Defense of the Faith - The Bible: Just a collection of myths? - Part 2

Last week did the Bible Just a Collection of Myths Part 1 which is addressing the New Testament and our first paragraph there revisits this briefly and then what we end up with however is in the Old Testament we got an entirely different situation because as we point out in your handout on the front there has some of the oldest previous to the Dead Sea Scrolls, some of the oldest Hebrew documents of the Old Testament that we have possession of. What you see in the upper left is something that Nancy and I saw when we were over in Jerusalem.

It's at the Israel Museum. that they have the Aleppo Codex, it's called. And so that was one from the 10th century, just prior to 1000 AD. And then the other one that dates from about 1008 AD is the Leningrad Codex. So those were, prior to the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest Hebrew manuscripts that we had of the Old Testament.

Now, we have then below that the copying traditions. that Randy covered, so I won't go over those in detail, but just present those. And then on page two, this is I think something to take a look at. There are four major Old Testament copying traditions. One is the Masoretic texts. the entire Hebrew Old Testament copied by the Mazarites, is the way it's pronounced, after the scribal tradition that's mentioned in Mark 2, 6, and 7, with the earliest copies being from the 9th and early 11th centuries.

So that's like over a thousand years or about a thousand years after the New Testament times. So that's, you know, that's the best we had prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls moved the earliest copies 1,000 years earlier. So now, we have then next the Dead Sea Scrolls. Most of them date from 300 BC to 100 BC. So over 2,000 years old. Those were discovered from 1947 on into the multiple discoveries of more Dead Sea Scrolls on into the 50s. So they continued to find more caves with more scrolls hidden in them.

So you end up with all of the Old Testament with the exception of the book of Esther. among those Dead Sea Scrolls, and in some of them, like Isaiah, we have over 20 copies of all or a part of Isaiah from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Okay, and then next we have the Samaritan Torah. Now that only includes the first five books, and they've tweaked it. What did the Samaritans tweak in the Torah, the first five books, the books of Moses? What the Samaritans did, because remember what the Samaritans do, there Jesus talked to the Samaritan woman, right? And at Jacob's well, Jesus is talking to this woman.

And this woman says, we worship on this mountain, right? So there's Mount Gerizim and Ebal. And so they would worship there on Gerizim. It was an alternate to the place it was supposed to be, which is in Jerusalem. So they doctored up the first five books to allow worship on this mountain here, Gerizim, instead of Jerusalem. So that's one thing. It's only the first five books and they've been doctored.

But that's another copying tradition is the Samaritans. And then we have the Septuagint, sometimes called the LXX, which means 70, because about 72 scholars translated it. So it's the Old Testament translated into Greek about 200 BC. Most New Testament quotes of the Old Testament are from the Septuagint, are actually from the Septuagint. Three books I'm aware of, Ephesians and Hebrews, and Revelation are from a version of the Septuagint that comes from around Ephesus. So you have those four copying traditions, but none of them gets any farther back than the Dead Sea Scrolls, which is about 100 to 300 BC for most of the documents.

So, does that allow enough time between a lot of the Old Testament events and the earliest copies, does that allow enough time that you could develop myths and legends? Yes, it does. So, then what we have to look at is, do the contents give evidence of being far earlier? from far earlier? Do the contents give evidence of being from far earlier? Since the copies that we have are actually, in most cases, centuries later than the original event. So, what we have there in trying to date the contents A number of excellent books have been produced. In some cases, a whole book has been produced supporting an earlier source just for one Bible book.

So people have gone in great depth. What I've done here is I've given you a link and I may even have emailed it ahead of time. This book by Craig Davis is really good, really well done. And it's about 600 pages, and you can download it for free, however, as a PDF file, but using the link that's in the bottom of the page. And what he has done is he's been very thorough to go back with each of the Old Testament books and show that its source was far earlier than the earliest copies we have.

So, for example, for the book of Isaiah, it's something like 44 pages of analysis. So, anyway, that's a recommended resource. Because there's so much in this, We're not even going to be able to scratch the surface, really. However, what we'll do is we'll take a look at the book of Judges, for instance.

