2023-09-26T09:10:28-04:00

Timothy F. Kauffman was raised Catholic, converted to Protestantism in 1990, and is now a Presbyterian (PCA). He has written, “I was saved out of Roman Catholicism, and into Christianity, . . . Roman Catholicism was out of accord with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” Timothy is author of the books, Quite Contrary: Biblical Reconsiderations of the Apparitions of Mary (1994), Graven Bread: The Papacy, the Apparitions of Mary, and the Worship of the Bread of the Altar (1995), and is co-author with Robert M. Zins, of A Gospel Contrary!: A Study of Roman Catholic Abuse of History and Scripture to Propagate Error (April 24, 2023). He has been blogging about theology and Catholicism since 2014. His words will be in blue.

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I will be responding to one portion of Timothy’s article, ” ‘We Don’t Worship Mary’ Part 1″ (6-8-14).

The commandment in the Scripture identifies visible exterior actions that go along with idolatrous worship—namely, making graven images, and bowing down to and serving them—and those visible external actions are just as forbidden as murder:

Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them… (Exodus 20:3-5)

. . . Even the Roman Catholic Catechism extolls the virtue of martyrs who would not even go through the motions of idolatry, “refusing even to simulate such worship,” irrespective of interior dispositions (paragraph 2113). 

This is a legalistic, external-only definition of idolatry, which goes against the biblical definition of it. See my article: Biblical Idolatry: Authentic & Counterfeit Conceptions (2015). But that is a deeper issue, apart from my immediate reason for this response. Timothy starts from a flawed definition of idolatry (according to the biblical standard). Therefore, the argument he builds upon it is also flawed and its substance false.

He would make out (as far as I can tell from his remarks here) that all bowing before any images whatsoever is an act of idolatry. In effect, he makes all images “graven images.” But this, too (if indeed he holds to it), is a falsehood. See:

“Graven Images”: Unbiblical Iconoclasm (vs. John Calvin) [Oct. 2012]

Was Moses’ Bronze Serpent an Idolatrous “Graven Image?” [National Catholic Register, 2-17-20]

But even John Calvin didn’t oppose all religious images whatsoever.

There are many directions to go in such discussions. Rest assured, I have written about all of the main aspects of the broader controversy about the communion of saints and images. But again, I am centering one one thing at present, as will shortly be made clear. The quickest refutation of Timothy’s contention is to cite Holy Scripture (which I always love to do, and have a reputation for doing!):

The ark of the covenant — the most sacred item to the ancient Israelites — had cherubim carved on top of it: on both sides of the “mercy seat” (Ex 25:22; Num 7:89; Heb 9:5). Additionally, when the ark was put into its permanent place in the Holy of Holies in the temple, giant carved cherubim covered it as well (1 Kgs 6:23 ff.; 8:6-7; 1 Chr 28:18; 2 Chr 3:11 ff.;  5:8). The cherubim were angels. They guarded the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve rebelled against God (Gen 3:24; cf. Ezek chapters 1 and 10).

We know that cherubim represented (and in carved images portrayed) angels. We know that they were on top of the ark of the covenant itself (Ex 25:18-22; 37:7-9; Num 7:89; 1 Sam 4:4; 2 Sam 6:2), and also in larger form, present in the temple, outside of the Holy of Holies (1 Kgs 6:22-35; 7:29, 36; 2 Chr 3:7-14; Ezek 41:18, 20, 25). And they were also previously present in the tabernacle, the original prototype of the temple (Ex 26:1, 31; 36:8, 35).

[see also an illustration of Solomon’s temple and what the ark of the covenant may have looked like]

This being the case, we know that wherever there is bowing, prayer, and/or worship in Scripture, as related to the ark of the covenant either outside the temple or tabernacle, or in them, that statues (of cherubim / angels) were present. And this is also true of any bowing, prayer, and/or worship in or near the temple. That’s an awful lot of statuary or other images! Yet we are to believe that these most sacred acts of the ancient Jews were fundamentally idolatrous, and that anything even approximating these actions in Christianity is also idolatrous? It strains credulity to the breaking point. Here are the actual relevant biblical passages:

Bowing and Praying Before the Ark of the Covenant (Including Cherubim)

Joshua 7:6-7 (RSV) Then Joshua rent his clothes, and fell to the earth upon his face before the ark of the LORD until the evening, he and the elders of Israel; and they put dust upon their heads. [7] And Joshua said, “Alas, O Lord GOD, why hast thou brought this people over the Jordan at all, to give us into the hands of the Amorites, to destroy us? Would that we had been content to dwell beyond the Jordan!

Worship and Praise Before the Ark of the Covenant (Including Cherubim)

1 Kings 3:15 . . . Solomon . . . came to Jerusalem, and stood before the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and offered up burnt offerings and peace offerings . . .

1 Kings 8:5 And King Solomon and all the congregation of Israel, who had assembled before him, were with him before the ark, sacrificing so many sheep and oxen that they could not be counted or numbered. (cf. 2 Chr 5:6)

1 Chronicles 16:4 Moreover he appointed certain of the Levites as ministers before the ark of the LORD, to invoke, to thank, and to praise the LORD, the God of Israel. (cf. Deut 10:8)

1 Chronicles 16:37 So David left Asaph and his brethren there before the ark of the covenant of the LORD to minister continually before the ark as each day required,

2 Chronicles 5:6 And King Solomon and all the congregation of Israel, who had assembled before him, were before the ark, sacrificing so many sheep and oxen that they could not be counted or numbered.

Bowing Towards the Temple (Which Included Carved and Painted Cherubim), and Worshiping and Giving Thanks

2 Chronicles 7:3 When all the children of Israel saw the fire come down and the glory of the LORD upon the temple, they bowed down with their faces to the earth on the pavement, and worshiped and gave thanks to the LORD, saying, “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures for ever.”

Psalm 138:2 I bow down toward thy holy temple and give thanks to thy name for thy steadfast love and thy faithfulness; for thou hast exalted above everything thy name and thy word.

Praying and Sacrificing and Worshiping in or Near the Temple (Which Included Carved and Painted Cherubim) or Tabernacle (Embroidered Cherubim)

2 Chronicles 6:20 that thou mayest hearken to the prayer which thy servant offers toward this place. [temple]

2 Chronicles 6:26-27 When heaven is shut up and there is no rain because they have sinned against thee, if they pray toward this place, and acknowledge thy name, and turn from their sin, when thou dost afflict them, [27] then hear thou in heaven, and forgive the sin of thy servants, thy people Israel, when thou dost teach them the good way in which they should walk; and grant rain upon thy land, which thou hast given to thy people as an inheritance. [temple]

2 Chronicles 6:29-30 whatever prayer, whatever supplication is made by any man or by all thy people Israel, each knowing his own affliction, and his own sorrow and stretching out his hands toward this house; [30] then hear thou from heaven thy dwelling place, and forgive, and render to each whose heart thou knowest, according to all his ways (for thou, thou only, knowest the hearts of the children of men); [temple]

2 Chronicles 6:32-33 Likewise when a foreigner, who is not of thy people Israel, comes from a far country for the sake of thy great name, and thy mighty hand, and thy outstretched arm, when he comes and prays toward this house, [33] hear thou from heaven thy dwelling place, (cf. 1 Ki 29-30,35,42) [temple]

Psalm 5:7 . . . I will worship toward thy holy temple in the fear of thee.

Psalm 28:2 Hear the voice of my supplication, as I cry to thee for help, as I lift up my hands toward thy most holy sanctuary. [tabernacle]

Psalm 134:2 Lift up your hands to the holy place, and bless the LORD! [tabernacle or temple]

Luke 2:37 . . . She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day.

Acts 3:1 Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour ofprayer, the ninth hour.

Acts 22:17 . . . I had returned to Jerusalem and waspraying in the temple . . .

Hebrews 9:2-7 For a tent was prepared, the outer one, in which were the lampstand and the table and the bread of the Presence; it is called the Holy Place. [3] Behind the second curtain stood a tent called the Holy of Holies, [4] having the golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant covered on all sides with gold, which contained a golden urn holding the manna, and Aaron’s rod that budded, and the tables of the covenant; [5] above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat. Of these things we cannot now speak in detail. [6] These preparations having thus been made, the priests go continually into the outer tent, performing their ritual duties; [7] but into the second only the high priest goes, and he but once a year, and not without taking blood which he offers for himself and for the errors of the people.

Are these all “graven images” too? Are all these instances or prayer, worship, and sacrifice in conjunction with images (cherubim, palm trees, etc.) idolatrous? According to the Bible, obviously not. In the Bible, God was worshiped even in direct association with created matter: a burning bush, a cloud, and fire (as well as in conjunction with the cherubim on top of the ark, where He stated that He was especially present):

Exodus 3:2, 4-5 And the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush; and he looked, and lo, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. . . . [4] When the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here am I.” [5] Then he said, “Do not come near; put off your shoes from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”

Exodus 33:9-10 When Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the door of the tent, and the LORD would speak with Moses. [10] And when all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the door of the tent, all the people would rise up and worship, every man at his tent door.

2 Chronicles 7:3-4 When all the children of Israel saw the fire come down and the glory of the LORD upon the temple, they bowed down with their faces to the earth on the pavement, and worshiped and gave thanks to the LORD, saying, “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures for ever.” [4] Then the king and all the people offered sacrifice before the LORD.

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Photo credit: Moses and Joshua in the Tabernacle, c. 1896-1902, by James Tissot (1836-1902) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

Summary: I object to Presbyterian apologist Timothy F. Kauffman’s argument that all bowing to any religious objects whatsoever is rank idolatry. The Bible states otherwise.

2023-05-12T10:27:03-04:00

Gallicanism, Ultramontanism, and Petrine Primacy in the New Testament

The book, The Infallibility of the Church (1888) by Anglican anti-Catholic polemicist George Salmon (1819-1904), may be one of the most extensive and detailed — as well as influential — critiques of the Catholic Church ever written. But, as usual with these sorts of works, it’s abominably argued and relentlessly ignorant and/or dishonest, as the critiques listed below amply demonstrate and document.
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The most influential and effective anti-Catholic Protestant polemicist today, “Dr” [???] James White, cites Salmon several times in his written materials, and regards his magnum opus as an “excellent” work. In a letter dated 2 November 1959, C. S. Lewis recommended the book to a reader, Michael Edwards, who was “vexed” about papal infallibility (see: The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume 3: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy, 1950 – 1963, edited by Walter Hooper, New York: HarperCollins, 2007, p. 1133, footnote 24). Russell P. Spittler, professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, wrote that “From an evangelical standpoint,” the book “has been standard since first published in 1888” (Cults and Isms, Baker Book House, 1973, 117). Well-known Baptist apologist Edward James Carnell called it the “best answer to Roman Catholicism” in a 1959 book. I think we can safely say that it is widely admired among theological (as well as “emotional”) opponents of the Catholic Church.
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Prominent Protestant apologist Norman Geisler and his co-author Ralph MacKenzie triumphantly but falsely claim, in a major critique of Catholicism, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1995, 206-207, 459), that Salmon’s book has “never really been answered by the Catholic Church,” and call it the “classic refutation of papal infallibility,” which also offers “a penetrating critique of Newman’s theory.”
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Salmon’s tome, however, has been roundly refuted at least twice: first, by Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Murphy in The Irish Ecclesiastical Record (March / May / July / September / November 1901 and January / March 1902): a response (see the original sources) — which I’ve now transcribed almost in its totality: adding up to more than 73,000 words, or approximately 257 pages (last two installments abridged a bit); secondly, by Bishop Basil Christopher Butler (1902-1986) in his book, The Church and Infallibility: A Reply to the Abridged ‘Salmon’ (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1954, 230 pages). See all of these replies — and any further ones that I make — listed under “George Salmon” on my Anti-Catholicism web page.
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See also my thorough refutation of Salmon’s false and scurrilous accusation of St. Cardinal Newman, regarding papal infallibility: John Henry Newman’s Alleged Disbelief  in Papal Infallibility Prior to 1870, and Supposed Intellectual Dishonesty Afterwards [8-11-11]
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Bishop Butler’s book is partially available (8 chapters of 11) in old Internet Archive files (see chapters one / two / three / four / five / six / seven) and another web page with Chapter Ten. Most of these files will eventually be inaccessible, so I have decided to select highlights of all of these chapters, and also from chapters eight, nine, and eleven, from my own hardcover copy of the book.  The words below are all from Bishop Butler, edited and abridged by myself. I will indicate which chapter excerpts are from, but not page numbers. Subtitles are not Salmon’s own. George Salmon’s words will be in blue; St. Cardinal Newman’s words in green.
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See other installments of this series:
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Chapter Six: The Vatican Council
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I do not know anything in the teaching of the modern Church which suggests that an Ecumenical Council (which requires papal acceptance as such for its claim to the title) is any less of a “main organ” than is the Pope, defining a doctrine (as recently that of the Assumption) without the formality of a Council. The country can be governed by Order in Council (a direct act of superior authority) or by Act of Parliament (and a Bill only becomes an Act when it receives the royal signature), but it would be rash to assume that the claim of Parliament to be the “main ” organ of government is not upheld. Similarly, it is of course simply a mistake to say, as Salmon himself does, (S, page 109) that “modern Catholics seek to show that infallibility does not reside in Councils.” The Church recognizes about twenty [now 21] Ecumenical Councils, and all their doctrinal definitions are accepted as infallible.

