Is there really a God tell me your Opnion (Page 38)  ghostgeek: Beauty and biblical evidence both lie in the eye of the beholder, it seems. No evidence of the events described in the Book of Genesis has ever been found. No city walls have been found at Jericho, from the appropriate era, that could have been toppled by Joshua or otherwise. The stone palace uncovered at the foot of Temple Mount in Jerusalem could attest that King David had been there; or it might belong to another era entirely, depending who you ask. Archaeologists always hope that advances in technology will shed fresh light on at least part of this ancient mystery: Did the Bible really happen? So far, what discoveries there are, tend to indicate that at the least, the timelines are off. [ https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2017-11-01/ty-article-magazine/is-the-bible-a-true-story-latest-archaeological-finds-yield-surprises/0000017f-eb2f-ddba-a37f-eb6fc2260000 ] ghostgeek: Eighteen years ago, on October 29, 1999, Haaretz published an article by Tel Aviv University's Ze’ev Herzog, whose message was spelled out in the very headline: “The Bible: No evidence on the ground.” Of what? No evidence that the children of Israel sojourned in Egypt, passed through a miraculously parted Red Sea, wandered the Sinai Desert for 40 years or indeed any years, and no evidence that they conquered the land of Israel and divided it up among 12 tribes of Israel. The renowned archaeologist also shared his suspicion that David and Solomon’s "United Kingdom," described in the Bible as a regional power, was at most a minor tribal domain. "Jehovah, the God of Israel, had a wife and the early Israelite religion adopted monotheism only towards the end of the period of the kingdom, not at Mount Sinai,” Herzog also wrote. The unbridgeable gap Herzog described between the Biblical tales and the archaeological findings was nothing new, to researchers. Israeli archaeologists have long thought as much, based on biblical criticism theories originating in Germany during the early 19th century. The general public, however, was shocked. [ https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2017-11-01/ty-article-magazine/is-the-bible-a-true-story-latest-archaeological-finds-yield-surprises/0000017f-eb2f-ddba-a37f-eb6fc2260000 ] ghostgeek: The founding fathers of Israeli archaeology explicitly set out with the Bible in one hand and a pick in the other, seeking findings from the biblical eras, as part of the Zionist project. But as excavations progressed in the 1970s and 1980s, rather than substantiation, what began to pile up was contradictions. In Jericho no wall was found from the era that Joshua was supposed to have lived, around the mid-13th century B.C.E., that he could have caused to tumble down. No evidence has been found that a large new group of people entered into Canaan during the post-Exodus settlement period. There is, in fact, no evidence to substantiate Exodus. [ https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2017-11-01/ty-article-magazine/is-the-bible-a-true-story-latest-archaeological-finds-yield-surprises/0000017f-eb2f-ddba-a37f-eb6fc2260000 ] ghostgeek: In Jerusalem, no concrete remains have been found from the purported glorious United Kingdom, and nowhere is there ex-biblical evidence of the kings David or Solomon either, with the possible exception of the "Beitdavid" inscription (more on that below). Nor do major archaeological tells conform to biblical descriptions, until after the period of the purported United Kingdom. [ https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2017-11-01/ty-article-magazine/is-the-bible-a-true-story-latest-archaeological-finds-yield-surprises/0000017f-eb2f-ddba-a37f-eb6fc2260000 ] ghostgeek: Archaeology has not been able to find the Patriarch Abraham, or signs of his heirs. There is no evidence that the Children of Israel ever went to Egypt, or fled it in the Exodus. [ https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2017-11-01/ty-article-magazine/is-the-bible-a-true-story-latest-archaeological-finds-yield-surprises/0000017f-eb2f-ddba-a37f-eb6fc2260000 ] ghostgeek: If anything, archaeologists find inconsistencies between the biblical accounts and the facts. For example, the Book of Genesis mentions camels, but the earliest domestic camel bones found in Israel date to around 930 B.C.E., about a millennia after their appearance according to the Bible. Ditto the Philistines, who seem to have actually sailed to the Holy Land only centuries after the Bible says they did. [ https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2017-11-01/ty-article-magazine/is-the-bible-a-true-story-latest-archaeological-finds-yield-surprises/0000017f-eb2f-ddba-a37f-eb6fc2260000 ] ghostgeek: One who firmly believed in the authenticity of biblical lore, and who penned a fierce rebuttal to Herzog, was Professor Adam Zertal of Haifa University (1936-2015). He conducted a huge survey (a descriptive report, without excavation) of archaeological sites in the West Bank and listed about 200 small sites in the Samarian hills. The most famous is a large cultic structure that Zertal identified as none other than the altar Joshua erected on Mount Ebal. "Then Joshua built an altar to the LORD, the God of Israel, in Mount Ebal, just as Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded the sons of Israel, as it is written in the book of the law of Moses, an altar of uncut stones on which no man had wielded an iron tool" (Joshua 8:30 31). Even with the latest technology, nobody can tell what the Mount Ebal site really was. Nor is Joshua's existence bolstered by other evidence. For instance, no remains of a city wall have ever been found at Jericho from Joshua's era (about the mid-13th century B.C.E.) Other cities that are mentioned in the story of the conquest did not even exist during that period. In any case, most archaeologists now agree that the Israelite-Jewish identity arose from traditions that developed among the inhabitants of Canaan. It was not brought from outside by invaders. [ https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2017-11-01/ty-article-magazine/is-the-bible-a-true-story-latest-archaeological-finds-yield-surprises/0000017f-eb2f-ddba-a37f-eb6fc2260000 ] ghostgeek: The most ferocious dispute is whether a united kingdom, ruled by kings David and Solomon, ever existed. The Bible describes a regional power with its capital in Jerusalem that controlled extensive parts of the Land of Israel. Five years before Herzog’s article in 1999, Avraham Biran