February 10, 2025 • 36 mins
There are claims - and you hear them every so often - that archeology has disproved this story or that in the bible, and claims from this or that scholar of particularly late dating of different bible books.
How do we as evangelical pastors react/respond/answer those claims?
Hans Kristensen is senior pastor of Marsfield Community Church in Sydney and is studying ancient archaeology.
He suggests that there are 10 major archaelogical finds that help us to increase our confidence in the Old Testament:
- There’s evidence of a big population jump in Caanan at exactly the time that the bible said that Yahweh was giving Israel the land, called the ‘Hill Country Explosion.’
- The Egyptian Pharaoh Merneptah boasts of raiding the land of Caanan, saying it was occupied by Israel.
- In the city of Hazor, archaeologists have found religious idols destroyed and other items intact, just as expected from Joshua 11-12
- The recently discovered altar at Mount Ebal is likely Joshua’s altar (Joshua 8)
- In the Tel Dan inscription we now have archeological evidence for King David’s existence.
- There’s consistent architectural town planning in the cities built around the time of David and Solomon - pointing towards planning and control under one ruler (eg a King).
- There are similarities between what we know of the temple of Solomon and a similar temple built at Ain Dara, about 30 kilometres from Beirut, showing Solomon’s temple fits into the religious and architectural landscape of the time.
- The discovery of six massive chambered gates at Hazor, Meggido and Gezer and other architectural discoveries at those sites corresponds with 1Kings 9:15.
- A ninth century battle account from King Moab of Mersha mirrors the one in 2 Kings 3.
- The Biblical chronology of the listed kings matches almost exactly with archeological evidence.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thought about that in terms of it having a that would
(00:06):
have a derivative effect ofincreasing our church podcast
audience yeah, Well, I meanoccasionally, yeah, I mean, and
I've actually gone out of my waynot to do self-promotion type
stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Yeah, not to do self-promotion type stuff, you
know, yeah, yeah, I figure Ihave an enormous opportunity to
that.
I shouldn't take advantage ofyeah, sure.
Yeah, because it will justbuild resentment.
Yeah, yeah.
So I've tried to have a well,just a self-effacing posture.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, just aself-effacing posture.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Yeah, and I think what I've seen you do is you
push the resources that youthink are going to be helpful
for people online.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's my consistent.
I mean, I'm definitely tryingto promote the ideas that I
think will be helpful, you know,and on a range of topics, yeah.
So, whether it's ministrypragmatism or personal trust in
Christ, yeah, yeah, and pushideas that I think will be
(01:13):
helpful, sure.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
You know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Ready to go?
Mr Wong, cool Tenarchaeological finds to increase
your Old Testament confidence.
Hans christensen is our guest.
It is the pastor's heart.
Dominic steel is my name.
There are claims, and you hearthem every so often, that
archaeology has disproved thisstory or that in the bible.
Claims about the exodus, claimsabout joshua jericho, and
(01:42):
claims from this or that scholarabout particularly late dating
of different Bible books.
How do we, as evangelicalpastors, react, respond, answer
those claims and are they true?
Today?
An episode of the Pastor'sHeart that will put confidence
in your belly.
We examine moments wherearchaeology and the Bible
(02:04):
converge.
Hans Christensen is with ustoday on the Pastor's Heart.
I first knew Hans when he was ahipster church planter at the
suburb next door.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
I'm not sure I was ever a hipster, but you know
that's okay.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
He now leads the ministry at Marsville Community
Church in Sydney and is studyingancient history.
Church in Sydney and isstudying ancient history.
Hans, it was something in yourpastor's heart that led you to
be deeply interested in theintersection between, if you
like, archaeology and the Bible,and particularly the Old
Testament, and a frustrationwith what was happening with
(02:41):
some of your peers.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yeah, so just a bit of backstory.
I think I first heard ofarchaeology and was inspired to
think about archaeology, fromIndiana Jones even though I
wouldn't call him anarchaeologist, he's more of a
looter.
But so I had a great historyteacher at high school and in my
early 20s I went through aperiod of doubting the
(03:05):
reliability of the New Testament, the Gospels, and whether Jesus
rose from the dead.
And I was helped by a guy namedIH Marshall as I wrote to him
and he wrote back and said readthis and think about this.
But when I started at Marsfield, that's really cool.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
I remember reading his stuff, yeah, but it never
occurred to me to write to him.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yeah, so what happened was?
I lived in Moree, I came downto Sydney for a concert and as I
was going back it's an 11-hourtrain ride I picked up a book
from Dimmicks by a guy namedJohn Shelby Spong.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Right.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Why Christianity Must Change or Die.
False teacher of the 80s yeah,yeah, yeah.
And Episcopal bishop who deniedpretty much everything in the
Bible.
He went through and one of thethings he said was no major
historian believes that theGospels were true.
They're historically reliable.
That kind of thing which reallyput my faith in a tailspin.
(04:03):
And then I went to MauryChristian Bookstore and in the
50-cent bin there was IHMarshall's book.
I Believe in the HistoricalJesus, I read it, I wrote to him
and he wrote back over aboutsix months.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Isn't that great that he took an interest in a
country, kid from.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
I know, I know beautiful man and when I've
talked to other people who haveknown him they just say, yeah,
that's pretty typical, that'sjust what he did.
He's just a humble, graciousman.
I look forward to seeing him inglory.
But when I moved to Marsfield Icaught up with some friends and
they had read some books onarchaeology and history and the
(04:41):
Old Testament and listened tosome scholars and some teachers
and they got to the point wherethey were like I'm not sure if
the exodus happened, I'm notsure if the conquest happened,
I'm not sure of this.
And I tried to find a kind of aJohn Dixon level book on these
issues and there was nothing outthere that I could find that
(05:02):
was good and reputable.
And I remember talking toAnthony Pedersen, who is an Old
Testament lecturer at Morling, agood friend of mine, and I said
mate, you need to write a booklike this.
He goes, mate, I wouldn't knowwhere to start.
And he said, well, why don'tyou write this book?
I said I can't do that and hesaid, well, you can go to
Macquarie Uni.
I lived 10 minutes fromMacquarie Uni.
(05:22):
You can study archaeology,history, the Bible, all that
kind of stuff there, and overtime you'll amass knowledge that
will be helpful for people.
So that's kind of the journey.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
And it was to see my friends struggling with their
faith.
This is pastors struggling withtheir faith.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Yeah, there was a couple of pastors.
There was a couple of laypeople that just got to the
point where they were like I'mnot sure I can for the pastors
it was.
I'm not sure if I can preachthese parts of the Old Testament
.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
And some of the problem is the theological
education they'd had.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Yeah, so they had received some teaching.
It was directed to some to readsome authors that had
undermined confidence in thescriptures.
Yeah, well, I think the problemwas they were told that these
authors are centrists, thatthey're not conservative like me
on the Old Testament, butthey're not really progressive.
But this is where the field isand really these guys were quite
(06:23):
progressive, quite, I would say, left of the mark when it comes
to where most scholars are atwith the historicity of the Old
Testament archaeology.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
So how do we best start our thinking about
archaeology, history Bible.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Okay, the first thing to realise is that everyone's
biased, right, so everyone'scoming to archaeology history in
the Bible with some kind ofbias Everyone.
And I think the reason for thatis the Bible is still in play,
and what I mean by that is thatthe Bible is shaping people's
lives.
