south Arabian”] script and the languages spoken and written by the civilizations that developed in the southwest corner of the Arabian Peninsula as of the end of the second millennium BCE has expanded enormously in recent decades . . . [due to, among other things] intensive archaeological excavations in the area, which have yielded stratigraphically datable inscriptions. . . . they have enabled the chronological rearrangement of ASA inscriptions on a firm radiometric basis rather than on their paleographic development alone. (13) This last point is of great importance for the present study. Before the abovementioned 14C analyses, most ASA inscriptions were dated to the 8th century BCE; now, it has become clear that the two branches of ASA script—the monumental, generally called musnad, and the minuscule, generally called zabūr—were in use in the southwest corner of the Arabian Peninsula as early as the 11th century BCE . . . the letters [of the inscription in question] were most probably written before the end of the second millennium BCE . . . (14)

This [is] the first time an ASA inscription dated to the 10th century BCE has been found in such a northern location . . . As the 10th-century BCE South Arabian political scene is well known, there seems to be little doubt that the writer of this inscription was a Sabaean. At this time, the Kingdom of Sheba was the dominant power in South Arabia, with a flourishing economy based on the irrigated cultivation of incense and perfume plants and their marketing over long distances by means of camel caravans . . . The Ophel inscription is the most ancient ASA inscription found so far in the Land of Israel. (15) (16)

The Ophel inscription makes an important contribution to the age-old question of the likelihood of a visit by a delegation from the South Arabian Peninsula to King Solomon in the 10th century BCE as related in 1 Kgs 10 and 2 Chr 9; . . . Scholars . . . who have based their opinions on the data of the last two decades, will find strong support of their opinion in the inscription. (17)

Many theoretically possible routes have been proposed for the trade between Southwest Asia and the Levant from the Bronze Age onward . . . One of these is the maritime route, sailing around the Arabian Peninsula and along the Red Sea. This is a valid possibility also for the trade route between Sheba and Israel in the 10th century BCE, which could be traveled by sea as far as Eilat and continued northward by land . . . (18)

Kitchen notes another interesting factor about the queen of Sheba:

In north Arabia we have a series of executive queens, seemingly queens regnant, in the ninth and early seventh centuries, as Assyrian texts prove clearly. . . . Zabibe (738), Samsi (733), Iati’e (703) — and lastly Te’elkhunu in 691 . . . After 690, never again do we find any Arabian queen playing any active role whatsoever in history. . . .

Thus, in terms of old-fashioned OT scholarship, the queen of Sheba is “pre-Deuteronomic” (well before 621, the imaginary date for the first “publication” of Deuteronomy and its religious beliefs). There was no rational reason for inventing a story about a queen . . . visiting Solomon at any time after 650 at the latest . . . Our queen should belong to genuine historical tradition . . . (19)

As we saw in the Bible passage above, Hiram brought gold to Solomon and Judah from Ophir, and the queen of Sheba brought “very much gold.” The gold could have been derived from the same place. Where is this Ophir? In my book, The Word Set in Stone (2023, pp. 23-24), I took the position that it was Mahd Adh Dhahab (“Cradle of Gold”), a small gold area and mine in the northwest Arabian Peninsula. Geologists believe more 30 metric tons of gold came out of this mine in antiquity. This area was directly in the line of the ancient incense trade route. Besides the biblical connection of Ophir with gold, we have a Hebrew ostracon (likely eighth century B. C.), found in 1951, with the inscription, “Gold of Ophir for Beth-Horon — 30 shekels.”

FOOTNOTES

1) Kenneth A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2003), 116.

2) Himanshu Prabha Ray, The Archaeology of Seafaring in Ancient South Asia (Cambridge University Press: 2003), 31.

3) E. Keall, “Possible connections in antiquity between the Red Sea coast of Yemen and the Horn of Africa,” in P. Lunde, A. Porter (eds), Trade and travel in the Red Sea region (Oxford: 2004), 45, figures 11-12.

4) Gunnar Sperveslage, “Intercultural contacts between Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula at the turn of the 2nd to the 1st millennium BCE,” ch. 14 (pp. 303-330), in J. C. Moreno García (ed.): Dynamics of Production in the Ancient Near East 1300-500 BC (Oxford: 2016). (Link)

5) See H.-P Uerpmann & M. Uerpmann, “The appearance of the domestic camel in south-east Arabia,” Journal of Oman Studies 12 (2002): 235–260.

6) See M. Heide, “The domestication of the camel: biological, archaeological and inscriptional evidence from Mesopotamia, Egypt, Israel and Arabia, and traditional evidence from the Hebrew Bible,” Ugarit-Forschungen 42 (2010): 331–382.

7) K. A. Bard & R. Fattovich (eds), Harbor of the Pharaohs to the Land of Punt. Archaeological Investigations at Mersa/Wadi Gawasis, Egypt, 2001–2005 (Naples: 2007).

8) K. A. Bard, R. Fattovich, & C. Ward, “Sea Port to Punt: new evidence from Mersā Gawāsīs, Red Sea (Egypt),” in J. Starkey, P. Starkey & T. Wilkinson (eds), Natural Resources and Cultural Connections of the Red Sea (British Archaeological Report S1661 /Society for Arabian Studies Monographs 5), 143–148, (Oxford: 2007).

9) Bard & Fattovich, 130–131.

10) Bard, Fattovich, & Ward, 147.

11) Daniel Vainstub, “Incense from Sheba for the Jerusalem Temple,” Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology (Jan. 2023) 4: 42–68. (Link)

12) Vainstub, 45-46.

13) See M.B. Piotrovskij and A. V. Sedov, “Field-Studies in Southern Arabia,” Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia (1994) 1: 202–219; particularly pp. 204-206; A. Avanzini, Corpus of South Arabian Inscriptions I–III: Qatabanic, Marginal Qatabanic, Awsaniete Inscriptions (Pisa: Edizioni Plus—Università di Pisa, 2004), 10.

14) See P. Stein, “Palaeography of the Ancient South Arabian Script: New Evidence for an Absolute Chronology,” Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy (2013) 24: 186–195.

15) Vainstub, 59.

16) See A. De Maigret, “A Sabaean Stratigraphy from Barāqish,” Arabia (2007 –2010) 4: 67–95.

17) Vainstub, 61.

18) Vainstub, 62. See also the media article highlighting this find: Amanda Borschel-Dan, “Newly deciphered inscription gives clue to biblical queen of Sheba’s Jerusalem visit,” The Times of Israel, April 3, 2023. https://www.timesofisrael.com/newly-deciphered-inscription-gives-clue-to-biblical-queen-of-shebas-jerusalem-visit/.

19) Kitchen, 117.

20) Kitchen, 120.

***

See Related Articles

Archaeology & Solomon’s Temple-Period Ivory [1-28-23]

King Solomon’s “Mines” & Archaeological Evidence [3-24-23]

Solomon’s “Impossible” (?) Wealth & Archaeology [4-25-23]

Solomon’s Temple and its Archaeological Analogies (Also, Parallels to Solomon’s Palace) [4-25-23]

***

Practical Matters: Perhaps some of my 4,200+ free online articles (the most comprehensive “one-stop” Catholic apologetics site) or fifty-one books have helped you (by God’s grace) to decide to become Catholic or to return to the Church, or better understand some doctrines and why we believe them.

***

Photo credit: Solomon And The Queen Of Sheba, by Giovanni Demin (1789-1859) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

***

Summary: Is the queen of Sheba and her famous visit to see king Solomon the stuff of myth and legend or actual history? I provide significant evidence in favor of the latter.

Solomon’s “Impossible” (?) Wealth & Archaeology

Last updated on: April 25, 2023 at 1:35 pm By Dave Armstrong

0 Comments

1 Kings 9:14 (RSV) Hiram had sent to the king one hundred and twenty talents of gold.

1 Kings 10:10-11 Then she gave the king a hundred and twenty talents of gold, and a very great quantity of spices, and precious stones; never again came such an abundance of spices as these which the queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon. Moreover the fleet of Hiram, which brought gold from Ophir, brought from Ophir a very great amount of almug wood and precious stones.

1 Kings 10:14-18 Now the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was six hundred and sixty-six talents of gold, besides that which came from the traders and from the traffic of the merchants, and from all the kings of Arabia and from the governors of the land. King Solomon made two hundred large shields of beaten gold; six hundred shekels of gold went into each shield. And he made three hundred shields of beaten gold; three minas of gold went into each shield; and the king put them in the House of the Forest of Lebanon. The king also made a great ivory throne, and overlaid it with the finest gold.

Archaeologist Kenneth Kitchen observed, “Such figures have very often been dismissed as fantasy; but it is wiser to check on their background before jumping to premature conclusions.” (1) Kitchen notes that — “from firsthand sources” — we know that:

Metten II of Tyre (ca. 730) paid a tribute of 150 talents of gold to . . . Tilgath-pileser III (2) of Assyria [r. 745-727 B.C.], while in turn his successor Sargon II (727-705) (3) bestowed 154 talents of gold upon the Babylonian gods — about 6 tons in each case. (4)

Pharaoh Thutmose III of Egypt (5) [r. 1479-1426 B.C.] offered approximately 13.5 tons (more than 200 talents) of gold implements to the god Amun in Thebes, and additionally a fabulous collection of gold vessels. This constitutes almost one-third of Solomon’s reported annual revenue of gold, and it was merely one occasion, at one Egyptian temple.

But that’s a mere pittance compared to Pharaoh Osorkon I [r. c. 979-c. 973 B.C.] (6), who offered “383 tons of gold and silver” (7) to the gods of Egypt in his first four years as Pharaoh. And it’s nothing in comparison with the 1,180 tons of gold from Susa that Alexander the Great plundered, or the 7,000 tons of gold altogether that he took away from the conquered Persian Empire. (8) The website Iran (9) states that the gold taken from Persia was “more gold than today in Fort Knox.” Thomas R. Martin and Christopher W. Blackwell, biographers of Alexander the Great, estimate it to have been “200,000 talents” of precious metals (10): a sum that would be about $1.6 trillion in today’s U.S. dollars.

Thus, on what prima facie basis should the amount of wealth that the Bible attributes to King Solomon be questioned as supposed fantasy and fiction, in light of the above historical analogies from the documented facts of history?

FOOTNOTES

1) Kenneth A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2003), 133.

2) Donald John Wiseman, “Tilgath-pileser III,” Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Tiglath-pileser-III.