Chapter 10 of the Abridgement is devoted to the Vatican Council [1870], at which the Pope’s infallibility was defined and the old theological controversy between Gallicans (who thought a Council superior to a Pope) and Ultramontanes was thus terminated by a conciliar act. Salmon’s main source for his sharply critical account of the Council was apparently “Quirinus,” and this means that it was largely Dollinger, whom Mr. Woodhouse describes as “The great R.C. historian.” It is true of course that Dollinger was a great historian, and that he had been a Catholic. But for ten years before the Council he had been moving towards what in modern jargon might be called the “left” of the theological world, and he left the Church as a result of the Council and its decisions. He is therefore a partial witness.

[see my related article, Döllinger & Liberal Dissidents’ Rejection of Papal Infallibility (11-28-04) ]

There had been in antiquity what amounted to a traditional recognition that the Church of Rome had always been a citadel of orthodoxy, that its “line” on any doctrinal issue might be presumed to be correct, and that the infallible Peter spoke in the official utterance of the bishop who, as Bishop of Rome, inherited his “apostolic chair” (sedes apostolica). There had further been, and especially in the West, a practical recognition of Rome’s de jure leadership of the Catholic Church. Broadly speaking, these ideas met no serious and persistent opposition from orthodox ecclesiastical quarters either before 1054 (when, under Michael Caerularius, the Eastern Churches drifted into separation from the West) or, in the West, after that date, until the scandals of the Western schism and the period of the anti-Popes shook the prestige of the Roman See.

The Council of Constance (1414-17), in an endeavour to bring the Western schism to an end, declared that

a General Council, as representing the Universal Church, held its power immediately from Jesus Christ…and that every one, even the Pope, was bound to obey the Council in matters concerning the faith, the extinction of the schism, and the reform of the Church in its head and members; and that the Council had authority over the Pope as well as over all Christians.

This is the theory of theological (as distinct from political) Gallicanism, and the acts of this Council were approved by the Pope “saving the rights, dignity, and pre-eminence of the Apostolic See.” Theological Gallicanism found a home in France, where the great Bossuet (17th century) was one of its spokesmen, and though its famous “Four Articles” had in 1690 been declared by the Pope to be “null and void,” . . .

Meanwhile, the other, and ultimately victorious explanation of the relation of bishops (or Council) and Pope, had been systematically set forth by St. Robert Bellarmine in 1586. This is the theory known as Ultramontanism:

The Pope is the supreme judge in deciding controversies on faith and morals. When he teaches the whole Church in things pertaining to faith, he cannot err.

The nineteenth century, however, witnessed the rise of a movement of thought to which the name New Ultramontanism, or “Neo-Ultramontanism,” has been applied. [T]he school of thought opposed to the New Ultramontanism came to be described as “Gallican.” But, says [Cuthbert] Butler, “the liberal Catholics were not, as such, Gallicans” — that is, they did not, as such, maintain the theological Gallicanism of Bossuet. Their great leader was Montalembert, who declared that he detested Gallicanism and its official formularies; . . .

In England, Ullathorne may be taken as a typical case of a man educated on the lines of the old theological Gallicanism who, by the date of the Vatican Council, had evolved into a supporter of the moderate Ultramontanism canonised in that Council’s definition of faith. Cardinal Newman, the greatest of the Oxford converts, stated after the Council, as we have seen, that he had held this theological opinion ever since his conversion a quarter of a century earlier. But the great layman convert W. G. Ward, editor of the Dublin Review since 1863, was an ardent advocate of extreme theological Neo-Ultramontanism:

He held that the infallible element of bulls, encyclicals, etc., should not be restricted to their formal definitions, but ran through the entire doctrinal instructions; the decrees of the Roman Congregations, if adopted by the Pope and published by his authority, thereby were stamped with the mark of infallibility, in short, ‘his every doctrinal pronouncement is infallibly directed by the Holy Ghost’…Ward’s attitude to encyclicals and allocations was much like the Protestant attitude to the Bible…He insisted…that his view was the only Catholic one…only invincible ignorance excusing [those who rejected it] from mortal sin. [Cuthbert Butler, The Life and Times of Bishop Ullathorne, vol. 2, 41-44]

It can be well understood that such as extreme position, advocated with force and ability, by a theologian like Ward, aroused the greatest anxiety in more moderate men such as Newman, with a deep knowledge of Christian history and a sense of those “fine distinctions” which looked like treachery to Ward, and like special pleading to Salmon.

It will thus, I take it, be seen that it is altogether mistaken to suppose that the line which separates the minority at the Council from the majority must be the same as the line dividing those who held, from those who rejected, the opinion that the Pope as pastor of the flock of Christ is superior to any Council lacking his ratification, and that he is therefore infallible. There were those who held this opinion as theologically true, but feared either the extreme position of the Neo-Ultramontanes or the effect of even a moderate definition upon governments and upon non-Catholics, and the danger that it would lead to an undesirable “centralization” and a diminution of the rights and status of the other diocesan bishops. In fact, as we can now see, the Neo-Ultramontanes did not prevail at the Council, democratic governments have found it possible to maintain diplomatic relations with the Holy See, and the bishops had their authority secured to them in the Canon Law of the Latin Church. Unfortunately, many non-Catholics continue, like Salmon, to imagine that Neo-Ultramontanism is now the official creed of the Catholic Church.

Chapter Seven: St. Peter’s Primacy

The course of Salmon’s argument now takes him back from the Vatican Council to the origins of Christianity, and in the eleventh chapter of the Abridgement the “Petrine texts” and St. Peter’s position as deducible from the New Testament are investigated; and the claim is made that whatever special prerogatives Christ gave to the first among his Apostles, still no provision was made whereby these prerogatives should be transmitted to a line of individual successors of St. Peter.

Before descending into the detail of these discussions, there is a point which I think it legitimate to make here. The foundation of the Church’s “case against Protestantism” is that Christ entrusted his truth and grace to a visible society of human beings, the perpetuity of which society on earth is assured by divine Providence; and such a society does in fact appear to be the one direct outcome in history of Christ’s life on earth. Approaching the New Testament documents as historians, we see in them the evidence of that Church’s existence and activity in the apostolic generation. The books of the New Testament were written by and for members of that society. When we come to the second and subsequent centuries of our era the “Great Church” is indeed flanked by other more or less Christian bodies, and Christian influence makes itself felt beyond the limits of any social incorporations of Christianity. But these other bodies, in so far as they are (imperfectly) Christian, and these influences, all derive from the “Great” or “Catholic” Church. And so it has been ever since.

The story of Christianity has been, in fact, the story of a great central body known to itself and to the non-Christian world as the “Catholic Church,” and alongside it of other bodies and influences derived historically from it. I know that all Christians see things in this light. But no unprejudiced person will deny that this is at least a reasonable way of looking at the “Christian fact” in history, somewhat as the Copernican hypothesis is a reasonable way of looking at the phenomena relating to what we now call the solar system. Moreover, for a Christian who believes that something called “the Church” was established by Christ as an essential part of his work for all mankind, this way of looking at the Christian story makes sense of the New Testament evidence on this subject.

Now there is one text, and only one, in the Gospels, in which Christ’s intention to found such a “Church” is expressed in language incorporating the actual word “Church” (ecclesia). It is the famous words of Christ in the middle of St. Matthew’s Gospel:

Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jonas, because flesh and blood hath not revealed it [viz. the fact that Jesus is ‘Christ the Son of the living God’] to thee, but my Father who is in heaven. And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock will I build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to thee the keys of the Kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosened also in heaven. (Matthew 16:17-19)

This passage has, of course, and for obvious reasons, been the storm-centre of controversies, literary, historical, exegetical, and theological. All I want to do here, however, is to emphasize that the passage does stand there, in the New Testament, and in a prominent position in the New Testament.

The text cries out across the centuries to the contemporary fact and the contemporary fact harks back to the original commission. I venture to think that to anyone who believes in divine Providence; and especially to anyone who already believes, or inclines to believe, that the divine entered into the texture of human history in a unique and supreme way in the Person of Jesus of Nazareth; and above all to anyone who believes that Christ founded a visible society that was to represent him on earth till the end of history, this correspondence between the beginning and the end of the Christian story, so far as that story has yet been unrolled, is profoundly moving, claims the most earnest and prayerful attention, and is an invitation to faith.

The correspondence can, of course, more or less, be “explained away,” just as a believing Jew will “explain away” the correspondence between Old Testament Judaism’s messianic hope and the Christian message. The method of explaining away is to concentrate attention on the human and other creaturely causes which have influenced and in some measure affected the development of the Church. This is the method adopted by Salmon, and to a discussion of his use of it we must shortly turn.

It is surely no great straining of this text, to see in it the bestowal on Peter, for transmission to those who should succeed in his see, of the powers and privileges which Catholics believe that the Pope possesses. But even one who does not see this in the text, must surely admit that the scriptural evidence is not demonstrably inconsistent with the Catholic belief; and this is all we need. And so, too, with the evidence of subsequent history.

A Catholic does not yield religious faith to the Vatican definition because he thinks that the truth of the definition can be historically proved without appeal to the authority of the Church that holds its teaching commission from Christ. It may be difficult for a western non-Catholic to believe in the Papacy; but the difficulty will be principally caused by the fact that the non-Catholic does not yet believe in the Church as a visible association of baptized believers.

What, in fact, is contained in the passage of St. Matthew’s Gospel quoted above? It is desirable to read the passage in its context, and I suggest that we thus get the following as a probable exegesis.

St. Peter has confessed, on behalf of the other Disciples, that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” In reply Christ first “congratulates” him on having learned this truth (the cardinal Christian truth when it is a question of distinguishing Christianity from Judaism) not by human means but by divine revelation. He then echoes St. Peter’s words to him; “[As thou hast said that I am Christ, the son of the living god] I in my turn say to thee, Thou art Kepha [the Aramaic for Rock].” The parallelism with Peter’s confession (which was not “Thou art Jesus,” but “Thou art the Messiah…”) indicates that Kepha is here not simply a personal name but a name denoting a function or office; and the nature of that function is at once made clear: “Thou art Rock, and upon this Rock I will build my Church.”

Peter then, in his official or functional capacity, is to be the firm substructure (not a foundation stone but the Rock on which the foundation stones will rest) of the Church which Christ will “build” as a builder builds a temple or a house. “Upon this Rock I will build my Church, and the gates of Sheol [i.e. the might of the city of the powers of evil] will not prevail against it [i.e. the Church, not I think, the Rock].” Thus the Church will have a stability that will make it at all times and for ever victorious over the worst assaults of the evil that is ever conspiring against the divine cause and purpose in history. And the source of this stability will be the Rock on which the Church is built.

We naturally compare the implied simile with that which terminates the Sermon on the Mount:

Every one therefore that heareth these my words and doth them, shall be likened to a wise man that built his house upon a rock, and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded on a rock. (Matthew 7:24f)

We note Christ’s great concern for “stability.” It is stable perseverance that counts, not a “flash-in-the-pan” enthusiasm. So too he contrasted, in the parable of the Sower, the seed sown on good ground with, for instance, that which “endured only for a season.” So, too, he promised that “he who endured to the end” should be “saved.” The man whose character survives all the storms and stresses of natural life is he who rests his behaviour permanently on a permanent adhesion to Christ’s teaching.

An individual Christian may fail and fall, as Judas did. But Christ’s promise for his Church is that it will not fail or fall. The “gates of Sheol” will not prevail against it. And the reason is that it is built upon Peter, the Rock. I will point out, in passing, that the stability of the building obviously depends upon the persistence, and persistent functioning, of the Rock. To suggest that the Church can survive and outlive the office or function signified by Peter’s “official” name, is like suggesting that the “wise man,” having once accepted and acted upon Christ’s teaching, could thereafter dispense with that “rock” and yet hope to withstand the rain and floods and winds. If the Church is to persist — and Christ assures us that it will — then the Petrine function must a fortiori persist.

We may now continue with our text. “And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” The “kingdom of heaven” is the Reign of God, and the “keys” are the outward sign of investiture as the major-domo, the “second-in-command” and representative of the King himself — compare the prophecy addressed to Sobna:

I will drive thee out from thy station, and depose thee from the ministry. And…I will call my servant Eliacim the son of Helcias, and I will clothe him with thy robe, and will strengthen him with thy girdle, and will give thy power into his hand; and he shall be as a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to the house of Juda. And I will lay the key of the house of David upon his shoulder: and he shall open, and none shall shut: and he shall shut, and none shall open. (Isaiah 22:19-22)

The conclusion to be drawn from this comparison is that in the Christian dispensation, which is the historical anticipation, the realisation “in a mystery,” of the post-historic Reign of God, Peter is to have the supreme authority as the “vicar” of the heavenly King. Finally, he is told that “whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven” etc. “Binding” and “loosing,” in the rabbinical usage, would mean excluding from, and granting readmission to, the community; or declaring the existence or the non-existence of a legal obligation. The phrase therefore seems to imply that Peter is to exercise a juridical function in the religious sphere, and his juridical decisions in this sphere will have divine sanction (“bound or loosed in heaven“).

