Church History Tour

Today trying to answer the question: Is the Old Testament Historically reliable?

And why should we?

One, because there are assaults towards our faith:

Rickard Dawkins on his definition of faith and his view of the Bible:

Archaeology does not lead us to Christ but confirms our faith in Him when we see how God orchestrated the discoveries of relics/artifacts.

Validates the Hebrew and Greek scriptures on which our faith is based.
Slowly over centuries has these artifacts has been pulled from ruins, tells, digs for a time when the “West” grew cold to spiritual things and made a god of facts and the scientific method. Be assured we as Christians have a response to evolution and all other atheistic and agnostic views that may come at us.

For the summer and even today, I want you to come away with is a bigger appreciation of the authority and basis for your faith. That you could believe it more strongly than you maybe have been able to do in the past and that you could defend it. That result would come from a better understanding of what God has done. I hope that the understanding will lead to a greater ability to trust Him.

Realize that no archeological discovery has EVER been made that contradicts historical statements in scripture.

“It was the rise of the science of archaeology that broke the deadlock between historians and the orthodox Christians. Little by little, one city after another, one civilization after another, one culture after another, whose memories were enshrined only in the Bible were restored to their proper places. No where has archaeological discovery refuted the Bible as history.”

John Elder, Archaeologist and Author

Outline:

Look at reliability in three areas:

text transmission (the accuracy of the copying process)

Professor Wilson’s Process

the confirmation of the Old Testament by evidence in archaeology

Sennacherib and Hezekiah in II Kings 18, 19
Tirhakah or Taharkah, the Cushite King
Sargon II, Assyria
Genesis Hittites

Documentary evidence also uncovered through archaeology

Work of the Masoretes
Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran

These evidences usually do not “cause” faith but to confirm our faith in the Word of God which we have in the English language.

Indirectly or directly they are apologetic in nature. That is, these principles and facts can be drawn upon when needed to substantiate and defend belief in the Bible and the eternal truths.

In the market place of ideas Christianity is under assault by atheists, Christians who have problems with the Bible’s infalability (liberal theologians) , Cults, who have substitute scriptures or attack basic beliefs and other religions such as Islam, Hinduism and Sikhs.

Textual Transmission: How Accurate Was the Copying Process?

Professor Wilson (Robert Dick) Process — don’t misspell the king’s name?

Old Testament Scholar, Princeton Seminary, Western Theological Seminary and University of Berlin. Prof of Semitic philology and Old Testament at Princeton. Is the Higher Criticism Scholarly?, Scientific Old Testament Criticism.

The Prof did much research on how accurately all the kings, both Israeli and foreign were recorded in the Bible. He looked at accuracy of spelling as well as chronology of the kings and their counterparts or contemporaries in other countries.

OT 26 names of foreign kings.
Those names also found on other documents in the time of these kings.

Also names found on monuments to the kings.

Finding:

Spellings of king’s names in OT identical to extra-biblical documentation.
Changes in spellings of some names are in accordance with the laws of phonetic change as those laws were in operation at the time.
Name of Judah and Israel kings are found on the Assyrian contemporary documents.
Spellings are the same as we find in the present Hebrew text.
144 cases of transliteration from Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian and Moabite into Hebrew and 40 cases of the opposite.
184 cases total.
The evidence shows remarkable accuracy in recording and spelling those names accurately over a period of 2300 to 3900 years BC.

Additional Professor Wilson Research:

There are about 40 of these kings living from 2000 – 400 BC.
Each appears in chronological order with reference to the kings of the same country and with respect to their contemporary kings of other countries.
No stronger evidence for the accuracy of the OT records could possibly be imagined than this collection of kings.

Wilson’s conclusion:

“The proof that the copies of the original documents have been handed down with substantial correctness for more than 2000 years cannot be denied. That the copies in existence 2k years ago had been in like manner handed down from the originals is not metely possible, but , as we have shown, is rendered probable by the analogies of Babylonian documents now existing of which we have both originals and copies, thousands of years apart, and of scores of papyri which show when compared with our modern editions of the classics that only minor changes of the text have taken place in more than 2,000 years and especially by the scientific and demonstrable accuracy with which the proper spelling of the names of kings and of the numerous foreign terms embedded in the Hebrew text has been transmitted to us.”