3) Jorgen Laessoe, “Sargon II,” Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sargon-II. This article dates the beginning of Sargon’s reign to 721 B.C., as opposed to Kitchen’s 727.

4) Kitchen, 133-134.

5) Peter F. Dornan, Margaret Stefana Drower, “”Thutmose III,” Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thutmose-III.

6) “Osorkon I,” Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Osorkon-I.

7) Kitchen, 134.

8) Ibid.

9) “Alexander,” Iran. https://www.the-persians.co.uk/alexander1.htm.

10) Thomas R. Martin and Christopher W. Blackwell, Alexander the Great: The Story of an Ancient Life (Cambridge University Press, 2012), 86. https://www.amazon.com/Alexander-Great-Story-Ancient-Life/dp/0521767482/ref=sr_1_1.

***

See Related Articles

Archaeology & Solomon’s Temple-Period Ivory [1-28-23]

King Solomon’s “Mines” & Archaeological Evidence [3-24-23]

Solomon’s Temple and its Archaeological Analogies (Also, Parallels to Solomon’s Palace) [4-25-23]

***

Photo credit: Linnaea Mallette [public domain / PublicDomainPictures.Net]

***

Summary: Many critics have stated that Solomon’s wealth was “impossible”. Analogies to other rich monarchs in ancient times, however, show that it was completely possible.

Archaeology & Ten (More) Kings of Judah & Israel

Last updated on: April 20, 2023 at 10:09 am By Dave Armstrong

0 Comments

Thus far, in my articles and my 2023 book, The Word Set in Stone: How Archaeology, Science, and History Back Up the Bible, I have documented archaeological confirmation — of one sort or another — for kings of the United Monarchy (Saul, David, and Solomon), and kings in the period of the divided kingdom of (southern) Judah (931-586 B.C.) and (northern) Israel (931-722 B.C.). These include Hezekiah, Ahaz, Jotham, Pekah, Jehoiachin, Zedekiah, Jehoiakim, Manasseh, Rehoboam, Ahaziah of Judah, Jehoram I of Israel, and Ahab (with Queen Jezebel).

That’s already fifteen kings out of a total of 23 kings in Judah, and 19 kings in northern Israel (= 42 total). Now I shall document the same sort of evidence for ten more kings, which means that I now have extrabiblical documentation for 25 out of 42 kings (60%). It all adds up to the Bible being relentlessly historically accurate.

2 Chronicles 26:1, 3 (RSV) And all the people of Judah took Uzziah, who was sixteen years old, and made him king instead of his father Amazi’ah. . . . Uzziah was sixteen years old when he began to reign, and he reigned fifty-two years in Jerusalem.

Uzziah, king of Judah (aka Azariah in 1 Kings 15:1-7), according to Encyclopedia Britannica reigned from 791-739 B.C. (1) Bryan Windle (2) details some of the evidence for his historicity:

Two seals which once belonged to officials in his court mention him by name. One reads, “belonging to Abiyau, servant of Uzziah.” (3)^{. . .}The second seal is made of red limestone and reads, “Belonging to Sebnayau, servant of Uzziah.” (4) . . . Based on the shapes of the letters and the styles of the seals, both date to the time of King Uzziah.

Windle continues,

A fragmentary inscription from the Assyrian king, Tiglath-Pileser III mentions “Azariah of Judah” (Uzziah’s other name) several times. In one part, Tiglath-Pileser writes: “19 districts of Hamath, together with the cities of their environs, on the shore of the sea of the setting sun, who had gone over to Azariah in revolt and contempt [of Assyria].” (5) While this event is not known in Scripture, it would be consistent with Uzziah’s influence as he expanded his control in the region . . . (6)

Encyclopedia Britannica (7) dates the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III to 745-727 B.C., which overlaps that of Uzziah by some six years.

Uzziah was a prolific builder:

2 Chronicles 26:6, 9-10 . . . he built cities in the territory of Ashdod and elsewhere among the Philistines. . . . Moreover Uzziah built towers in Jerusalem at the Corner Gate and at the Valley Gate and at the Angle, and fortified them. And he built towers in the wilderness, and hewed out many cisterns, . . .

A fortress dated to Uzziah’s time-period has been discovered by archaeologists at Ain el-Qudeirat (or Kadesh Barnea). It had eight rectangular towers and a large cistern. (8) Archaeologists Negev and Gibson wrote about it:

A completely new fortress was built in the 8th century BC (Stratum II) . . . [with] three projecting towers on each side. . . . This fortress was probably erected by Uzziah . . . Its destruction is ascribed to the Assyrians. (9)

Moreover, Stratum III at Lachish, from Uzziah’s time, “was strongly fortified and surrounded by a double wall . . . further strengthened by buttresses and towers . . . a formidable shaft measuring 75 feet by 75 feet by 66 feet . . . was probably intended to provide the city with a safe water supply . . .” (10)

Beth Shemesh (Stratum II), has been dated to the 9th-7th centuries B.C., and among the many finds there included “a large plastered water reservoir.” (11)

Manasseh, king of Judah, reigned from c. 686-642 B.C. (12) The Bible states that he reigned fifty-five years (2 Kings 21:1), but this likely includes eleven years of co-regency with his father, Hezekiah. (13) A seal has been discovered that may be one that Manasseh used during his co-regency with his father. In a book about such seals, Nahman Avigad concluded,

a thorough microscopic examination of the stone revealed that the engraving does not give the impression of being recent. Moreover, the script, showing a fluent classic Hebrew hand, appears to be authentic in form and spirit. (14)

Bryan Windle adds,

Interestingly, it bears the same iconography – the Egyptian winged scarab – as that of numerous seals attributed to King Hezekiah. While some may be surprised to see an Egyptian symbol on a Hebrew king’s seal, it must be noted that Hezekiah established an alliance with Egypt against the Assyrians (2 Ki 18:21; Isaiah 36:6). (15)

In the annals of Assyrian king Esarhaddon (r. 680-669 B.C.) (16), Manasseh was named as a mere vassal, conscripted to deliver wood for the construction of Esarhaddon’s palace. (17) Windle continues,

Esarhaddon’s son and successor, Ashurbanipal, also mentions “Manasseh, King of Judah” in his annals, which are recorded on the Rassam Cylinder, named after Hormuzd Rassam, who discovered it in the North Palace of Nineveh in 1854. This ten-faced, cuneiform cylinder includes a record of Ashurbanipal’s campaigns against Egypt and the Levant. (18)

This cylinder states in part,

During my march (to Egypt) 22 kings from the seashore, the islands and the mainland, Ba’al, king of Tyre, Manasseh (Mi-in-si-e), king of Judah (la-ti-di)…[etc.]…servants who belong to me, brought heavy gifts (tdmartu) to me and kissed my feet. (19)

The dates of reign for Ashurbanipal are 668-627 B.C. (20), so we see that 26 of those years are contemporaneous with Mannaseh.

2 Kings 14:23 In the fifteenth year of Amaziah the son of Joash, king of Judah, Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel, began to reign in Samaria, and he reigned forty-one years.

Jeroboam II ruled from c. 791-c. 750 in Israel (21). Bryan Windle (22) summarizes a key evidence for his historicity,

The “Megiddo Seal,” as it called, was discovered in excavations at Megiddo in the early 1900’s. The seal was made of jasper, and depicted a crouching lion, along with the inscription, “(belonging) to Shema, Servant of Jeroboam.” (23)

Archaeologist Kenneth A. Kitchen observes,

The famous seal of ‘Shema servant [=minister of state] of Jeroboam’ is almost universally recognized to belong to the reign of Jeroboam II of Israel . . . attempts to date it to Jeroboam I’s reign are unconvincing. (24)

In 2020, archaeologist Yuval Goren of Ben-Gurion University claimed to have proven the authenticity of a bulla (clay seal impression) bearing the image of a roaring lion and a paleo-Hebrew inscription, “(Belonging) to Shema, Servant of Jeroboam.” (25)

2 Kings 17:6 In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria captured Samaria, and he carried the Israelites away to Assyria, . . .

Hoshea was the final king of Israel, and reigned from 731-722 B.C. (26) Windle (27) noted,

An ancient seal, bearing the paleo-Hebrew inscription, “Belonging to Abdi, servant of Hoshea” was purchased at a Sotheby’s auction in 1993 for $80,000. . . . At the bottom is an Egyptian winged sun disk, an image that is common on prominent Hebrew seals, such as that of King Hezekiah. In ancient seals, the servant’s title, ’ebed, indicates that the master was a king, (28) . . . Moreover, epigrapher André Lemaire notes, “The paleo-Hebrew writing on this seal fits very well with other dated inscriptions from the last third of the eighth century B.C.E.” (29) Even though the seal was purchased on the antiquities market, most experts support its authenticity.

2 Kings 15:29-30 In the days of Pekah king of Israel Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria came and captured Ijon, Abel-beth-maacah, Jan-oah, Kedesh, Hazor, Gilead, and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali; and he carried the people captive to Assyria. Then Hoshea the son of Elah made a conspiracy against Pekah the son of Remaliah, and struck him down, and slew him, and reigned in his stead, in the twentieth year of Jotham the son of Uzziah.

Along these same lines, Hoshea appears in the royal inscriptions of the Assyrian king, Tiglath-Pileser III (r. 745-727). Summary Inscription No. 4 reads:

The land of Bit-Humria [literally Omri-Land, that is Israel]…all of its people […to] Assyria I carried off Pekah, their king, [I/they ki]lled…and Hoshea [as king] I appointed over them. (30)

2 Kings 17:3, 5-6 Against him came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria; and Hoshea became his vassal, and paid him tribute. . . . Then the king of Assyria invaded all the land and came to Samaria, and for three years he besieged it. In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria captured Samaria, and he carried the Israelites away to Assyria, . . .

This biblical account of the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel is corroborated by the Babylonian Chronicle ABC 1 (BM 92502) which states, “On the twenty-fifth of the month Tebêtu, Šalmaneser in Assyria and Akkad ascended the throne. He ravaged Samaria.” (31) Shalmaneser V reigned from 726-721 B.C. (32)

1 Kings 16:23 In the thirty-first year of Asa king of Judah, Omri began to reign over Israel, and reigned for twelve years; . . .

