On December 18, 1995, TIME magazine published an article entitled, “Are the Bible’s Stories True? Archaeology’s Evidence.” The article said this:

In another part of the world, it would have been a straightforward public-works project. A highway was too narrow to handle the increasing flow of traffic, so the authorities brought in heavy equipment to widen it. Partway through the job, however, a road-leveling tractor uncovered the opening to a cave no one knew was there. Work came to an immediate halt, and within hours a scientific swat team descended on the site to study it.

That’s the law in Israel, where civilization goes back at least 5,000 years and where a major archaeological find could be lurking under any given square foot of real estate. Just about every empire since the beginning of Western history has occupied these lands, or fought over them, or at least passed through – Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Turks, Crusaders – leaving behind buildings or burial places or artifacts. Which is why there were about 300 active digs this year in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza – an area no bigger than New Jersey . . .

Some of the Bible’s most familiar names, places and events, in fact – the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; King David, the slayer of Goliath; Moses and the Israelites’ flight form bondage in Egypt; Joshua’s conquest of the Promised Land and the gloomy prophecies of Jeremiah – are being seen in a new light thanks to a flood of recent discoveries. And archaeologists are always seeking new evidence that might help resolve some still-unanswered questions: Did Moses really exist? Did the Exodus happen? Did Joshua fight the Battle of Jericho? Did Jesus drive out the money changers? When – and why – were the earliest books of the Bible written?1

After not really answering the question, “Are the Bible’s stories true?” the author goes on to say,

Yet for ordinary Jews and Christians, it’s impossible to maintain scientific detachment about ancient clay pots and fallen stones and inscriptions being dug up in the Holy Land. Hundreds of millions of people grew up listening to Bible stories, and even those who haven’t set foot in a church or synagogue for years still carry with them the lessons of these stirring tales of great deeds, great evil, great miracles, and great belief. Many may be able to accept the proposition that some of the Bible is fictional. But they are still deeply gratified to learn that much of it appears to be based on fact. Says Harvard’s Cross: “To suggest that many things in the Bible are not historical is not too serious. But to lose biblical history altogether is to lose our tradition.”2

It would be hard to see how a Christian with a high view of Scripture could agree with that last statement in the article. “To suggest that many things in the Bible are not historical is not too serious.” What the Harvard professor seems to be implying is that it is okay for the Bible to be inaccurate when it teaches history and geography as long as it teaches spiritual truth. It is okay for the Bible to be wrong about scientific facts as long as it is right about religious instructions.

But here is the problem with that: if the Bible is wrong on history, how do we know that it is right on spirituality? If the Bible is inaccurate with its geography, how can we trust its theology? If there is a contradiction in one area of the Bible, why would there not be contradictions in several areas? If there is one falsehood in Scripture, why should we believe that there are not hundreds of them?

Archaeology is a big deal when it comes to a study of the Bible. If Archaeology proves the Bible wrong then we have a serious problem on our hands. If it proves the Word of God to be inaccurate in one area of study, then for all we know, it is inaccurate in several areas. And with that in mind, this article is devoted to answering the question, “What does Archaeology say about the Bible?”

Archaeology is “the study of the life of ancient peoples, as by excavation of ancient cities or artifacts.”3 Archaeology is the study of ancient civilizations by looking at what they left behind. Archaeologists dig through the skeletons and the rocks to learn about the history of the people who lived thousands of years ago. And, for our purposes in this article, “Biblical Archaeology” refers to the study of societies that are mentioned in the Bible. This article is concerned chiefly with the field of Biblical Archaeology.

Before we talk about some of the significant finds that Biblical Archaeologists have made, it would be helpful to mention the purpose and the limitations of this discipline.

1. The Purpose of Biblical Archaeology

One purpose of Biblical Archaeology is to clarify the world of the Bible.4 The Bible was written within a time-span of about 1500 years. Moses wrote Genesis around 1446 B.C.5 and the Apostle John wrote Revelation around A.D. 90.6 In our own reckoning, that is a time span running from the 7th century A.D. until today. From the time the first book of the Bible was written until the time the last book of the Bible was written, 15 centuries went by.