The Bible is still shapingpolitical thought.
(06:59):
The Bible is still, especiallyin America, one of these things
that gets quoted a lot, and soyou cannot come to the
historicity of the Bible and betotally objective.
I can come to you know thehistoricity of, you know a
pharaoh's, you know wars.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
And because it has no actual, real impact on your
life, exactly you really don'thave a dog in that fight.
Yeah, yeah, whereas actuallyeveryone's got a dog in that
fight because it all workstowards whether or not God
exists and how I should livetoday.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and especially if
you are more on the progressiveside of morality and politics.
It does seem like you know, youcan almost map it out the
people who are more the scholarsthat are more progressive in
their politics and you can seeit on Twitter and Facebook and
that kind of thing are generallymore sceptical of the
(07:54):
reliability of the Old Testament.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
What about when it comes up there's a claim that
archaeology has disprovedJericho?
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, the first thing to sayis there's very little
archaeology can definitivelyprove and disprove.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
After all this study, that's what you've discovered.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it'sfrustrating.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
So I got into this thing going, man, I'll be able
to prove this and that and this,and I would say, well, actually
I can't.
But, they can't either.
They can't either.
So when people say archaeologylet's take the Exodus for
example right, when people sayarchaeology has disproved the
Exodus, the first question Iwant to ask is what are our
(08:44):
archaeological expectations?
That is to say, when I read theBook of Exodus, what should I
expect to find in thearchaeology?
Right?
And so when you piece that out,when you ask that question, it
sharpens what we're looking for,right?
If you just say archaeology hasdisproved the book of Exodus or
the event of the Exodus, well,it just seems very out there and
(09:08):
nebulous.
But now we're interacting andsaying, okay, you've got to give
me things that you think willdisprove.
And so I've heard people say,well, there's no record of the
Exodusodus from the Egyptians,right, the problem with that is,
(09:29):
what we've got in Egypt ismonumental records that glorify
the pharaohs, right, and sothere's no way a pharaoh would
ever say, oh, by the way I hadthis big defeat yeah yeah, we
had this big defeat.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
It's a bit like if We've lost a third of our
population, exactly.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
It would be like Kamala Harris if she took a
billboard out in the middle ofTimes Square and say isn't
Donald Trump great, he's thevictor I lost.
There's no way she's going todo it.
There's no way an ancientpharaoh or any ancient ruler
will do that.
Other people have said we'veexcavated the Sinai Desert and
(10:06):
you look at that claim and yougo.
Well, actually, you haven't.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
It's a big desert.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
I think it's far bigger than Victoria, right,
yeah?
And so what they've done isthere's been certain work at the
traditional sites of MountSinai, but the problem is it
wasn't an excavation, right.
It was basically a type ofarchaeological excavation.
(10:32):
Well, not really excavation.
We're basically going over thesurface and seeing if there's
pottery there and things leftbehind.
So you might be able to say,well, this pottery is from this
time and therefore there's somepeople there.
But there's eight differentplaces where Sinai could be
right.
And so you know, there's allthese things where, when you dig
down into it, it actuallydoesn't work.
(10:54):
I'll give you another example,if you want the Book of Joshua.
The Book of Joshua is probablythe litmus test for a lot of
people saying whether theBible's true or not, the litmus
test for a lot of people sayingwhether the Bible's true or not.
And there was a greatarchaeologist called WF Albright
you might have heard of him andhe suggested in the early 1900s
(11:15):
that what we should find, basedon his reading of the Book of
Joshua, is in all these tales,in all these ancient tales we
should see these hugedestruction layers because,
where you know, the Israelitesburned the cities and that kind
of thing right, and so we shouldsee it all around.
And so archaeologists wentlooking for these destruction
(11:37):
layers around the time that wewould expect Joshua, and they're
not there.
And so a lot of people go well,that means the book of Joshua
was wrong.
But here's the problem you readthe book of Joshua and it says
only three cities were burnedJericho, hazor and Ai.
And so what we're looking nowfor is destruction layers of
(12:00):
three different cities, not thewhole place.
Also, joshua says that God gavethe Israelites places that they
didn't build.
They were going to tend tovineyards that they didn't plant
, and so what you would expectis not that the Israelites come
into Canaan.
This is from the book of Joshua.
(12:20):
You wouldn't expect theIsraelites to come into Canaan
and destroy everything, becauseGod says actually, you're going
to actually inhabit these cities.
So why would you destroy a cityif you're going to inhabit it?
So if we take the biblicalbooks seriously and allow them
to speak for themselves, thenwhen we look at the archaeology,
I think the archaeology doesn'tgive anywhere near a negative
(12:44):
picture, like a lot of criticswould say it does.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
What about when we hear or read that a narrative or
story is dated much later thanthe events?
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Yeah, you read that all the time, right, and I think
the first thing to say is ifyou go to Moore College, where
we both studied I did this a fewyears ago and I was studying
Joshua at the time and I pickedup about 20 different
commentaries on the book ofJoshua and they have a section
that no pastors read generallybecause it's generally boring-
(13:18):
and it's useless for preaching.
And that's the introduction,and they usually have a date.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
And it was interesting when the various
commentators date the book.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, date the bookright yeah, and it was
interesting.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
People dated Joshua from the writing of Joshua from
everywhere, from about 1100 BCright down to 3 BC.
Wow.
And so what they were mostlydoing was saying this is the
ideology of a particular period,this is what was happening in a
(13:51):
particular period.
We see in the book of Joshuathat these things were happening
.
There's some overlap here.
Therefore, Joshua was writtenhere.
But the problem scholars callthat mirror reading, right?
The problem with that is it'svery subjective, right.
You can mirror read the book ofJoshua and you can say well,
you know it's from this periodor that period or that period,
(14:13):
and I won't bore you with goingthrough the different periods
and how Joshua could be writtenat these different times.
The other thing is, what a lotof people are doing now is going
with the Hebrew language, thedevelopment of the Hebrew
language, and saying biblicalHebrew only comes in at this
time.
The problem is there's this hugedebate around when biblical
(14:37):
Hebrew came in.
But also the implication isthat these books, or the sources
that they came from, couldn'tbe written earlier, and I think
there's great evidence to saythat there was writing in Israel
a lot earlier than a lot ofscholars would say, and
therefore at least the sourcescould be written earlier.
(14:59):
And so when you're dating abook, you've got to not have one
or two arguments, there's gotto be a multiplicity of
arguments.
And when scholars, like a guylike Baruch Halpern, for example
, when he dates biblical books,he uses all these different
arguments.
And when all the arguments comeinto play, when he's dating the
book of 1 and 2 Samuel, forexample, they're dated very,
(15:23):
very early, like they're datedwithin.
He dates 1 and 2 Samuel about50 to 100 years after David,
which, when you think about it,is very early for ancient
historical records.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Now I'm going to give you these 10 bullet points in a
moment, but just before thenour preaching.
You've done this study.
How do you think archaeologyand history should impact just
me as an everyday preacher?
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Okay.
So here's a mistake that I made, right when I started, I was
about to preach through the bookof Kings and I thought, you
know, what I'm going to do isI'm going to have a five minute
section on why you can believethis bit of the Bible, right?
And I bored everyone to tears,right.
And I remember one lady comingup to me and saying, oh, you
(16:10):
don't need to do that, all thatstuff about you know, can you
believe this section?