Omri was king of Israel from 886/885-875/874. (33) He is referred to several times in the Mesha Stele (34) (or Moabite Stone), dated to 840 B.C., in which King Mesha of Moab describes his exploits. He’s also mentioned on the Black Obelisk of Assyrian king Shalmaneser III (r. 858-824 B.C.) (35) Even a hundred years after Omri’s reign, Israel was referred to by Assyrian kings as “Omri-land”: by Tiglath-Pileser III (r. 745-727 B.C.) in his Annalistic Records (36) and by Sargon II (37) (r. 721-705) (38).

2 Kings 10:36 The time that Jehu reigned over Israel in Samaria was twenty-eight years.

Jehu reigned over Israel in the general period of c. 842-815 B.C. (39) or 841-814/813 (40). Bryan Windle (41) sums up the archaeological evidence supporting the biblical record with regard to this king:

Jehu’s reign corresponded with that of Shalmaneser III [r. 858-824 B.C.], . . . One of the longest versions of Shalmaneser III’s annals . . . records the various campaigns he took through the first 21 years of his reign. (42) In his 18^th year, Shalmaneser . . . wrote, “I received tribute from Ba’ali-manzeri of Tyre and from Jehu of the house of Omri.” (43) Other copies of Shalmaneser’s annals have been discovered with the same description of Jehu’s tribute. These include inscriptions on two monumental bulls discovered at Nimrud (ancient Calah), (44) in an annalistic tablet, (45) as well as on the Kurba’il statue of Shalmaneser III. (46) . . .

It should be noted that, in Assyrian records, Jehu is often associated with the “house of Omri” or described as the “son of Omri.” Jehu was not a descendant of Omri; rather he was the successor to the Omride dynasty. The Assyrians often referred to successive rulers in relation to the name of the ruler of the country with whom they had first contact. (47)

2 Kings 13:10 In the thirty-seventh year of Joash king of Judah Jehoash the son of Jehoahaz began to reign over Israel in Samaria, and he reigned sixteen years.

Jehoash II, Or Joash (2 Chron. 25:17), was king of Israel from 806/805-791/790. (48) Bryan Windle describes the primary extrabiblical evidence in his case (49):

Shortly after Jehoash began to reign, the Assyrian king, Adad-Nirari III [r. 810-783 B.C.] (50) invaded the western lands. A victory stele (monument) was discovered in 1967 during excavations at Tell al-Rimah which contains a record of Adad-Nirari III’s campaign. While its date is unknown, many scholars associate it with Adad-Narari III’s expedition westward in 796 BC. (51) It reads:

. . . I received the tribute of Jehoash the Samarian, of the Tyrian ruler and of the Sidonian ruler. (52)

2 Kings 15:17, 19 In the thirty-ninth year of Azariah king of Judah Menahem the son of Gadi began to reign over Israel, and he reigned ten years in Samaria. . . . Pul the king of Assyria came against the land; and Menahem gave Pul a thousand talents of silver, that he might help him to confirm his hold of the royal power.

Menahem reigned in Israel from 749/748-739/738 (53). Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III (r. 745-727 B.C.) invaded Samaria in 743 B.C. and boasted, “As for Menahem I overwhelmed him like a snowstorm and he . . . fled like a bird, alone, and bowed to my feet. I returned him to his place and imposed tribute upon him: gold, silver, linen garments with multicolored trimmings…” (54) In another inscription, “Menahem of Samaria” is named — with sixteen other kings — as having paid tribute to Tiglath-Pileser III. (55).

2 Kings 22:1 Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned thirty-one years in Jerusalem. . . .

Josiah was king of Judah from c. 640-609 (56). Kitchen writes,

Ostracon Mousaieff 1, . . . required payment of three shekels of silver to “the House [= temple] of the LORD [YHWH] “in the name of ‘Ashiah/’Oshiah the king, via a man [Z]echariah. The script is either eighth . . .. or seventh century . . . In the former case, ‘Ashiah/’Oshiah is a variant of Joash, king of Judah; in the latter case, of Josiah, which is the latest date possible. In Josiah’s time a Levite named Zechariah was concerned with repairs to the Jerusalem temple (cf. 2 Chron. 34:12), . . . (57)

Sure enough, after Kitchen wrote the above (in 2003), further evidence of King Josiah has surfaced. A signet ring was discovered in the ancient City of David in Jerusalem which features the name of one of King Josiah’s officials, Nathan-melech, a “chamberlain” named in 2 Kings 23:11. The inscription of the ring says, “belonging to Nathan-Melech, Servant of the King” (58). Sixteen years’ time in biblical archaeology is more than enough for all kinds of new exciting discoveries to be made. They literally arrive every few months. This find is a classic case, and not in the least surprising. Also, a seal with the text “Asayahu servant of the king” probably belonged to “Asaiah the king’s servant” (2 Kings 22:12). (59)

2 Kings 8:16-17 In the fifth year of Joram the son of Ahab, king of Israel, Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, began to reign. He was thirty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned eight years in Jerusalem.

Jehoram II reigned in Judah from 849/848-842. (60) He is mentioned on the Tel Dan stele (61), a Canaanite artifact discovered in 1993 — most notable for its reference to the “House of David.” The prevailing opinion as to its date is the second half of the ninth century B.C.: precisely when Jehoram II reigned. He’s referred to as the father of Ahaziah of Judah (see 2 Kings 8:24-25).

Kenneth Kitchen explains the absence in extrabiblical sources of most of the rest of the kings of Judah and Israel, and the overall extraordinary accuracy of the biblical accounts:

Here the evidence began with Omri and Ahab, coming up to the mid-ninth century. Before that time, no Neo-Assyrian king is known to have penetrated the southwest Levant, to gain (or record) knowledge of any local king there. And it was not Egyptian custom to name foreign rulers unless they had some positive relationship with them (e.g., a treaty). Foes were treated with nameless contempt. . . .

But from 853 onward we do have some data. Some nine out of the fourteen Israelite kings are named in external sources. Of the five missing men, three were ephemeral (Zechariah, Shallum, Pekahiah) and two reigned (Jehoahaz, Jeoboam II) when Assyria was not active in the southwest Levant. And one of these (Jeroboam II) is in any case known from a subject’s seal stone. Judah was father away than Israel, so the head count is smaller: from Jehoram I to Zedekiah we have currently mention of eight kings out of fifteen. Of the seven absentees, Uzziah . . . is known from his subjects’ seals. Amaziah reigned during Assyrian absence from the southwest Levant; Jotham . . . is known from a bulla of Ahaz. Amon and Jeho-ahaz were ephemeral, while Josiah reigned during the Assyrian decline, without documentation by them of Levantine kings. But seal impressions and possibly an ostracon come from his time. . . .

The time-line order of foreign rulers in 1-2 Kings, etc. is impeccably accurate, as is the order of the Hebrew rulers, as attested by the external sources. (62)

The basic presentation of almost 350 years of the story of the Hebrew twin kingdoms comes out under factual examination as a highly reliable one, with mention of own and foreign rulers who were real, in the right order, at the right date, and sharing a common history that usually dovetails together well, when both Hebrew and external sources are available. Therefore we have no valid reason to cast gratuitous doubt on other episodes where comparable external data are currently lacking . . . (63)

This concludes our survey. As I already mentioned, I’ve now presented extrabiblical documentation for 25 out of 42 kings of Judah and Israel (60%). As Dr. Kitchen mentioned in the preceding citation, five of the remaining kings were “ephemeral” (i.e., ruled for a very short time). If we don’t include them, it’s 25 out of 37, or 68%. Plausible, feasible explanations for most or all of the remaining dozen not being mentioned are provided by Kitchen as well. The Bible, in this historical respect, as in many others, is, as Dr. Kitchen asserted, “impeccably accurate” and “highly reliable.”

FOOTNOTES

1) “Uzziah,” Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Uzziah.

2) Bryan Windle, “King Uzziah: An Archaeological Biography,” Bible Archaeology Report, August 7, 2020. https://biblearchaeologyreport.com/2020/08/07/king-uzziah-an-archaeological-biography/.

3) Amahai Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible (London: Yale University Press, 1990), 519.

4) Clyde E. Fant and Mitchell G. Reddish, Lost Treasures of the Bible. (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008), 143.

5) D. D. Luckenbill. “Azariah of Judah.” American Journal of The Semitic Languages and Literatures. Vol. 41, No. 4 (July 1925), 220.

6) Windle, ibid.

7) Donald John Wiseman, “Tiglath-pileser III,” Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Tiglath-pileser-III.

8) Catherine L. McDowell, study note on 2 Chronicles 26:10, in ESV Archaeology Study Bible (ed. John Currid and David Chapman; Wheaton: Crossway, 2018), 632.

9) Avraham Negev & Shimon Gibson, eds., Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land (New York: Continuum, revised ed., 2003), “Kadesh Barnea,” 277.

10) Negev & Gibson, “Lachish,” 289.

11) Ibid., “Beth Shemesh . . .,” 88.

12) “Manasseh,” Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Manasseh-king-of-Judah.

13) Ewin R. Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1983), 174-176.

14) Nahman Avigad and Benjamin Sass, Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals (Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Israel Exploration Society, and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, The Institute of Archaeology, 1997), 55.

15) Bryan Windle, “King Manasseh: An Archaeological Biography,” Bible Archaeology Report, February 12, 2021. https://biblearchaeologyreport.com/2021/02/12/king-manasseh-an-archaeological-biography/.

16) “Esarhaddon,” Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Esarhaddon.

17) James B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1969), 291.

18) Windle, “King Manasseh . . .”

19) Pritchard, 294.

20) Donald John Wiseman, “Ashurbanipal,” Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ashurbanipal.

21) Kenneth A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2003), 31.

22) Bryan Windle, “King Jeroboam II: An Archaeological Biography,” Bible Archaeology Report, March 4, 2021. https://biblearchaeologyreport.com/2021/03/04/king-jeroboam-ii-an-archaeological-biography/.

23) David G. Hansen, “Megiddo, the Place of Battles,” Bible and Spade Vol. 23, No. 2 (Spring 2010). https://biblearchaeology.org/research/chronological-categories/conquest-of-canaan/3084-megiddo-the-place-of-battles.

24) Kitchen, 19.

25) Amanda Borschel-Dan, “2,700 years ago, tiny clay piece sealed deal for Bible’s King Jeroboam II,” Times of Israel, December 10, 2020. https://www.timesofisrael.com/2700-years-ago-tiny-clay-piece-sealed-deal-for-bibles-king-jeroboam-ii/.