This last sentence of the saying (“Whatsoever thou shalt bind” etc.) is repeated (with a change from the singular “thou” to the plural “you”) in a saying addressed to the Disciples in Matthew 18 (where the juridical meaning is suggested by the context, which deals with “excommunication”), and it has been argued that therefore nothing is given by it to Peter that is not given to each of the Apostles. But

  1. the plural reference in Matthew 18 may indicate that jurisdiction is there given to the Church as a whole, not (except by derivation) to each Apostle severally.
  2. The promise of the keys, in the preceding sentence, must be something peculiar to Peter, since there is no room for more than one Major-Domo in a household, one Grand Vizier in a realm. Nor is it enough to say that each Apostle (and bishop) will wield the power of the keys in his own sphere of jurisdiction or local Church; since there is no evidence to suggest that Christ ever represented himself as founding a plurality of Churches. “My Church” is to be conceived as a continuation on a higher plane of the divine theocracy of Israel, and this was (in idea) a single polity centering in the Temple, the Sanhedrim and the High Priest.
  3. The attempt to reduce Peter to the same level as the other Apostles breaks down most manifestly in the first of these three promises: “Thou art Rock, and upon this Rock I will build my Church.” Besides the fact that a single building will not require more than one rock to rest upon, the conclusive consideration here is that Simon Bar-jonas was the only one of the Disciples to whom the functional name Kepha (Rock) was given by Christ.

Thus we must give up the attempt to argue from the third promise (and its similarity to the promise of Matthew 18) that Peter is promised, in all this section, only equal authority with the other Apostles; and it is more reasonable to infer, from the uniqueness of the first promise, that special authority is given to him in the second; and that in the third he is given a power equivalent to that which in Matthew 18 is given to the Church as a whole.

From the Matthean passage we may now turn to John 21:13-17, with the twice-repeated injunction to Peter to “feed my lambs,” and a third bidding to “feed my sheep.” The comparison of the followers of Christ to a “flock” of which he is the shepherd occurs more than once in the Gospels. It seems reasonable to turn for illustration of John 21 to an earlier passage in the same Gospel (chapter 10) where the comparison occurs, and the unity of the flock is emphasized — “there shall be one flock and one shepherd.” With this passage in mind, I take it as the most probable interpretation of the triple injunction in John 21 that Christ is solemnly handing over the Christian flock to Peter as his own vicegerent, now that his own visible presence is about to be removed. Salmon indeed points out that the “office of tending Christ’s sheep” is not peculiar to St. Peter; the same duty is enjoined upon the Ephesian elders (Acts 10:28) and upon the elders addressed in 1 Peter 5:2. But the unity of the flock will depend upon there being one shepherd or “pastor” whose control is superior to that of any other: “one flock” requires “one shepherd.”

[Footnote: Of course, in John 10 the “one shepherd” is Christ himself. But the problem is, how the pastoral function is to be exercised in Christ’s “absence.” If one vice-pastor is not required for the one flock, there seems no reason why there should be any pastors at all other than Christ himself, and this is refuted not only by John 21 but Acts 10:28, and 1 Peter 5:2.]

And it is noteworthy that this appears to be St. Cyprian’s interpretation of the passage; while Cyprian is clear that each bishop is a “shepherd of the flock,” he describes St. Peter, and him alone among the Apostles, as him “to whom the Lord entrusts his sheep to be fed and guarded, upon whom he set and founded the Church.” If any uncertainty still remains, it should be remembered that the Johannine passage can be illustrated from the Matthaean passage, and vice versa. It is not quite natural to take the “keys” as nothing more than is given to each of the Apostles; nor is it quite natural to take the pastoral investiture of John 21 as nothing more than the apostolate to which each of the Eleven could lay claim; it is most unnatural to adopt both of these rather strained interpretations; and if a special function is intended in either case, it is probably intended in both cases.

Thirdly, there is Luke 22:32, “Satan hath desired to have you [plural, i.e. the Disciples] that he may sift you [plural]; but…thou [singular, i.e. Peter], being converted, establish thy brethren.” The passage, taken by itself, could not, as Salmon points out, be suspected to contain “a revelation concerning the Church’s appointed guide to truth in all time.” But Salmon’s principle in exegesis appears to be the (secular) Roman one: Divide and master, divide et impera. When it is recognized that Peter had been designated as the Rock and Viceroy, and was to be appointed the pastor, of Christ’s Church, Kingdom and Flock; and when it is remembered, in particular, that the function of the rock is to give stability to the superstructure, it is possible to hold that in this Lucan passage Peter is being bidden to exercise the stabilising function (establish, make firm, confirm) implied by his new name of Rock (though the name used in the Lucan context is not Peter or Kepha, but Simon). As Simon, Peter is a prey to temptation like his brethren; but as Peter he is called upon to impart to them a (supernatural) stability.

These four Gospel passages have of course to be seen against the general background of the New Testament; in which the primacy of Peter stands out so clearly, as is recognized perhaps by modern non-Catholic scholarship more fully than in Salmon’s day.

But Salmon tries to diminish the weight of the New Testament evidence in two ways.

(1) He argues that the Fathers of the Church did not find the papal primacy in these passages; and indeed that patristic exegesis often finds a different original meaning, or no special significance at all, in the texts which are adduced by Catholics in support of the primacy. We may reply

  1. the Fathers have a way of finding in a given text of Scripture just so much as is relevant to their interest at the moment — thus Origen can argue, for moral reasons, that (in a sense) each Christian is a “Peter” on which the Church is built. But they do not always mean to exclude other possible interpretations. They regarded the words of Scripture as full of unfathomable mysteries, and would take that aspect of truth which helped their immediate purpose.
  2. Salmon would hardly have objected to our preferring the real and full meaning of the New Testament passages to the meanings put upon them by individual Fathers.
  3. Dom John Chapman has a remarkable essay on St. John Chrysostom’s references to St. Peter, and to this article I refer anyone who wishes to know what one of the greatest ancient exegetes thought of the New Testament evidence in regard to Peter: “the first of the Disciples,” “the unshaken foundation,” “who was entrusted with the keys of heaven,” who did not receive the see of Jerusalem (given to St. James) because Christ “made Peter the teacher not of that see but of the world.”
  4. As the Church’s consciousness of the special role of the Church and See of Rome developed, so her exegesis developed too; and as her articulate view of the Papacy approximated gradually to that defined by the Vatican Council, so her interpretation of the Petrine texts came to approximate to what, I have argued, is their real meaning.

(2) Salmon writes:

[I]t seems to me the most obvious and natural way of understanding our Lord’s words (Matthew 16:17f) to take them as conferring a personal honour in reward for [Peter’s] confession. Thy name I have called Rock: and on thee and on this confession of thine I will found my Church. For that confession really was the foundation of the Church. Just as in some noble sacred music, the strain which a single voice has led is responded to by the voices of the full choir, so that glorious hymn of praise, which Peter was the first to raise, has been caught up and re-echoed by the voices of the redeemed in every age….Jesus fulfilled His promise by honouring [Peter] with the foremost place in each of the successive steps by which the Church was developed [first Pentecost, mission to Cornelius]. Thus the words of Christ were fulfilled in that Peter was honoured by being the foremost among the human agents by which the Church was founded. But I need not say that this was an honour in which it was impossible he could have a successor. We might just as well speak of Adam’s having a successor in the place which he occupied in the founding of the Christian Church.

Some comment on this passage seems to be called for. Peter is the Rock; and on him and on his confession [or having made his confession of faith] would the Church be founded. It is the confession that leads to Salmon’s discourse on sacred music; but in point of fact Christ does not promise to found his Church on Peter’s confession, but on Peter.

We can therefore dismiss the idea that Peter is being promised the honour of being the first of a vast succession of believers taking their cue from his confession of faith. But, indeed, the idea of “honour” seems strangely out of place in the Gospel. Christ warned his disciples against Pharisaic love of outward marks of honour, and there is literally nothing to suggest that he is here conferring “honour” on Peter. (Was Salmon misled by St. Cyprian, who speaks of the Apostles as having “parem honorem” ? But honos in Latin means an office — cf. cursus honorum, the scale of successive offices in the Republican magistracy.) He is “blessed,” just as the Disciples’ eyes are “blessed” because they see (Matt 13:16), but this blessedness is a supernatural grace, not an honour, it is a noblesse which confers no outward dignity but a frightening responsibility and a vocation to the Cross. “Peter was honoured by being the foremost among the human agents by which the Church was founded.” But to be one of the agents of the founding of the Church is not the same thing as being the Rock upon which Christ, the divine Builder, constructs his Church. It is true that, after Christ, the Apostles were, in a unique and unbequeathable sense, the Church’s “founders” — but this idea is in no way present in, or to be inferred from, the passage of which Salmon here presents himself as interpreter. His exegesis seems to me completely to miss the mark.

It would be rather strained to call the first notes of a concert, as such, the rock on which the concert is built. No-one would call a builder the rock which someone else builds the edifice. On the contrary, Peter is, not in his person but in his function, the Rock which gives stability to the structure of the Church (just as obedience to Christ’s teaching is the rock on which the Christian moral life is built), and whereas Adam’s race can survive Adam’s death, the structure will collapse if at any time the underlying rock is removed. I need hardly add that Salmon’s interpretation must break down still more obviously if it is sought to apply it to the promise of the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven.

But though Salmon’s explanation of Matt 16:18 seems quite untenable, the question whether Christ intended Peter to have a successor in his special functions remains to be considered on its own merits. Here it is to be remarked that there may be an aspect of these functions which was to be handed on, and another aspect that was incommunicable. There is an analogous distinction in the relationship of the episcopate to the Apostles. It is the teaching of the Church that the bishops inherit their office from the Apostles. Yet apostleship, in certain important aspects, was incommunicable. To have “seen the Lord” and to have received a commission immediately from him were essential to being an “Apostle of Christ” (Acts 1:20ff; Matt 10:2ff; 1 Cor 9:1; Rom 1:1; etc); and these privileges were incommunicable. But a mediated commission from Christ could be received by others from the Apostles, and this, we believe, is the origin of the episcopal authority. Similarly, Peter — not unlike Abraham the “father of faith” (cf. Isaiah 51:1-2) before him — had the unique and incommunicable privilege of being the first to have confessed Jesus as “Christ, the son of the living God”; but in another aspect his rocklike function may have been intended to have its abiding place in the Church — by transmission — as the Law of Moses had its abiding function in the Old Dispensation.

I assume that, as Christians, we believe that Christ intended his Church to continue to function as such till the end of history (“Lo, I am with you all the days even until the consummation of the age” — Matthew 28:20). We have, then, simply to ask: is it credible that Jesus gave to this Church a structure, an anatomy, which was to survive only for one generation? If the apostolic age of the Church required the guidance and governance of “hierarchy,” is it conceivable that the need would grow less as new generations were born and died?

And in particular, if the Kingdom required a Grand Vizier, the sheep a shepherd, in the few years following the Ascension, is it conceivable that this was regarded by Christ as a purely transitional requirement? If in the great “eschatological” discourse of Matthew 24 and 25, the prophetic gaze of Christ is directed over a remote vista of the future course of the Church in the world, was that Church to face wars and rumour of wars, persecution, treachery, and the “growing cold” of love, with no “vicar” of Christ such as himself provided for its triumphant beginnings? And to those who value the episcopacy but do not accept the Papacy, we may legitimately put the question: Why should the “college” of the ruling Twelve be perpetuated in bishops if the presidency of the college is not perpetuated in the successor of Peter?

It will be objected that at least there is no positive evidence in the New Testament of such an intention on the part of Christ. I suggest, in reply, that this is to misunderstand what Christ did when he not only “built” but gave authority to his Church. It is not only the ministry, but the Church, which we confess to be “apostolic” (“one, holy, catholic and apostolic”). Now apostleship connotes possession of transmitted authority — as an ambassador re-presents the authority of his sovereign. And the New Testament shows us the gift of this authority by Christ:

All authority hath been given [by my heavenly Father] unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations…” (Matt 28:18-19); “As the Father hath sent me, even so send I you.” (John 20:21); “He that receiveth you, receiveth me; and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me. (Matt 10:40)

How had the Father sent Christ? He had sent him, as Christ’s words prove, with transmissible authority. If, then, Christ “sent” his Apostles as his Father had sent him, he sent them with an authority similarly transmissible. He empowered the infant Church to prolong its own life, and we must reasonably assume that he empowered it to perpetuate, or himself perpetuated in it, the features which his own action showed that he deemed necessary to it.