I said, well, why not?
And she said, oh, because it'sboring and anyway, we believe
the Bible already.
I said but why do you believethe Bible?
And she said because my mumtold me it was true and I
thought that's great.
So I wouldn't necessarily gointo just putting random bits in
(16:34):
there, especially if you don'tknow what you're talking about.
There is a lot ofmisinformation out there,
especially on YouTube, and I'veheard preachers and I myself
have put in things that I'vegone.
Oh, I found out later thatwasn't true.
What I would suggest topreachers is to go to a website
called bibleplacescom, calledbibleplacescom, and what you can
(16:56):
do there is buy photographs ofthe different sections of Books
of the Bible.
So you buy a bunch of photosfrom 1 Samuel and what they've
done is order the photos inevery chapter.
So you get 60 photos on 1Samuel, 1 and 60 and goes
(17:17):
through, and it's got somecommentary with that, and what
I've been starting to use isthose photos, a few of those
photos, through a sermon, justto say what we've got here is
real people in real places, inreal times.
This is real history.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
So just to move it out of the potential idea that
this is kind of fairy tale.
Yeah, exactly, you're notmaking much of it, but you're
just grounding it in history.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Yeah, to move it out of the potential idea that this
is kind of fairy tale.
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
You're not making much of it, yeah, yeah, but
you're just grounding it inhistory.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
So, for example, on Sunday I preach on Joshua 5, 13
through 15, where Joshuaencounters the commander of the
Lord's army.
It's just out of Jericho.
I had a photo of the Mount ofJericho and I said we know where
Jericho is.
This is real people, realplaces, real times.
This is not Middle Earth.
And then I moved on.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Right, that's great.
Now, okay, we're going to go 10points.
Yep, it's going to be one-daycricket fast shots Sure.
Sure, let's go in Canaanarchaeological evidence at
exactly the time that the Biblesays he brought the people of
Israel in.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Yeah, yeah.
So just one thing I wouldnuance in what you said.
There's two different dates forwhen scholars think the Exodus
happened and the conquesthappened.
There's an early date, aroundthe 1400s.
There's a late date, around the1200s.
I hold to the late date aroundthe 1400s.
There's a late date around the1200s.
I hold to the late date aroundthe 1200s.
But what's really interestingis that in the early 1200s,
(18:45):
1100s around there, what you seein the hill country of Israel,
you see this populationexplosion.
We've got a map Tell us aboutthis map.
Yeah, so there's all theselittle dots on that map, and
those dots are these littlevillages that just pop up right
From nowhere, as if somebodyjust moved into the land.
(19:07):
Absolutely, absolutely.
Now there are scholars whowould say these guys were just
low light.
You know some Canaanites whowere in the plain.
They moved up.
But it's such a populationexplosion and everyone says it's
a population explosion, even ifyou're really sceptical of it
(19:29):
that they had to come fromsomewhere.
Right, the Bible would say well, they came from Egypt in the
Exodus, and so there's much moreto say about that, but I think
that gives you a picture.
That's a little archaeologicalfact and it is a fact.
The population explosion that Ithink actually really works
well with the Bible.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Now, from the 12th century, there's a record of the
Egyptian pharaoh raiding theland of Canaan and saying
Israelites were there.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Yes, so a guy, a pharaoh, named Maneptah.
He was the pharaoh afterRamesses II.
If you watch the Disney showswhich talk about the Exodus,
that's Ramesses II.
In all those Disney showsManeptah was a very old pharaoh.
He wouldn't have gone intoIsrael himself.
But he basically says Israel islaid waste and its seed is no
(20:21):
more.
Basically wiped them out.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
We've got the picture here.
Tell us about that document.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
It's called the Maneptah Stella or the Israel
Stella.
It's very famous and it's got aline where it talks about
Israel.
Now here's the thing that doesprove something.
That proves that Israel is inthe land of Canaan at the time
that the book of Judges says itis.
Now here's the other thing Inthe Egyptian language, or
(20:49):
hieroglyphs, what they will dois use these things called
determinatives, and they're justa few little symbols that kind
of define an entity.
And so the guy who wrote theManeptus Stella, the scribe,
uses the determinative of apeople group.
So Israel is not a state with aking at this time, it's a
(21:14):
people group.
Now here's the thing when youlook at the Book of Judges, what
do you see?
In the Book of Judges, you seea group of people who have no
king, and so I think there is aconvergence here between what we
see in the Book of Judges andthe Maneptostella at this point.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
My dad is an expert on Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Oh well, there you go .
So I'm looking forward toasking him about this, ask him,
and I would love to hear what hesays about it.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Number three in the city of Hazor, they've found
religious idols destroyed.
Yep yep and Well.
Joshua 11 and 12 said.
Deuteronomy said destroy thoseidols.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
So in Hatsor Hatsor is one of the three places that
Joshua said.
The Israelites burned Hatsor,ai and Jericho right.
And so at Stratum I think it's12, there's this huge
destruction layer like there'smounds and mounds of ash.
The fire was so great that itturned some of the rock to glass
(22:23):
.
That was how hot it was right.
There's two really interestingthings from this.
One that whoever burned itburnt the administrative centre
and also the religious part ofit.
When you have a look at thebook of Joshua but you also look
at Deuteronomy, the Israeliteswere meant to go in and destroy
(22:47):
the idols.
The idols were all there.
They're just destroyed.
Now, in the ancient world, whatyou would do is you would take
the idol as booty, but that'snot what the Israelites were
directed to do.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
They smashed them up, and they were told to smash
them up, and they did smash themup.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
And so what we see in Joshua sorry, what we see in
Hatsor is what we'd expect fromJoshua in Deuteronomy a huge
destruction layer where theysmashed idols.
And that's why there's twogreat archaeologists who were
the main excavators of Hatzor,yigal Yadin and Amnon Ben-Tor,
who both said this destructionis probably the Israelites.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Okay, number four.
The discovery of the altar atMount Ebel is likely Joshua's
altar.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Yeah, so in 1980.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
We've got a photo of it here.
Yeah, yeah, great.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
In 1980, a great archaeologist named Adam Zertal
was doing a bunch of work inthis area he was-and he came
across this structure and heuncovered it a structure on
Mount Ebal, and what he foundwas it had all the hallmarks of
an altar.
(23:59):
So there's a lot of ash aroundfrom burning things.
There was a lot of animal bonesand that kind of thing mostly
kosher animal bones the stuffyou'd expect Israelites to see,
Exactly exactly.
And then when you have a lookat Joshua 8, you see that they
had an altar on Mount Ebal, andso Adam Zertal, I think, puts a
(24:19):
convincing case that this isactually Joshua's altar.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Number five we now have evidence for King David's
existence, and it's called theTel Dan inscription.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Yeah, the Tel Dan inscription.
So up until 1992, there was noarchaeological evidence that
King David ever existed, and soin 1992, at the site of Tel Dan
in the north of Israel, a bunchof great archaeologists
uncovered in a wall two, sorrythree, fragments of the Tel Dan
(24:51):
inscription, and it's got aphrase on it the House of David.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
We've got a picture of that here.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Yep, yep, and so the house of David.
We've got a picture of thathere, and so the house of David.
Now, this is a stela that waserected about 100 years after
David, and so it shows you thatthe nation of Judah, at this
point, is defining themselves byKing David, right?