Now, when was the period of the Judges? So here's Moses, he talks to the people of Israel, and that's the book of Deuteronomy as his last you know, time talking to them, and he goes up on the mountain and the Lord takes him. Then Joshua is the one that goes in, takes the people of Israel, and they go into Jericho, and they went into various other places, and started conquering the land. Joshua dies, and then you're into the period of the Judges afterwards, and that starts about 375 BC. 375 BC and it continues on and remember the period of judges is kind of like a cycle because what happens during the time of the judges?

The Jews fall into a moral and spiritual decline and then somebody comes and oppresses them and then after you know, being oppressed for a while, they call on the Lord. Lord, help! The Lord sends a judge, and not a king, but a judge, and the judges arise from different tribes. It isn't like, you know, David, where it's all one line. So they come from different tribes and places, and they send in a judge, and the judge, for some period of time, casts off, or at least harasses the oppressor. So Samson, for example, is said to have carried on his judgeship for 20 years. So we'll take a look at the Book of Judges, and particularly looking at Samson and Gideon as examples.

So that's the kind of test case we'll look at. So let's look at the top of page 3. After a number of pages of analysis, this is what Craig Davis writes in Dating the Old Testament. And again, you can download a copy yourself using that link at the bottom of page two.

Judges was completed in the period of the United Monarchy. probably under the reign of Solomon in about 950 BC. And by the way, there are some who would say about 1000 BC during the time of David. So you got a kind of a window in there, but he says 950. Older written material was used. So what does that mean? The Book of Judges is not something that was just handed down as stories, right? But it was from other earlier records and documents. So about 950 BC, during the reign of Solomon, or possibly a little earlier during the reign of David, someone sat down and collected these accounts during the period of the judges and put this thing together from earlier records, not just stories handed down, from earlier records.

So then in Judges 8.14, Gideon captured a young man at random from the city of Sukkoth and asked for the names of its leaders. The young man wrote down the names of 77 city leaders. So this random guy was quite knowledgeable and able to to remember and write 77 city leaders.

This minor aspect of the story of Gideon testifies to the literacy of the age which may have been beyond what modern writers normally assume. And this is one thing that's getting pushed farther and farther back. It used to be said that we have no writings from this early time. and accept the Bible and that was written later and people were generally ignorant and illiterate and literacy was at a low level and the more and more we find the more we discover that no literacy was not at some low level that literacy was rather widespread earlier in the history of Israel and so he goes on to remark about that His last line is, it should not be considered a surprise to realize that much of the Old Testament was written in the second millennium BC, that is before 1000 BC, before the reign of David. And so some things have been found from the time of David and even earlier, indicating that literacy is more widespread.

So the first thing is, does the account of, say, Samson or Gideon, does it fit what we know of the geography and of the existing cities and places at the time? And the answer is yes. So we have, for example, and this is why I printed it out in color so we can get the full benefit of it. Nancy and I and Courtney and Ingrid stood there at Beth Shemesh and there at Beth Shemesh we could look off to our left and see the city of Timnah.

That is, by the way, where Jacob used to take his sheep to get sheared. That is where Samson got his first wife, is from the city of Timnah. The city of Zorah, which is first mentioned in Joshua when it was captured by the Israelites, is the city where Samson was born and raised. And then off to the right is the city of Eshtoel, also mentioned as one that Joshua captured, and then also mentioned a few different times In judges including twice Talking about those that particular city with regard to Samson Okay, so you can stand there, and here's this one spot, and you can see where most of the life of Samson took place and There's Chimna There's Zora there's Eshto and it says in the last part that he was buried in between Zorah and Eshtoel and you can go there and see where he was buried.

So these are all real places that this is described as. Then look at the top of page 4. Here's the map of the Philistine Valley, so we have on page three a kind of a picture looking at these places, and then you see Beshemesh, where we stood to see the perspective that we have there, and you see on the map Timna, and Ekron, a Philistine city on one side, and on the other end, Zora and Eshtoel, which was Israelite country. And so that area, you know, that valley in between there was kind of the interface between here's where the Israelites are and here's where the Philistines are. Okay.