At the end of this wearisome investigation of the “Petrine texts,” let us return to the point at which this chapter started. The astonishing thing about the religion inaugurated by the humble Carpenter of Nazareth, the victim, as he might seem, of an enthusiasm little to the taste of those who held power in the Judaism of his day, is that this religion has survived, not as a mere flavouring in the hotch-potch of man’s inheritance from the distant past, as Stoicism may be said to survive in a vague kind of way in our European moral outlook, but as a recognisable and distinct entity, in the world, challenging the world, riding the storms of the breakdown of cultures, and still the one hope of a world which needs religion but cannot invent a religion by itself. That it has thus survived is due, humanly speaking, to the fact that that religion has from the first been a polity, a society, possessing a centre — as human associations must — which, since the death of St. Peter, has in fact been at Rome. The society is still with us; Rome is still its centre; and again we ask ourselves, is it not by the positive will of Providence that Rome’s centrality claims to be the fulfilment of the promise and commission to “Simon, Bar-jonas” ?

Additional Note[s]

It has been suggested that one of the factors leading in patristic times to a diversity of interpretation of the “Thou art Peter” saying, is that in Greek and Latin the name Peter has a masculine termination, while the word for rock (petra) has a feminine one. (The New Testament [e.g. Paul’s epistles] shows that almost certainly the name given to “Simon Bar-jonas” by Christ was Kepha. In Aramaic, the language in which Christ will have uttered the famous promise, it would run: “Thou art Kepha, and upon this Kepha will I build my Church.” It is hardly disputed among scholars today that Petros (the Greek for Peter) is meant not to distinguish Peter from petra (the rock) but to identify him with it.

The Apostles are foundation stones of the Church (cf. 1 Peter 2:4-5; Eph 2:19-20; Rev 21:14); Peter is the Rock on which these foundation-stones are laid.

Professor Cullmann on St. Peter. The eminent Lutheran scholar, Dr. Oscar Cullmann, has recently (1952) published an important work: Saint Pierre, Disciple, Apotre, Martyr (Delachaux et Niestle, Neuchatel). In it he maintains that the promises to Peter in Matthew 16 are an authentic part of that Gospel. He interprets the promise of the keys as a promise that Peter will be Christ’s commissioned manager (intendant) of the Church, and points out that the power of “binding and loosing” given to all the Apostles at a later point in this Gospel, is given to Peter in a special way. Similarly, the purport of the Johannine text “Feed my sheep” is, in his opinion, that Peter is to be the shepherd of the one flock of Christ. And he points out that Peter was in fact (and, he maintains, in consequence of Christ’s commission) the head of the Church of Jerusalem at a time when that Church was the whole Church. He thinks it probable that Peter died at Rome as a martyr in the Neronian persecution. But he argues that in the latter part of his life Peter put himself, as head of the Jewish Christian mission, under the leadership of St. James of Jerusalem. And he entirely denies that Peter’s primacy, though established by Christ, has been inherited exclusively by the Bishops of Rome. Peter was the Rock of the Church’s foundation, but none other has been, or could be, Rock in that sense.

Dr. Cullmann’s position seems to be one of “arrested development.” He fails to go all the way with Catholic thought and belief because (in consequence of certain views of his own on the character of New Testament “time,” but yet surely rather unreasonably) he denies to the post-apostolic Church’s authority that power of representing Christ which he acknowledges in the Church’s two great sacraments. He also parts company with Catholicism because he does not see that the Church is by nature an association and therefore incapable of existing in separate parts; he thus finds it possible to view the development of the Papacy as something to which the “Church” as a whole is not fully and finally committed.

But his book represents an important and promising approximation to the Catholic position.

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Go to Part 4

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Summary: Bishop B. C. Butler critiqued the anti-infallibility arguments & rampant misrepresentations & quotes out of context, of anti-Catholic George Salmon, in 1954.

2023-04-20T10:09:23-04:00

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 18th 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.

***

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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.
2023-04-17T13:36:06-04:00

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 GarfinkelJon W. CarrollMichael PytlikMadeleine 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.

Related Reading

King Hezekiah: Exciting New Archaeological Findings [12-13-22]

***

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.

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]. 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 InformationThanks a million from the bottom of my heart!

***

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]

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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.

2023-03-29T10:05:44-04:00

1 Samuel 27:1-3, 5-7 (RSV) And David said in his heart, “I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul; there is nothing better for me than that I should escape to the land of the Philistines; then Saul will despair of seeking me any longer within the borders of Israel, and I shall escape out of his hand.” So David arose and went over, he and the six hundred men who were with him, to Achish the son of Maoch, king of Gath. And David dwelt with Achish at Gath, . . . Then David said to Achish, “If I have found favor in your eyes, let a place be given me in one of the country towns, that I may dwell there; for why should your servant dwell in the royal city with you?” So that day Achish gave him Ziklag; therefore Ziklag has belonged to the kings of Judah to this day. And the number of the days that David dwelt in the country of the Philistines was a year and four months.

1 Samuel 30:1, 3  Now when David and his men came to Ziklag on the third day, the Amalekites had made a raid upon the Negeb and upon Ziklag. They had overcome Ziklag, and burned it with fire, . . . And when David and his men came to the city, they found it burned with fire, . . .

An article in Israel Today: Archaeology, “Have Archeologists Found the Biblical City of Ziklag?,” by Tsvi Sadan (7-10-19) summarizes the recent discovery:

After four years of excavations, Israeli archaeologists Yosef Garfinkel of the Hebrew University and Saar Ganor of the Israel Antiquities Authority, along with Australian archaeologist Kyle Keimer of Sidney’s MacQuarie University, announced on Monday that Khirbet a-Ra’i, located between the modern city of Kiryat Gat and Lachish, is most likely the Philistine city of Ziklag, where David found refuge from king Saul (1 Sam. 27). . . .

Khirbet a-Ra’i yields both Philistine and Judean artifacts, which means that this site was both a Philistine and Judean city. That fits the biblical account, which says that this Philistine city was given to David, . . .

Other reasons for designating the site as Ziklag are the Philistine artifacts themselves, dated to the 12th-11th centuries BC, . . . Similar artifacts have been found in the Philistine cities of Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ekron and Gat[h]. . . .

Above the Philistine remains were found the remains of an agricultural settlement from the time of King David. Some of the nearly 100 intact clay vessels found at the site are identical to those found in Khirbet Qeiyafa, the biblical She’arayim. . . .

Furthering the claim that this is Ziklag is the clear evidence of a massive fire, which could confirm the biblical account of the Amalekites burning the city . . .

Yosef Garfinkel elaborates:

Twelve different suggestions to identify Ziklag have been put forward, such as Tel Halif near Kibbutz Lahav, Tel Sera in the Western Negev, Tel Sheva, and others. However, none of these sites produced continuous settlement which included both a Philistine settlement and a settlement from the era of King David. (in Enrico de Lazaro, “Archaeologists Locate Long-Lost Biblical City of Ziklag,” Science News, 7-25-19)

See a map of Ziklag’s location in Israel.

Yosef Garfinkel and Saar Ganor provide further confirming details:

If . . . we take into account the currently agreed location of Gath at Tell es-Safi, Ziklag should be located in a much more northerly location, . . . 

Ziklag is presented as a rather remote place in relation to the capital city of Gath. Hence, it should probably be located at the edge of the territory of Gath. Spatial analysis of the Philistine settlement pattern has indicated that these cities controlled an area of about half a day’s walk form the major city(Garfinkel 2007). Hence, Ziklag should be at a distance of no more than c. 15 km from Gath. Scholars who place Ziklag 30 or 40 km away from Gath do not present a realistic estimation of the territory of a Philistine city-state. . . . 

Although it seems likely that only epigraphic finds can confirm the identification of the site with Ziklag, in the current state of knowledge Khirbet al-Ra‘i is a much better candidate then any of the previous suggestions. The location of Khirbet Qeiyafa and Khirbet al-Ra‘i in similar geopolitical positions signifies the same strategic viewpoint. Khirbet al-Ra‘i sits on the border between Judah and Philistia on the western edge of the Shephelah and opposite the Philistine city of Ashkelon, controlling the road running through the Lachish Valley. Likewise, Khirbet Qeiyafa sits on the same border opposite the Philistine city of Gath (Tell es-Safi) and controls the road running through the Elah Valley. In the very late 11th and early 10th century BCE under King David, Judah was a small territory in Jerusalem and the hill country, with the border of the western Shephelah region being marked by Khirbet Qeiyafa and Khirbet al-Ra‘i. Even David’s lament for Saul and Jonathan (‘Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Ashkelon’; 1 Sam 1:20) receives new meaning, as Khirbet Qeiyafa is located opposite Gath and Khirbet al-Ra‘i is located opposite Ashkelon. In this context, identifying Ziklag at Khirbet al-Ra‘i explains why it is mentioned extensively in the biblical traditions of King David. (“Was Khirbet al-Ra‘i Ancient Ziklag?,” Strata: Bulletin of the Anglo-Israeli Archaeological Society 2019, vol. 37: 51–59)
Archaeological verification of Ziklag: the place where King David sought refuge from the paranoid and jealous King Saul, indirectly gives us corroboration of the biblical text regarding the reign of Saul (c. 1037 – c. 1010 B.C.) and the reign of David, following (c. 1010 – c. 970 B.C.). As always, details in the Bible are historically accurate and verified by archaeology and historiography. The Bible records that the Amalekites burned Ziklag while Saul was still king, and that the Philistine King Achish gave the city to David. Accordingly, archaeology shows us that it was burned right at the time the Bible indicates, and that a new Hebrew settlement was built atop the ruins of the culturally and religiously different previous Philistine city.

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Photo credit: David before Saul (1640s), by Jusepe Leonardo (1601-?) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

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Summary: Archaeologists are convinced that the city of Ziklag, where David hid from King Saul for sixteen months, has been identified: in harmony with the biblical data.

2023-05-12T10:39:35-04:00

Doctrinal Development; St. Cardinal Newman’s Views on Papal Infallibility & the Immaculate Conception; St. Irenaeus & Tradition

The book, The Infallibility of the Church (1888) by Anglican anti-Catholic polemicist George Salmon (1819-1904), may be one of the most extensive and detailed — as well as influential — critiques of the Catholic Church ever written. But, as usual with these sorts of works, it’s abominably argued and relentlessly ignorant and/or dishonest, as the critiques listed below amply demonstrate and document.
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The most influential and effective anti-Catholic Protestant polemicist today, “Dr” [???] James White, cites Salmon several times in his written materials, and regards his magnum opus as an “excellent” work. In a letter dated 2 November 1959, C. S. Lewis recommended the book to a reader, Michael Edwards, who was “vexed” about papal infallibility (see: The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume 3: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy, 1950 – 1963, edited by Walter Hooper, New York: HarperCollins, 2007, p. 1133, footnote 24). Russell P. Spittler, professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, wrote that “From an evangelical standpoint,” the book “has been standard since first published in 1888” (Cults and Isms, Baker Book House, 1973, 117). Well-known Baptist apologist Edward James Carnell called it the “best answer to Roman Catholicism” in a 1959 book. I think we can safely say that it is widely admired among theological (as well as “emotional”) opponents of the Catholic Church.
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Prominent Protestant apologist Norman Geisler and his co-author Ralph MacKenzie triumphantly but falsely claim, in a major critique of Catholicism, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1995, 206-207, 459), that Salmon’s book has “never really been answered by the Catholic Church,” and call it the “classic refutation of papal infallibility,” which also offers “a penetrating critique of Newman’s theory.”
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Salmon’s tome, however, has been roundly refuted at least twice: first, by Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Murphy in The Irish Ecclesiastical Record (March / May / July / September / November 1901 and January / March 1902): a response (see the original sources) — which I’ve now transcribed almost in its totality: adding up to more than 73,000 words, or approximately 257 pages (last two installments abridged a bit); secondly, by Bishop Basil Christopher Butler (1902-1986) in his book, The Church and Infallibility: A Reply to the Abridged ‘Salmon’ (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1954, 230 pages). See all of these replies — and any further ones that I make — listed under “George Salmon” on my Anti-Catholicism web page.
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See also my thorough refutation of Salmon’s false and scurrilous accusation of St. Cardinal Newman, regarding papal infallibility: John Henry Newman’s Alleged Disbelief  in Papal Infallibility Prior to 1870, and Supposed Intellectual Dishonesty Afterwards [8-11-11]
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Bishop Butler’s book is partially available (8 chapters of 11) in old Internet Archive files (see chapters one / two / three / four / five / six / seven) and another web page with Chapter Ten. Most of these files will eventually be inaccessible, so I have decided to select highlights of all of these chapters, and also from chapters eight, nine, and eleven, from my own hardcover copy of the book.  The words below are all from Bishop Butler, edited and abridged by myself. I will indicate which chapter excerpts are from, but not page numbers. Subtitles are not his own. George Salmon’s words will be in blue; St. Cardinal Newman’s words in green.
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See other installments of this series:
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Chapter One: Introductory
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On the Development of Doctrine

[T]he whole discussion must necessarily be dominated by the idea of development. It is a fact which every enquirer can see for himself, and which no believer can deny, that Christianity has developed. Ritual and ceremonial developments are obvious and are not, in themselves, important. There has been devotional development. There has also been theological development. And — most important for our present argument — there has been dogmatic and, I add, doctrinal development. A clear illustration of dogmatic development is the articulation of Christian belief about the Incarnation and the Holy Trinity in the great conciliar decisions from A.D. 325 to A.D. 680. The result of such development is that many statements by the Fathers of the first three centuries would be condemned as heretical if made by medieval or modern writers. Similarly, it can be said that the doctrine of the sacramental minister has developed since the days of St. Cyprian, who denied the reality of Baptism conferred by schismatics and heretics.