Speaker 1 (25:13):
House of David.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
yeah, yeah yeah, and so it doesn't prove much, but it
definitely proves that therewas a Judahite king named David,
who was extremely significantfor Judah.
It doesn't prove that Davidkilled Goliath, no, but it
actually proves that Davidexisted and that he was a
(25:33):
culturally significant king.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Now you also talk in number six about consistent
architectural town planningacross the Israelite cities, as
if there was one governor kingwho was saying let's plan our
towns like this.
Now this is more… I mean it's ahypothesis, but it's
(25:55):
interesting.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Yeah, okay, so about 10 years ago now, maybe a bit
more, there was a place calledKerber Kiafa that was excavated
and this is a very small sitethat was overlooking the Ilar
Valley, right, and it really isa site that was around for maybe
50, maybe 100 years, right,very, very, very ephemeral site.
(26:21):
Now what you see at that siteis they've got the kind of
architecture and town planningthere that you see at other
Judahite sites, right, and thisis from the time of Saul David,
and so what some archaeologistsand I tend to agree with them
would see the similarity in townplanning.
(26:44):
And also, you see, at some ofthese different sites.
There are Kerber Kaufer, forexample.
There are ostracons.
There's these little pieces ofpottery with writing on there
which implies that you knowthey're writing for a reason you
just don't write in your diaryback then.
There's probably administrationfunctions there, and so what a
(27:09):
lot of scholars have seen isthat all these towns have the
same architecture, the samereligion.
There's no iconography,religious iconography there.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Consistent with.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Judaism.
Exactly, it points to the factthat there's some kind of state
functioning at this point.
Now, this is debated.
I want to say that this isdebated, but I just tend to see
that I'm won over by thosearguments when I read those.
So I think there is evidence ofa small state around the time
(27:46):
of David.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Now, number seven is similarities between what we
know of the Temple of Solomonand a similar temple that was
built up near Beirut.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so consistentarchitecture of the day.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Yeah, yeah, so there's a temple called
Ayandhara.
I may not be pronouncing thatright, but it existed from 1300
BC to around 740 BC, right, andit, in terms of the layout and
the size of each room, is almostan exact match to the Solomonic
(28:21):
Temple.
In fact, what you see isthere's other temples around the
time of the Solomonic Templewhich are almost exactly alike.
And here's the other thingthat's really interesting
there's a scepticalarchaeologist he's pretty
interesting.
There's a skepticalarchaeologist he's pretty
skeptical on a bunch of thingscalled William Dever.
He's one of the greats of thefield and he's a guy who doesn't
(28:45):
believe that Joshua happened,the conquest happened, the
Exodus didn't happen.
But he will say that everysingle thing that we read about
the Solomonic Temple in 1 Kingscan be confirmed
archaeologically.
And so here's a couple ofthings.
One skeptical scholars will saythat the Solomonic Temple is a
(29:09):
later idea and they've just kindof made this up based on later
ideas.
Actually, if you take thearchaeology, all the archaeology
is from.
All the archaeological remainsthat kind of correspond with the
Solomonic Temple are around thetime of the Solomonic Temple or
before that.
But here's an exegetical payoffAll the archaeological
(29:35):
correlates are from pagantemples and pagan religion,
which goes to show you thatSolomon was very influenced by
his wives.
You don't just get to I thinkit's 1 Kings 11, where it says
he had a bunch of wives and theyled him astray.
You can actually see all theway through that Solomon is
(29:55):
being led astray, all the waythrough that.
Solomon is being led astray,all the way through 1 Kings, I
think it's 3 to 10, and that'sone of the bits of evidence.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Now these chambered gates at Hazor, Megiddo, Gezer,
and their discovery correspondswith 1 Kings 9.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
Yeah.
So 1 Kings 9.15 says thatSolomon built up Hatzel, megiddo
and Gezer right.
And what we find at Hatzel,megiddo and Gezer are these
things, six chamber gates andthere's a photo coming up on the
screen about them.
And basically everyone saysthese are huge, monumental gates
(30:35):
which suggest an organisedstate, right.
And so when I think it wasYigal Yedin once again saw these
, he looked at these and saidthis is a state.
This corresponds with 1 Kings9.15, and if you have a look,
especially at Megiddo, the samelevel that this gate is on at
(30:56):
Megiddo, you see a palace, yousee other things.
Now I've got to say that therewas an archaeologist named
Israel Finkelstein.
He's a great archaeologist,very sceptical of the Bible,
very creative.
Now he wants to date thisarchitecture later, by about 100
years, but basically there's noarchaeologists that will really
(31:20):
side with him.
The majority of archaeologiststhink that his redating is
absolutely wrong.
So these gates, which a lot ofarchaeologists would say show
state formation, are dated tothe 10th century, which is
around the time of Solomon,which shows, I think there's a
(31:41):
correlation between 1 Kings 9.15and these gates.
Now I would love to say thatSolomon has written his name on
there, so I was here.
It's not that we don't have that, but I think there's a good
argument that can be made for it.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Let's go quickly.
The last two yeah, ninthcentury battle from King Moab.
Yeah, and his account of thatcorresponds with 2 Kings 3.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Exactly In 2 Kings 3, there is a coalition of Judah
Israel who attacks Moab, kingMesha, and King Mesha has got
his own stellar, the Meshastellar.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
You put that on the screen, yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
It gives a parallel account of two kings, three,
which when you read themtogether you would expect both
are biased in certain ways, butthey basically give the same
account.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
And then, finally, the biblical chronology of the
listed kings matches almostexactly with archaeological
evidence.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so one of the things that'sreally interesting is that a
number of the kings, whetherthey be Judahite or Israelite or
foreign kings, are found invarious inscriptions around the
times that they were around,right, and what historians can
do with those inscriptions iscome up with a chronology of
those right, and then when youhave a look at the chronology of
(33:01):
the Bible, you actually seethat the chronology of the Bible
is actually extremely accurate,which shows, I think, that the
biblical writers, one and twokings, were using records that
were contemporary with the kingsthat they were talking about.
Right, and they didn't mess withthese records.
(33:22):
They didn't mess with theirsources and make stuff up.
I think they were veryconservative with those sources
and you actually can seeevidence for that in the Book of
Kings, where it says if youwant to know more about this
king, go and read this annul allthat kind of thing, those
annuls, I think know more aboutthis king, go and read this
animal or that kind of thing.
Those animals I think thisargument shows that they existed
, that they were used and thatthe historians who wrote one and
(33:46):
two kings were veryconservative in their handling
of the sources.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Now we should say you have a blog, yep, we've put the
link to that in the show notesYep.
And we should say to ChristianPublisher go and look at that
blog and then Hans will workwith you to turn it into a book
and for the rest of us, we cango and read it for free now.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
Yeah, yeah.
So it's got a bunch of theessays I've written for uni and
a few other things on there, soyeah.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
And the heavy reading that you're recommending.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
So there's two books.
When pastors ask me well, whatare two books?
Speaker 1 (34:23):
These are thick ones.
I'm looking forward to yourbook.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
So the first one on the right is a book called
Ancient Israel's History andIntroduction to Issues and
Sources, and it's written by abunch of evangelical
archaeologists and historiansand they basically take you.
They write an essay on eachkind of section the Book of
Judges or the period of theJudges and it's actually really,
(34:50):
really good, and so that's oneI recommend.