Robert Dick Wilson, Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, p 85.

An Example of the Alignment of Kings in the Old Testament:
Sennacherib and Hezekiah and Tirhakah

Sennacharib 704 - 681 BC

The man depicted on the right of this Stella is Sennacharib, the son of Sargon II. He did what his father could not, attacking and defeating the southern kingdom of Judah. This king is important as there is much written about him in the Bible, particularly in his dealings with the righteous king of Judah, King Hezekiah. It is Sennacharib who is responsible for building the great city of Nineveh.

At the end of the 8^th century, in 701 BC, Sennacharib came from Assyria, through Phoenicia, and attacked all the fortified towns of Judah. Except for Jerusalem, Lachish, located southwest of Jerusalem, was the last of all the fortified cities to be attacked and destroyed.

As archeologists dug down through the different layers they found artifacts from the battle, e.g., balls, slings, arrowheads, bone and metal.

Balls and Sling retrieved from the Lachish Tell:

Hezekiah Murial out of Nineveh

They also found the Taylor Prism which is Sennacharib’s account of all the battles, including those of Lachish, and Jerusalem, where Hezehiah lived, a righteous king, whom the Lord loved and honored.

Taylor Prism

The Taylor Prism, an 8-sided prism, parallels the Biblical account (II Kings 19) in 7 areas. Both agree that:

Hezekiah rebelled against Senacharib
The fortified towns of Judah fell
Lachish also fell
Hezekiah was shut up in Jerusalem
He paid 30 talents of gold in tribute to Sennacharib to gain favor
Jerusalem did not fall
The Assyrian army left without firing a single arrow at Jerusalem

Here however is a mystery; why did they (Assyrians) leave? The historical record, including the Taylor prism, gives us no reason. We have to go to the Bible to find out the reason.

According to the Bible Sennacharib did not capture Jerusalem though he destroyed all the other cities. This is found in II Kings 19:9 and Isaiah 37:9. What was the reason for his sudden departure in the Bible? According to II Kings 19:9, and Isaiah 37:9, he had to return because someone was attacking his southern flanks, King Tirhakah of Ethoipia/Egypt. Historians, however, had always puzzled over Tirhdkah, as there is no documentation for such a king. Is he the product of a myth or legend? Most Historians think the bible is full of myths, and Tirhakah is just another example of such a myth. For centuries only the Bible referred to Tirhakah.

Tirhakah has now been authenticated historically, there in the British Museum. Sennacherib had to return to defend the city of Ninevah against Tirhakah. Once he had defended his kingdom, he returned a 2^nd time to Jerusalem.

Preservation of the text

Groups of Hebrew involved in preservation and dissemination of the laws and principles:

Sopherim, Zugoth, Tannaim, Talmudists

Talmudists copying process: p. 74 Evidence that Demands a Verdict

•Samuel Davison describel some of the disciplines of the Talmudists. The Talmudists preceeded the Masoretes.

Here are just some of their techniques.

A synagogue roll must be written on the skins of clean animals
the roll must be prepared for the particular use of the synagogue by a Jew
Rolls must be fastened together with strings taken from clean animals
Every skin must contain a certain number of columns, equal throughout the entire codex
The length of each column must not extend over less than 48 or most than 60 lines; and the breadth must consist of thirty letters
The whole copy must be first-lined and if three words be written without a line, it is worthless
The ink should be black, neither red, green, nor any other color, and be prepared according to a definite recipe
An authentic copy must be the exemplar, from which the transcriber ought not in the least deviate.
No word or letter, not even a yod, must be written from memory,the scribe not having looked at the codex before him
Between every consonant the space of a hair or thread must intervene

Between every new parashah, or section, the breadth of nine consants
Between every book, three lines

The fifth book of Moses must terminate exactly with a line; but the rest need not do so
Besides this, the copyist must sit in full Jewish dress

wash his whole body
not begin to write the name of God with a pen newly dipped in ink
and should a king address him while writing that name he must take no notice of him

All rolls were duly verified and only then accepted as authentic and regarded as being of equal value with any other copy.