The question arises whether the fact of such developments is compatible with the Christian claim that there was a complete revelation of saving truth made to the Apostles. In other words, has Christianity preserved its identity, or are these so-called developments, or some of them, really additions to the alleged original revelation, so that modern Christianity is not really the same thing as the “message” given, it is said, by God to mankind in Jesus Christ? This is a question which every enquirer has, in the long run, to answer for himself. But there can surely be no valid a priori objection to the hypothesis of genuine doctrinal development. Development seems to be almost universal in the world of biology, as also in that of human affairs. And if Christianity is a living thing it is only to be expected that it too will develop. A butterfly is a developed caterpillar. An adult man is a developed infant. In both these cases the development strikes the imagination very forcibly. Thus the definition of homo sapiens is “a rational animal”; and a child four days old is a specimen of homo sapiens. But the rationality of the child is latent or potential rather than actual and visible. As the babe grows into childhood, boyhood and adolescence, the struggle of rationality to assert itself takes varying forms and suffers diverse vicissitudes. A long time elapses before rationality can be said to take habitual effective control. Yet the individual in question is, in external self-manifestation, most true to his own nature not at the beginning but at the end of the process.

The same may be true of Christianity, with special reference to the papal primacy and infallibility which Salmon denounces as corruptions of the original deposit of faith. There is no absurdity and no sophistry in maintaining that Christianity is by definition “papal,” just as man is by definition rational, even if the operation and recognition of the papal prerogatives in the fourth century were as hard to discern as the rationality of the human baby, or the wings of a caterpillar.

When, however, Salmon asks why should development not take place in the case of Protestant doctrine too, the answer is of course that there is no a priori reason against it, although in fact Protestant doctrine tends not to exhibit this phenomenon of vitality. But development outside the body of continuing Christian experience, development which has at its origin a violent break with the Catholic past which alone can form a biological link with Christian origins, has as such no claim upon our acceptance.

The great modern champion of the idea of development was of course John Henry Cardinal Newman, who describes the view on which he writes, as follows:

That the increased expansion of the Christian Creed and Ritual, and the variations which have attended the process in the case of individual writers and Churches, are the necessary attendants on any philosophy or polity which takes possession of the intellect and heart, and has had any wise or extended dominion: that, form the nature of the human mind, time is necessary for the full comprehension and perfect of great ideas; and that the highest and most wonderful truths, though communicated to the world once for all by inspired teachers, could not be comprehended all at once by the recipients, but, as being received and transmitted by minds not inspired and through media which were human, have required only the longer time and deeper thought for their full elucidation. [Essay on Development, 29f.]

And again from Newman:

It is indeed sometimes said that the stream is clearest near the spring. Whatever use may fairly be made of this image, it does not apply to the history of a philosophy or belief, which on the contrary is more equable, and purer, and stronger, when its bed has become broad, and deep, and full. It necessarily rises out of an existing state of things, and for a time savours of the soil. Its vital element needs disengaging from what is foreign and temporary, and is employed in efforts after freedom which become more vigorous and hopeful as its years increase. Its beginnings are no measure of its capabilities, nor of its scope. At first no one knows what it is, or what it is worth. It remains for a time perhaps quiescent: it tries, as it were, its limbs and proves the ground under it, and feels its way. From time to time it makes essays which fail, and are in consequence abandoned. It seems in suspense which way to go; it wavers, and at length strikes out in one definite direction. In time it enters upon strange territory: points of controversy alter their bearing; parties rise and fall around it; dangers and hopes appear in new relations; and old principles reappear under new forms. It changes with them in order to remain the same. In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often. [Ibid., 40]

It is with such thoughts and expectations that we ought to turn to the study of Christian history; and my chief complaint against Salmon in the part of his book devoted to the history of papalism is that he supposes that if Catholicism is true the Papacy ought to have been functioning, and its authority to have been recognized, almost as unmistakably in antiquity as now. But he is pushing at an open door. The action and the theory of the modern Papacy are the outcome of an age-long growth, and we must seek in the pages of history less for a proof of the papal claims than for the evidence that they have shared in, and been central to, the general development of that society which is our only historical link with the origins of Christianity. Again I would quote Newman:

For myself, I would simply confess that no doctrine of the Church can be rigorously proved by historical evidence: but at the same time that no doctrine can be simply disproved by it. Historical evidence reaches a certain way, more or less, towards a proof of the Catholic doctrines; often nearly the whole way: sometimes it goes only so far as to point in their direction; sometimes there is only an absence of evidence for a conclusion contrary to them; nay, sometimes there is an apparent leaning of the evidence to a contrary conclusion, which has to be explained — in all cases, there is a margin left for the exercise of faith in the word of the Church. He who believes the dogmas of the Church only because he has reasoned them out of History, is scarcely a Catholic. [Letter to the Duke of Norfolk in Difficulties of Anglicans (1896), ii, 312.]

The Cardinal Error of Protestants

It may even be said that the cardinal error of Protestantism was to identify development with corruption. There was a school of Anglican divines who took as their criterion of doctrine not the living voice of the contemporary Church but (for some reason not easily apparent) the first four or five centuries of Christian history. Other Protestants, more logical and more radical, made the Bible their sole criterion; and this is, formally, at least, the Anglican position as stated in the Thirty-Nine Articles. But liberal Protestantism has had to go further still, and Harnack, when faced by the argument of Batiffol’s Primitive Catholicism that the germ of Catholicism was present in the Christianity of the Apostles, fell back on the last line of strictly Protestant defense — that there is an unbridgeable gulf between the Apostles and their Master.

The truth is, that development is visible in that brief section of the Christian story of which the New Testament books are a fragmentary record, and in the last resort the choice is between accepting the principle of development and rejecting the Christian claim to possess a divine revelation.

Chapter Two: The Infallibility of the Church
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The issues of the Protestant controversy with the Roman Catholic Church (says Salmon) “mainly turn on one great question,” that, namely, of the infallibility of the Church. If the Roman Catholic Church is infallible, then obviously it is too late to appeal against it either to Scripture or to history.

Before I comment on this statement of what Salmon conceived to be the main issue between Protestants and Catholics, I think it desirable to scrutinise some of the other statements in the first chapter of the Abridgement. Thus, as an example of Salmon’s controversial tone, it may be observed that after stating that in the Tracts for the Times Newman and his co-adjutors, being then Protestants, had published “excellent refutations of the Roman doctrine on purgatory and on some other points” he goes on to say that, on joining the Church, these men “bound themselves to believe and teach as true things which they had themselves proved to be false.” The word “proved” here may or may not be meant to suggest that these converts were insincere in their profession of doctrines against which they had formerly argued. It certainly leaves an unpleasant flavour on the tongue, and it would have been easy to substitute “rejected as false” for “proved to be false.” A writer who can either cleverly or negligently arouse such suspicions by the casual use of a single word needs to be watched carefully when he comes to make broad historical statements.

Again, it is inaccurate to say that the writers of the Tracts “allowed themselves to be persuaded” that Christ must have provided some infallible guide to truth, and then

accepted the Church of Rome as that guide, with scarcely an attempt to make a careful scrutiny of the grounds of her pretensions, and merely because, if she were not that guide, they knew not where else to find it.

This is doubly inaccurate. Newman has himself told us how his case against the Catholic Church in his Protestant days had been that while the Church could claim “universality” in contrast to the provincialism of the Anglican Church, the Anglicans could appeal to “antiquity” against the corruption of Rome. The crisis came for him when he realised, not the need of an infallible guide, but that antiquity itself gave its witness for Roman Catholicism against Anglicanism. And as for the suggestion that submission to the Church was made with “scarcely an attempt to make a careful scrutiny of the grounds of her pretensions,” Salmon can hardly have been ignorant that Newman’s conversion took about six years and bore fruit in the great Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, a work which is a landmark in Christian thought and in itself a profound examination of the credibility of the Catholic claim.

Nor is it in the least reasonable to suggest that Newman “may have thought” that submission meant no more than belief “that everything the Church of Rome then taught was infallibly true” but not everything that she might subsequently teach. The whole Essay is concerned to show that dogmatic and doctrinal developments need not be inconsistent with fidelity to “the faith once delivered” (Jude 3) and we may assume that it had occurred to Newman that what had been characteristic of the Church for fifteen hundred years — namely, that her dogmas were constantly increasing in number and complexity — would probably continue to characterise her in the future.

Misrepresenting Cardinal Newman on Papal Infallibility

But it would seem that Salmon found it peculiarly difficult to be fair to Newman. In this same chapter he refers to the ferment in the Roman Catholic Church created by the expectation that a Council (that known to history as the [First] Vatican Council) was to be called to define the personal infallibility of the Pope, “so making it unnecessary that any future Council should be held”: [Salmon says]

Those who passed for the men of highest learning in that communion, and who had been wont to be most relied on, when learned Protestants were to be combatted, opposed with all their might the contemplated definition, as an entire innovation on the traditional teaching of the Church, and as absolutely contradicted by the facts of history. These views were shared by Dr. Newman . . . The Pope’s personal infallibility . . . was a doctrine so directly in the teeth of history, that Newman made no secret of his persuasion that the authoritative adoption of it would be attended with ruinous consequences to his Church . . . He wrote in passionate alarm to an English Roman Catholic Bishop [Ullathorne]: Why, he said, should an aggressive insolent faction be allowed ‘to make the heart of the just sad, whom the Lord hath not made sorrowful.

It will be observed that Salmon here states categorically that Newman, as a Catholic, before 1870, shared the view that the doctrine of the Pope’s personal infallibility was “absolutely contradicted by the facts of history,” and the unwary reader will naturally suppose that his opposition to the “aggressive insolent faction” was due to his belief that the doctrine was false.

For the facts we may turn to The Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman by Wilfrid Ward. Ward, in discussing the period leading up to the Vatican Council, writes of a “determined group of neo-Ultramontanes” with a policy tending to “extreme centralization.” “It was not Ultramontanism in its time-honored sense but an ecclesiastico-political movement practically abrogating the normal constitution of Church and State alike.” A leader of this group, Veuillot, the editor of L’Univers, had written concerning the Pope: “We must….unswervingly follow his inspired directions,” although what the Church claims for the Pope is not inspiration, but merely Providential assistance. W. G. Ward in England had gone so far as to affirm that “in a figurative sense Pius IX may be said never to have ceased from one continuous ex cathedra pronouncement.” [Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman, ii, 211f.]

Now Newman held that such men were trying to commit Catholic theologians to an entirely new view, ascribing infallibility to a Pope’s public utterances which were not definitions of faith or morals. “He could not forget such Popes as Liberius and Honorius. The action of these Pontiffs could, no doubt, in his opinion, be defended as consistent with Papal Infallibility,” but only by careful distinctions which Veuillot and W.G. Ward repudiated. Such men comprised the “aggressive insolent faction” which Newman protested against in his private letter to Ullathorne. And it is not surprising that he feared their influence and held that a definition of papal infallibility promoted by such men would be inopportune. But this is not to say that before 1870 he disbelieved the doctrine in the moderate form in which it was eventually defined, still less that he held it to be an “entire innovation on the traditional teaching, absolutely contradicted by the facts of history.” Newman’s position in 1867 is clearly stated in a letter to Pusey in that year:

A man will find it a religious duty to believe it, or may safely disbelieve it, in proportion as he thinks it probable or improbable that the Church might or will define it, or does hold it, and that it is the doctrine of the Apostles. For myself…I think that the Church may define it (i.e. it possibly may turn out to belong to the original depositum), but that she will not ever define it; and again I do not see that she can be said to hold it. She never can simply act upon it (being undefined, as it is), and I believe never has — moreover, on the other hand, I think there is a good deal of evidence, on the very surface of history and the Fathers, in its favour. On the whole then I hold it: but I should account it no sin if, on the grounds of reason, I doubted it. [Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman, ii, 221]

A letter earlier in the same year to Henry Wilberforce expresses Newman’s mind as follows:

For myself, I have never taken any great interest in the question of the limits and seat of infallibility. I was converted simply because the Church was to last to the end, and that no communion answered to the Church of the first ages but the Roman Communion, both in substantial likeness and in actual descent. And as to faith, my great principle was: ‘securus judicat orbis terrarum.’ So I say now — and in all these questions of detail I say to myself, I believe whatever the Church teaches as the voice of God — and this or that particular inclusively, if she teaches this — it is this fides implicita which is our comfort in these irritating times. And I cannot go beyond this — I see arguments here, arguments there — I incline one way today another tomorrow — on the whole I more than incline in one direction — but I do not dogmatise . . . I have only an opinion at best (not faith) that the Pope is infallible. [Ibid., 234]

In the following year (1868) we find him writing to a Mr. Renouf, who had published a pamphlet on the case of Pope Honorius, as follows: “I hold the Pope’s Infallibility, not as a dogma, but as a theological opinion; that is, not as a certainty, but as a probability.”