More on the apologetic side isthis book.
Kenneth Kitchen is a greatevangelical Egyptologist and
it's got a lot of detail there.
Just a warning with the bookhe's very dismissive of other
people's ideas in a way that Ithink is sinful.
(35:11):
But if you can overlook that,it's a treasure trove of amazing
information.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Great.
So not that good on tone, butreally good on facts.
Yeah, absolutely.
Thanks so much for coming inand talking to us.
Thanks for having me.
Hans Christensen is our gueston the Pastor's Heart and he is
the senior pastor at MarsfieldCommunity Church in Sydney.
My name's Dominic Steele.
We'll look forward to yourcompany next Tuesday afternoon
on the Pastor's Heart Cool.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Cool.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
Wasn't too painful.
No, it was good.
Thought about that in terms of it having a that would
(00:06):
have a derivative effect ofincreasing our church podcast
audience yeah, Well, I meanoccasionally, yeah, I mean, and
I've actually gone out of my waynot to do self-promotion type
stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Yeah, not to do self-promotion type stuff, you
know, yeah, yeah, I figure Ihave an enormous opportunity to
that.
I shouldn't take advantage ofyeah, sure.
Yeah, because it will justbuild resentment.
Yeah, yeah.
So I've tried to have a well,just a self-effacing posture.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, just aself-effacing posture.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Yeah, and I think what I've seen you do is you
push the resources that youthink are going to be helpful
for people online.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's my consistent.
I mean, I'm definitely tryingto promote the ideas that I
think will be helpful, you know,and on a range of topics, yeah.
So, whether it's ministrypragmatism or personal trust in
Christ, yeah, yeah, and pushideas that I think will be
(01:13):
helpful, sure.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
You know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Ready to go?
Mr Wong, cool Tenarchaeological finds to increase
your Old Testament confidence.
Hans christensen is our guest.
It is the pastor's heart.
Dominic steel is my name.
There are claims, and you hearthem every so often, that
archaeology has disproved thisstory or that in the bible.
Claims about the exodus, claimsabout joshua jericho, and
(01:42):
claims from this or that scholarabout particularly late dating
of different Bible books.
How do we, as evangelicalpastors, react, respond, answer
those claims and are they true?
Today?
An episode of the Pastor'sHeart that will put confidence
in your belly.
We examine moments wherearchaeology and the Bible
(02:04):
converge.
Hans Christensen is with ustoday on the Pastor's Heart.
I first knew Hans when he was ahipster church planter at the
suburb next door.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
I'm not sure I was ever a hipster, but you know
that's okay.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
He now leads the ministry at Marsville Community
Church in Sydney and is studyingancient history.
Church in Sydney and isstudying ancient history.
Hans, it was something in yourpastor's heart that led you to
be deeply interested in theintersection between, if you
like, archaeology and the Bible,and particularly the Old
Testament, and a frustrationwith what was happening with
(02:41):
some of your peers.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yeah, so just a bit of backstory.
I think I first heard ofarchaeology and was inspired to
think about archaeology, fromIndiana Jones even though I
wouldn't call him anarchaeologist, he's more of a
looter.
But so I had a great historyteacher at high school and in my
early 20s I went through aperiod of doubting the
(03:05):
reliability of the New Testament, the Gospels, and whether Jesus
rose from the dead.
And I was helped by a guy namedIH Marshall as I wrote to him
and he wrote back and said readthis and think about this.
But when I started at Marsfield, that's really cool.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
I remember reading his stuff, yeah, but it never
occurred to me to write to him.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yeah, so what happened was?
I lived in Moree, I came downto Sydney for a concert and as I
was going back it's an 11-hourtrain ride I picked up a book
from Dimmicks by a guy namedJohn Shelby Spong.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Right.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Why Christianity Must Change or Die.
False teacher of the 80s yeah,yeah, yeah.
And Episcopal bishop who deniedpretty much everything in the
Bible.
He went through and one of thethings he said was no major
historian believes that theGospels were true.
They're historically reliable.
That kind of thing which reallyput my faith in a tailspin.
(04:03):
And then I went to MauryChristian Bookstore and in the
50-cent bin there was IHMarshall's book.
I Believe in the HistoricalJesus, I read it, I wrote to him
and he wrote back over aboutsix months.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Isn't that great that he took an interest in a
country, kid from.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
I know, I know beautiful man and when I've
talked to other people who haveknown him they just say, yeah,
that's pretty typical, that'sjust what he did.
He's just a humble, graciousman.
I look forward to seeing him inglory.
But when I moved to Marsfield Icaught up with some friends and
they had read some books onarchaeology and history and the
(04:41):
Old Testament and listened tosome scholars and some teachers
and they got to the point wherethey were like I'm not sure if
the exodus happened, I'm notsure if the conquest happened,
I'm not sure of this.
And I tried to find a kind of aJohn Dixon level book on these
issues and there was nothing outthere that I could find that
(05:02):
was good and reputable.
And I remember talking toAnthony Pedersen, who is an Old
Testament lecturer at Morling, agood friend of mine, and I said
mate, you need to write a booklike this.
He goes, mate, I wouldn't knowwhere to start.
And he said, well, why don'tyou write this book?
I said I can't do that and hesaid, well, you can go to
Macquarie Uni.
I lived 10 minutes fromMacquarie Uni.
(05:22):
You can study archaeology,history, the Bible, all that
kind of stuff there, and overtime you'll amass knowledge that
will be helpful for people.
So that's kind of the journey.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
And it was to see my friends struggling with their
faith.
This is pastors struggling withtheir faith.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Yeah, there was a couple of pastors.
There was a couple of laypeople that just got to the
point where they were like I'mnot sure I can for the pastors
it was.
I'm not sure if I can preachthese parts of the Old Testament
.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
And some of the problem is the theological
education they'd had.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Yeah, so they had received some teaching.
It was directed to some to readsome authors that had
undermined confidence in thescriptures.
Yeah, well, I think the problemwas they were told that these
authors are centrists, thatthey're not conservative like me
on the Old Testament, butthey're not really progressive.
But this is where the field isand really these guys were quite
(06:23):
progressive, quite, I would say, left of the mark when it comes
to where most scholars are atwith the historicity of the Old
Testament archaeology.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
So how do we best start our thinking about
archaeology, history Bible.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Okay, the first thing to realise is that everyone's
biased, right, so everyone'scoming to archaeology history in
the Bible with some kind ofbias Everyone.
And I think the reason for thatis the Bible is still in play,
and what I mean by that is thatthe Bible is shaping people's
lives.
The Bible is still shapingpolitical thought.
(06:59):
The Bible is still, especiallyin America, one of these things
that gets quoted a lot, and soyou cannot come to the
historicity of the Bible and betotally objective.
I can come to you know thehistoricity of, you know a
pharaoh's, you know wars.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
And because it has no actual, real impact on your
life, exactly you really don'thave a dog in that fight.
Yeah, yeah, whereas actuallyeveryone's got a dog in that
fight because it all workstowards whether or not God
exists and how I should livetoday.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and especially if
you are more on the progressiveside of morality and politics.
It does seem like you know, youcan almost map it out the
people who are more the scholarsthat are more progressive in
their politics and you can seeit on Twitter and Facebook and
that kind of thing are generallymore sceptical of the
(07:54):
reliability of the Old Testament.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
What about when it comes up there's a claim that
archaeology has disprovedJericho?
