Tag Archives: History

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Archaeologists find first artifact that mentions Bethlehem

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Dina sent me this article from the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

Israeli archaeologists have discovered a 2,700-year-old seal that bears the inscription “Bethlehem,” in what experts believe to be the oldest artefact with the name of Jesus’ traditional birthplace.

Experts state the tiny clay seal’s existence and age provide vivid evidence that Bethlehem was not just the name of a fabled biblical town, but also a bustling place of trade linked to the nearby city of Jerusalem.

Eli Shukron, the Israel Antiquities Authority’s director of excavations, said the find was significant because it is the first time the name “Bethlehem” appears outside of a biblical text from that period.

Shukron said the seal, 1.5 centimetres (0.59 inches) in diameter, dates back to the period of the first biblical Jewish Temple, between the eighth and seventh century B.C., at a time when Jewish kings reigned over the ancient kingdom of Judah and 700 years before Jesus was born.

The seal was written in ancient Hebrew script from the same time. Pottery found nearby also dated back to the same period, he said.

Shmuel Achituv, an expert in ancient scripts at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University who did not participate in the dig, said the discovery was the oldest reference to Bethlehem ever found outside of the Bible.

Apart from the seal, the other mentions of Bethlehem, Mr Achituv said, “are only in the Bible”.

There’s some good news for your Sunday!

News

Archaeologist discovers artifacts from a 3,000 year old community

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Ari sent me an article on the discovery, but I chose this one to link from the Jerusalem Post.

Excerpt:

A Hebrew University archeologist has discovered artifacts from a 3,000-year-old community that have created a new understandings of how the First Temple was built, the university announced on Tuesday.

Prof. Yosef Garfinkel, the Yigal Yadin Professor of Archeology at the university, displayed models of items excavated in Khirbet Qeiyafa, a fortified city in the Valley of Elah, about 30 km. southwest of Jerusalem.

The religious community, which Garfinkel believes was Jewish, based on the lack of pig bones and graven images, kept small shrines in rooms of three buildings. The small ritual objects are box-like in shape and made from basalt or clay. The shrines predate the First Temple by at least 30 years, but utilize important architectural designs written in the Torah that describe how the Temple should be built.

The discovery of these ritual objects has allowed archeologists a new understanding of the Temple’s construction, explained Garfinkel.

More than 20 architectural terms that describe the Temple no longer exist in modern language, so models of the Temple are based on educated guesses. For example, the Torah states that the Temple had “slaot,” which was previously understood as “columns,” and “sequfim,” which was widely translated as “windows.” But after studying the small shrines, Garfinkel concluded that the number of slaot corresponded to triglyphs, ornamental decorations above the columns, and the number of sequifim was consistent with a triple recessed doorway, rather than windows.

The Christian Post has more about what the discovery means.

Excerpt:

“For the first time in history we have actual objects from the time of David, which can be related to monuments described in the Bible,” the press release, provided by the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, states.

Hershel Shanks, editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review, told The Christian Post on Tuesday that the find is “extremely interesting” but needs to be examined further.

“The unfortunate thing is we don’t have enough information … to be all confident of the conclusions that Yosef Garfinkel is drawing,” said Shanks.

One thing that should be considered is the miniature shrines that were uncovered by Garfinkel are not the first to be discovered, and some might interpret the finding as evidence of a Canaanite cult rather than an Israelite one.

The date of the artifacts is pretty accurate – they are from approximately 1,000 years Before Christ – although Shanks says it is impossible to say with certainty which biblical king was on the throne at the time.

“This may well have been Davidic, but it’s hard to come down hard on it. But within that range, yes … we have a lot of confidence in the date of it,” he said.

So things are still up in the air on the significance of this discovery.

This reminds me of the story I am following about Dan Wallace’s discovery of the early fragments of Mark. Scholars are still holding off judgment on that as well.

News

The Best Schools interviews historian Mike Licona

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This is a long interview with one of our top resurrection scholars. (LINK FIXED!)

Excerpt:

TBS: You have also been a prominent public apologist for the veracity of the New Testament. For example, you have engaged in public debates with such well-known atheists as Dan Barker and Richard Carrier, as well as with such revisionist New Testament scholars as Bart Ehrman, Elaine Pagels, and Stephen Patterson. Describe some of the high points in these debates. What are some key things that persons of faith should bear in mind as they face skeptics of the New Testament like this? What made you want to get involved in public controversy and debate? Looking back on your career on the debating platform, would you say, overall, it has been time well spent? If so, why?

ML: Sometime in the mid-1990s, I purchased audio-cassette tapes of William Lane Craig debating Frank Zindler and John Dominic Crossan. I was very impressed when I heard Dr. Craig pick apart their arguments in an intellectually sound manner. I have never enjoyed heated discussions. But there was something about confronting bad philosophy and arguments and being able to present a sound case for the truth of Christianity that was very appealing to me. I never imagined I would participate in a debate. At that point, Dr. Craig had two doctorates while I had not even completed my master’s thesis and had no intention of doing so. So, engaging in public debate in the type of forum he was doing was not even on my radar.