That is an enormous amount of time.

And, in that enormout amount of time, empires rose and fell. Cultures came and went. Inventions were made and thrown away. And each book of the Bible was written within a unique window of history. It is the task of the Biblical Archaeologist to try and determine what can be seen through that window.

Biblical Archaeologists try to answer the question, “What did the world look like when Moses wrote the book of Genesis?” “How did the Roman Empire impact the way Paul wrote his Letter to the Romans?” “What did warfare look like when King David fought the Philistines?”

As one author put it,

We can calculate even the population size in places like Jerusalem or the entire area of Judah, or the kingdom of Israel. We can imagine how many people lived there, in what type of settlements they lived, what type of town plan there was, what kind of vessels they used in everyday life, what kind of enemies they had and what kind of weapons they used against these enemies – everything related to the material aspect of life in the [Bible] period can be described by archaeological finds from this particular period.7

A second purpose of Biblical Archaeology is to complement the witness of the Bible. I know that when skeptics read this, they say “Aha, gotcha!!” “You admit that the whole purpose of Biblical Archaeology is to prove the Bible true and that is biased.” “Your love for the Bible has clouded your judgment.” “I’m sure that every time Archaeology contradicts the Bible, you ignore the real evidence.”

But that is not what Biblical Archaeologists mean when they say that their purpose is to complement the witness of the Bible. The word “complement” means “to complete, perfect, or fill up.”8 When Biblical Archaeologists say that they are trying to complement the Bible, they mean that they are trying to complete its testimony. They are trying to fill in the historical gaps that the authors of Scripture left out of their writing.

To say this another way, when Biblical Archaeology seeks to complement the Bible, it takes the Bible at face value until it is given a reason to do otherwise. When it comes to a location that is mentioned in the Bible, it follows the Bible’s details about until it can go no further. It does not say, “Well the Bible says that such-and-such happened here and we all know that the Bible is wrong, so let’s try and prove the Bible wrong.” Instead, Biblical Archaeology says, “This is what the Bible says happened here. So let’s dig here and see what light this sheds on the Bible.”

2. The Limitations of Biblical Archaeology

Like any science, Biblical Archaeology has its limitations. One limitation of Biblical Archaeology is that only a fraction of what was survives. Very little of the past can survive hundreds of years, let alone thousands of years. Even though the weather of the Middle East is perfect for preserving things and even though a lot has been found in Archaeological digs, a thousand years is still a thousand years.

It has been almost three thousand years since Moses wrote.9 It has been almost two thousand years since Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote.10 And anything can happen in that kind of time frame. Wars break out. Famines occur. Things burn up and dry up and wither away.

For example, the greatest library in the ancient world was located in Alexandria, Egypt. It had one million books, many of which were one of a kind. In the 7th Century A. D., the library was destroyed in a fire and every volume it had was lost.11 Historians would love to study the books that were located in this famous collection but they cannot because they have all been burned up. Biblical Archaeology is a very limited field. Only a fraction of what was survives.

A second limitation of Biblical Archaeology is that only a fraction of what has survived has been surveyed. Israel is a populated country today. 7.6 million people live within its borders.12 And, because of this, Biblical Archaeologists cannot start digging wherever they want to. The land where the artifacts are located usually belongs to someone else and that person(s) must give permission to the Archaeologist before any exploration is done on their property.

One example of this is the Pool of Siloam. In John 9, Jesus healed a lame man by telling him to “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (v. 7). For years, the existence of the pool was unverified until in the summer of 2004, work along a drainage pipe revealed some large stone steps where the pool was supposed to be located. After removing the rock from around the steps, Biblical Archaeologists found what appeared to be an ancient pool that fit the Biblical description of the Pool of Siloam. Unfortunately, the pool has yet to be fully excavated, as the western side belongs to the Greek Orthodox Church and they have not given permission to dig on their property.13

This happens a lot in Archaeological studies. Only a fraction of what has survived has been surveyed because people live on the land that needs to be surveyed. And they usually want to be left alone.