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, the first thing to sayis there's very little
archaeology can definitivelyprove and disprove.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
After all this study, that's what you've discovered.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it'sfrustrating.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
So I got into this thing going, man, I'll be able
to prove this and that and this,and I would say, well, actually
I can't.
But, they can't either.
They can't either.
So when people say archaeologylet's take the Exodus for
example right, when people sayarchaeology has disproved the
Exodus, the first question Iwant to ask is what are our
(08:44):
archaeological expectations?
That is to say, when I read theBook of Exodus, what should I
expect to find in thearchaeology?
Right?
And so when you piece that out,when you ask that question, it
sharpens what we're looking for,right?
If you just say archaeology hasdisproved the book of Exodus or
the event of the Exodus, well,it just seems very out there and
(09:08):
nebulous.
But now we're interacting andsaying, okay, you've got to give
me things that you think willdisprove.
And so I've heard people say,well, there's no record of the
Exodusodus from the Egyptians,right, the problem with that is,
(09:29):
what we've got in Egypt ismonumental records that glorify
the pharaohs, right, and sothere's no way a pharaoh would
ever say, oh, by the way I hadthis big defeat yeah yeah, we
had this big defeat.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
It's a bit like if We've lost a third of our
population, exactly.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
It would be like Kamala Harris if she took a
billboard out in the middle ofTimes Square and say isn't
Donald Trump great, he's thevictor I lost.
There's no way she's going todo it.
There's no way an ancientpharaoh or any ancient ruler
will do that.
Other people have said we'veexcavated the Sinai Desert and
(10:06):
you look at that claim and yougo.
Well, actually, you haven't.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
It's a big desert.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
I think it's far bigger than Victoria, right,
yeah?
And so what they've done isthere's been certain work at the
traditional sites of MountSinai, but the problem is it
wasn't an excavation, right.
It was basically a type ofarchaeological excavation.
(10:32):
Well, not really excavation.
We're basically going over thesurface and seeing if there's
pottery there and things leftbehind.
So you might be able to say,well, this pottery is from this
time and therefore there's somepeople there.
But there's eight differentplaces where Sinai could be
right.
And so you know, there's allthese things where, when you dig
down into it, it actuallydoesn't work.
(10:54):
I'll give you another example,if you want the Book of Joshua.
The Book of Joshua is probablythe litmus test for a lot of
people saying whether theBible's true or not, the litmus
test for a lot of people sayingwhether the Bible's true or not.
And there was a greatarchaeologist called WF Albright
you might have heard of him andhe suggested in the early 1900s
(11:15):
that what we should find, basedon his reading of the Book of
Joshua, is in all these tales,in all these ancient tales we
should see these hugedestruction layers because,
where you know, the Israelitesburned the cities and that kind
of thing right, and so we shouldsee it all around.
And so archaeologists wentlooking for these destruction
(11:37):
layers around the time that wewould expect Joshua, and they're
not there.
And so a lot of people go well,that means the book of Joshua
was wrong.
But here's the problem you readthe book of Joshua and it says
only three cities were burnedJericho, hazor and Ai.
And so what we're looking nowfor is destruction layers of
(12:00):
three different cities, not thewhole place.
Also, joshua says that God gavethe Israelites places that they
didn't build.
They were going to tend tovineyards that they didn't plant
, and so what you would expectis not that the Israelites come
into Canaan.
This is from the book of Joshua.
(12:20):
You wouldn't expect theIsraelites to come into Canaan
and destroy everything, becauseGod says actually, you're going
to actually inhabit these cities.
So why would you destroy a cityif you're going to inhabit it?
So if we take the biblicalbooks seriously and allow them
to speak for themselves, thenwhen we look at the archaeology,
I think the archaeology doesn'tgive anywhere near a negative
(12:44):
picture, like a lot of criticswould say it does.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
What about when we hear or read that a narrative or
story is dated much later thanthe events?
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Yeah, you read that all the time, right, and I think
the first thing to say is ifyou go to Moore College, where
we both studied I did this a fewyears ago and I was studying
Joshua at the time and I pickedup about 20 different
commentaries on the book ofJoshua and they have a section
that no pastors read generallybecause it's generally boring-
(13:18):
and it's useless for preaching.
And that's the introduction,and they usually have a date.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
And it was interesting when the various
commentators date the book.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, date the bookright yeah, and it was
interesting.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
People dated Joshua from the writing of Joshua from
everywhere, from about 1100 BCright down to 3 BC.
Wow.
And so what they were mostlydoing was saying this is the
ideology of a particular period,this is what was happening in a
(13:51):
particular period.
We see in the book of Joshuathat these things were happening
.
There's some overlap here.
Therefore, Joshua was writtenhere.
But the problem scholars callthat mirror reading, right?
The problem with that is it'svery subjective, right.
You can mirror read the book ofJoshua and you can say well,
you know it's from this periodor that period or that period,
(14:13):
and I won't bore you with goingthrough the different periods
and how Joshua could be writtenat these different times.
The other thing is, what a lotof people are doing now is going
with the Hebrew language, thedevelopment of the Hebrew
language, and saying biblicalHebrew only comes in at this
time.
The problem is there's this hugedebate around when biblical
(14:37):
Hebrew came in.
But also the implication isthat these books, or the sources
that they came from, couldn'tbe written earlier, and I think
there's great evidence to saythat there was writing in Israel
a lot earlier than a lot ofscholars would say, and
therefore at least the sourcescould be written earlier.
(14:59):
And so when you're dating abook, you've got to not have one
or two arguments, there's gotto be a multiplicity of
arguments.
And when scholars, like a guylike Baruch Halpern, for example
, when he dates biblical books,he uses all these different
arguments.
And when all the arguments comeinto play, when he's dating the
book of 1 and 2 Samuel, forexample, they're dated very,
(15:23):
very early, like they're datedwithin.
He dates 1 and 2 Samuel about50 to 100 years after David,
which, when you think about it,is very early for ancient
historical records.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Now I'm going to give you these 10 bullet points in a
moment, but just before thenour preaching.
You've done this study.
How do you think archaeologyand history should impact just
me as an everyday preacher?
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Okay.
So here's a mistake that I made, right when I started, I was
about to preach through the bookof Kings and I thought, you
know, what I'm going to do isI'm going to have a five minute
section on why you can believethis bit of the Bible, right?
And I bored everyone to tears,right.
And I remember one lady comingup to me and saying, oh, you
(16:10):
don't need to do that, all thatstuff about you know, can you
believe this section?
I said, well, why not?
And she said, oh, because it'sboring and anyway, we believe
the Bible already.
I said but why do you believethe Bible?
And she said because my mumtold me it was true and I
thought that's great.
So I wouldn't necessarily gointo just putting random bits in
(16:34):
there, especially if you don'tknow what you're talking about.
There is a lot ofmisinformation out there,
especially on YouTube, and I'veheard preachers and I myself
have put in things that I'vegone.
Oh, I found out later thatwasn't true.
What I would suggest topreachers is to go to a website
called bibleplacescom, calledbibleplacescom, and what you can
(16:56):
do there is buy photographs ofthe different sections of Books
of the Bible.
So you buy a bunch of photosfrom 1 Samuel and what they've
done is order the photos inevery chapter.