So what you have is you've got a geographical context. You've got, you know, archaeologists finding the places that are described there in Judges, and they were occupied during that time. If you found that, no, this place was not even in existence during the time that it's claimed that it was there, then you've got a basis for saying, hmm, I wonder if this is really true. Somebody isn't reading back into the time, right? But when you find that, no, it really was a real place, And it was a place where the Philistines lived, and that's where he got, or Samson got his first wife.

Then you find a geographical and historical context that matches it. Then, the next one, here's a location, bottom of page four, location where Gideon gave a drinking test and 300 passed and he sent home the rest, right? To wax poetic here. But that actual place, there's a picture of it, there it is located on the map, En-Herod, or En-Herod is the name of the place, and there's a spring there, and a good place to give people the test.

Now, why did Gideon give people this test and send away most of the soldiers. It would be evident that it's God who does this and not man. We didn't win because we had lots and lots of soldiers. It's God who's going to pull this off and you're only going to have 300 versus their thousands.

But again, you've got an historical context, a geographical context, for what's described there in the account regarding Gideon. Now, let's ask this question. Why would anyone, I mean, given this historical context, why would anyone question the complete historicity of the account of Gideon and of the account of Samson? Why would anyone question the historicity of those accounts? Yeah, now what part of it did they have a tough time with? That 300 men would end up wiping out thousands of Midianites, right?

So that ratio just doesn't sound like it's doable. But why did God do this? God did it so that it wouldn't be humanly supportable that we won because we had all these people. You want to make the odds so they're completely unlikely. 300 men are going to take out thousands of Midianites.

So it's the miraculous element that has them have a rough time, even though all the geographic and historical context is there and supportive. Let's think about with Samson. What parts of this account with Samson are hard for a person who is skeptical to swallow? Pardon? Most of it. Him being born and raised in Zorah, is that a problem? That's not a problem, okay?

But, and a lot of times you'll see pictures of Samson as this super muscular guy, but something to remember, the Philistines couldn't figure out why this guy was so strong. Which meant that, well sure, he's got muscles on his muscles, they couldn't figure out why. Why is this guy so strong? And later in his years, He still was able to come up with strength. He was miraculously strong, not explainably strong. Miraculously strong, not explainably strong.

So it's those miraculous elements that cause people to say, you know, this is myth and legend. Yeah? to exaggerate what actually happened. I mean, that's why I think the people who wrote the Gospels have to be so careful not to do this exaggeration and make it more factual. It's really easy to exaggerate things that are already beyond, you know, logic. Right? Yeah.

Alright, let's take a look at the top of page 5. This is looking at the archaeology and chronology of judges, especially regarding Samson and Gideon. I referred to this Dating the Old Testament, which you can, like I say, buy it if you like, but you can download it for free as an Adobe Acrobat or PDF file at the link shown on page 2. Another resource that I refer to, starting here, is the Archaeological Study Bible.

And it's it's not exhaustive. It doesn't cover everything, but it's got a lot of good resources And so I refer to that here the Archaeological Study Bible notes on Timna which has been identified with a high level of certainty as Tel Batash so that's it's It's a tell what is it?

What does it tell me? Okay, so it's it's this, you know older layer and then a newer layer built on top of the rubble of the older layer and then another layer and another one and there are over 200 tells in Israel Okay, the largest of which is Hazor. It's about 200 acres. This is one of those 200 tells So that's that's Timna More recently called Tel Batash Part of Tel Beth Shemesh, which is where Nancy and I and Courtney and Ingrid stood and where that picture from a couple pages earlier was taken, part of that has been excavated. Now, let's talk about part of it's been excavated.

Why do archaeologists excavate part of a tel and not the whole thing? Yeah, you think about it they're gonna start in on a on a tell and they can either come in like on the side and cut through all the layers or they can say come down and on in the middle and Start, you know going down, but one thing is archaeology is destructive That is when I go in and dig some something down especially if I'm going to go all the way down and to where the first city was built, I'm going to destroy all the material all the way down there. So I'm going to take it out, and of course the intent is to take pictures and measurements and record carefully what was done. I don't just go in with a backhoe.

So they go in very carefully and look at the different layers. So here at Tel Beshemesh, they had been excavating only a portion of it, and they got down to a level that was about the 11th century. So that's about as closely as they could date this level.