A third limitation of Biblical Archaeology is that only a fraction of what has been surveyed has been made known to the public. This may sound kind of strange, but only a small portion of what has been found has been told to us. And there are many reasons for this. Randall Price, author of The Stones Cry Out, gives some of the reasons as follows:

Even the most significant finds, such as inscriptions, are not always published. The reasons for this have been the source of controversy, such as the 40-year delay in releasing just the photographs of the Dead Sea Scroll material from Cave 4. It also took about 30 years for Kathleen Kenyon’s final reports from Jericho to be published. In addition, of the known 500,000 cuneiform texts lying in museum storage rooms, only about 10 percent have ever been published. The problem here has simply been lack of interest, expertise, time, and money.14

You can add to that politics. Sometimes, important items are found in Archaeological sites and governments fight over who gets to claim them. By the time the fighting stops, the artifacts have been lost or stored away. For an example of this, see the information above regarding the Pool of Siloam.

Only a fraction of what has been surveyed has been made known to us. Interest, expertise, time, money, and politics all contribute to this.

So, as we look at the field of Biblical Archaeology (or any Archaeology), we have to realize that only a fraction of what was survives, only a fraction of what survives is surveyed, and only a fraction of what has been surveyed is made known to the public. When we are examining the findings of Archaeology, we are dealing with fractions upon fractions upon fractions. We are looking at a very, very, very limited science. This field of study can only take us so far before it is shrouded in mystery.

In fact, because of this, Biblical Archaeologists often remark that, “Absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence.” Just because we cannot find something, does not mean it is not there. It just means that we cannot find it. When people say, “You cannot prove that Moses ever existed because you cannot find Moses in the rocks.” We could reply, “You cannot prove that Plato ever existed because you cannot find Plato in the rocks, either. Or Homer. Or Pythagorus. Or just about any other person of antiquity.”

Archaeology is a very limited field of study and, because of that, when something has not been found, it does not mean that it cannot be found. It does not mean that it will never be found. It simply means that has not been found. “Absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence.”

3. The Findings of Biblical Archaeology

What have Biblical Archaeologists found in their studies? We cannot look at all the findings of Biblical Archaeology due to the size of this article but we can look at a few.

First, the Dead Sea Scrolls. In early 1947, a Bedouin shepherd boy found a cave full of scrolls eight miles south of Jericho near the Dead Sea. He was searching for his lost goat and, as he searched in an abandoned cave, he came across several old jars full of leather scrolls. After word got out about the jars, a team of Biblical Archaeologists surveyed the area and found close to 200 caves like the one the shepherd boy found.

As scholars began to investigate, they found that the area had belonged to a sect of Jewish monks named the Essenes. The Essenes believed that the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem was corrupt, so they fled to the desert to live and worship and study the Old Testament. After the last great Jewish revolt in A.D. 70, the Romans drove the Essenes away from their hideout. But right before they did so, the monks hid their scrolls in caves where they would remain untouched for the next 10 centuries.

When all of the Archaeological research was done, W. F. Albright said that the Dead Sea Scrolls was “the greatest manuscript archaeological discovery in modern times.” Another scholar wrote that, “It may be that this is one of the greatest finds ever made in Palestine, a find we never so much as hoped for.”

40,000 fragments of scrolls were found and, when they were all put together, they contained the writings of more than 500 books.

Of the most important books that were found was a complete copy of the Book of Isaiah, dating back to 125 B.C. It is highly unusual for Biblical Archaeologists to find a complete copy of anything but one complete leather manuscript of Isaiah was found that dated back to a century before the time of Jesus Christ. Before that discovery, the oldest manuscript of Isaiah was from A. D. 900, written 10 centuries after the one found in the caves.