So you get 60 photos on 1Samuel, 1 and 60 and goes
(17:17):
through, and it's got somecommentary with that, and what
I've been starting to use isthose photos, a few of those
photos, through a sermon, justto say what we've got here is
real people in real places, inreal times.
This is real history.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
So just to move it out of the potential idea that
this is kind of fairy tale.
Yeah, exactly, you're notmaking much of it, but you're
just grounding it in history.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Yeah, to move it out of the potential idea that this
is kind of fairy tale.
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
You're not making much of it, yeah, yeah, but
you're just grounding it inhistory.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
So, for example, on Sunday I preach on Joshua 5, 13
through 15, where Joshuaencounters the commander of the
Lord's army.
It's just out of Jericho.
I had a photo of the Mount ofJericho and I said we know where
Jericho is.
This is real people, realplaces, real times.
This is not Middle Earth.
And then I moved on.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Right, that's great.
Now, okay, we're going to go 10points.
Yep, it's going to be one-daycricket fast shots Sure.
Sure, let's go in Canaanarchaeological evidence at
exactly the time that the Biblesays he brought the people of
Israel in.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Yeah, yeah.
So just one thing I wouldnuance in what you said.
There's two different dates forwhen scholars think the Exodus
happened and the conquesthappened.
There's an early date, aroundthe 1400s.
There's a late date, around the1200s.
I hold to the late date aroundthe 1400s.
There's a late date around the1200s.
I hold to the late date aroundthe 1200s.
But what's really interestingis that in the early 1200s,
(18:45):
1100s around there, what you seein the hill country of Israel,
you see this populationexplosion.
We've got a map Tell us aboutthis map.
Yeah, so there's all theselittle dots on that map, and
those dots are these littlevillages that just pop up right
From nowhere, as if somebodyjust moved into the land.
(19:07):
Absolutely, absolutely.
Now there are scholars whowould say these guys were just
low light.
You know some Canaanites whowere in the plain.
They moved up.
But it's such a populationexplosion and everyone says it's
a population explosion, even ifyou're really sceptical of it
(19:29):
that they had to come fromsomewhere.
Right, the Bible would say well, they came from Egypt in the
Exodus, and so there's much moreto say about that, but I think
that gives you a picture.
That's a little archaeologicalfact and it is a fact.
The population explosion that Ithink actually really works
well with the Bible.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Now, from the 12th century, there's a record of the
Egyptian pharaoh raiding theland of Canaan and saying
Israelites were there.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Yes, so a guy, a pharaoh, named Maneptah.
He was the pharaoh afterRamesses II.
If you watch the Disney showswhich talk about the Exodus,
that's Ramesses II.
In all those Disney showsManeptah was a very old pharaoh.
He wouldn't have gone intoIsrael himself.
But he basically says Israel islaid waste and its seed is no
(20:21):
more.
Basically wiped them out.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
We've got the picture here.
Tell us about that document.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
It's called the Maneptah Stella or the Israel
Stella.
It's very famous and it's got aline where it talks about
Israel.
Now here's the thing that doesprove something.
That proves that Israel is inthe land of Canaan at the time
that the book of Judges says itis.
Now here's the other thing Inthe Egyptian language, or
(20:49):
hieroglyphs, what they will dois use these things called
determinatives, and they're justa few little symbols that kind
of define an entity.
And so the guy who wrote theManeptus Stella, the scribe,
uses the determinative of apeople group.
So Israel is not a state with aking at this time, it's a
(21:14):
people group.
Now here's the thing when youlook at the Book of Judges, what
do you see?
In the Book of Judges, you seea group of people who have no
king, and so I think there is aconvergence here between what we
see in the Book of Judges andthe Maneptostella at this point.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
My dad is an expert on Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Oh well, there you go .
So I'm looking forward toasking him about this, ask him,
and I would love to hear what hesays about it.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Number three in the city of Hazor, they've found
religious idols destroyed.
Yep yep and Well.
Joshua 11 and 12 said.
Deuteronomy said destroy thoseidols.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
So in Hatsor Hatsor is one of the three places that
Joshua said.
The Israelites burned Hatsor,ai and Jericho right.
And so at Stratum I think it's12, there's this huge
destruction layer like there'smounds and mounds of ash.
The fire was so great that itturned some of the rock to glass
(22:23):
.
That was how hot it was right.
There's two really interestingthings from this.
One that whoever burned itburnt the administrative centre
and also the religious part ofit.
When you have a look at thebook of Joshua but you also look
at Deuteronomy, the Israeliteswere meant to go in and destroy
(22:47):
the idols.
The idols were all there.
They're just destroyed.
Now, in the ancient world, whatyou would do is you would take
the idol as booty, but that'snot what the Israelites were
directed to do.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
They smashed them up, and they were told to smash
them up, and they did smash themup.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
And so what we see in Joshua sorry, what we see in
Hatsor is what we'd expect fromJoshua in Deuteronomy a huge
destruction layer where theysmashed idols.
And that's why there's twogreat archaeologists who were
the main excavators of Hatzor,yigal Yadin and Amnon Ben-Tor,
who both said this destructionis probably the Israelites.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Okay, number four.
The discovery of the altar atMount Ebel is likely Joshua's
altar.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Yeah, so in 1980.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
We've got a photo of it here.
Yeah, yeah, great.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
In 1980, a great archaeologist named Adam Zertal
was doing a bunch of work inthis area he was-and he came
across this structure and heuncovered it a structure on
Mount Ebal, and what he foundwas it had all the hallmarks of
an altar.
(23:59):
So there's a lot of ash aroundfrom burning things.
There was a lot of animal bonesand that kind of thing mostly
kosher animal bones the stuffyou'd expect Israelites to see,
Exactly exactly.
And then when you have a lookat Joshua 8, you see that they
had an altar on Mount Ebal, andso Adam Zertal, I think, puts a
(24:19):
convincing case that this isactually Joshua's altar.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Number five we now have evidence for King David's
existence, and it's called theTel Dan inscription.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Yeah, the Tel Dan inscription.
So up until 1992, there was noarchaeological evidence that
King David ever existed, and soin 1992, at the site of Tel Dan
in the north of Israel, a bunchof great archaeologists
uncovered in a wall two, sorrythree, fragments of the Tel Dan
(24:51):
inscription, and it's got aphrase on it the House of David.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
We've got a picture of that here.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Yep, yep, and so the house of David.
We've got a picture of thathere, and so the house of David.
Now, this is a stela that waserected about 100 years after
David, and so it shows you thatthe nation of Judah, at this
point, is defining themselves byKing David, right?
Speaker 1 (25:13):
House of David.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
yeah, yeah yeah, and so it doesn't prove much, but it
definitely proves that therewas a Judahite king named David,
who was extremely significantfor Judah.
It doesn't prove that Davidkilled Goliath, no, but it
actually proves that Davidexisted and that he was a
(25:33):
culturally significant king.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Now you also talk in number six about consistent
architectural town planningacross the Israelite cities, as
if there was one governor kingwho was saying let's plan our
towns like this.
Now this is more… I mean it's ahypothesis, but it's
(25:55):
interesting.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Yeah, okay, so about 10 years ago now, maybe a bit
more, there was a place calledKerber Kiafa that was excavated
and this is a very small sitethat was overlooking the Ilar
Valley, right, and it really isa site that was around for maybe
50, maybe 100 years, right,very, very, very ephemeral site.