When the Vatican Council actually came to define the Pope’s infallibility, the exaggerations of the neo-Ultramontanes were “definitely rejected.” [Ibid., 307] And on seeing the test of the definition Newman was able to write to a friend: “I saw the new definition yesterday and am pleased at its moderation — that is, if the doctrine in question is to be defined at all.” And on August 8th he wrote to Mrs. Froude:

As I have ever believed as much as the definition says, I have a difficulty in putting myself into the position of mind of those who have not . . . I very much doubt if at this moment — before the end of the Council, I could get myself publicly to say it was de fide, whatever came of it — though I believe the doctrine itself. [Ibid., 308]

It thus appears that there were, before the Council’s definition, two opinions about papal infallibility, a moderate one and an extreme one. Newman on the whole held the moderate one while strongly opposing the extreme view, whose more violent upholders he stigmatised as an aggressive insolent faction. The Vatican Council itself came down on the side of the moderate opinion, and Newman’s only remaining hesitations were a temporary one as to whether the moment had come when this opinion was in fact de fide, and a more lasting one as to the exact scope of the definition — “what we may grant, what we must maintain.” [Letter of April, 1872 (ibid., 312)] By December 1874 he had cleared his mind on the latter point, as can be seen from his “Letter to the Duke of Norfolk.”

It is thus that Salmon has gravely misrepresented Newman’s whole attitude to the papal infallibility question. He has given his readers the impression that the dogma as actually defined was something that Newman had regarded as in absolute contradiction with the facts of history and he has represented an opposition to the dogma’s opportuneness as an opposition to its content. It may be said, in Salmon’s defense, that the Life, from which I have been quoting, was not published when his own book appeared. But the Letter to the Duke of Norfolk had appeared before the end of 1875, and Salmon’s first edition was dated 1888. I append a few extracts from the former (it had been alleged that it was understood at one time that Newman “was on the point of uniting with Dr. Dollinger and his party” who refused to submit to the Vatican definition, “and that it required the earnest persuasion of ‘several bishops’ to prevent him from taking that step”): Newman responded —

. . . an unmitigated and most ridiculous untruth in every word of it . . . But the explanation of such reports about me is easy. They arise from forgetfulness . . . that there are two sides of ecclesiastical acts, that right ends are often prosecuted by unworthy means, and that in consequence those who, like myself, oppose a line of action, are not necessarily opposed to the issue for which it has been adopted . . . On July 24, 1870, I wrote as follows: ‘I saw the new Definition yesterday, and am pleased at its moderation . . . The terms are vague and comprehensive; and, personally, I have no difficulty in admitting it . . .’ Also I wrote as follows to a friend: (July 27, 1870) ‘. . . for myself, ever since I was a Catholic, I have held the Pope’s infallibility as a matter of theological opinion; at least, I see nothing in the Definition which necessarily contradicts Scripture, Tradition, or History . . . ‘ [Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, 299-304]

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Misrepresenting Cardinal Newman on the Immaculate Conception

It may seem that I have spent too long on a very small detail. But so much of Salmon’s book is taken up with what I may call “creating an atmosphere” against Catholicism and loyal Catholics that it may be worthwhile to draw attention to a remark in that same chapter of the book about Newman’s attitude to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception:

He was too well acquainted with Church history not to know that the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was a complete novelty, unknown by early times . . . But when the Pope formally promulgated that doctrine as part of the essential faith of the Church, he had submitted in silence.

The doctrine was defined in 1854. In the Essay on Development (1845) Newman had pointed out that the condemnation of Arianism had left vacant “in the realms of light” a place for Mary to fill:

Thus there was ‘a wonder in heaven’: a throne was seen, far above all other created powers, mediatorial, intercessory; a title archetypal; a crown bright as the morning star; a glory issuing from the Eternal Throne; robes pure as the heavens; and a sceptre over all; and who was the predestined heir of that Majesty? . . . The vision is found in the Apocalypse, a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. The votaries of Mary do not exceed the true faith, unless the blasphemers of her Son [the Arians] come up to it. The Church of Rome is not idolatrous, unless Arianism is orthodoxy.

And he quotes St. Augustine’s saying that all have sinned “except the Holy Virgin Mary, concerning whom, for the honour of the Lord, I wish no question to be raised at all, when we are treating of sins.” [Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 143-6]

The passage quoted here from the Essay on Development was written before Newman became a Catholic. In 1846, the year following his reception into the Church, we find him writing from Rome about the doubtful reception accorded by two Roman professors to his views on development, and he adds: “By the bye it is an encouraging fact, connected with the theory of development, that . . . Perrone is writing a book to show that the Immaculate Conception may be made an article of faith.” [Life, i, 161.]

Three years later (the Dedication is dated In Fest S. Caroli, November 4, 1849), he published his Discourses to Mixed Congregations, from which I quote the following:

Consider, that, since Adam fell, none of his seed but has been conceived in sin; none, save one. One exception there has been — who is that one? Not our Lord Jesus, for he was not conceived of man, but of the Holy Ghost; not our Lord, but I mean His Virgin Mother, who, though conceived and born of human parents, as others, yet was rescued by anticipation from the common condition of mankind, and never was partaker in fact of Adam’s transgression . . . ‘Thou art all fair, O Mary, and the stain original is not in thee.'” [Discourses to Mixed Congregations (1892), 49]

As grace was infused into Adam from the first moment of his creation….so was grace given from the first in still ampler measure to Mary, and she never incurred, in fact, Adam’s deprivation….I am not proving these doctrines to you, my brethren: the evidence of them lies in the declaration of the Church. [Ibid, 354-6.]

Salmon may not have been guilty of knowing and disregarding the Discourses, but if he had not read the Apologia Pro Vita Sua (Newman’s conversion and autobiography) he had no right to describe Newman’s states of mind at all. I therefore quote the following from that famous work, first published in 1864, ten years after the Definition of the Immaculate Conception:

Let me take the doctrine which Protestants consider our greatest difficulty, that of the Immaculate Conception. Here I entreat the reader to recollect my main drift, which is this. I have no difficulty in receiving the doctrine; and that because it so intimately harmonises with that circle of recognised dogmatic truths, into which it has recently been received….it is a simple fact to say, that Catholics have not come to believe it because it is defined, but that it was defined because they believed it….I never heard of one Catholic having difficulties in receiving the doctrine, whose faith on other grounds was not already suspicious. Of course, there were grave and good men, who were made anxious by the doubt whether it could be formally proved to be Apostolical either by Scripture or Tradition, and who accordingly, though believing it themselves, did not see how it could be defined by authority and imposed upon all Catholics as a matter of faith; but this is another matter. The point in question is, whether the doctrine is a burden. I believe it to be none. [Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1902), 254f.]

Newman does not state whether he had shared the anxiety of the “grave and good men” to whom he refers, but his letter of 1846 from Rome, quoted above, shows that his own theory of development must have made it easier for him than for some others to admit that the doctrine is a genuine development of the faith “once delivered.” For a theological defense of the doctrine “as an immediate inference from the primitive doctrine that Mary is the second Eve” I may refer to the Letter to Pusey (1865) in Difficulties of Anglicans (ii, p. 31-50; cf. 128-52).

Now I do not profess to know what Salmon meant to convey by saying that Newman had “submitted in silence” to the promulgation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. But I think I know the sort of impression that that phrase will have left, and might have been expected by its author to leave, on many minds; and I think I have shown that that impression is entirely false to the tone and contents of a number of passages in Newman’s writings, nearly all of which had been long available to Salmon’s inspection when he first published his book. I conclude that Salmon is a very unsafe guide for those who have not the opportunity and the inclination to check both his definite assertions and the impression conveyed by his use of language.

Infallibility: The Last Refuge?

We may now revert to the chapter entitled “The Question of Infallibility.” Salmon there speaks of opponents of the proposed definition (of papal infallibility) who, however, submitted to it once it had been imposed. Some of these, he says, thus surrendered “their most deep-rooted beliefs” solely in deference to external authority. It will be desirable, later on, to consider how much of the opposition in question had been due to an opinion that the proposed definition was inopportune, how much to a doubt whether its matter, though perhaps true, was definable as part of the faith, and how much to real “disbelief” in the matter of the definition. Assuming that there were some, who had hitherto “denied the truth of the new dogma” who now accepted it, it must be pointed out that for a Catholic a “belief” based on his own theological opinions unsupported by the verdict of the Church stands on a different, and a lower, footing compared with that of an article of faith. The former kind of belief is not, for a Catholic, among his “most deep-rooted beliefs” — it is less deep-rooted than his belief, or rather his certainty, that the Church’s voice is the voice of God. It was therefore proper and honourable for such men to “submit” to an external authority whose claim upon them coincided with the deepest intimations of their own conscience.

Salmon presents the doctrine of the Church’s infallibility as the “last refuge of a beaten army” — an earlier refuge had been the appeal to Tradition. When the early Protestants appealed against the Church to Scripture

the Roman Catholic advocates ceased to insist that the doctrines of the Church could be deduced from Scripture; but the theory of early heretics, refuted by Irenaeus, was revived, namely, that the Bible does not contain the whole of God’s revelation, and that a body of traditional doctrine existed in the Church equally deserving of veneration.

On this rather characteristic sentence I comment as follows:

(1) Salmon here suggests that the appeal to Tradition as a source of doctrine parallel to Scripture was a Counter-Reformation invention. But the second Ecumenical Council of Nicaea, seven hundred and fifty years before the Council of Trent, had anathematised “anyone who rejects ecclesiastical tradition written or unwritten.” [Denzinger-Bannwart (15th ed), No. 308.]

St. Irenaeus on Sacred Tradition

(2) It is perhaps hardly necessary to point out that the (alleged) heretical apostolic traditions which Irenaeus rejected were rejected by him upon the precise ground that if the Apostles had had any traditions to consign to posterity they would have entrusted them not to a line of hidden teachers ending up in the heresiarchs but to the legitimate succession of public teachers in the Catholic Church (quoting St. Irenaeus) :

When [the heretics] are faced with objections derived from the Scriptures, they set about to attack the Scriptures as not being correct or authoritative, as saying different things, and as only conveying truth to those who know the tradition, which was not handed down in writing but viva voce….But when we appeal to that tradition which comes from the Apostles and is preserved in the Churches by the succession of the elders, they oppose tradition, saying that they are wiser not only than the elders but than the apostles and have discovered the pure truth.

Irenaeus then points to the preservation of the true tradition and apostolic succession of bishops in the local Churches:

All who are willing to see the truth can perceive in every [or all the] Church the tradition of the Apostles manifested in all the world; we can enumerate those appointed by the Apostles bishops in the Churches, and those who succeeded to them, who never taught or knew anything like the ravings of the heretics. Had the Apostles known hidden mysteries, which they taught the perfect separately and secretly from others, they would have handed them on especially to those to whom they were entrusting the Churches. [Adv Haer III, ii, 3.]

For a modern presentation of Irenaeus’ views about Scripture and Tradition we may turn to The Biblical Theology of Saint Irenaeus (1948) by a non-Catholic writer, Mr. John Lawson, a former student of Wesley House, Cambridge [quotations omitted for brevity’s sake]. If Mr. Lawson’s interpretation of Irenaeus is correct, it would seem that in this matter of the authority of “unwritten” Tradition the second-century Bishop of Lyons stands with the Second Council of Nicaea, the Council of Trent, and Cardinal Newman (in the passage quoted below); and with Cardinal Manning in his condemnation of an appeal away from the voice of the contemporary Church; and that it is quite illegitimate to suggest that he stood with the “Bible-only” school of thought against Sacred Tradition.

[Dave: for related reading, see my articles:

Irenaeus (d. c. 200) vs. Sola Scriptura [8-1-03]

Chrysostom & Irenaeus: Sola Scripturists? (vs. David T. King) [4-20-07]

Lutheran Chemnitz Wrong Re Fathers & Sola Scriptura (mostly dealing with St. Irenaeus and Tertullian) [8-29-07]

Did I Take St. Irenaeus Out of Context (Rule of Faith)? [11-29-17] ]

***

Go to Part 2

***

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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]. 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 InformationThanks a million from the bottom of my heart!

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Photo credit: book cover of Butler’s The Church and Infallibility, from its Amazon page.

***

Summary: Bishop B. C. Butler critiqued the anti-infallibility arguments & rampant misrepresentations & quotes out of context, of anti-Catholic George Salmon, in 1954.

2023-03-14T15:30:55-04:00

This excerpt is the first four-and-a-half pages of Chapter Eleven (“King David Versus King Arthur”) of my book, The Word Set in Stone: How Archaeology, Science, and History Back up the Bible (Catholic Answers Press, March 15, 2023: see further book and purchase information). Bible passages: RSV.

*****

Then all the tribes of Israel came to David at Hebron,
and said, “Behold, we are your bone and flesh.”
—2 SAMUEL 5:1

The substantial historicity of the united monarchy of Judah (reigns of King Saul: c. 1037–c. 1010 B.C., King David: c. 1010–c. 970 B.C., and King Solomon: c. 970–c. 931 B.C.) was widely accepted in the middle years of the twentieth century, even within secular archaeological circles.