It is interesting to note that when the two manuscripts of Isaiah were places side-by-side, they agreed word-for-word on 95 % of their contents. To be specific about that, in Isaiah 53, only 17 letters (not words but letters) of the 166 words had discrepancies. Of those 17 discrepancies, 10 were spelling differences, 4 were stylistic changes, and 3 added the word “light” in the newer manuscripts. In other words, in 1,000 years of copying, only 5 % of the text had been changed and none of the changes affected the meaning of the chapter!

Due to this amazing find, skeptics cannot claim that Christians changed the wording of the Old Testament to make it agree with the New Testament. The Essenes were Jewish and their copy of Isaiah was written 100 years before Jesus Christ was born. Not only that, but their copy of Isaiah agrees word-for-word with the copy that was written 10 centuries later by the Christians.

Other books that were found in the caves were only fragments or pieces of books of the Old Testament. Fragments of Ecclesiastes and Deuteronomy and the Minor Prophets were found dating back to some time around the 2nd Century B.C.15

Second, the ruins of the Jerusalem Temple. King Solomon built a temple to the Lord in Jerusalem in the 10th Century B.C. In 585 B.C., Solomon’s Temple was torn down by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. 50 years later, in 537 B.C., the temple was rebuilt by the Jewish Priest Zerubabbel. And several hundred years after that, Zerubbabel’s Temple was torn down and rebuilt by King Herod in the First Century A.D. Herod’s Temple was finished in A. D. 62 but on August 10, A. D. 70 his temple was torn down by the Romans Emperor Titus.16

Now, here is where Biblical Archaeology comes in.17 For centuries, Jerusalem was controlled by the muslims, who were not very interested in history. While they built their Dome of the Rock where Herod’s Temple used to be, they did not explore the ruins around it. For centuries, they did not dig or set up Archaeological teams to look into the history of the place. But when Israel took over the land after World War II, all of that changed.

In 1968, Benjamin Mazar began the largest earth-moving project in Israel to remove all the debris from the southern wall under the Temple Mount. His team dug down several stories until they came to a First Century street 10 meters wide and covered with stone slabs a foot thick. On this ancient street, they found shops that were used for buying and selling animals for sacrifice. This would explain why Jesus was so angry with the Jewish leaders for selling animals in the Temple courts (Jn 2:13-22). The Jews could have gone down to the street and purchased the animals instead of turning God’s house into a marketplace.

Biblical Archaeologists also found broken stones on top of the street and they noticed that the street itself was cracked. This would have been caused by the Roman soldiers throwing stones down from the Temple (several stories above). This would have also confirmed Jesus’ words in Mark 13:2, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left upon another which will not be torn down.”

One of the greatest finds at the southern wall was the SouthEast corner of the Temple. The corner was identified by an inscription on its side. The SouthEast corner was the highest point of the Temple, so it was the place where the priests would go to blow their trumpets and announce the beginning of the Sabbath days. It was also the corner where Jesus was tempted by Satan. Matthew 4:5-6 says,

Then the devil took Him into the holy city and had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, “If you are the Son of God, thrown yourself down.”

According to ancient church history, the SouthEast corner was also the place where the Apostle James was thrown down to his death by the Jewish High Priest.18

Third, Hezekiah’s Tunnel. Second Kings 20:20 says that,

Now the rest of the acts of Hezekiah and all his might, and how he made the pool and the conduit and brought water into the city, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah?

Second Chronicles 32:30 says,

It was Hezekiah who stopped the upper outlet of the waters of Gihon and directed them to the west side of the city of David.

In the 8th Century B.C., King Hezekiah built a 1750-foot tunnel to bring water from the Gihon Spring on the western side of Jerusalem into the city to protect the inhabitants from dehydration during a siege. The Gihon Spring is the only source of freshwater near Jerusalem and, if invading armies captured that water source, the people in Jerusalem would quickly die of thirst. So Hezekiah began a public works project during his reign to transport water into the city.