26) Kitchen, 31.

27) Bryan Windle, “King Hoshea: An Archaeological Biography,” Bible Archaeology Report, October 8, 2021. https://biblearchaeologyreport.com/2021/10/08/king-hoshea-an-archaeological-biography/.

28) Lawrence J. Mykytiuk, Identifying Biblical Persons in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions of 1200-539 B.C.E. (Boston: Brill, 2004), 65.

29) André Lemaire, “Royal Signature: Name of Israel’s Last King Surfaces in a Private Collection,” Biblical Archaeology Review 21:6, (November/December 1995), 51.

30) Mordecai Cogan, The Raging Torrent: Historical Inscriptions from Assyria and Babylonia Relating to Ancient Israel (Jerusalem: Carta, 2015), 73.

31) A. K. Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles (Locust Valley: J.J. Augustin Publisher, 1975), 73. https://www.livius.org/sources/content/mesopotamian-chronicles-content/abc-1-from-nabu-nasir-to-samas-suma-ukin/.

32) “Shalmaneser V,” Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Shalmaneser-V.

33) Kitchen, 30.

34) “Mesha Stele,” New World Encyclopedia. https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Mesha_Stele.

35) “Shalmaneser III,” Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Shalmaneser-III.

36) A. Leo Oppenheim, “Babylonian and Assyrian Historical Texts,” in Ancient Near Easter Texts Relating to the Old Testament, ed. James B. Pritchard (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1969), 284.

37) Jorgen Laessoe, “Sargon II,” Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sargon-II.

38) Oppenheim, ibid., 285.

39) “Jehu,” Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jehu.

40) Kitchen, 30.

41) Bryan Windle, “King Jehu: An Archaeological Biography,” Bible Archaeology Report, October 9, 2020. https://biblearchaeologyreport.com/2020/10/09/king-jehu-an-archaeological-biography/.

42) Albert Kirk Grayson, Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC: II (858-745 BC) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 50.

43) Ibid., 54.

44) Ibid., 48.

45) Pritchard, 280.

46) Grayson, 60.

47) Randall Price and H. Wayne House, Zondervan Handbook of Biblical Archaeology (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2017), 135.

48) Kitchen, 31.

49) Bryan Windle, “King Jehoash: An Archaeological Biography,” Bible Archaeology Report, August 13, 2021. https://biblearchaeologyreport.com/2021/08/13/king-jehoash-an-archaeological-biography/.

50) “Sammu-ramat,” Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sammu-ramat#ref258856.

51) Linda S. Schearing, “Joash,” in D. N. Freedman, ed., The Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 4473.

52) “The Tell al-Rimah Stela,” Livius.org, July 10, 2020. https://www.livius.org/sources/content/anet/cos-2.114f-the-tell-al-rimah-stela/.

53) Kitchen, 31.

54) Pritchard, 284.

55) Mordecai Cogan, The Raging Torrent: Historical Inscriptions from Assyria and Babylonia Relating to Ancient Israel (Jerusalem: Carta, 2015), 59.

56) “Josiah,” Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Josiah.

57) Kitchen, 20.

58) Amanda Borschel-Dan, “Tiny First Temple find could be first proof of aide to biblical King Josiah,” The Times of Israel, March 31, 2019. https://www.timesofisrael.com/two-tiny-first-temple-inscriptions-vastly-enlarge-picture-of-ancient-jerusalem/.

59) Michael Heltzer, The Seal of Asahayu, in William H. Hallo, The Context of Scripture (Brill, 2000), Vol. II, 204.

60) Kitchen, 30.

61) Kitchen, 17-18.

62) Kitchen, 62-63.

63) Kitchen, 64.

***

Photo credit: King Uzziah Stricken by Leprosy (c. 1639), by Rembrandt (1606-1669) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

***

Summary: I provide extrabiblical documentation for ten kings of Judah & Israel, adding to my 15 previous similar efforts, for a total of 25 out of 42, or 60% “outside” verification.

Assyrian King Sennacherib, the Bible, & Archaeology

Last updated on: April 17, 2023 at 1:36 pm By Dave Armstrong

0 Comments

Bryan Windle states,

Sennacherib is mentioned by name 16 times in Scripture, more than any other Assyrian ruler. From a biblical perspective, he is most famous for his invasion of Judah in 701 BC and his siege against King Hezekiah and Jerusalem (2 Ki 18-19; 2 Ch 32; Is 37). (1)

He reigned as king from 705/704 to 681 B.C. (2). As to the dates of reign of King Hezekiah of Judah, Encyclopedia Britannica observes, “The dates of his reign are often given as about 715 to about 686 BC, . . .” (3). Archaeologist and Egyptologist Kenneth A. Kitchen concurs with Hezekiah’s dates. (4) 2 Kings 18:2 (RSV) informs us that “he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem.” Thus, we have a strong correspondence in the time of reigns between the two kings, which already backs up the biblical account.

2 Kings 18:13-15, 17 In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them. And Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria at Lachish, saying, “I have done wrong; withdraw from me; whatever you impose on me I will bear.” And the king of Assyria required of Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. And Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the LORD, and in the treasuries of the king’s house. . . . And the king of Assyria sent the Tartan, the Rabsaris, and the Rabshakeh with a great army from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem. And they went up and came to Jerusalem. When they arrived, they came and stood by the conduit of the upper pool, which is on the highway to the Fuller’s Field.

Scripture also states that Sennacherib failed to conquer Jerusalem (2 Kings 18:28-35) during his military exploits of 701 B.C. Sennacherib in his annals provides information that corroborates the biblical account,

As for Hezekiah, the Jew, who did not submit to my yoke, 46 of his strong cities, as well as the small cities in their neighborhood, which were without number – by levelling with battering-rams (?) and by bringing up siege-engines (?), I besieged and took (those cities). . . . Himself, like a caged bird I shut up in Jerusalem his royal city….In addition to the 30 talents of gold and 800 talents of silver (there were), gems, cosmetics (?), jewels (?), large sandu-stones, couches of ivory, house chairs of ivory, elephant hide, ivory (lit. elephant’s teeth), ushu-wood, ukarinnu-wood, all kinds of valuable (heavy) treasures, . . . (5)

The similarities of the accounts of taking the fortified cities is striking, as is the exact amount of gold given by Hezekiah to Sennacherib as tribute. The much larger amount of silver in the Assyrian chronicle might very well be paralleled in the biblical description: “Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the LORD, and in the treasuries of the king’s house.” Ultimately, Sennacherib doesn’t record that he took Jerusalem, and this lines up with the Bible and a prophecy from the prophet Isaiah (2 Kings 19:20) to Hezekiah,

2 Kings 19:32-34 “Therefore thus says the LORD concerning the king of Assyria, He shall not come into this city or shoot an arrow there, or come before it with a shield or cast up a siege mound against it. By the way that he came, by the same he shall return, and he shall not come into this city, says the LORD. For I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.”

Sennacherib’s death is also similarly detailed in biblical and Assyrian records,

2 Kings 19:37 And as he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer, his sons, slew him with the sword, and escaped into the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his stead. (cf. Isa. 37:38)

Esarhaddon refers to his father’s murder, committed by his brothers:

My brothers went mad and whatever was wicked against gods and men they did, and plotted evil: they drew the sword in the midst of Nineveh godlessly: to exercise the kingship against each other they rushed like young steers. (6) . . . those rebels, the ones engaged in revolt and rebellion, when they heard of the advance of my campaign, they deserted the army they relied on and fled to an unknown land. (7)

Kitchen adds fascinating details,

The biblical Adrammelek is a form of Arda-mulissi (the name of Sennacherib’s murderous eldest son in contemporary documents) . . . (8)

Sennacherib in his annals gets theological: “In my 7th campaign, (the god) Ashur my Lord supported me . . . against Elam . . .” . . . The ancient writer’s theological beliefs ibn each case have nothing to do with the reality of the events — only with the imputed cause behind the events. So we can no more dismiss 2 Kings 18-19 (even if we believe in neither YHWH nor his angel of death) than the annals of Sennacherib (even though nobody today believes in Ashur!), backed up as they are by the nontheological precis in the Babylonian Chronicle.

In short, the Hebrew narratives in Kings and Chronicles should be treated as impartially and fairly as most properly knowledgeable Assyriologists, Hittitologists, and Egyptologists normally treat the firsthand and fully comparable ancient documents in their domain. Hypercriticism of the Hebrew data is wrong in attitude, methods, and results alike. (9)

Additionally, Assyrian records note Sennacherib’s siege of Lachish,

The siege and capture of Lachish . . . is the centerpiece to a splendid set of scenes showing the Assyrian forces attacking, then actively pressing their siege to break into Lachish, capture the town, and lead out captives. . . . The mound of Tell ed-Duweir . . . revealed the battered bulk of the Assyrian siege ramp (as shown on the reliefs) up to the walls, plus a Hebrew counterramp within the walls. The city, destroyed by the Assyrians, is Lachish level III archaeologically. (10)

This lines up (as always!) with the biblical mention of the same siege:

2 Chronicles 32:9 . . . Sennach’erib king of Assyria, who was besieging Lachish with all his forces, . . .

2 Kings 19:32 (see above) indirectly refers to this siege ramp, in stating that Sennacherib would not (and in fact he did not) “cast up a siege mound against” Jerusalem, as he presumably did against other cities (Lachish being one).

Some, however, think that this siege was carried out by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, some 114 years later. Not so, according to an article in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology, in an article dated October 14, 2021. (11) This significant research article was reported on by The Times of Israel (12), The Jerusalem Post (13), and Haaretz (14).

FOOTNOTES

1) Bryan Windle, “Sennacherib: An Archaeological Biography,” Bible Archaeology Report, July 3, 2020. https://biblearchaeologyreport.com/2020/07/03/sennacherib-an-archaeological-biography/.

2) Henry W. F. Saggs, “Sennacherib,” in Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sennacherib.

3) “Hezekiah,” in Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hezekiah.

4) Kenneth A, Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2003), 31.

5) Daniel David Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1924), 11-12. https://oi.uchicago.edu/sites/oi.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/shared/docs/oip2.pdf.

6) “The Esarhaddon Prism,” The British Museum. https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_1929-1012-1.

7) “Ninevah A,” The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period. http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/rinap/corpus/.

8) Kitchen, 42.

9) Kitchen, 51.

10) Kitchen, 42.