Davidson adds that “the rolls in which these regulations are not observed are condemned to be buried in the ground or burned.”

What is a Gheniza?

Was a type of cupboard in which defective and tattered manuscripts were laid aside and from these receptacles some of the oldest manuscripts not extant have in modern times been recovered.

But the Jewish mindset was to prefer the newest copy.

The absence of very old copies of the Hebrew Bible is not a surprise and neither is it unsettling. The Jews discarded older and defective copies and because of the dispersion, many of their good copies were no doubt destroyed.

Hebrew reverence of scripture

Who were The Masoretes and what was their contribution to the preservation to the Hebrew scriptures?

The Masoretes were the Jewish scholars who between 500 AD and 950 AD gave the final form to the text of the Old Testament. The destruction of the temple in 70 AD along with the dispersion of the Jews from their land, became a powerful impetus to 1. standardize the consonantal text, and 2. standardize punctuation and the use of vowels to preserve correct vocalization and pronunciation for reading. They were clal Masoretics because they preserved in writing the oral tradition (masorah) concerning the correct vowels and accents, and the number of occurrences of rare words of unusual spellings. They received the unpointed (comparable to English without vowels), consonantal text of the Sopherim and inserted the vowel points that gave to each word its exact pronunciation and grammatical form. They even engaged in a moderate amount of textual criticism. Where ever they suspected that the word indicated by the consonantal text was erroneous, they corrected it in a very ingenious way. They left the actual consanants undisturbed, as they had received them from the Sopherim. But they inserted the vowel points that belonged to the new word they were substituting for the old, and then inserted the consanants of the new word itself in very small letters in the margin. (From Archer, A Survey of the Old Testament, 63)

The Masoretes work resulted in several codexes which have survived dispersion and persecution. One of the best examples is the Aleppo Codex in Leningrad. We also saw the Codex Sinaticus in the British Library. Discovered at the Temple of the foot of Mt Sinai.

What about the physical documents on which these kings were recorded?

The collections of manuscripts:

Cairo Geniza manuscripts (scattered all over the world now)
Dead Sea Scrolls
Cairo Codex (895 AD, produced by the Masoretic Moses ben Asher family)
Codex of the Prophets of Liningrad
Codex Babylonicus Petropalitanus
Aleppo Codex
British Museum Codex
Reuchlin Codex of the Prophets

“We have given practical proof of our reverence for our own Scriptures. For, although such long ages have now passed, no one has ventured either to add, or to remove, or to alter a syllable; and it is an instinct with every Jew, from the day of his birth, to regard them as the decrees of God, to abide by them, and, if need be, cheerfully to die for them. Time and again ere now the sight has been witnessed of prisoners enduring tortures and death in every form in the theatres, rather than utter a single word against the laws and the allied documents.” - Flavius Josephus, First-Century Historian

The Masoretes preserved the Hebrew scriptures as the Jews lived in foreign lands and began in many cases to speak other languages.

Example: the original Torah of Temple Mickve, Savannah ( We saw first hand Jewish respect of the scriptures. ) The Temple has the original copy of the Towrah which was sent with the first 40 Savannah Jewish settlers from England.

These are just some of the ways God worked through man to preserve the message God intended.

Hezekiah

According to the Bible, in the middle of the night, the angel of the Lord came down and destroyed 185,000 of Sennacharib’s men. Therefore, he had no choice but to return to Assyria, an embarrassment, unable to explain what had happened. However, these facts are not found on this the Hezekiah mural taken from Nineveh, and for one very good reason: because these murals are bragging accounts. The kings did not record their failures/defeats, so we would not expect to find such a humiliation to be recorded in this mural. Therefore, historians are faced with a dilemma, as they cannot explain why Sennacharib returned empty handed. The Bible provides the solution, filling in the missing details. Both the Biblical and historical accounts inform us that Assyrians never did defeat Jerusalem, nor was Judah ever completely defeated, but it is the Bible which uniquely explains why.