And they found this seal that you see on the upper right side of page 5. And what that seal depicts is a guy, it looks like he might even have long hair, at the mouth of a lion. So here is a seal showing the account of Samson battling this lion, by the way, at the mouth, right? And you see the tail that comes up there? So here is this seal, and it's... It looks like somebody's on the back of the lion, or am I looking at it?

That looks to be an accidental marking. Yeah, it looks to be an accidental marking. And there are some, for example, above the tail that are also accidental markings and not intentional. But what's interesting is this dates from about the 11th century.

Now, one of the points that we make here, a little farther down, the period of the judges, we've got different records of, okay, this judge and that judge, and with the information given, and trying to make that connect up with the piece of information we have from history and archaeology and that sort of thing, there are various ideas as to how all those fit together.

Some cases, for example, here's Samson, he dealt only with this valley of Sorek, and dealt only with the Philistines, from any record we have. But that doesn't deal with somebody else in some other area. So some of the accounts and judges may be overlapping in time, concurrent, and dealing with different people. So, the period of the judges is not one that we've got down to a system and a science in terms of how all those judges fit into the time frame. We have from 1 Kings 6, verse 1, a bracket as to when it started and when it ended, but how things happened in the middle of that and what was concurrent and what was not. is something that's still up for debate and discussion, even having respect for scripture in the mix there.

So then, what you see is, because of the uncertainty, Samson is either somewhere in his 20-year judgeship, somewhere from the middle 12th century to the middle 11th Century so this seal may even have been made during his lifetime Or if not a few decades after his lifetime So very interesting, okay, so this this account of Samson right here at this valley Okay, it has this evidence either within Samson's lifetime or within decades of Samson's lifetime.

Now we have another here, this is the Amarna tablets. The Amarna tablets are kind of royal records. that the Egyptian pharaohs had. And so there are over 300 of these tablets that were found in an Egyptian royal record, a royal library. A hundred of those 300 tablets are writings from the kings of the cities in Canaan, the Canaanite kings, complaining to the Egyptian pharaoh that some people called the Habiru the Habiru are attacking them and taking over their cities so a hundred of these tablets are complaining about that out of out of about three hundred So this is one example, the Amarna tablet, EEA 286, and they've got various systems of numbering and naming these things. So the quote there is over the tablet, the land of the king is lost to the Habiru, and now indeed a city of the territory of Jerusalem. So then, we have Judges 3, 15 through 30, tells about how Ehud overcame Eglon, the king of the Moabites at Eglon's palace. That palace of Eglon has been found in Jericho.

Yes? What does that word mean? What's that? The H-A-V-I-R-U. Okay, well, that's the point of debate. Pardon? Yeah, in other words, this is this is a transliteration of how the Correspondence, you know looks a lot of this is in Akkadian is the language that it's used as a diplomatic Akkadian a kk a di am and And so that's the language that a lot of these Amarna tablets are written in.

And so the question is, you know, who are these Habiru? And it sounds like Hebrew, right? The Hebrews. It is at the right time for the Israelites to have been attacking. So that fits with a hundred letters approximately, coming from the Canaanite kings, complaining that, you know, hey, these Habiru are, you know, coming and attacking us and taking over our cities. It fits. Are there people who contest it? Yes. Why? Because it fits right with the Bible account. So, of course you'd have people who can contest it, right?

At any rate, so we went to Jericho. We didn't go to everything there. We had an issue with trying to avoid getting stuck with a snowstorm in Jerusalem, keeping us from being able to get back to our hotel. So we went and saw Old Testament Jericho, the one that Joshua and his forces attacked. But we didn't go to this palace, but it has been found, the palace of Eglon.

Excavations at Hazor, which we did go to, match the biblical account from the time of the judges. Hazor is, like I said, a little over 200 tells in Israel. It's the largest one at about 200 acres. And it's north of the Sea of Galilee, not too far. So the excavations at Hazor match the biblical account for the time of the judges. Most of Hazor has not been excavated. So when the, I mean, you can imagine it's 200 acres and you got this, you know, really tall tell, 200 acres, the archaeologists are going to leave most of the evidence untouched. But what has been done there, backs up the account of the judges.