11) Yosef Garfinkel, Jon W. Carroll, Michael Pytlik, Madeleine Mumcuoglu, “Constructing the Assyrian Siege Ramp at Lachish: Texts, Iconography, Archaeology and Photogrammetry,” Oxford Journal of Archaeology Volume 40, Issue 4 (November 2021), 417-439. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ojoa.12231.

12) Michael Bachner, “How Lachish fell: Study reconstructs Assyrian onslaught almost 3,000 years ago,” The Times of Israel, November 9, 2021. https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-lachish-fell-study-reconstructs-assyrian-onslaught-almost-3000-years-ago/.

13) Rossella Tercatin, “Biblical warfare: How did the Assyrians conquer Judean Lachish?,” The Jerusalem Post, November 9, 2021. https://www.jpost.com/archaeology/biblical-warfare-how-did-the-assyrians-conquer-judean-lachish-684440.

14) Ariel David, “Archaeologists Reveal Secrets of Assyrian War Machine That Conquered Ancient Judah,” Haaretz, November 9, 2021. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2021-11-09/ty-article/archaeologists-reveal-secrets-of-assyrian-war-machine-that-conquered-ancient-judah/0000017f-f57a-d318-afff-f77b80330000.

***

Photo credit: Timo Roller (5-5-15), Cast of a rock relief of Sennacherib from the foot of Cudi Dağı, near Cizre. The cast is exhibited in Landshut, Germany. [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license]

***

Summary: Overview of the convergence of biblical & archaeological data regarding Assyrian King Sennacherib (r. c. 705-681 B.C.), during the time of King Hezekiah of Judah.

The Tower of Babel, Archaeology, & Linguistics

Last updated on: November 30, 2023 at 5:50 pm By Dave Armstrong

0 Comments

Prominent online atheist anti-theist Jonathan M. S. Pearce, who runs the blog, A Tippling Philosopher (1), provides an example of the fairly standard skeptical view of the tower of Babel story:

I have to claim that anyone who believes this story actually happened is an idiot. . . . sometimes you just gotta tell it like it is. And, because it’s what I do, I’ll help them along the way to realising it is ahistorical . . . We know how languages evolved and it wasn’t like that. The story is refuted by linguistics. Go research it, Christian. (2)

And what I “do” is to refute this sort of insulting knee-jerk skepticism. Invariably, the self-perceived “superior thinker” has not thought anywhere near deeply enough to give the story a fair shake. Pearce (sadly typical of anti-theist analyses) — in the end — will be found to be guilty of the same “shallow” and/or “gullible” mentality that he ostensibly decries. This will become obvious as we proceed.

First of all, all must understand that the early chapters of Genesis (particularly the first eleven chapters) represent a genre and form of thinking that is very difficult for us to fully understand or interpret with an assurance that we are grasping the author’s intention. So everyone is engaging in guesswork to more or less degrees. That said, I submit this story is not simply myth, and it has several demonstrable connections to known history, verified by archaeology, as I will show.

As always, we can’t absolutely prove miracles or the mind of God and whether he acted in ways that the account describes. But we can verify what is able to be verified, and argue convincingly, I think, that the story (however one interprets God’s place in it) is reflecting and reporting actual events of some sort. Accordingly, Pope Pius XII, in his encyclical Humani Generis (August 12, 1950) (3), expresses a view with which all traditional Christians who believe in biblical inspiration and inerrancy can agree:

The first eleven chapters of Genesis, although properly speaking not conforming to the historical method used by the best Greek and Latin writers or by competent authors of our time, do nevertheless pertain to history in a true sense, which however must be further studied and determined by exegetes; the same chapters, . . . in simple and metaphorical language adapted to the mentality of a people but little cultured, both state the principal truths which are fundamental for our salvation, and also give a popular description of the origin of the human race and the chosen people. If, however, the ancient sacred writers have taken anything from popular narrations (and this may be conceded), it must never be forgotten that they did so with the help of divine inspiration, through which they were rendered immune from any error in selecting and evaluating those documents.

The pope was referring to and paraphrasing a letter from the Pontifical Biblical Commission, which he approved on January 16, 1948 (4). It reads in part:

If it is agreed not to see in these chapters history in the classical and modern sense, it must be admitted also that known scientific facts do not allow a positive solution of all the problems which they present. The first duty in this matter incumbent on scientific exegesis consists in the careful study of all the problems literary, scientific, historical, cultural, and religious connected with these chapters; in the next place is required a close examination of the literary methods of the ancient oriental peoples, their psychology, their manner of expressing themselves and even their notion of historical truth the requisite, in a word, is to assemble without preformed judgements all the material of the palaeontological and historical, epigraphical and literary sciences. It is only in this way that there is hope of attaining a clearer view of the true nature of certain narratives in the first chapters of Genesis.

In light of this perspective, I will give the tower of Babel account my best shot, incorporating insights from many different scholarly sources. As long as everyone understands that we are all engaging in speculation, and that we can’t be dogmatic or utterly inflexible concerning our own interpretations, discussion is constructive and hopefully helps us better understand the texts that observant Christians hold to be inspired and without error — correctly understood.

Genesis 11:2-4 (RSV) And as men migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”

As for Shinar, and what it refers to, let’s take a step back and examine an earlier related passage:

Genesis 10:8-12 Cush became the father of Nimrod; he was the first on earth to be a mighty man. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD . . . ] The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, and Accad, all of them in the land of Shinar. From that land he went into Assyria, and built Nineveh, Rehoboth-Ir, Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city.

Christopher Eames notes that most of the city-states mentioned in this passage have been

. . . corroborated by archaeology as early centers of civilization in Mesopotamia. Babel, of course, corresponds to the historical Babylon. Erech is the historical Uruk (believed to be the origin of the territorial name Iraq). Accad is, of course, the above-mentioned city-state-cum-kingdom of Akkad. Asshur likewise corresponds to a city of the same name, and later the civilization of Assur—the Assyrians. Nineveh is the famous Assyrian capital city of the same name. And Calah is the Assyrian city of Kahlu. These later cities all link specifically to Asshur, a descendant of the fair-skinned Shem (from which we get the term “Semite”). (5)

Linguists, historians, and other scholars note that the Hebrew שנער Šinʿar is related to the Egyptian Sngr, Hittite Šanḫar(a), all referring to southern Mesopotamia. Sangara/Sangar is mentioned as one of the conquests of Pharaoh Thutmose III (r. 1479-1426 B.C.) (6) and Sanhar/Sankhar appears in the Amarna letters (7): clay tablets of correspondence between Egyptian diplomats and various Middle Eastern countries, written in cuneiform, and usually dated to around 1360–1332 B.C. Because of all these correlations, we know the Bible is referring to the historically momentous Sumerian culture and civilization of southern Mesopotamia (later Babylon and currently Iraq).

Now let’s proceed to see what else we can learn about this period and place and how the Bible describes it. We have two textual clues in Genesis 11:3, which are ostensibly historical facts that we can seek to verify: kiln-fired bricks (“burn them thoroughly”) and the “bitumen for mortar.”

The time-setting of the story of the tower of Babel (whenever it was written), from appearances, seems to be right after the Flood. Genesis 6-9 present the story of Noah’s ark and the Flood. Genesis 10 presents the “table of nations.” Genesis 11 abruptly tells the story of the tower of Babel in just nine verses. Then 11:10 refers to the “descendants of Shem” (Shem being one of Noah’s sons) and notes that “When Shem was a hundred years old, he became the father of Arpachshad two years after the flood.” Thus, it looks, prima facie, like the time period is shortly after the Flood occurred. In my book, The Word Set in Stone (8), I accepted a provisional date for the Flood, of 2900 B.C.: give or take a hundred years.

In order to objectively date the Tower of Babel, according to archaeology, we need to to establish when kiln-baked bricks and bitumen appeared in the flood plain of southern Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Genesis 11:2 also refers to a “plain.” That fits the proposed area, which is as flat as a pancake. Genesis 11:8-9 states that the “city” being built in Shinar was “called Babel” (i.e., Babylon); hence, the “tower of Babel.”

I found a goldmine of information along these lines in a 1995 article about ziggurats and the tower of Babel (9). First of all, this region is famous for the construction of ziggurats (10), which some think were regarded as artificial mountains, in such a flat area. The oldest ziggurats go back to my proposed time period:

The structure at Eridu, the earliest structure that some designate a ziggurat, is dated in its earliest level to the Ubaid period (4300-3500). . . . the so-called White Temple of Uruk [is] dated to the Jamdet Nasr period (3100-2900) . . . (11)

During the Sumerian Uruk Period (4100-2900 BCE) ziggurats were raised in every city in honor of that community’s patron deity. . . . Ziggurat construction continued through the Early Dynastic Period of Mesopotamia (2900-2334 BCE) and was then adopted by the later Akkadian, Babylonian, and other civilizations of the region. (12)

Kiln-fired Mesopotamian bricks were different from the bricks used in Palestine, which only utilized sun-dried mud bricks. (13). Kiln-fired bricks appear in Mesopotamia during the late Uruk period and become more common in the Jamdet Nasr period (3100-2900 B.C.) (14). An article specifically about ancient Mesopotamian bricks observes,

There were problems in the south of Mesopotamia where dry bricks did not meet the building requirements, because it was irresistible to moisture, in addition to the high groundwater levels in the area, the lack of stone and the difficulty of carrying it out of northern Mesopotamia. At the same time, people already knew ceramics and its properties that were resistant to moisture, so the builders began to burn bricks . . . for the first time evidence of the baked brick appeared during the Uruk period, and exactly in the buildings of Eridu city. (15)

Paul H. Seely states about kiln-fired bricks:

We know when baked bricks first appear in the archaeological record of the ancient Near East as building materials. Nor are we arguing from silence. There are hundreds of archaeological sites in the ancient Near East which have architectural remains. . . . although unbaked brick was extensively used for architecture from c. 8500 B.C. to Christian times, baked brick, though used occasionally for such things as drains or walkways, did not make an architectural appearance until c. 3500 B.C. and it was rarely used in architecture until c. 3100 B.C. . . . the archaeological data from the Near East universally testify that prior to c. 3100 B.C. the bricks used in architecture were unbaked. Indeed, Jacquetta Hawkes indicates in her archaeological survey that baked brick was not used for architecture anywhere in the entire world until c. 3000 B. C. (16)