Tirhakah

Now we can solve the mystery concerning the ruler Tirhakah. Remember, that Sennacharib in his first invasion of Judah, had to suddenly return home to Nineveh, because a king referred to in the Bible as Tirhakah was attacking him on his southern flanks (II Kings 19:9; Isaiah 37:9). Yet there is no secular documentation to support thin king; that is until the last century, when this statue (see photo) was discovered. The Egyptian hieroglyphics written on this statue refers to the king Tirhakah by name. So this supposedly mythological king is actually historical, proving that when the Bible speaks about him in Isaiah 37, and II Kings 19, it is historically credible and not simply a myth or legend. We now know that Tirhakah was the ruler of the Cushites, which included present day Sudan, North Africa, Egypt and Ethiopia. He was a great power of that day, so when he attacked Sennacharib, it was a very serious threat. That is why Sennacharib had to return to defend against him, according to II Kings 19:9 and Isaiah 37:9.

Three years ago is the South Hampton (UK) museum, there was a statue of a king that was used as a bicycle stand. One of the curators of the British museum went down to Southhamption in Jan 1999, and when he looked at the figure and hieroglyphics underneath he saw again the reference to Tirhakah. There was another statue of Tirhakah. The Southampton museum had no idea what they had, a statue from the 8^th c. BC in their museum, with no idea as to its importance. So these two statues prove that Tirhakah is historical. Much as we are finding more evidence for Tirhakah we possibly could find further evidence for people or events in the Bible.

Legendary Genesis is now the Historical Genesis

Sodom and Gomorrah
The Hittites and the Horites of Genesis
The Flood
Ur

Mari and Nuzi Tablets

7 customs detailed in the Mari tablets which parallel customs shown in Genesis

One tablet from Tell Markikh mentions 5 cities: Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim and Zoar found in Genesis 14:8 same listed in same order.

I don’t have time to develop the significance but this unique listing of cities help biblical scholars fight the liberal theories that Genesis was written in the 6^th c. BC from a long oral tradition and redacted to the 1900 – 1400s BC.

Dead Sea Scrolls

There are many things here but we will do the analysis on the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Isaiah Analysis

Isaiah 53

166 words in the chapter.
Only 17 letters in question.
10 letters are simply a matter of spelling
Four letters are minor stylistic changes, such as conjunctions
Three letters comprise the word “light.” This was added in verse 11 and does not affect the meaning greatly. The word “light” is supported by the Septuigant and IQ Is (one of the Isaiah scholls found in the Dead Sea caves).
Thus, of the 166 words in the chapter, only three letters in question after a thousand years of transmission. This word does not significantly change the meaning of the passage.

Isaiah in the Qumran scrolls: “proved to be word for word identical with our standard Hebrew Bible in more than 95% OF THE TEXT. The 5 % of variation consisted chiefly of obvious slips of the pen and variations in spelling.” Dr. Gleason Archer

Millar Burrows says: “It is a matter of wonder that through something like a 1000 years the text underwent so little alteration. As I said in my first article on the scroll, ‘Herein lies its chief importance, supporting the fidelity of the Masoretic tradition.’”

The Significance of the Qumran documents:

1. These scrolls take the textual scholar back 1000 years earlier than previously known in Hebrew manuscript evidence. Tenth century manuscipts were the earliest prior to these copies.

2. The earliest complete copy dated from the 11^th century.

3. The Dead Sea manuscripts date back to as early as 125 BC.

4. The conclusion is that there was no significant difference between the Isaiah scroll at Qumran and the Masoretic Hebrew text dated 1000 years earlier.

5. This confirmed the reliability of our present Hebrew text.

6. We should accord to the Masoretes the highest praise.

Conclusions

•All archaeological finding to date have confirmed the text and improved our understanding of the Biblical record
•We saw that the transmission of Kings names stood up to rigor
•The Dead Sea Scrolls discovery was probably the biggest archaeological find in history for Christianity and Judaism and confirmed accurate text transmission
•The work of the Talmudists, the Masoretes, archaeological discoveries, the work of Professor Richard Wilson and hundreds like him confirm for us that the Hebrew scriptures have been passed to us with amazing care by God Himself and those He charged down through the centuries to care for those scriptures and thus with stunning accuracy