The next here is Pharaoh Merneptah who ruled from about 1210 to I have 2002 and that's not right it should be 1202 so I can correct that 1202 BC claimed in an inscription that he annihilated the Israelites a direct translation is Israel is wasted its seed is seed is not this is actually overstatement But that was commonly done.

In other words, the royal records would never record a defeat. Right? They just wouldn't do that. The Bible does, but in these pagan royal records, they never record a defeat. So you're not going to get the Egyptians writing down, you know, we lost a whole bunch of soldiers and equipment, you know, in the sea when the sea, you know, came in on us. You're not going to get any record of that. They will exaggerate their military successes. Regularly exaggerate the military successes. So, you know, Israel is wasted, its seed is not, you know, basically he says, I wiped them out, right?

But that's not what happened. He attacked them, yes. So early in the 12th century BC, the tribe of Dan, likely due to pressure from the Philistines, moved north to take over the Canaanite city of Laish, renaming it Dan. That was a place we didn't go to, because it was much farther north of Hazor, and it was right over the border from Syria. So anyway, we decided not to do that. But that's the place, Tel Dan.

And what we notice in archaeological studies is a change of cultures at this time that's in the record. And what are some of the things they look for in the change of culture when the archaeologists are digging down? If I'm going to go from Canaanites to Israelites, what am I going to find?

Pottery. Differences of pottery. Okay, that's part one. What else? There will be some of that. One of the other things they look for is pig bones. Pig bones. Because the Canaanites would eat the pigs, right? And the Jews would be strongly disinclined to eat the pigs. And so they look for pig bones. If pig bones are rare to non-existent, then they say, well, that's Jewish. If you've got lots of pig bones, then that's Canaanites. So that's a distinction that they make.

Dan did not take over all the land that was given to him and he ended up moving probably from being pushed by the Philistines in the south they ended up moving into an area that was actually outside of what was originally given to them. And so Tel Dan is an area that they actually got pushed to, probably from pressure from the Philistines on the south end. Then there's something else that's well connected. Here's Gideon, and this brings up another pattern. here's Gideon he has a son Abimelech and as much as Gideon is portrayed as a good guy Abimelech his son was portrayed as a very bad guy really bad but one of the things that happened is Shechem Shechem was wiped out by Abimelech and that's what the Bible describes and when you go and look at the archaeological record there's from the time of Abimelech for the next two centuries Shechem is uninhabited because Abimelech had wiped it out so it took two centuries for people to move back in after Abimelech did his destruction as the Bible describes so the archaeological record backs up what the Bible says for the account of Abimelech.

Now, so here is again the archaeological study Bible, ASB as I call it. The final note on page 369 is the stories of judges are not legends or myths but gritty and often tragic accounts of the follies of God's people, the Israelites, right? Archaeological evidence strongly supports taking the stories at face value.

And the only reason you wouldn't is because you don't believe in miracles and you don't believe in God. So what happens is people do not do their studies and then choose their presuppositions. People choose their presuppositions first and then studied the material. So if you go into Judges with the idea that God can do miracles, you find very good connections in many, many places in the book of Judges, and other places in the Bible. You find lots of good, solid connections.

If, however, you assume really there is no God and there is no possibility of miracles, then you are going to conclude, not on the basis of evidence, but on the basis of presuppositions, the thinking you started with, you're going to conclude that these are myths and legends. Because you can't possibly allow a miracle. Even if you need them somewhere else.

Alright, so let's take a look on page 6. Here's another example, the book of Isaiah. I love the book of Isaiah, just a great book. Okay, so after more than 40 pages, I think it's 44 is the exact number, of analysis, Davis, that's the author of this dating the Old Testament, and again you can download your own copy, Davis says Isaiah 1 through 66, so that's the chapters, was placed in its final form by about 680 BC. or shortly afterwards, and is all the work of Isaiah the son of Amos. The book was not written all at the same time. Some portions were written earlier and other portions were written later in Isaiah's life, starting from about 740 BC. So Isaiah's life and prophetic ministry appears to have been centered in Jerusalem.