The presence of kiln-fired bricks, at the right time and right place to be available for the Tower of Babel seems, therefore, solidly established. Moving on to the question of “bitumen for mortar,” what evidence do we know of, for it being available in southern Mesopotamia, c. 3000-2800 B.C.? The beautiful Anu Ziggurat in Uruk (modern Warka) was built in c. 3517-3358 B.C. Its flat top “was coated with bitumen (asphalt—a tar or pitch-like material similar to what is used for road paving)” and “a system of shallow bitumen-coated conduits” were also discovered. (17) Where did this bitumen utilized in Uruk and other nearby sites come from? We know that, too:

Research into bitumen sources has illuminated the history of the expansionist period of Mesopotamian Uruk. An intercontinental trading system was established by Mesopotamia during the Uruk period (3600-3100 BC), with the creation of trading colonies in what is today southeastern Turkey, Syria, and Iran. According to seals and other evidence, the trade network involved textiles from southern Mesopotamia and copper, stone, and timber from Anatolia, but the presence of sourced bitumen has enabled scholars to map out the trade. For example, much of the bitumen in Bronze age Syrian sites has been found to have originated from the Hit seepage on the Euphrates River in southern Iraq. Using historical references and geological survey, scholars have identified several sources of bitumen in Mesopotamia and the Near East. (18)

Sumerians called bitumen esir, and Akkadians called it iddu. The substance seems to have been more widely used in Mesopotamia than anywhere else in the ancient world. The early Ubaids in the region coated their houses and paddleboats (both made from marsh reeds) with bitumen. The Mesopotamian city of Hīt was famous for its bitumen wells, discovered by the Sumerians as early as 2900 B.C.

The availability and use of bitumen in Mesopotamia by the early third millennium B.C. is thus established. The Bible had its facts right again, as far as we can determine from archaeology. In other words, the types of building materials and methods for building the tower of Babel, according to the Bible, were indeed available and practiced, respectively, at that time and place.

Having verified what we can from archaeology, now we need to move on to the larger aspects of the story of Babel: the question of developing languages, migration, and exactly what the story is seeking to say about these things and related aspects.

Genesis 11:1 Now the whole earth had one language and few words.

This is right before the story of the tower of Babel. It has been argued, however, that Genesis chapters ten and eleven are chronological, and that differentiation of language was already cited several times in chapter ten:

Genesis 10:5 . . . These are the sons of Japheth in their lands, each with his own language, . . .

Genesis 10:20 These are the sons of Ham, by their families, their languages, their lands, and their nations.

Genesis 10:31 These are the sons of Shem, by their families, their languages, their lands, and their nations.

So why does Genesis 11:1 appear to contradict these verses in the chapter preceding it? It’s been noted that the Hebrew word for “earth” (eretz) can mean many things, including the entire world (e.g., Gen. 1:1, 15; 2:1, 4), but also things like the “land” or “ground” of countries, such as Egypt (eretz mitzrayim) and Canaan (eretz kana’an), the dry land (Gen. 1:10), and ground from which seeds grow (Gen. 1:12). This is plainly observed in the range of how the New American Standard Bible translates eretz: country or countries 59 times, ground 119 times, land[s] 1638 times; compare to earth[‘s], 656 instances, and world (3). Clearly and undeniably, eretz can and does have different meanings. As with most biblical words in both Hebrew and Greek –, we need to consult context to determine which meaning applies in any given biblical text.

Context indicates very strongly that Genesis 11 is not talking about the entire earth, but rather, the land which is described repeatedly as the place where the events occur: southern Mesopotamia, or Sumer, as it was known at the proposed period of history. That was already seen in the related passage of Genesis 10:8-12, and numerous times in Genesis 11: “Shinar” (11:2), “a city” and “the city” (11:4-5, 8), called “Babel” (11:9):

Genesis 11:5-9 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the sons of men had built. And the LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

Even the references to being scattered to “the face of all the earth” can scarcely be taken literally, since there were huge areas of the world unknown to the ancient Hebrews, such as North, Central, and South America. Chris Gousmett contends for this interpretation:

It is not the origin of all the languages of the earth, but instead describes something else entirely. . . .

While the expression kol-ha’aretz is translated as ‘the whole earth’ or ‘all the earth’ we could be justified in suggesting that there it refers to ‘the whole land’. In addition, we can ask whether the population of the whole earth migrated into the plain of Shinar. This would appear not to be the case, as this story follows an account of the dispersal of various groups into other lands. The scattering they feared was not dispersal over the whole earth, but across the plain into which they had migrated to settle. (19)

That this is only one group of people among many is indicated by their desire to ‘make a name’ (a reputation) for themselves as one people among many. If this were the whole population of the earth prior to their dispersal after the flood then for whom would they make ‘a name’? (20)

What Gen. 11 speaks about is not the origin of the many different languages spoken across the earth, but the confusion engendered by God among one group of people in the land of Shinar. (21)

Some have argued that what was in the mind of the author was not language in reference to literally the entire world, but rather, a lingua franca, which means a common or bridge language, or one that is common as a second language across widely different groups of people. Historically, such languages included Akkadian, Babylonian, and Aramaic in ancient western Asia, Koine Greek, Latin (which functionally lasted until the 18th century), Italian, French, Spanish, and English. In this understanding, Sumerian was the lingua franca c. 3000 B.C. in (at least the self-understanding of) Mesopotamia. The Babel story might be thought to possibly be a “morality tale” of the demise of Sumerian language and culture. Some background detail of Sumerian culture may be useful to back up this hypothesis.

Sumerian is believed to be a language isolate, meaning that “we know of no other languages that relate to it ancestrally.” (22) It was also the first written language in the history of the world, as a British Library article notes,

Full writing-systems appear to have been invented independently at least four times in human history: first in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) where cuneiform was used between 3400 and 3300 BC, . . .

Scholars generally agree that the earliest form of writing appeared almost 5,500 years ago in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq). Early pictorial signs were gradually substituted by a complex system of characters representing the sounds of Sumerian (the language of Sumer in Southern Mesopotamia) and other languages.

From 2900 BC, these began to be impressed in wet clay with a reed stylus, making wedge-shaped marks which are now known as cuneiform. (23)

Sumerians, by the way, also developed the wheel, sophisticated irrigation and agricultural techniques, sailboats, calendars and cities, as far back as 3500 B.C. Now, it may be that Genesis 11 reflects this unique and particular historical circumstance, where we have the first complete writing system ever in history, and a language isolate at that. This would have been pretty dominant in 3400-3000 B.C. among Sumerians in southern Mesopotamia. Perhaps it was all they knew. Then when different languages started showing up, perhaps an oral tradition began to the effect that this was a judgment upon the Sumerian-speaking (and cuneiform-writing) Sumerians, who had seemed so dominant. Moser observes,

Little is known about when Sumerian-speaking people arrived in southern Mesopotamia, assuming they did not originate there. Either way, from a very early period a multilingual environment existed in southern Mesopotamia, which included languages like Sumerian, an early form of Akkadian, other Semitic languages, and Hurrian. (24)

Could this “multilingual environment” that Moser refers to “in southern Mesopotamia” actually refer to the confusion of languages in the biblical text? Unfortunately, he doesn’t indicate the exact time of this “very early period.” So we’ll have to do more “digging” ourselves for further “answers” along these lines.

Written language is not the same thing as spoken language. It may very well be that Akkadian started to be widely spoken in Mesopotamia before it borrowed cuneiform as its writing method, too (as eventually fifteen languages did). The biblical text refers to the Sumerians not being able to “understand one another’s speech” (Gen. 11:7). That’s talking, and it need not necessarily be related to writing at all. Complex and technologically advanced cultures like the Incas had no writing system, as was also true of most of the North American indigenous people (the Cherokees being a notable exception; and they simply invented it “on the spot”).

So it could have been that spoken Akkadian was part of the confusion referred to in the Babel story. Omniglot, “the online encyclopedia of writing systems and languages” (x23), states that “Akkadian was a semitic language spoken in Mesopotamia” starting around “2,800 BC” and that it “first appeared in Sumerian texts dating from 2,800 BC in the form of Akkadian names.” (25) If this is correct (and how do they know, I wonder?), it could correspond to a “late” date of the building of the tower of Babel, which I estimated provisionally to be from 3000-2800 B.C. That gives us a real possibility of linguistic confusion: from the first written language and the lingua franca and language isolate to a multi-lingual environment.

The Jewish Virtual Library (26) also dates Akkadian, defined as “the designation for a group of closely related East Semitic dialects current in Mesopotamia” to “the early third millennium,” which would be, presumably, about 3000-2800 B.C.: again fitting the time-frame schema for the possible explanation I am maintaining. Moreover, I found a scholarly article that deals with the inter-mixture of Akkadian and Sumerian and which refers to a “long history of linguistic symbiosis, stretching back several centuries [from before c. 2500 B.C.]” which reinforces “the impression of . . . a Sumerian-Akkadian linguistic area . . . Among the East Semitic languages of 3rd-millenium and earlier Mesopotamia were ancestral dialects of Akkadian . . .” (27)

Matthew A. McIntosh, who teaches ancient history, noted this cultural clash of the Sumerians and Akkadians, around 3000 BC:

When written records began in the late fourth millennium BC, the Semitic-speaking Akkadians (Assyrians and Babylonians) were entering Mesopotamia from the deserts to the west, and were probably already present in places such as Ebla in Syria. Akkadian personal names began appearing in written record in Mesopotamia from the late 29th century BC. (28)

The earliest positively proven historical attestation of any Semitic people comes from 30th century BC Mesopotamia, with the East Semitic-speaking peoples of the Kish civilization, entering the region originally dominated by the people of Sumer (who spoke a language isolate). (29)

Related to the above analysis is the understanding of the collapse of the Mesopotamian Uruk culture (c. 3300-3000 B.C.). K. Kris Hirst states,

After the Uruk period between 3200–3000 BCE (called the Jemdet Nasr period), an abrupt change occurred . . . The Uruk colonies in the north were abandoned, and the large cities in the north and south saw a sharp decrease in population and an increase in the number of small rural settlements. (30)

Lastly, Dallin D. Oaks, a linguist, proposes an interpretation of the Babel account that has likely been largely overlooked:

I shall explore another possibility in the text, a possibility that a scattering of people is what caused the confusion of languages rather than vice-versa. In other words, the people were scattered, and their subsequent separation from each other resulted in a differentiation of languages, which would in turn help to keep the people separated from each other. If this latter interpretation better represents the intent of the text, the account is very compatible with the type of explanation scholars in historical linguistics commonly provide for the development of different languages.

