The Bible says that Joseph, an Israelite sold into slavery in Egypt, rose up to become one of the most influential high officials in Egypt.
For two centuries, skeptics said this was ridiculous.
The Pharaohs would never—they said—elevate a foreigner, let alone a lowly Semite, to such a position.
But archaeologist James Hoffmeier has shown that there is precedent.
Hoffmeier gives several samples of Semites and Canaanites who served as viziers and in other high positions under the pharaohs.
Moreover, from 1650 to 1550 B.C., the lower part of Egypt was ruled by foreigners.
These were the Hyksos, whose name literally means “foreign rulers.”
The Hyksos, as it turns out, were Semites from Canaan.
It would hardly be unusual for these Semites to pick one of their own to be a high official.
In the painting below by Giambattista Tiepolo, Joseph is shown receiving pharaoh’s ring.
Now admittedly the dates here don’t match perfectly. Joseph would seem to have lived before the ascension of the Hyksos.
But biblical dating is not certain for these early periods, and one school of thought holds for a later date for Joseph that would put him right in the Hyksos period.
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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 laws of the universe are given to us, not made by us.
So too, matter is given and not made.
Nature—including human nature—is given and not made.
Contrary to what a lot of people think, the moral law is given, not made.
But history—history is made by human beings.
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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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