He is the one author of an Old Testament book that was also a court prophet. The better kings in Judah had a court prophet, for example. Does anybody know who was the court prophet for David? Nathan was the court prophet for David. And Nathan would tell things that were pleasant. You're always going to have a descendant on the throne. And he would also confront him. So he didn't always have things to say that David would like to hear. But he was a court prophet. Isaiah was a court prophet, and we see his position as a court prophet most strongly with King Hezekiah. Most strongly with King Hezekiah.

Isaiah makes multiple references to other places in Judah and other nations and empires. Isaiah was written approximately the same time as the writings of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey, and that sort of thing. And interestingly enough, the Iliad and the Odyssey and Isaiah have some common figures of speech. some common figures of speech between them. To me that's just fascinating. Isaiah is a very sophisticated writer. He writes in poetry and prose and even goes and does some children's nursery rhymes at certain places. He's an incredible writer.

And how many, I mean, a percentage of the population could read and write? I would say a majority. Most of the time, a majority. Yeah. And you would have some who could read and write in multiple languages. Pretty well educated. Yep. Pretty well educated. Literacy rate was high. Literacy rate was high.

And we're discovering more and more that that was the case Now so that so there are lots of connections with Isaiah and and the archaeology of Jerusalem one of the places for example that we went is we went to this to the spring of Gihon which is where Solomon was anointed we went down Hezekiah's tunnel and built most likely during the time of King Hezekiah when Isaiah was a court prophet and Isaiah made reference to that tunnel and redirecting the water works in there and at the bottom is the pool of Siloam where Jesus healed the blind man but it's also mentioned under another name in the book of Isaiah and another name still in Nehemiah So there are a number of places that Isaiah has connections to Jerusalem's archaeology.

You also have cross-connections with other Bible books. 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles overlaps the time of Isaiah and records some nearly identical material. or very similar material Micah was a concurrent prophet with Isaiah and so you find cross connections between Micah and Isaiah Zephaniah quotes Isaiah Zephaniah quotes Isaiah so if you find cross connections with several Bible books there to get some confirmation there are a number of historical documents from other nations that cross-connect with Isaiah, the book of Isaiah. So there's lots of material archaeologically in and around Jerusalem. Other cities, Lachish is one of them that we went and visited, and the Natz one that's mentioned in Isaiah. It's the second largest city after Jerusalem in Judah, the southern kingdom.

And its attack by the Assyrians is mentioned. And the Assyrians have a record of that attack in their palace walls, and that was taken to the British Museum, right? And if you go to Lakish today, and as we saw, it is the only tell with a remaining Assyrian siege ramp that you can see. And it's large enough you can see it from the air.

Siege ramp. In other words, what the Assyrians did, and they showed this in pictures, is they would of course have arrows going into Lakish, and they also would have sling stones, usually about this size, and they would have sling stones that they would sling, and those would you know, come landing inside the city. So people inside the city, they're getting, you know, their places broken from these sling stones. Some of them are getting injured, maybe even killed by these sling stones and arrows that are just raining on them. Meanwhile, the Assyrians are taking soil and building it up so that they can make a ramp to breach the wall. And this was their standard way of doing things, but there at Lachish, you can still see that siege ramp.

And Lachish is one of the cities that Isaiah again addresses, because it was the second largest city after Jerusalem in Judah. So you have in the Archaeological Study Bible 21, within the pages of Isaiah, 21 cultural, historical, and archaeological insets. There's an article of full or half a page that describes the cultural, historical, and archaeological connections with Isaiah. And really that only scratches the surface of the cultural, historical, and archaeological confirmations of the historicity of the book of Isaiah.

So a few examples below. Here is the seal of all you servant of King Uzziah. He was king during the time. So we actually have his seal right there. Next one over the signet ring of King Jotham, which was also used to make a seal marking. There it is right next to it.

The next one is seal impression of King Ahaz. So not the seal, but seal impression from King Ahaz and then a seal impression of King Hezekiah. We have well over a hundred, I think the number is getting to be around 150, of seal impressions of King Hezekiah because what he did is he had a great number of large jars made to go to the various cities around Judah so that they would have water reserves. And for all those jars, he had his own signet ring, the seal impression, put on the handle of the jar. And so since that's something that lasts and endures, even if the jar gets all broken up, we have, like I say, well over 100, I think the number's around 150 of those seal impressions of King Hezekiah. So we've got lots of connection there.

