The Bible is archaeologically interesting not merely for what it says but also for what it doesn’t say.
For example it’s there is no mention of writing in the Book of Genesis.
The Hebrew words for writing, book or document never appear in this book.
When Abraham purchased a burial cave from Ephron the Hittite, the price and bargaining process are outlined in detail in Genesis 23.
The account concludes:
“Ephron the Hittite answered Abraham in the audience of the children of Heth, even of all that went in at the gate of his city, saying,
Nay, my lord, hear me: the field give I thee, and the cave that is therein, I give it thee; in the presence of the sons of my people give I it thee: bury thy dead.” (Genesis 23: 10-11)
The reason Ephron makes this declaration in front of his people is there is no written contract, only a public assembly of witnesses to the oral transaction.
So the arts of reading and writing were absent, or at least uncommon, in the Judean Hills of Israel at the time of the patriarchs.
This corresponds with what archaeologists know about the spread of the written word which seems to have occurred only later, and predictably in urban centers.
The first mention of writing in the Bible occurs in the Book of Exodus 17:14, when Moses is told to record the defeat of Amalek “in a book.”
Below, the Ephron bargaining scene from the Abraham Tapestries of Henry VIII. Woven as a 10-piece set in Brussels in the early 1540s, they are now in the Royal Collection at Hampton Court Palace.
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A gang of goons, acting on the authority of King Zedekiah of Judah, threw the prophet Jeremiah into a pit.
Two of them were Jehucal son of Shelemiah and Gedaliah son of Pashur.
Both men have been historically corroborated through the archaeological discovery of clay seal impressions dated to the sixth century B.C. bearing their names.
And that’s me, below, in the actual pit into which Jeremiah was tossed. Debbie my wife took his short video of me in Jerusalem earlier this year.
But how did Jeremiah survive?
“Now when Ebed-melech the Ethiopian, one of the eunuchs of the king’s house, heard that they had put Jeremiah in the dungeon…” (Jeremiah 38:7)
So the king’s own men put Jeremiah in there, but a low-ranking Ethiopian decided to take matters into his own hands.
Ebed-melech approached the king—a daunting task that involved great personal risk—and remarkably got permission to get Jeremiah out.
It took 30 men to pull Jeremiah out since he was trapped in the caked mud at the ...
The Bible says that the Assyrian king Shalmaneser besieged and destroyed Samaria in the northern kingdom of Israel.
This was in the 8th century B.C.
This triumph is celebrated in Assyrian records, a series of inscriptions discovered by archaeologists in the Assyrian capital of Khorsabad.
Written in the Akkadian cuneiform dialect, the inscriptions are now in the Louvre in Paris. (See image below.)
They credit the Assyrian king Sargon II with the conquest of Samaria in the 8th century B.C.
So which version is correct, the Assyrian one or the one in the Bible?
As it turns out, both.
It was indeed Shalmaneser V who besieged and pillaged Samaria.
His successor was Sargon II, a usurper who seized the throne.
And it was Sargon who continued the military campaign in Samaria and finally conquered the city.
Once again, the historicity of Scripture is vindicated by archaeology.
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