The story of the tunnel’s construction is truly fascinating and abnormally simple. One group of stone masons started cutting into the rock on one side of a hill and one group started cutting into the rock on the other side of a hill and they literally met in the middle. We know that this was what happened because of an inscription that was found inside the tunnel. It said:

And this was the way in which it was cut through: While we [had our] axes, each man toward his fellow, and while there were still three cubits to be cut through, [there was heard] the voice of one man calling to his fellows, for there was an overlap in the rock on the right [and on the left]. And when the tunnel was driven through, the quarrymen hewed (the rock), each man toward his fellow, axe against axe; and the water flowed from the spring toward the reservoir for 1200 cubits, and the height of the rock above the heads of the quarrymen was 100 cubits.

The masons dug for a little while and then stopped to listen for the sound of the other crew. When they heard them, they dug in the direction of the noise. After awhile, they stopped again and listened for the sound of the other crew and they dug in that direction again. They did this until they met the other group close to the middle of the tunnel. The Hebrew inscription was placed in the tunnel where the two groups met.

Hezekiah’s Tunnel confirms the Biblical account of King Hezekiah and it verifies his efforts to bring fresh water into the city.19

There are other findings that we could discuss, such as the Moabite Stone from the 9th Century B.C. The Moabite Stone tells about a Moabite king’s victory over Omni, King of Israel.20 We could also talk about the fragments of the New Testament that have been discovered21 or what ancient non-Christian authors have said about Jesus.22 But, at this point, we should move on to our next topic.

4. The Significance of Biblical Archaeology

There is a lot that the believer can take from a study of Biblical Archaeology. For one, Biblical Archaeology (or any Archaeology for that matter) has never contradicted the Bible. That may seem like a strong statement to make when TIME Magazine tells us the opposite. But every time the Archaeological discoveries or lack of Archaeological discoveries have seemed to contradict Scripture, Archaeology has spoken in the Bible’s defense.

For example, liberal scholars23 at one time believed that the Book of Isaiah had been rewritten by Christians.24 They thought that the Jews had written one book and the Christians changed it to agree with their views about Jesus. “After all,” liberals said, “the oldest copy we have of Isaiah is from A.D. 900 . . . How do we know that Isaiah’s prophecies about Jesus were not added some time after Isaiah died?” When the Dead Sea scrolls were found, their question was answered. Isaiah wrote all of his prophecies before Jesus lived and we have the evidence to prove it.

Remember: “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Archaeology is a very limited field. Just because something from the Bible has not been found in an Archaeological dig does not mean that it will never be found or that it did not happen. It just means that we need to suspend judgment until further evidence is collected. We have every right to trust the Bible because it has never been proven wrong by Archaeology.

A second significant fact about Biblical Archaeology (or any Archaeology for that matter) is that it has a long way to go. As we mentioned earlier, this is a field of science that is pretty limited. To make sweeping judgments based on what has been found or has not been found is to give Archaeology too much authority.

And this is important to mention because, as TIME Magazine demonstrates, a lot of people put Archaeology forward as the supreme test for the trustworthiness of the Bible. It is the end-all-authority for them. If you can find it, it happened. If you cannot find it, it did not happen. Case closed.

But the case is not closed because Archaeology has a long way to go. It is a very limited field.

A third significant fact about Biblical Archaeology (or any Archaeology for that matter) is that you often find what you look for. What I mean by that is the TIME article looks at the findings of Biblical Archaeology and says, “I do not know if the Bible is true.” I look at the findings of Biblical Archaeology and say, “The Bible is true.” Why? Because the author of TIME Magazine does not believe the Gospel and I do. His approach to the subject is to disprove the Bible, mine is to prove it true.

This does not mean that Archaeology is hopelessly subjective. It simply means that the evidence can be twisted to fit an agenda. It means that credit can be given where credit has not been earned. Sweeping judgments can be made about what is/is not in the rocks and people can base their entire confidence in Scripture on a field of science that only deals with fractions of fractions of fractions.

And there is a Biblical reason for this prejudice against the Bible: Archaeology cannot change someone’s mind. Only the Holy Spirit can do that. Biblical Archaeology is a great resource to strengthen the faith of a believer but, without the power of the cross, it can convince no one.