discovered a Hebrew inscription at tell Dan bearing the word “beitdavid” – the House of David. Believers claim it's extra-biblical evidence that the great king existed; others say that could refer to any David. Or to something else entirely. The critical camp argues that a century of excavations in Jerusalem and elsewhere indicates that David and his sons, if they existed, ruled a fairly small, remote hill town, no more. There is no evidence of the existence of a large and powerful kingdom in the hills in the 10th century B.C.E., they say. Professor Israel Finkelstein, a father of the critical thesis, suspects the biblical descriptions of David's kingdom conflated two unrelated elements. One is a historical memory of the northern Kingdom of Israel, with its capital in Samaria: a larger, more powerful kingdom than the southern Kingdom of Judea, which was destroyed by the Assyrians not long before the biblical stories were compiled in Jerusalem. Refugees from the northern kingdom came to Jerusalem, bringing with them stories that were integrated into the text. The second element was the political and religious interest of kings of Judea, under whose auspices the Davidic texts were written. “The great and glorious kingdom was a glorious kingdom-to-be, the one that was yet to happen," Finkelstein postulates. "There may have been a unified kingdom, but it was ruled from Samaria. Judean writers adopted the idea and made it their own years after the fall of the northern kingdom [of Israel]." Even the most enthusiastic supporters of the biblical approach are unable to say what the name of that glorious unified kingdom was, Herzog stresses. [ https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2017-11-01/ty-article-magazine/is-the-bible-a-true-story-latest-archaeological-finds-yield-surprises/0000017f-eb2f-ddba-a37f-eb6fc2260000 ] ghostgeek: Jerusalem is the critical camp’s trump card. In the 18 years since Herzog’s article, the historic tell of Jerusalem, which descends from the Temple Mount to the Kidron Stream, via the neighborhood of Silwan, including the so-called City of David, has been dug up like never before. Yet as the vast majority of archaeologists would agree, with the exception of a few controversial sites which we'll come to in a moment – the capital of a unified kingdom of David and Solomon has not been found. Tunnels, the City of David, Jerusalem Tunnels, the City of David, JerusalemCredit: Olivier Fitoussi There is evidence of settlement, says Dr. Doron Ben-Ami of the Antiquities Authority. “We’ve found the Jerusalem of the 10th century B.C.E., but it was a paltry settlement with no monumental construction. If you are letting archaeology speak, that is what it says. If you take the Bible and start searching with candles, it isn't archaeology any more.” Ben-Ami, now the chief archaeologist for the Central District at the Antiquities Authority, excavated the largest site in Jerusalem in recent decades, the site formerly known as the Givati parking lot by the Old City of Jerusalem. In the layers that have been peeled off, evidence was found of the entire lifespan of Jerusalem: an Ottoman baking oven, a Byzantine gold hoard, a Roman farmhouse, a Seleucid fortress, a Hasmonean house, down to findings from the period of the Kingdom of Judea in the 9th century B.C.E. Beneath that level, nothing was found. The Givati parking lot is not unique. For all the discovery that Jerusalem has been occupied for some 7,000 years, it hasn't produced many findings from the period of David and Solomon, the 10th century B.C.E. Earlier periods, the Jebusite and Canaanite stages of the city, before it was conquered by David, did yield many findings inside the City of David digs, including sophisticated defense and water systems. But researchers are having difficulty identifying an imperial capital of a mighty unified kingdom as described in Scripture. Most researchers therefore suspect that at during the so-called Davidic era, Jerusalem was at most a town, smaller than the Canaanite Jerusalem that preceded it and the Jerusalem of the days of the independent Kingdom of Judea that came after it. [ https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2017-11-01/ty-article-magazine/is-the-bible-a-true-story-latest-archaeological-finds-yield-surprises/0000017f-eb2f-ddba-a37f-eb6fc2260000 ] zeffur: Let's see it's a toss up---do you believe the writers who lived at the time of David & Solomon or do you believe a bunch of modern know little-2-nothing nitwits that are guessing? Seriously dude, get a grip. Modern people don't know jack about such an ancient past, due to the scarcity of available evidence--due to the endless wars that have destroyed it. Anyone who believes the modern guess makers is 5 cans short of a six pack.... Your foolishness reminds me of this pic: Picture (Edited by zeffur) ghostgeek: Anybody can write a pack of lies but what is, and isn't, in the soil cannot be manipulated. Therefore the spade is mightier than the pen. ghostgeek: That I will concede, but how many things are ever fully destroyed? For example, who would think that date stones or olive pits would still exist after more than two thousand years, but some do and they've been used for dating purposes. zeffur: Depends on how thoroughly they are hated & how strong their adversaries are. The Jews didn't make any monuments like the Egyptians & their metal objects were stolen & most likely melted for their gold value. Not all cultures date burial stones, so that likely isn't applicable either. If you do a Google search with the string "archaeological evidence for ancient Jerusalem" you will see many articles about evidence that has been found. There are also vids which show much of the archaeological evidence that has been found. It's just ignore or misrepresented by people that have an anti-Jewish agenda. (Edited by zeffur) ghostgeek: I did that search and the first thing I encountered was the mention of a 2,700-year-old toilet. Well, I suppose not everyone was happy to hang their bum over the city wall when they needed to go but it did leave me wondering what sort of loo paper they used back then.  h0nd0: Israel is 13 tribes, not your normal country NOMADS in the region.. Jerusalem was a place. David called home.. NOMADS scatter like Genghis kahn they utilize areas but they don't stay too long that's why they survived so well.. but like most nomadic people they eventually have to join socialites.. after David settled down have rise to Jesus his great great great great great grandson and he came to fruition.. |