But by the 1990s, what is called archaeological or biblical minimalism became quite the fashionable view to take among a new generation of archaeologists who worked in Israel. It was the high-water mark of skepticism, influenced and infused by a marked “anti-biblical” or “anti-traditional,” or what could be called a “vehemently secular,” spirit. Older “truths” were no longer accepted as established or given. Many archaeologists in the 1990s, and continuing until the present time, held or hold a view similar to the following:

Nadav Na’aman, an authority on Jewish history . . . at Tel Aviv University, describes David’s story as “extraordinary fiction.” But he believes that it contains kernels of truth, preserved as the tale was passed down by oral tradition. [188]

In other words, among the minimalists, David is regarded similarly to how most historians view King Arthur: a real person (not nonexistent), but vastly mythologized, to such an extent that the “kernel” of historical truth and fact has been mostly lost amid the colorful and memorable legends built up around him. The late Philip R. Davies, Bible scholar at the University of Sheffield, confidently proclaimed the same: “I’m not the only scholar who suspects that the figure of King David is about as historical as King Arthur.” [189]

Ze’ev Herzog, archaeologist at Tel Aviv University, took an even more extreme view in a 1999 front-page story in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, titled “The Bible: No Evidence on the Ground”:

Following seventy years of intensive excavations in the Land of Israel, archaeologists have found out: The patriarchs’ acts are legendary, the Israelites did not sojourn in Egypt or make an exodus, they did not conquer the land. Neither is there any mention of the empire of David and Solomon, nor of the source of belief in the God of Israel. These facts have been known for years, but Israelis are a stubborn people, and no one wants to hear it. [190]

I submit that stubbornness and excessive dogmatism are traits not unknown among minimalist archaeologists. Tom Meyer, a biblical scholar at Shasta Bible College in California, described this sort of skepticism among scholars, who thought King David “never existed and was a figment of the imagination of a post-exilic Jewish community who, after returning to Jerusalem from Babylonian captivity in the fifth century B.C., invented King David as a national figure which the fledgling nation could rally around as they rebuilt their country.” [191]

Thomas L. Thompson, professor of Old Testament at the University of Copenhagen, and author of Early History of the Israelite People (1992), stated,

It is out of the question that Saul, David, and Solomon, as described as kings in the Bible, could have existed. I think the biblical accounts are wonderful stories, invented at the time when Jerusalem was part of the Persian Empire in the fifth century B.C. [192]

God has a wonderful sense of humor, and it is often exhibited (or so it seems to me) in the particular timing of new archaeological findings that support the truthfulness and historical trustworthiness of the Bible.

In March 1993, all biblical scholars and archaeologists (minimalist and maximalist alike) agreed that there was no “concrete evidence” outside the Bible (such as in written monuments or documents) of the existence of King David. Then, lo and behold, in July 1993, just four months after the above article that cites Thompson, definitive evidence of this nature (the Tel Dan Stele) was found in Israel. Eric H. Cline, chairman of the Department of Classical and Semitic Languages and Literatures at the George Washington University, told the story in his book, Biblical Archaeology: A Very Short Introduction. A portion of it was adapted for an internet article, “Did David and Solomon Exist?”:

As it is currently reconstructed, the inscription describes the defeat of both Joram, king of Israel, and Ahaziyahu, king of Judah, by a king of Aram-Damascus in the ninth century BCE. [193]

“House of David” is also biblical terminology (1 Sam. 20:16; 2 Sam. 3:1–6; 1 Kings 12:19–26; 2 Chron. 10:19; and many other instances in the RSV). The language of the inscription is a dialect of Aramaic. Most scholars think King Hazael of Damascus (ninth century B.C.) is the author. Prominent Israeli archaeologist Israel Finkelstein, who regards himself as neither a minimalist nor a maximalist (somewhere in the middle of the spectrum), described the decisive importance of this find:

Much of the minimalist effort has been invested in the claim that David and Solomon . . . are not historical figures. They argued that, like Abraham, Moses, Joshua, David, and Solomon are not mentioned in any extra-biblical texts, and should therefore be seen as legendary personalities. This argument suffered a major blow when the Tel Dan basalt stele was discovered in the mid-1990s. . . .

Moreover, it most probably specified the names of the two later kings—Joram of Israel and Ahaziah of Judah— both of whom are mentioned in the biblical text. [194]

Arguably, a second mention of the “House of David” occurs in the Mesha Stele [195] (c. 840 B.C.), connected with King Mesha of Moab, written using a variant of the Phoenician alphabet, closely related to paleo-Hebrew script. It was discovered in August 1868 in Dibhan, Jordan, but re-interpreted in light of the Tel Dan Stele, so that many think it refers to the “House of David” and contains a possible second mention of David.
Opposing views exist, as always. Some think it refers to Balak, a Moabite in the Bible, who lived 200 years before David.

French epigrapher, historian, and philologist André Lemaire had actually suggested a reading of “House of David” in 1992, before the Tel Dan Stele was discovered. [196] An article written by Amanda Borschel-Dan notes how Michael Langlois, of the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan, used his own fancy high-tech methods to discover something further:

After layering the images together, in a startling discovery, Langlois found a previously overlooked dot, which indicates a break between words throughout the entire tablet, as was customary among scribes at the time. . . .

“In my paper I’m not trying to discuss whether King David exists, just trying to read the stone, and my conclusion for line 31 is that the most likely reading is Beit David, which takes into account the traces of letters and the combination of them,” said Langlois. [197]

FOOTNOTES

188 Ruth Margalit, “In Search of King David’s Lost Empire,” The New Yorker (June 22, 2020).

189 Philip R. Davies, “‘House of David’ Built on Sand: The Sins of the Biblical Maximizers,” Bible Archaeology Report 20:04 (July/August 1994), 55.

190 Cited in Ruth Margalit, “In Search of King David’s Lost Empire”.

191 Cited in Sebastian Kettley, “Archaeology news: ‘Incredible artefact testifies to the existence’ of Bible’s King David,” Express UK (February 15, 2021).

192 Cited in David Keys, “Leading archaeologist says Old Testament stories are fiction,” Independent (March 28, 1993).

193 Eric H. Cline, “Did David and Solomon Exist?,” The Bible and Interpretation (October 2009).

194 Israel Finkelstein and Amihay Mazar, The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007), 14.

195 “The Mesha Stele, or Moabite Stone, a Non-Biblical Text, Confirms Some Events in the Biblical Book of Kings,” History of Information.

196 Amanda Borschel-Dan, “High-tech study of ancient stone suggests new proof of King David’s dynasty,” The Times of Israel (May 3, 2019).

197 Ibid.

***

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.

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]. 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 InformationThanks a million from the bottom of my heart!

***

Summary: Excerpt about King David, from my book, The Word Set in Stone: How Archaeology, Science, and History Back up the Bible (Catholic Answers Press, 3-15-23).

2023-03-02T11:54:38-04:00

This is Chapter Three of my book, The Word Set in Stone: How Archaeology, Science, and History Back up the Bible (Catholic Answers Press, March 15, 2023: see further book and purchase information). Bible passages: RSV.

*****

Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said,
“To your descendants I will give this land.”
—GENESIS 12:7

We can’t find out much (if anything) specifically about the patriarch Abraham, revered in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam alike as “the father of faith.” Archaeologists have not yet found physical, or “hard,” evidence that he existed.

Nevertheless, if the purported accounts of Abraham in Genesis are verified as accurate, according to what we know from history and archaeology, then we have an objective and rational basis for believing that Abraham did exist in history, as opposed to being merely fictional or mythological (like Heracles of Greek mythology).

Particularly—as I will primarily contend in this chapter— we can offer strong archaeological evidence that cities and regions mentioned in the Bible as having been visited or lived in by Abraham did indeed exist before and during the time period involved. If they didn’t exist then, it would clearly present a problem.

Such verifications don’t prove the Bible’s inspiration, but they do support its historical accuracy and highly suggest that many biblical skeptics have gone too far in their negative or agnostic opinions.

According to the Bible, Abraham was a man who took many journeys. Joshua 24:2–3 states,

Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel . . . “I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan, and made his offspring many.”

The usual or “standard” view is that Abraham came from Ur of the Chaldeans (see Gen. 11:27–28, 31), which is close to the Persian Gulf, west of the Euphrates, in southern Mesopotamia (current-day Iraq). Some biblical evidences regarding Abraham’s journey to Canaan, however, suggest another city: Urfa (also known as Sanliurfa and, in ancient times, Edessa) in present-day Turkey (southeastern Anatolian region).

Gary Rendsburg, professor of Jewish history in the Department of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University, makes the case for Urfa being the biblical Ur of the Chaldeans or Chaldees:

A serious geographical problem plagues the story: a journey from Ur to Canaan would not pass through Harran. . . .

A more attractive suggestion is that Abraham’s hometown is the city of Ur in northern Mesopotamia = modern-day Urfa in southeastern Turkey, 44 km [27 miles] north of Harran. Most likely, this city is the one mentioned as Ura in cuneiform tablets from Ugarit (fourteenth-thirteenth centuries BCE), where it is associated with the Hittite realm. A journey from Urfa to Canaan would indeed pass directly through Harran.

Local (Turkish) Jewish, Christian, and Muslim tradition identifies this city as biblical Ur, the birthplace of Abraham. In fact, this notion was commonly accepted in nineteenth-century biblical scholarship. [42]

Cyrus H. Gordon, professor of Hebraic studies at New York University, adds,

The biblical evidence is by itself conclusive in placing Ur of the Chaldees in the Urfa-Haran region of south central Turkey, near the Syrian border, rather than in southern Mesopotamia . . .

Genesis 24:4, Genesis 24:7, Genesis 24:10, and Genesis 24:29 tells us that Abraham’s birthplace was in Aram-Naharayim where Laban lived. [43]

The journey from Ur to Haran (also spelled “Harran”— see Gen. 12:4–5; Acts 7:3–4), undertaken by Abraham, was 27 miles. M. Bözdeniza et al. noted that “the known written documents about Harran indicate that its history goes as far back as 2500 B.C.” [44] Tamara M. Green placed the city’s origin at around 2000 B.C. and observed that it was “founded as a merchant outpost by Ur.” [45] She noted that “the abundance of goods that passed through the area must have proved a temptation, for raids upon the caravan were frequent.” Either date is earlier than the estimated time of Abraham’s birth: around 1880–1860 B.C., according to the copiously researched scholarly determinations of Egyptologist Kenneth A. Kitchen. [46] Haran was ideally located on a trade route between the Mediterranean and the plains of the Tigris River.

Genesis 12:6 Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land (see also 33:18).

Archaeology informs us that Shechem was settled (or resettled) before Abraham was born—“in around 1900” B.C.—and that it had “a two-hundred-year period of prominence as a city-state, covering the centuries from 1750 to 1540” B.C. [47] David G. Hansen observed,

Archaeological investigations have corroborated much of what the Bible has to say about Shechem’s physical and cultural aspects. Archaeology has confirmed Shechem’s location, its history, and many biblical details. . . .

In the original Hebrew, the word translated in our English Bible as “city” meant a permanent, walled settlement. . . . Genesis 34:20 and 24 report that Shechem had a city gate; therefore it was fortified. [48]

The Bible refers to Abraham dwelling “by the oaks of Mamre . . . at Hebron” (Gen. 13:18; see also 14:13, 18:1, 35:27), and also to the burial of his wife Sarah there (23:2, 19). Archaeologists Avraham Negev and Shimon Gibson provide the evidence for Hebron’s existence during Abraham’s lifetime:

The earliest ancient settlement was established . . . during Early Bronze III [2700–2200 B.C.]. . . . This city was destroyed in a substantial conflagration. Not long afterwards and the same period the city was built anew. . . .

Following a period of abandonment, settlement of the site was renewed in Middle Bronze IIB [1750–1650 B.C.]. [49]

A 2018 article on the city [50] at Hebron.org (including a video) notes the discovery in that year of stairs (recently opened to the public) from the time of Abraham:

Dr. Emmanual Eisenberg of the Israel Antiquities Authority led the dig in Tel Hevron. . . . In what is today’s Admot Yishai neighborhood, near the Tomb of Jesse and Ruth is a flight of stairs, over 4,000 years old, leading from the valley below into the ancient city of Hebron.

Another location that the Bible claims Abraham visited and lived in is Beersheba (Gen. 21:14,29–33; 22:19). Biblical scholar John J. Bimson noted about it:

Sarna has argued . . . “The biblical passages refer only to a well and a cultic site. . . . No king or ruler is mentioned, and no patriarch ever has dealings with the inhabitants of Beersheba.” . . . In 1967, Aharoni held the view that the absence of early archaeological evidence does not contradict the patriarchal narratives, which, he then suggested, have only the area of Beersheba in mind, not a town. [51]

The biblical data appear perfectly consistent with this scenario. Beersheba is mentioned eleven times in Genesis in the RSV. None of the passages requires the interpretation of even a town, let alone a city. The first mention, in Abraham’s time (Gen. 21:14), refers to “the wilderness of Beersheba.”

Genesis 14:17–18 After his return from the defeat of Ched-or-laomer and the kings who were with him, the king of Sodom went out to meet him at the Valley of Shaveh (that is, the King’s Valley). And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was priest of God Most High.