In the spring of 2003, Gary Habermas was invited to debate Dan Barker (left). He didn’t like debating and asked me if I would be interested in debating Dan. He said that if I ever wanted to get involved in debate, this would be a good first one for me, since Dan is not a scholar. So, I accepted an invitation to debate Dan and loved the experience. The next year, Gary turned down two more debates and referred them to me, which I accepted. Later Bill Craig passed along a few to me. And that’s how I got started.

Some items others should keep in mind if they decide to engage in debate or dialogue with nonbelievers is that your opponents are not your enemies. I don’t regard anyone I have debated as an enemy. In fact, I now consider some of them as friends. Hopefully, we’re all after truth. If Christianity is true, my opponents will have to answer to God some day. That’s between them and God. Since Jesus taught for us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, there is no reason for us to act in a nasty way toward those with whom we have a disagreement. I’d also suggest that if you’re going to get in the ring with some major scholars like Bart Ehrman and Stephen Patterson, you better be willing to do your homework and prepare diligently. Debate is not easy. It takes a lot of work and it can be very emotionally draining. It’s not for everyone. But if you have the personality for it and are willing to put in the effort, there will be plenty of opportunities to engage in public debate and we need more Christians who will join us. I love the challenge and doing something that I think has a lot of value.

Being engaged in public debate has been time well spent and there have been positive results. I’ve seen some who were on an authentic quest for truth become followers of Jesus after attending or viewing one of my debates, while others have returned to faith in Christ. Some have expressed that their faith was significantly strengthened after attending one of my debates, while others devoted their lives to full-time Christian ministry. Hey, I don’t give an altar call. I just present truth and answer objections as best and as honestly as I can. Students are hungry for truth. They want a foundation on which to base their lives that’s based on truth rather than wishful thinking.

TBS: In 2010, you published your doctoral dissertation as The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (IVP Academic, 2010). [Hereafter referred to as “Resurrection.”] It is an extremely impressive piece of work, which has now set the standard for historiographical work on the historicity of Jesus and the Resurrection. Just the list of endorsers reads like a Who’s Who of New Testament scholarship. What was the research path that led to your magnum opus?

ML: Gary Habermas and I were working on our bookThe Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (Kregel Publications, 2004). I regard Habermas (right) to be the world’s leading expert on the topic. For several years he had been compiling a bibliography on academic sources written on Jesus’ resurrection and had more than 2,000 sources at that time. Today, that bibliography has expanded to around 3,400! Habermas had read the major works and catalogued where scholars stood on more than 100 topics related to Jesus’ resurrection. So, I asked him to which discipline the majority of scholars writing on the subject belong. He said the overwhelming bulk of them are biblical scholars and a small percentage are philosophers. I asked him if any professional historians outside the community of biblical scholars had published on the subject and he said he recalled seeing perhaps a handful of journal articles and one short book. At that point I decided that I wanted to conduct a thorough investigation of Jesus’ resurrection as a historian. I wanted to know how historians conduct their investigations and how those investigations differ from those conducted by biblical scholars and philosophers.

After being accepted into the doctoral program at the University of Pretoria, I immersed myself in literature written by philosophers of history and professional historians on the nature of historical knowledge and the various methods of discovering the past. It didn’t take me long to discover that I had a serious challenge before me: Historians are virtually unanimous in admitting that the completely objective historian does not exist and that we are all persons of bias. I realized that I had my own biases. After all, I wanted to show that the resurrection of Jesus was an historical event. So, I put together a list of recommended steps for managing my bias and did my best to follow them. Did I obtain complete objectivity? No one can and I wasn’t an exception. I discovered that I could get pretty close to my goal of complete objectivity if I genuinely wanted to be there and engaged in a serious effort to get there. However, I found that unless I took deliberate and sustained efforts toward remaining there, I would go back to my default position. It was a continuous struggle.

I became obsessed with my research. I agonized over my biases and attempts to suspend judgment while my investigation proceeded. I was intentional in debating some of the finest and toughest minds taking a contrary view. I wanted to put my method and conclusions before them in order to see what they had to say and to learn from the process.

My completed dissertation ended up being around four times the size of the average one. It was a long and laborious process. But it yielded priceless knowledge to me. So, I was thrilled when IVP decided to publish it.

TBS: Resurrection is a 700-page work dense with scholarly annotation. Nevertheless, would you be able to summarize the main conclusions you reach in this work for our readers? What does this book add to conservative New Testament scholarship about the Resurrection? What’s new here? How does it differ from other magisterial work in this area, such as that of Gary Habermas and N.T. Wright?

ML: I think there are three major differences between my new book and where others have previously gone. First, I discuss issues pertaining to the philosophy of history and historical method with a depth that exceeds by far what other scholars have offered pertaining to the question of Jesus’ resurrection. Second, I interact with the debate over whether historians are within their professional rights to investigate miracle claims to a far greater degree than has been previously offered. Third, I subject a variety of hypotheses to strictly controlled historical method in a more comprehensive manner than has been previously offered. There are other contributions the book makes to the discussion, such as a discussion pertaining to the historicity of Jesus’ predictions pertaining to his imminent death and resurrection, as well as the meaning of two Greek terms upon which an important discussion hinges. But the above three are the major ones.

Worth the read. It sounds from the interview that things are going better for Dr. Licona.