One of the important implications of this alternate interpretation is that the confusion of languages would have been gradual rather than immediate. Does the biblical text allow an interpretation suggesting a more gradual change resulting from rather than causing a dispersion of people? A careful look at the account shows that it doesn’t actually say that the confusion was immediate. While the account says that the confusion of languages happened “there” at Babel, the identification of the location could be referring to the place at which the process of language change was initiated, since that was the place from which the dispersion of people occurred, and the dispersion is what caused the ultimate confusion of languages. And while some might believe that immediate change is implied because of their assumption that the confusion of languages caused the construction of the tower to cease, it should be pointed out that the account in Genesis doesn’t make such an overt connection, . . . (31)

FOOTNOTES

1) Jonathan M. S. Pearce, A Tippling Philosopher (blog): https://onlysky.media/jonathan-pearce/.

2) Pearce, “The Tower of Babel Story Is OBVIOUSLY Not Historical,” November 23, 2021. https://onlysky.media/jpearce/the-tower-of-babel-story-is-obviously-not-historical/.

3) Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis (August 12, 1950). https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis.html.

4) Acta Apostolicae Sedis (Latin for “Acts of the Apostolic See”), vol. XL, pp. 45-48. This is the official gazette from the Vatican, which appears about twelve times a year. http://www.catholicapologetics.info/scripture/oldtestament/commission.htm.

5) Christopher Eames, “The ‘Sumerian Problem’—Evidence of the Confusion of Languages?,” Armstrong Institute of Biblical Archaeology, September 15, 2020. https://armstronginstitute.org/280-the-sumerian-problem-evidence-of-the-confusion-of-languages.

6) Margaret Stefana Drower & Peter F. Dorman, “Thutmose III,” Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thutmose-III.

7) “Amarna letters,” Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Amarna-Letters.

8) Dave Armstrong, The Word Set in Stone: How Archaeology, Science and History Back Up the Bible (El Cajon, California: Catholic Answers Press, 2023), 29, 33.

9) “Is There Archaeological Evidence for the Tower of Babel,?” Bulletin for Biblical Research 5 (1995): 155-75; reprinted at the Associates for Biblical Research website. https://biblearchaeology.org/research/patriarchal-era/2695-is-there-archaeological-evidence-for-the-tower-of-babel.

10) Joshua J. Mark, “Ziggurat,” World History Encyclopedia, October 13, 2022. https://www.worldhistory.org/ziggurat/.

11) “Is There Archaeological Evidence . . .,” ibid.

12) Mark, ibid.

13) See Kathleen Kenyon, Archaeology in the Holy Land (New York: Norton, 4th ed., 1979) 46, 87, 91, 164, etc.

14) See Jack Finegan, Archaeological History of the Ancient Near East. (Boulder, Colorado: Westview, 1979), 8; Holmyard Singer, The History of Technology, vol. 1. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1954), 462.

15) Kadim Hasson Hnaihen, “The Appearance of Bricks in Ancient Mesopotamia,” Athens Journal of History (Volume 6, Issue 1, January 2020) 73-96; citation from p. 80. https://www.athensjournals.gr/history/2020-6-1-4-Hnaihen.pdf.

16) Paul H. Seely, “The Date of the Tower of Babel and Some Theological Implications,” Westminster Theological Journal 63 (2001) 15-38; citation from p. 17. https://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/ted_hildebrandt/otesources/01-genesis/text/articles-books/seely_babel_wtj.pdf.

17) Senta German, “White Temple and ziggurat, Uruk”, Khan Academy. https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ap-art-history/ancient-mediterranean-ap/ancient-near-east-a/a/white-temple-and-ziggurat-uruk

18) K. Kris Hirst, “The Archaeology and History of Bitumen,” ThoughtCo., January 3, 2019. https://www.thoughtco.com/bitumen-history-of-black-goo-170085. See also: M. Schwartz & D. Hollander, “The Uruk expansion as dynamic process: A reconstruction of Middle to Late Uruk exchange patterns from bulk stable isotope analyses of bitumen artifacts,” Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 7:884-899 (2016). http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2016.01.027; Peter Roger Stuart Moorey, Ancient Mesopotamian Materials and Industries: Archaeological Evidence (University Park, Pennsylvania: Eisenbrauns, 1999), 334. https://books.google.com/books?id=P_Ixuott4doC&pg=PA334&lpg=PA334&dq=bitumen+in+ancient+mesopotamia&source=bl&ots=bwAwJaC_SC&sig=AlHp-aPz9yHkFcRCy2EpLH3QqEA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=j2oGT_WsAse1gwf824mjAg&sqi=2&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=bitumen%20in%20ancient%20mesopotamia&f=false.

19) Chris Gousmett, “The confusion of language in the interpretation of Genesis 11,” Evangelical Quarterly, 89.1 (2018), 34–50; quote from pp. 35-36. https://www.academia.edu/36158948/The_confusion_of_language_in_the_interpretation_of_Genesis_11.

20) Gousmett, 41-42.

21) Gousmett, 44.

22) Jason Moser, “Sumerian Language,” World History Encyclopedia, November 7, 2015. https://www.worldhistory.org/Sumerian_Language/.

23) Ewan Clayton, “Where Did Writing Begin?,” British Library, no date. https://www.bl.uk/history-of-writing/articles/where-did-writing-begin.

24) Moser, ibid.

25) “Akkadian,” Omniglot. https://omniglot.com/writing/akkadian.htm#:~:text=Akkadian%20was%20a%20semitic%20language,the%20form%20of%20Akkadian%20names.

26) “Akkadian Language,” Jewish Virtual Library. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/akkadian-language.

27) Andrew George, “Babylonian and Assyrian: A History of Akkadian,” 37-38. https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/3139/1/PAGE_31-71.pdf.

28) Matthew A. McIntosh, “Ancient Semitic-Speaking Peoples,” Brewminate, July 19, 2020. https://brewminate.com/ancient-semitic-speaking-peoples/.

29) J. Nicholas Postgate, Languages of Iraq, Ancient and Modern (British Institute for the Study of Iraq: 2007), 31-71.

30) K. Kris Hirst, “Uruk Period Mesopotamia: The Rise of Sumer,” ThoughtCo., April 21, 2019. https://www.thoughtco.com/uruk-period-mesopotamia-rise-of-sumer-171676.

31) Dallin D. Oaks, “The Tower of Babel Account: A Linguistic Consideration,” Science, Religion & Culture Vol. 2, Iss. 2 (May 2015). http://researcherslinks.com/current-issues/The-Tower-of-Babel-Account-A-Linguistic-Consideration/9/5/98/html

***

ADDENDUM: see the related “follow-up discussion: Tower of Babel: Dialogue with a Linguist (6-26-23). [added on 6-26-23]

***

Photo credit: The Tower of Babel, by Alexander Mikhalchyk (b. 1969) [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license]

***

Summary: I approach the tower of Babel story in Genesis 11 with the goal of seeking to understand which aspects of it can be verified by secular archaeology and linguistics.

***

King Ahab, Queen Jezebel, & Archaeology

Last updated on: April 7, 2023 at 12:48 pm By Dave Armstrong

0 Comments

The wicked reign of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel is summarized in the Bible as follows:

1 Kings 16:29-33 (RSV) In the thirty-eighth year of Asa king of Judah, Ahab the son of Omri began to reign over Israel, and Ahab the son of Omri reigned over Israel in Samaria twenty-two years. And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the LORD more than all that were before him. And as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, he took for wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and went and served Baal, and worshiped him. He erected an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he built in Samaria. And Ahab made an Asherah. Ahab did more to provoke the LORD, the God of Israel, to anger than all the ki29, 32.ngs of Israel who were before him.

As to the chronology of the kings of Judah and Israel in relation to extrabiblical sources, Egyptologist and archaeologist Kenneth Kitchen writes,

We find in Kings a very remarkably preserved royal chronology, mainly very accurate in fine detail, that agrees very closely with the dates given by Mesopotamian and other sources. . . . It cannot well be the free creation of some much later writer’s imagination that just happens (miraculously!) to coincide almost throughout with the data then preserved only in documents buried inaccessibly in the ruin mounds of Assyrian cities long since abandoned and largely lost to view. (1)

Utilizing his extraordinary knowledge of such matters, Kitchen estimates the reign of King Ahab (the “twenty-two years” of 1 Kings 16:29) to be 875 or 874 to 853 B.C. (2) We have external, extrabiblical evidence that Ahab was the king of Israel in 853 B.C.:

In 853 BC, the Assyrian king, Shalmaneser III fought against a coalition of western kings near at Qarqar in modern-day Syria. He left a description of the battle on a stele that was discovered in 1861 at Kurkh, near the Tigris river in Turkey. In the inscription on the Kurkh Monolith, he names “Ahab the Israelite” as one of the combatants and claims that he had one of the strongest forces, with 2000 chariots and 10000 soldiers. . . .

While neither Shalmaneser III, nor the Battle of Qarqar are mentioned in the Bible, this inscription is still important for several reasons. First, it is a clear confirmation of Ahab as a king of Israel. Secondly, it testifies to the wealth and power of the Israelite kingdom at the time. Finally, it references a historical event that can be dated. (3)

Expert on biblical chronology Edwin Thiele elaborates,

Shalmaneser also mentions that he received tribute from Jehu during his expedition to the west in his eighteenth year. This would be in the eponymy of Adam-rimani (841). Thus Jehu was already reigning over Israel sometime in 841….the interval between the death of Ahab and the accession of Jehu is exactly twelve years, being made up of the reigns of Ahaziah ,the son and successor of Ahab, and Joram, who was slain and succeeded by Jehu [2 Kings 2:51 & 3:1]….Since the interval between the battle of Qarqar, at which Ahab fought in 853, and the time Jehu paid tribute to Shalmaneser in 841 is also for a period of just twelve years, it is in this period that the reigns of Ahaziah and Joram must have taken place, with 853 as the last year of Ahab and 841 for Jehu’s accession. (4)

1 Kings 22:39 Now the rest of the acts of Ahab, and all that he did, and the ivory house which he built, and all the cities that he built, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel?