(26:21):
Now what you see at that siteis they've got the kind of
architecture and town planningthere that you see at other
Judahite sites, right, and thisis from the time of Saul David,
and so what some archaeologistsand I tend to agree with them
would see the similarity in townplanning.
(26:44):
And also, you see, at some ofthese different sites.
There are Kerber Kaufer, forexample.
There are ostracons.
There's these little pieces ofpottery with writing on there
which implies that you knowthey're writing for a reason you
just don't write in your diaryback then.
There's probably administrationfunctions there, and so what a
(27:09):
lot of scholars have seen isthat all these towns have the
same architecture, the samereligion.
There's no iconography,religious iconography there.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Consistent with.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Judaism.
Exactly, it points to the factthat there's some kind of state
functioning at this point.
Now, this is debated.
I want to say that this isdebated, but I just tend to see
that I'm won over by thosearguments when I read those.
So I think there is evidence ofa small state around the time
(27:46):
of David.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Now, number seven is similarities between what we
know of the Temple of Solomonand a similar temple that was
built up near Beirut.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so consistentarchitecture of the day.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Yeah, yeah, so there's a temple called
Ayandhara.
I may not be pronouncing thatright, but it existed from 1300
BC to around 740 BC, right, andit, in terms of the layout and
the size of each room, is almostan exact match to the Solomonic
(28:21):
Temple.
In fact, what you see isthere's other temples around the
time of the Solomonic Templewhich are almost exactly alike.
And here's the other thingthat's really interesting
there's a scepticalarchaeologist he's pretty
interesting.
There's a skepticalarchaeologist he's pretty
skeptical on a bunch of thingscalled William Dever.
He's one of the greats of thefield and he's a guy who doesn't
(28:45):
believe that Joshua happened,the conquest happened, the
Exodus didn't happen.
But he will say that everysingle thing that we read about
the Solomonic Temple in 1 Kingscan be confirmed
archaeologically.
And so here's a couple ofthings.
One skeptical scholars will saythat the Solomonic Temple is a
(29:09):
later idea and they've just kindof made this up based on later
ideas.
Actually, if you take thearchaeology, all the archaeology
is from.
All the archaeological remainsthat kind of correspond with the
Solomonic Temple are around thetime of the Solomonic Temple or
before that.
But here's an exegetical payoffAll the archaeological
(29:35):
correlates are from pagantemples and pagan religion,
which goes to show you thatSolomon was very influenced by
his wives.
You don't just get to I thinkit's 1 Kings 11, where it says
he had a bunch of wives and theyled him astray.
You can actually see all theway through that Solomon is
(29:55):
being led astray, all the waythrough that.
Solomon is being led astray,all the way through 1 Kings, I
think it's 3 to 10, and that'sone of the bits of evidence.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Now these chambered gates at Hazor, Megiddo, Gezer,
and their discovery correspondswith 1 Kings 9.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
Yeah.
So 1 Kings 9.15 says thatSolomon built up Hatzel, megiddo
and Gezer right.
And what we find at Hatzel,megiddo and Gezer are these
things, six chamber gates andthere's a photo coming up on the
screen about them.
And basically everyone saysthese are huge, monumental gates
(30:35):
which suggest an organisedstate, right.
And so when I think it wasYigal Yedin once again saw these
, he looked at these and saidthis is a state.
This corresponds with 1 Kings9.15, and if you have a look,
especially at Megiddo, the samelevel that this gate is on at
(30:56):
Megiddo, you see a palace, yousee other things.
Now I've got to say that therewas an archaeologist named
Israel Finkelstein.
He's a great archaeologist,very sceptical of the Bible,
very creative.
Now he wants to date thisarchitecture later, by about 100
years, but basically there's noarchaeologists that will really
(31:20):
side with him.
The majority of archaeologiststhink that his redating is
absolutely wrong.
So these gates, which a lot ofarchaeologists would say show
state formation, are dated tothe 10th century, which is
around the time of Solomon,which shows, I think there's a
(31:41):
correlation between 1 Kings 9.15and these gates.
Now I would love to say thatSolomon has written his name on
there, so I was here.
It's not that we don't have that, but I think there's a good
argument that can be made for it.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Let's go quickly.
The last two yeah, ninthcentury battle from King Moab.
Yeah, and his account of thatcorresponds with 2 Kings 3.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Exactly In 2 Kings 3, there is a coalition of Judah
Israel who attacks Moab, kingMesha, and King Mesha has got
his own stellar, the Meshastellar.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
You put that on the screen, yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
It gives a parallel account of two kings, three,
which when you read themtogether you would expect both
are biased in certain ways, butthey basically give the same
account.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
And then, finally, the biblical chronology of the
listed kings matches almostexactly with archaeological
evidence.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so one of the things that'sreally interesting is that a
number of the kings, whetherthey be Judahite or Israelite or
foreign kings, are found invarious inscriptions around the
times that they were around,right, and what historians can
do with those inscriptions iscome up with a chronology of
those right, and then when youhave a look at the chronology of
(33:01):
the Bible, you actually seethat the chronology of the Bible
is actually extremely accurate,which shows, I think, that the
biblical writers, one and twokings, were using records that
were contemporary with the kingsthat they were talking about.
Right, and they didn't mess withthese records.
(33:22):
They didn't mess with theirsources and make stuff up.
I think they were veryconservative with those sources
and you actually can seeevidence for that in the Book of
Kings, where it says if youwant to know more about this
king, go and read this annul allthat kind of thing, those
annuls, I think know more aboutthis king, go and read this
animal or that kind of thing.
Those animals I think thisargument shows that they existed
, that they were used and thatthe historians who wrote one and
(33:46):
two kings were veryconservative in their handling
of the sources.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Now we should say you have a blog, yep, we've put the
link to that in the show notesYep.
And we should say to ChristianPublisher go and look at that
blog and then Hans will workwith you to turn it into a book
and for the rest of us, we cango and read it for free now.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
Yeah, yeah.
So it's got a bunch of theessays I've written for uni and
a few other things on there, soyeah.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
And the heavy reading that you're recommending.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
So there's two books.
When pastors ask me well, whatare two books?
Speaker 1 (34:23):
These are thick ones.
I'm looking forward to yourbook.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
So the first one on the right is a book called
Ancient Israel's History andIntroduction to Issues and
Sources, and it's written by abunch of evangelical
archaeologists and historiansand they basically take you.
They write an essay on eachkind of section the Book of
Judges or the period of theJudges and it's actually really,
(34:50):
really good, and so that's oneI recommend.
More on the apologetic side isthis book.
Kenneth Kitchen is a greatevangelical Egyptologist and
it's got a lot of detail there.
Just a warning with the bookhe's very dismissive of other
people's ideas in a way that Ithink is sinful.
(35:11):
But if you can overlook that,it's a treasure trove of amazing
information.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Great.
So not that good on tone, butreally good on facts.
Yeah, absolutely.
Thanks so much for coming inand talking to us.
Thanks for having me.
Hans Christensen is our gueston the Pastor's Heart and he is
the senior pastor at MarsfieldCommunity Church in Sydney.
My name's Dominic Steele.
We'll look forward to yourcompany next Tuesday afternoon
on the Pastor's Heart Cool.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Cool.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
Wasn't too painful.
No, it was good.
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