These two things have to do with Jerusalem. Most scholars think Salem was a name for ancient Jerusalem (one of several). Mt. Moriah is the spot in Jerusalem (currently the Temple Mount) where Solomon’s temple was built some 600–700 years after Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son there. The traditional spot is currently covered by the Islamic Dome of the Rock.

Many seem to think that Jerusalem began, or first became a significant city, at the time David became king (c. 1000 B.C.). This is untrue. It was already very old by that time. Archaeological evidence exists for a settlement in the area as early as 4500–3500 B.C. The first mention of the city that we know of occurred around 2000 B.C. in the Egyptian Execration Texts [52] from the Middle Kingdom (2040 to 1782 B.C.). Massive walls (with four- and five-ton boulders) 26 feet high were built in Jerusalem by the seventeenth century B.C.—some 600 years before King David. The famous Ebla discoveries (including 1,800 complete clay tablets), discovered in Syria in 1974–1975, date to between approximately 2500–2250 B.C. They refer to the name of ancient Jerusalem as Ye-ru-sa-lu-um. [53]

Thus, an abundance of undeniable evidence exists showing that Abraham’s meeting with Melchizedek is a plausible event, given the known chronology of ancient Jerusalem. Nothing that we know would make such a meeting at that time and place impossible. In other words, the biblical account can’t be casually ruled out as historically inaccurate or “mythical,” as not a few biblical skeptics or archaeological minimalists would claim.

FOOTNOTES

42 Gary Rendsburg, “Ur Kasdim: Where Is Abraham’s Birthplace?,” Torah.com, 2019.

43 Cyrus H. Gordon, “Where Is Abraham’s Ur?,” Biblical Archaeology Review 3.2 (1977): 20–21, 52.

44 M. Bözdeniza et al, “Vernacular domed houses of Harran, Turkey,” Habitat International, vol. 22, no. 4 (December 1998), 477–485. Citation from page 478.

45 Tamara M. Green, The City of the Moon God: Religious Traditions of Harran (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1992), 19.

46 Kenneth A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids and Cambridge: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2003), 359.

47 See Ephraim Stern (ed.), The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, Vol. 4 (Carta, Jerusalem: The Israel Exploration Society, 1993); “Shechem,” 1,345–1,353. Citations from p. 1,347 and p. 1,352.

48 David G. Hansen, “Shechem: Its Archaeological and Contextual Significance,” Bible and Spade (Spring 2005).

49 Avraham Negev and Shimon Gibson, Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land (New York: Continuum, 2001), 224.

50 “The History of the 4,000-Year-Old Steps in Hebron” (October 26, 2018).

51 John J. Bimson, “Archaeological Data and the Dating of the Patriarchs,” chapter in A.R. Millard & D.J. Wiseman (ed.), Essays on the Patriarchal Narratives (Leicester, UK: InterVarsity Press, 1980), 59–92 (citation from pp. 75–76).

52 See “The Execration Texts,” City of David: Ancient Jerusalem.

53 For this and related information about pre-Davidic Jerusalem, see “Ancient Jerusalem.”

***

Practical Matters: Perhaps some of my 4,000+ 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.

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]. 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 InformationThanks a million from the bottom of my heart!

***

Summary: Chapter Three of my book, The Word Set in Stone (March 15, 2023) surveys the archaeological evidence that is consistent with the accounts of Abraham in the Bible.

2023-01-31T13:42:14-04:00

Toi Staff reported on this exciting archaeological discovery in The Times of Israel: “Archaeologist: Thick wall found at Lachish indicates King Solomon’s son built it” (4-23-19):

Prof. Yosef Garfinkel, head of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Institute of Archaeology, announced the find at a conference two weeks ago, . . .

The discovery, he argued, bolsters the biblical account in the book of Chronicles of the city under 10th century BCE King Rehoboam’s reign, . . .

“We looked in three places, and ultimately, in the northern section, we found a wall between Layer 6 and Layer 4. Later the excavators reached a floor that stretches to the wall, which could be dated using olive pits found beneath the floors. Samples of the pits were sent to the particle accelerator at Oxford, which ruled that the wall had been built around 920 B.C.E., which was exactly the rule of Rehoboam, son of Solomon and grandson of David.”

The discovery of a fortified city two days’ walk from King David and Solomon’s Jerusalem suggests the broader kingdom of Judah was established about a century earlier than historians currently believe.

This rather spectacularly verifies the Bible; especially this text:

2 Chronicles 11:5-12 (RSV) Rehobo’am dwelt in Jerusalem, and he built cities for defense in Judah. [6] He built Bethlehem, Etam, Teko’a, [7] Beth-zur, Soco, Adullam, [8] Gath, Mare’shah, Ziph, [9] Adora’im, Lachish, Aze’kah, [10] Zorah, Ai’jalon, and Hebron, fortified cities which are in Judah and in Benjamin. [11] He made the fortresses strong, and put commanders in them, and stores of food, oil, and wine. [12] And he put shields and spears in all the cities, and made them very strong. So he held Judah and Benjamin.

Encyclopaedia Britannica (“Kings: Solomon’s successors”) states that King Solomon died in 922 BC, succeeded by his son, Rehoboam. Note that the super-sophisticated “particle accelerator at Oxford” determined that the wall in Lachish was built around 920 BC: two years later. Bible and archaeology line up once again (I just wrote a book devoted to that convergence).

The prophet Jeremiah referred to Lachish (along with Azekah) as “the only fortified cities of Judah that remained” (Jer 34:7) shortly before the Babylonians conquered the country in 587-586 BC.

Archaeologists tell us that Lachish was in ruins for over 200 years. This is because Joshua took the city and burned it (Josh. 10:31-35). I wrote about it in my 2023 book, The Word Set in Stone (chapter: “Joshua and the Conquest of Canaan”):

The archaeological Level VII of Lachish has been dated to the thirteenth century B.C., and its destruction determined to be in the middle or latter part of the twelfth century B.C. According to Israeli archaeologist David Ussishkin, “the biblical description (in Josh. 10:31–32) fits the archaeological data: a large Canaanite city destroyed by fire . . . and complete desertion of the razed city explained by the annihilation of the populace.”

[Footnote: 3 Eero Junkkaala, Three Conquests of Canaan: A Comparative Study of Two Egyptian Military Campaigns and Joshua 10–12 in the Light of Recent Archaeological Evidence (Turku, Finland: Abo Akademi University Press, 2006); citations from pages 235–236, 238.]

Archaeologist Kenneth Kitchen dated the destruction of Lachish at “about 1177/1165” BC. [On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids and Cambridge: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2003, p. 142)].

Avraham Negev and Shimon Gibson, editors of Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land (New York: Continuum, revised edition of 2001, “Lachish,” 289) describe other findings in Lachish which are also consistent with the biblical accounts:

The earliest Israelite remains are the foundations of a palace (Palace A). It is 100 feet square and . . . is attributed to Rehoboam (928-911 BC). To the time of Asa (908-867 BC, stratum IV) is attributed the building of a city wall . . . To the time of Jehoshaphat (867-846 BC) is attributed the enlargement of the fortified palace . . .

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Further Related Reading

Bible & Archaeology web page

My book, The Word Set in Stone: How Archaeology, Science, and History Back up the Bible (Catholic Answers Press, March 2023)

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Practical Matters: Perhaps some of my 4,000+ free online articles (the most comprehensive “one-stop” Catholic apologetics site) or fifty 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]. 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 InformationThanks a million from the bottom of my heart!

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Photo credit: [אמיל אלגם / Bible Archaeology Report]

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Summary: In 2019, archaeologists discovered King Rehoboam’s wall in Lachish in Israel, dated to c. 920 BC in a “fortified city”: precisely the place & period described in the Bible.

2022-12-13T10:01:02-04:00

My upcoming book is entitled, The Word Set in Stone: How Science, History, and Archaeology Prove Biblical Truth. It will be published probably in the spring of 2023 by Catholic Answers Press (see the table of contents, Introduction, and other information). The editing work on it is done. Currently, I’m checking up on the latest archaeological discoveries that confirm the accuracy of the Bible since the time I wrote my book. They are constantly occurring.

Hezekiah, king of Judah (c. 741 BC- c. 687; reigned c. 716-c. 687), has been verified by many seals and bullae. His name was also mentioned on the prisms of Assyrian King Sennacherib. He was king during the time of the prophets Isaiah and Micah. Christopher Eames wrote the article, “‘[He]zekiah’: First-of-Its-Kind ‘Monumental’ Inscription of a King of Judah Revealed” (Armstrong Institute of Biblical Archaeology [no relation!], 10-26-22). He explains what is unique about the latest discovery:

[F]or . . . the kings of Judah in general, there has been one thing missing: “monumental”-style inscriptions, or stelae, of the sort well known and preserved in the likes of Assyria, Babylon and Egypt. Inscriptions that have thus far been unveiled naming biblical kings of Israel and Judah have largely been of the “miniature” variety—royal seal stamps, or bullae, such as those referencing JeroboamUzziahJotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah. As such, a prevailing belief has been that the kings of Judah and Israel did not have “monumental”-style inscriptions to record their own achievements. Now, a new discovery (or rather, a somewhat old discovery reexamined) changes that picture. . . .

Indeed, the received wisdom has been that the kings of Judah must not have utilized monumental inscriptions . . .

In 2007, a limestone slab was discovered in the Gihon Spring area of the City of David (oldest) area of Jerusalem by Israeli archaeologists Eli Shukron and Ronny Reich. In 2009, Dr. Pieter Gert van der Veen determined that the name Hezekiah was present on the slab. His German article was entitled “König Hiskia in einer neuen Inschrift aus Jerusalem?”

Shukron and epigrapher Prof. Gershon Galil have reinforced this conclusion, after reconstructing one line as ח]זקיה]/[H]zqyh/[He]zekiah (with the initial letter “h/ח” missing). A second line (also with the first letter missing) is believed to be the word “pool” (Hebrew bricha). This was what was new about their examination of the slab.

The slab or stele, according to a related article, “would be the first royal inscription by a Judahite king yet discovered.”

The exciting thing about all this is that Hezekiah was associated in the Bible at least six times with pools and water works. And the discovery was made in one such known “pool” in Jerusalem:

2 Kings 18:17 (RSV) And the king of Assyria sent the Tartan, the Rab’saris, and the Rab’shakeh with a great army from Lachish to King Hezeki’ah 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. (cf. Is 36:2)

2 Kings 20:20 The rest of the deeds of Hezeki’ah, and all his might, and how he made the pool and the conduit and brought water into the city, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah?

2 Chronicles 32:1-4 After these things and these acts of faithfulness Sennach’erib king of Assyria came and invaded Judah and encamped against the fortified cities, thinking to win them for himself. [2] And when Hezeki’ah saw that Sennach’erib had come and intended to fight against Jerusalem, [3] he planned with his officers and his mighty men to stop the water of the springs that were outside the city; and they helped him. [4] A great many people were gathered, and they stopped all the springs and the brook that flowed through the land, saying, “Why should the kings of Assyria come and find much water?”

2 Chronicles 32:30 This same Hezeki’ah closed the upper outlet of the waters of Gihon and directed them down to the west side of the city of David. And Hezeki’ah prospered in all his works.

Isaiah 22:11 You made a reservoir between the two walls for the water of the old pool. . . .

Hezekiah’s Tunnel (called a “conduit” in the Bible) can still be navigated today (I walked through it myself in October 2014). The original Pool of Siloam is associated with it:

The Pool of Siloam was built during the reign of Hezekiah . . . The pool was fed by the newly constructed Siloam tunnel. An older Canaanite tunnel had been very vulnerable to attackers, so, under threat from the Assyrian king Sennacherib, Hezekiah sealed up the old outlet of the Gihon Spring and built the new underground Siloam tunnel in place of the older tunnel (Books of Chronicles2 Chronicles 32:2–4).

During this period the Pool of Siloam was sometimes known as the Lower Pool (Book of IsaiahIsaiah 22:9), as opposed to a more ancient Upper Pool (Books of Kings2 Kings 18:17Isaiah 7:3) formerly fed by the older Canannite tunnel.

King Hezekiah is also described in the Bible as having built or fortified a new wall (“Broad Wall”) in Jerusalem:

2 Chronicles 32:5 He set to work resolutely and built up all the wall that was broken down, and raised towers upon it, and outside it he built another wall; and he strengthened the Millo in the city of David. He also made weapons and shields in abundance.

Isaiah 22:10 . . . you broke down the houses to fortify the wall. (cf. [possibly] Neh 3:8)

This was uncovered in the 1970s and dated to Hezekiah’s time.

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Practical Matters: Perhaps some of my 4,000+ free online articles (the most comprehensive “one-stop” Catholic apologetics site) or fifty 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]. 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 InformationThanks a million from the bottom of my heart!

***

Photo credit: A screen capture of the inscription Galil and Shukron have reconstructed to read “Hezekiah.” Source: ריקלין ושות’ עם שמעון ריקלין | 26.10.2022 | התכנית המלאה / [YouTube / secondary source]

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Summary: Archaeologists in Israel found a monumental inscription by King Hezekiah of Judah (the first from these kings). It also associates him with the construction of pools.

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