I worked with a fellow college student one summer who told me that he did not trust Biblical Archaeology because it always proved that the Bible true. His thinking was: The Bible must be wrong and Biblical Archaeology says that it is right, therefore, Biblical Archaeology must be wrong also. That is not very objective. That is not the way a “scientist” thinks.

And yet millions of people think that way.

Why? Because they do not like what the Bible says and they desire desperately to prove it wrong so they can live however they want to. And we can show them all the fossils and remains and manuscripts that we want to but, until their heart changes, they will never see the truth. Until they are made alive in Christ, they will be dead in their thinking.25

Faith is not about the sinner’s head only. It is also about his heart. And until the Holy Spirit comes into the sinner’s heart and changes it and makes it alive in Christ, all the evidence in the world will be rejected outright.

www.time.come/time/magazine/…/0,9171,983854,00.htm as of 10/19/10. [↩]
Ibid. [↩]
Webster’s New World Dictionary, ed. by Michael Agnes (New York: Wiley Publishing, 2003) 32-33. [↩]
These purposes of Biblical Archaeology are taken from Randall Price’s The Stones Cry Out: What Archaeology Reveals about the Truth of the Bible (Eugene, Ore.: Harvest House Publishers, 1997) 40-49. [↩]
John MacArthur, The MacArthur Bible Commentary (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2006) 4. [↩]
Ibid., 1999. [↩]
Professor Amihai Mazar, quoted in The Stones Cry Out, 41-42. [↩]
Webster’s New World Dictionary, 135. [↩]
Moses wrote Genesis in 1445 B.C. See footnote 5. [↩]
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were written in the First Century A. D. MacArthur, 1111, 1189, 1264-1265, 1338-1339. [↩]
www.mediahistory.umn.edu/archive/Alexandria.html as of 11/8/10. [↩]
www.jta.org/news/article/2010/09/06/2740813/israels-population-hits-76-million as of 10/19/10. [↩]
www.bibleplaces.com/poolofsiloam.htm as of 10/19/10. [↩]
The Stones Cry Out, 47. [↩]
Information for the Dead Sea Scrolls was taken from Josh McDowell,’s Evidence that Demands a Verdict: Historical Evidences for the Christian Faith (Campus Crusade for Christ, Inc., 1972) 60-61 and William LaSor’s “The Dead Sea Scrolls” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Volume 1, ed. by Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1979) 395-401. [↩]
All of this information regarding the Temple was taken from Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Dictionary, ed. by Ronald F. Youngblood (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1986) 1230-1238. [↩]
All of the information for the archaeological findings from the Southern Temple Mount were taken form www.bibleplaces.com/southerntm.htm as of 10/20/10. [↩]
Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Volume 1 (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 2002 ed.) 268. [↩]
All of the archaeological information for Hezekiah’s Tunnel is taken from www.bibleplaces.com/heztunnel.htm as of 10/20/10. [↩]
Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Dictionary, 852-853. [↩]
For more information about these, see our Frequently Asked Question: “How accurately was the Bible copied?” [↩]
McDowell, 84. For instance, Lucian, a Second Century Roman author wrote, “[Jesus was] the man who was crucified in Palestine because he introduced this new cult into the world . . . Furthermore, their first lawgiver persuaded them that they were all brothers one of another after they have transgressed once for all by denying the Greek gods and by worshipping that crucified sophist himself and living under his laws.” [↩]
Millard J. Erickson, The Concise Dictionary of Christian Theology (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1994) 114. The term “liberalism” simply means, “Any movement that is open to redefining or changing the traditional doctrines and practices of Christianity.” A liberal scholar, then, would be a scholar who is open to redefining or changing the traditional doctrines and practices of Christianity. [↩]
To see a scholarly refutation of this argument and several others that liberal scholars make against the authenticity of Old Testament books, visit www.instituteofbiblicaldefense.com/tag/old as of 11/8/10. [↩]
Romans 8:7 says, “Because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so.” [↩]