Bryan Windle comments on this:

Scholars have speculated that one of the enhancements which Ahab made to the capital of Samaria was to adorn the palace walls and furniture with ivory decorations such that it became known as “the Ivory House.” When Kathleen Kenyon’s team excavated Samaria in 1932, they unearthed a large collection of carved ivories dating to the Iron Age. . . . Because they date to the time of King Ahab, and were discovered near the palace complex, most scholars believe they come from the fabled, Ivory House. (5)

See an example of one of the figures. (6)

Dr. Liat Naeh (7) wrote her dissertation for the Archaeology Institute of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, on ritual artifacts made of bone and ivory dating from the Middle to Late Bronze Ages in the Levant. Bible History Daily notes her work in relation to our subject:

Naeh reviews recent wood, bone and ivory finds from the sites of Jerusalem, Rehov and Hazor in Israel to shed light on the Samaria ivories. These discoveries suggest that there was a local tradition of wood, bone and ivory carving of inlays (decorative materials inserted in something else), featuring recurring themes, during both the Bronze and Iron Ages in the southern Levant. The early interpretation of categorizing the Samaria ivories as Phoenician has impacted the subsequent discovery of other southern Levantine ivory artifacts. The bias to associate any such ivory find with the Phoenicians has caused the region’s local ivory tradition to be overlooked. Naeh suggests that it is necessary to change our view of the Samaria ivories—and ivories found throughout the southern Levant—as being made by the hands of foreigners. (8)

Bryant Wood recounts further archaeological corroboration of Ahab and the activities during his reign:

Excavations at Samaria have laid bare Ahab’s palace. An earlier palace was built on the acropolis by Ahab’s father Omri (1 Kgs 16:24). It was surrounded by a wall 5 ft thick. The royal quarter was later expanded by building a casemate (hollow) wall 32 ft wide outside the earlier wall. This is believed to be the work of Ahab. Within the compound was a building dubbed ‘the ivory house’ where many fragments of carved ivory plaques were found (see cover). This represents the most important collection of miniature art from the kingdom period found in Israel. The ivories appear to be remains of inlay originally placed on furniture in the palace of Ahab and later Israelite kings. Another interesting feature found in the royal compound was a pool in the northwest corner which could possibly be the pool referred to in Scripture where Ahab’s chariot was washed [1 Kings 22:38].

Ahab is credited with fortifying a number of cities in his kingdom (1 Kgs 22:39). At Megiddo, Stratum IVA has been attributed to this king. There were a number of prominent structures associated with Stratum IVA, including an offset-inset fortification wall 12 ft wide, large pillared buildings, a palace, and a water system which included a 260 ft long tunnel. At Hazor, Stratum VIII is dated to the time of Ahab. As at Megiddo, the city was totally rebuilt at this time. A solid fortification wall 10 ft wide was constructed, along with a citadel, a large pillared building, and an underground water system. At Tel Dan, a well-preserved city gate was constructed in the days of Ahab in Stratum III. The high place, originally constructed by Jeroboam I (1 Kgs 12:28-30) and destroyed by Ben-Hadad king of Aram (1 Kgs 15:20), was reconstructed at this time. (9)

With regard to archaeological evidence for Queen Jezebel, Bryant Wood sums up (10):

In the early 1960s a seal was purchased on the antiquities market and donated to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. The late Nahman Avigad [my link], a leading Israeli paleographer (one who studies ancient writing), published an article about the seal in 1964 (11). He suggested the name on the seal was possibly Jezebel, but there was a problem — the first letter of the name was missing. And so, little attention was paid to the seal and it languished in the Israel Museum for decades. Then, Dutch researcher Marjo Korpel (Associate Professor of Old Testament, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands) became interested in it (12) . Korpel was first drawn to the seal because of its imagery, but then became intrigued with the inscription. She noticed that a piece had broken off at the top and this could very well have been where the missing letter was originally located. She conjectured that there were initially two letters in the area of the break: a Hebrew lamed, or L, which stood for “(belonging) to” or “for,” and the missing first letter of Jezebel’s name.

Apart from the inscription, there are other compelling reasons for identifying the seal as that of Jezebel. First, as Avigad observed, it is very fancy, suggestive of royalty. It is made of the gemstone opal and is larger than average, being 1.24 in (31 mm) from top to bottom (13). Secondly, the form of the letters is Phoenician, or imitates Phoenician writing (14). Thirdly, the seal is filled with common Egyptian symbols that were often used in Phoenicia in the ninth century BC and are suggestive of a queen. At the top is a crouching winged sphinx with a woman’s face, the body of a lioness and a female lsis/Hathor crown. To the left is an Egyptian ankh, the sign of life. In the lower register, below a winged disk, is an Egyptian-style falcon, symbol of royalty in Egypt. On either side of the falcon is a uraeus, the cobra representation of Egyptian royalty worn on crowns. At the bottom left is a lotus, a symbol often associated with royal women. All of these icons taken together denote female royalty (15).

Although 100% certainty cannot be attained, Korpel’s assessment of the evidence leads her to conclude, “I believe it is very likely that we have here the seal of the famous Queen Jezebel” (16).

Moreover, King Ahab is mentioned in the Mesha Stele (aka Moabite Stone) (17), dated to c. 840 B.C.: only about thirteen years after Ahab’s estimated year of death. It’s a Canaanite inscription under the name of King Mesha of Moab (in current-day Jordan).

All of this adds up to the conclusion that the Old Testament (as has been proven again and again) is minutely, extraordinarily accurate, even about fine details and dates of events.

FOOTNOTES

1) Kenneth A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan, Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2003), 29, 32.

2) Ibid., 30.

3) Bryan Windle, “King Ahab: An Archaeological Biography,” Bible Archaeology Report, May 15, 2020.

4) Edwin R. Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1983), 76.

5) Windle, ibid.

6) Furniture inlay: striding sphinx, Samaria, Iron Age II, ninth-eighth century B.C. (Israel Antiquities Authority); https://web.archive.org/web/20210927000927/https://www.imj.org.il/en/collections/365181.

7) Liat Naeh, Curriculum Vitae.

8) “The Samaria Ivories—Phoenician or Israelite?,” Bible History Daily / Biblical Archaeology Society, August 28, 2017.

9) Bryant Wood, “Ahab the Israelite,” Bible and Spade, Fall 1996; reprinted at Associates for Biblical Research.

10) Bryant Wood, “Seal of Jezebel Identified,” Associates for Biblical Research, July 15, 2019. See a photo of the seal in this article.

11) Nahman Avigad, “The Seal of Jezebel,” Israel Exploration Journal (1964) 14: 274-76.

12) Marjo C.A. Korpel, “Fit for a Queen: Jezebel’s Royal Seal,” Biblical Archaeology Review (2008) 34.2: 32-37, 80.

13) Avigad, 274.

14) Korpel, 37.

15) Korpel, 36-37.

16) Korpel, 37.

17) Encyclopedia Britannica, “Moabite Stone.”

***

Photo credit: Photo: Yuber. The Kurkh Monolith of the Assyrian King Shalmaneser III that mentions “Ahab the Israelite.” [Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain]

***

Summary: I offer various archaeological evidences of the time-period and various aspects and events regarding wicked King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, in the 9th c. B.C.

Archaeology & First-Temple Period Bethlehem

Last updated on: April 6, 2023 at 11:10 am By Dave Armstrong

0 Comments

This exciting find was announced on the Bible History Daily website, in conjunction with the Biblical Archaeology Society:

On May 23, 2012 the Israel Antiquities Authority announced the discovery of a 2,700 year old bulla [c. 700 B.C.] bearing an inscription reading “Bethlehem.” The discovery marks the earliest known mention of ancient Bethlehem, a city best remembered as Jesus’ birthplace centuries later.

A bulla, or stamped piece of clay used to seal a document or container, was used to mark the identity of the sender or author of a document, . . . (1)

It was discovered in the ancient City of David section of Jerusalem. The article continues:

Despite the extended Biblical history of the city, the discovery of the bulla is the first archaeological evidence extending the history of Bethlehem to a First Temple Period Israelite city.

Excavation director Eli Shukron . . . emphasizes, “this is the first time the name Bethlehem appears outside the Bible, in an inscription from the First Temple period, which proves that Bethlehem was indeed a city in the Kingdom of Judah, and possibly also in earlier periods.”

The Jerusalem Post also announced it:

Archaeologists recently discovered the first artifact constituting tangible evidence of the existence of the ancient city of Bethlehem, which is mentioned in the Torah, . . .

The artifact, a bulla, or piece of clay for sealing a document or object, may prove the existence of Bethlehem dating back to the First Temple Period. . . .

Three lines of ancient Hebrew script appear on the bulla, including the words: Bishv’at, Bet Lechem and [Lemel]ekh. (2)

Bethlehem had a history recounted in the Bible extending to more than 1700 years before the birth of Jesus there (Matt. 2:1): which itself was predicted in Micah 5:2. King David (r. c. 1010-c. 970 B.C.) came from Bethlehem (1 Sam. 17:12, 15, 58, 20:6). It was also the burial site of Jacob’s wife Rachel over seven centuries earlier (Gen. 35:19, 48:7), and the book of Ruth, from the period of the judges (c. 1200–c. 1037 B.C.), mentions it seven times.

The earliest possible extrabiblical literary evidence regarding Bethlehem is found in the Amarna correspondence of 1350–1330 B.C., which consists of Egyptian diplomatic letters written in cuneiform (the written language of Mesopotamia), to the Canaanites and Amorites. We can’t determine with certainty whether that referred to the Bethlehem which is six miles from Jerusalem, because there was a second Bethlehem in Galilee, seven miles northwest of Nazareth — mentioned in Joshua 19:15 and Judges 12:8.

This bulla, however, which is believed to be part of a system of taxation — in this instance a transaction between Bethlehem and the king in Jerusalem –, leaves no doubt as to which Bethlehem it refers to.

FOOTNOTES

1) “History of Bethlehem Documented by First Temple Period Bulla from the City of David,” Bible History Daily; originally published on May 23, 2012; reprinted on July 16, 2019.

2) Yonah Bob, “Archaeologists find first proof of ancient Bethlehem,” The Jerusalem Post, May 23, 2012.

***

Photo credit: Bethlehem bulla [courtesy of Israel antiquities authority / Bible History Daily)

***

Summary: A bulla (clay seal), from Bethlehem, dated to the 8th century B.C. was found in the City of David region of Jerusalem in 2012: the earliest certain extrabiblical evidence.