LittleGirlLost said:
Here are some historical points that are mentioned for you guys to comment on. Sorry to post this here, but I don't know where else to put it.
Generally, historical points are less disputable, and in some cases pretty accurate when listing ancient civilizations or cities. But, for what its worth, here are my comments on the list:
A. For years skeptics said the Bible was unreliable because it mentions the Hittite nation (Deuteronomy 7:1) and cities like Nineveh (Jonah 1:1, 2) and Sodom (Genesis 19:1), which they denied ever existed. But now modern archaeology has confirmed that all three did, indeed, exist.
B. Critics also said that Bible-mentioned kings Belshazzar (Daniel 5:1) and Sargon (Isaiah 20:1) never existed. Once again, it has now been confirmed they did exist.
C. Skeptics also said the Bible record of Moses was not reliable because it mentions writing (Exodus 24:4) and wheeled vehicles (Exodus 14:25), neither of which they said existed at the time. They, of course, know better today.
D. At one time the 39 kings of ancient Israel and Judah who reigned during the divided kingdom were authenticated only from the Bible record, so critics charged fabrication. But then archaeologists found cuneiform records that mentioned many of these kings and, once again, the Bible record was proved accurate. Critics have repeatedly been proved wrong as new discoveries confirm biblical people, places, and events. It will always be so.
A. I'm not sure where the claim that the Hittite nation never existed comes from, we've uncovered archaeological existence of them as early as the 1880s, over 200 years. However, the only basis that anyone would doubt the existence of Hittites was due to the fact that the Bible mentions them in such causal tone that for years they were regarded as a small tribe, when in fact they were a flourishing kingdom that controlled much of the ancient Mesopotamian region between 2000 BC and the 8th century BC. However the Bible gets it wrong when it makes the claim that the Hittites are the Children of Heth, implying they are descendants of Abraham, however the Hittite civilization predates the earliest Israelites by 1000 years (for this reason, some have suggested that the Biblical and historical Hittites are two different groups of people).
The city of Ninevah follows almost exactly the same as the paragraph above.
The place where the author gets it completely wrong is the claim that we've found the city of Sodom and Gomorrah. The status of Sodom and Gomorrah is, at best, mythological given away by the very names of the cities themselves. I wrote on this topic a while ago at
Genesis Symbolism:
Symbolic Sodom and Gomorrah
Within Abraham's story is a moderately tangential tale of a terrible fate for two cities: Sodom and Gomorrah. God destroys these cities for wickedness and corruption.
There is a tradition of naming cities of the Bible as figurative elements, suggesting very strong allegorical significance. The significant names in this story translate as follows:
* Sodom, meaning "burnt, scorched"
* The King of Sodom, King Bera (or "ben ra"), meaning "son of evil"
* Gomorrah, meaning "heap"
* The King of Gomorrah, King Birsha (or "ben rasha"), meaning "son of mischief"
The names are the allegorical equivalent to Burntville ruled by Mr. Wicked, and Rubbleheap ruled by Mr. Mischief; the names in and of themselves foreshadow God's imminent destruction of the cities.
Allegorical names are common in the bible. Even Ai, the name of a city which the Israelites ostensibly conquered and destroyed, means "ruin".
Historical Sodom and Gomorrah
This story seems to be impressively difficult for some to interpret allegorically, and as a result many people are predisposed to associate these stories as historically factual. It often goes unnoticed that the names of the cities are of symbolic value only; although the names are not as obvious as, say, "Cruella DeVil?", the cities are intended as allegorical devices.
Nevertheless, this has never prevented some of the more enthusiastic Biblical Archaeologists from claiming the cities have been found. One wonders how the remnants of Burntville and Rubbleheap are discovered today, the answer is rather unremarkable: There are numerous abandoned cities in the Middle East. Some of them may have been abandoned when the early parts of the Bible were being composed, and perhaps the writers pointed to those as the ill-fated cities.
Others claim "fire and brimstone" has been discovered at Jebel Usdum (Mount Sodom). Upon exploration of this region, it is noted Jebel Usdum, "Mount Sodom" is nothing more than a hill of salt located southwest of the Dead Sea.
The Dead Sea, the home of the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah, has been around longer than any civilization. Still, thoughts of the Genesis tales have persisted for a long time and lingered in the imagination of many for just as long, so many evangelical Christians want to find such things; and unfortunately, many cities have been misidentified through the process. The ancient settlement of Qumran preserves the name "Gomorrah", though no one today would like to think that that was actually the site. And hopeful people have taken a minisub to the sea and found something off the edge.
To date, no remains of Sodom and Gomorrah have been found, although there is certainly no shortage of those kinds of claims. To dispel these claims, all one has to ask is "how do they know it's Sodom?", and any response not based on empirical evidence will be difficult to consider seriously; certainly all the "musts" in the world could be no substitute.
Most likely, in case of Sodom and Gomorrah, if the story is in fact rooted in reality, one could reasonably consider that the mythological symbols in the story are reminiscent of primitive worship of the elements or the forces of nature; and the actual historicity of these cities would be completely lost in myth and legend.
At the moment, I think I remember reading a reference that the Sodom and Gomorrah myths have been passed down for centuries and simply reinterpreted as having a Jewish hero (much in the same way flood stories have been passed down for centuries), however I cant find the reference. See my reply to D for an alternative interpretation.
B. I'm afraid I dont know much about ancient kings, so I cannot give you my opinion about the veracity of the authors claims. A quick search on Wikipedia shows that the authors comments might be true.
C. Who on earth has said that wheeled vehicles didnt exist in 900 BC? We have found wheeled vehicles of more than
5500 years old, and we know that stones used to build the pyramids were rolled along on logs. Whereever the author got the idea that skeptics disbelieved in wheeled vehicles before 900 BC is either citing a grossly ignorant skeptic who is desperately out of mainstream, or fabricating the claim entirely.
D. Lacking knowledge of Kings, I cannot say if this is true. However, I know that the claim in general is utterly false. Famously is the story Jericho tells of how Israelites conquered the city through a miracle from God. The problem with the story is that the walls of the city had toppled prior to 16th century BC, however the earliest Israelites did not exist before the 10th century BC (the book of Joshua itself was written around the 7th century BC), so its really no surprise that liberal scholars called the conquest of Jericho "
highly embellished" if the walls had fallen long before there were any Israelites to know them down.
Generally, the explanation for forming this myth is given very simply: Jewish scribes found a city which had toppled walls, so they concocted a myth about how the city came to be that way by glorifying the Jews as heros. Simple as that. (It wouldnt be surprising for the same thing to happen in concocting the myths about Sodom and Gomorrah given the number of abandoned and burnt out cities located in the Dead Sea region.)
I should note, one area where I might agree with the author is that some cities named in the bible that exist contrary to the claim that they dont is perhaps the claim that Nazareth never existed. Obviously, there are a lot of claims about the early life of Jesus that would appear historically false or contradictory, but the claim that Nazareth never existed is just false. I think this claim is rooted in the fact that a small village of Nazareth existed in the third century BC, but the village was paved over in the 2nd century AD obscuring all facts (until recently) that it had ever existed prior to 100 AD. Generally, people who claim that Nazareth never existed are, in my opinion, being unscholarly.