Something we didn't take the time to see, but is visible there in the Old City of Jerusalem, Hezekiah built some additional defensive walls, and this one, Hezekiah's Broad Wall, as it's recorded in 2 Chronicles, 2 Kings, and Isaiah, all three books, record the construction of this wall, and there it is.

And it was one of his defensive measures against the Assyrians. In addition, found in the area on the side of the Mount of Olives, we've found the burial plate for King Uzziah, and that's that square plate that you see on the lower part of page 6. And then we have a prison, and we'll address more on this later, but a prison from Sennacherib, who was the emperor of the Assyrians, who came with his forces to attack Jerusalem.

And it was, you know, Isaiah told Hezekiah, stand strong. the Lord's going to deal with this and that was where a hundred and eighty five thousand Assyrians lost their lives that night by the angel of the Lord coming and wiping them out very interestingly Herodotus writing sometime later in Greek had a different reason why those soldiers died but he didn't deny that they died He said, some mice came and ate their bow strings. And that's why they died.

So interesting, it confirms that something happened there. This cylinder, what you see here in Sennacherib's cylinder, in the picture on the lower right, that cylinder records Sennacherib went up against Lachish and all these different cities and he defeated them and da da da da da. When he gets to Jerusalem, he says, and I shut up Hezekiah like a bird in a cage in his royal city. But he didn't say he defeated them, right? So again, he put a good light, a good spin on basically a disaster of losing 185,000 men. That's a lot.

Okay, the other thing we won't have time to cover in any detail We have the Hebrew Old Testament chronology and one of the things that this does for us is it shows If we take these books at face value, what's the beginning time and ending time of writing? Some books like the book of Amos was all written in one year. That's that's it.

I Isaiah was written over decades of time, and so it's a collected anthology of different things. The book of Psalms was collected over a 1,000 year period of time. And I have a note there, many of the Psalms can be identified by time and author. What Craig Davis does, he goes by every one of the Psalms and gives the date and author if possible. every single one of them.

So he's done a very thorough job. But it's key to look at over what period of time were these collected, and if they're collected over a stretch of time, that also tells you it probably wasn't written by one author. Or if it was, it was collecting an earlier account and then putting it into a book. Some of that is what you see in 1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles.

So bottom line is we could go through the whole Old Testament like this and show that though we have the earliest copies are the Dead Sea Scrolls and in most cases it's many centuries after the initial recording and writing of the Old Testament we are able to analyze the contents and connect it up with archaeology and Arrive at a good sound basis for the whole Old Testament For all the Old Testament Well, we will cover and I'll talk with Randy about the timing here we will cover Old Testament archaeology specifically and then New Testament archaeology specifically in separate sessions and and go into more detail on that. I'll have a special handout that will include a summary of all the archaeology of the Old Testament and another one for the archaeology of the New Testament. So we'll go into that in more detail. Thoughts, questions, comments?

Is Dead Sea Scrolls basically Old Testament? Dead Sea Scrolls is all Old Testament. It was largely collected by the Essenes, which is a group not named in the New Testament. We hear about the Sadducees and the Pharisees, right? The Essenes were a more reclusive group, and the city of Qumran, Which has been excavated by various people, but one of those is Randall price. Who's a bible-believing?

Guy Randy and I met him But but the Dead Sea Scrolls were collected by them and put away in in these caves It all the Old Testament books multiple copies except for one and that's Esther I But all the other books on Isaiah, my recollection is about 22 different copies of Isaiah. In some cases they're in great state of preservation, in other cases it's just really corroded.

But nonetheless, about 22. Other questions? Comments? Okay, let's pray. Lord, we thank you for the abundant evidence that you've left for us that supports the integrity of scripture, that supports the historicity of the events recorded. And we just thank you that, especially in our day, where we get so much access and opportunity to see these things, even from a distance. photography and writings and have access to those. We are people very blessed with that opportunity. And we just thank you for it. We just pray in Jesus' name. Amen.