“Archeology and Faith”—J. D. Thomas

“Archeology and Faith”—J. D. Thomas Archeology and Faith
Lecture by J. D. Thomas,
February 10, 1950, at Abilene
Christian College (7:30 p.m.)

Let us read two verses from 1 Peter, the first chapter, “Seeing ye have purified your souls in your obedience to the truth, unto unfeigned love of the brethren, love one another from the heart fervently; having been forgotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word of God which liveth and abideth.” The atheist is a man who has faith. Certainly he doesn’t know the things that he accepts to be true. His faith differs from ours, but ultimately and finally, the atheist has to take his leap in the dark. He finds information that seems to him to justify his course of action, but whenever he has found all the possible information there is, he yet has to believe; he doesn’t know. If he knew, he would come around and convince you and me that there is no God and that the Bible is not the word of God, and we would accept it—if he could prove it. But he cannot prove it— he has to believe it. And we, of course, have faith—in a different direction. It is impossibble for us ultimately to prove to the atheist, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. The religion of Christianity is a faith religion, and I would point out that archeology is not going to prove everything that we might like for it to. The atheist obtains a set of facts, but we too have a set of facts—definite knowledge— that supports the faith that we have. All faith, both the atheist’s and ours, is based upon testimony. And faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is based upon the word of God. You can have a valid faith in Jesus Christ, a faith unto the 'having of your soul, without ever knowing anything about archeology! Yea, indeed, there were many faithful Christians before archeology was ever known. It is the word of God, that has the power to produce faith in the hearts of individuals. Don’t forget that. And remember, that God didn’t say—“Here is the word of God, but you must run over to an archeologist and ask him first if it is all right for you to believe these things.” The word of God is sufficient, independent of all outside confirmations and all external arguments, to produce faith. Your faith in God is not dependent upon archeology or any other objective study, external to the word! . But I do want to say tonight that archeology is the handmaid, yea, even the friend, of faith in Christ. Archeology serves to confirm the Bible in many places. Archeology, further, gives light or illumination for interpretation on different passages—it clears up things—it tells us about the customs of people and helps us understand the meaning of passages in the Bible that we didn’t know before. Archeology serves a third purpose—that of correcting bad theories, and I will give you an illustration of this point before we are through. Strictly speaking, archeology is a study of beginnings, or a study of antiquities. Strange to say, the Bible itself is one of the most ancient things that we have, and to study the Bible is really to study archeology. But critics and atheists will not accept the Bible, for some reason, as valid evidence. They challenge it, though they will accept almost any other ancient thing as valid evidence. This is obviously nothing less than atheistic prejudice. In studying archeology I would like to first explain something about the history of excavations, and the inter-pretation of these excavations. Archeology calls itself a science, and in a way, it may rightly do so, yet there is much the archeologists claim that is not provable and cannot be demonstrated. Many people who are archeologists make subjective judgments. That is,- they guess. But if we recognize archeology as a science, and to a degree I say we can do that, we need to realize that it is a very recent science. There had not been any excavating done at all, you might say, one hundred years ago. Sixty years ago, in 1890, Sir Flinders Petrie made a discovery that gave opportunity to date the various remains of cities that are found in Palestine. This method that he discovered is based on stratigraphy and typology. “Stratigraphy” indicates that the ancient cities were built one on top of the other in layers or strata. You may have heard of Dr. Schliemann’s excavations at Troy, the first city excavated in which it was found that one city was built on top of the remains of a former city. But he didn’t realize the significance of such a find, and it just so happened that Petrie, while digging in a mound in Palestine in 1890, happened to find a certain piece of pottery in a certain stratum that was similar to a piece of pottery that he had seen in Egypt, where he had done a great deal of excavating, and of which he knew the date. He assumed, of course, that the date was the same for this newly found pottery. And in the excavating of that mound he found that cities were built on top of remains of former cities.

We recognize that sometimes a city burned down and people did not inhabit it again for a while but when they rebuilt it, instead of clearing out the rubbish, they just filled in and built a new city right on top of the old one and the place forms a mound, growing constantly upward. Sometimes they find ten or twelve or even fifteen layers of strata of different cities in one mound. We naturally assume that the oldest city was the one on the bottom, and the most recent one on the top of the mound. Pottery, and other man made artifacts, are found in these different strata, and frequently coins with dates on them are found. Perhaps you find enough to determine a “type” of pottery, and there were many pottery types, and these types changed frequently, somewhat like automobile models do today. If you should find today, somewhere in a strange place, two 1929 model Chevrolet cars, you would be pretty certain that they both would date about the same time, knowing the fact that we have all types of varying models of automobiles in different times. Pottery and its use, and the fact that there was so much of it and there were different periodic styles and designs, has given the clue to dating. This we call the science of. “typology.” We recognize that it is not infallible, to be sure, and as a matter of fact, archeologists themselves will admit that you cannot date closer than perhaps one century, with pottery. But in general I think it is justifiable for us to accept the relative dating based on pottery types and upon stratigraphy. But now, after Petrie determined this possibility in 1890, it was thoroughly studied, and pretty well determined to be sound, before the first World War, but it was not until after the first World War, whenever Britain had the Holy Land under mandate, that the country of Palestine became really accessible for excavation. Britain arranged for and made it easy for people to excavate and to study in Palestine and a great deal of work was done in the period between the wars, and especially before 1936. Only since 1936 or 1937, up to the present time, which we note is only about the last twelve or thirteen years, has there been enough real evidence come together, for analyzing, putting together, and drawing conclusions from the many excavations and finds to date. So, whenever we say that archeology, as concerns the land of Palestine and the study of the Bible, is a recent science, we mean it is almost like the atomic bomb: there is a change or new development that comes almost every day. It is practically a valid statement to say that there are many Biblical scholars, people that are called scholars today, who are not aware of the actual effects that archeology is having on their particular field of interest. In the strata of the cities one thing that we ought to point out is that there are sometimes gaps in occupation. A city was destroyed, like Jericho, and was not rebuilt for several centuries later. And through the study of pottery, and with the knowledge of the certain artifacts that should be found in certain strata, they are able to prove the fact that this site lay unoccupied for several centuries, as the case may be.

We realize that there is a good deal of “glamour” in the study of archeology. The person, however, who goes to Palestine and excavates, comes to realize that there is a whole lot of work needed. Much painstaking effort is required, and then often one doesn’t find anything significant. But when it is all said and done, I feel that there is yet good reason for the study to have some “glamour,” and some appeal, even for us who are interested in the Bible as the Word of God.

Let us mention here a few of the confirmations that archeology has given, to information that we find in the Bible. Archeology has now located the most of the Biblical sites—ancient towns and places mentioned in the Bible—and practically all of them, have been definitely located and proven. With respect to the destruction of ancient Jericho, I would read to you a quotation from the Westminister Historical Atlas: “The center of interest naturally lies in the Canaanite city, the fall of which is described in Joshua, chapter six. About 1500 B. C. the city was provided with a strong double fortification of brick. The evidence of violent destruction was clear. The walls had toppled over down the sides of the mound. The base of the outer wall had shifted and the debris gave evidence of a terrific conflagration and earthquake. Houses were filled with burned remains, including charred roofing beams, onions, bread, wheat, barley, oats and dates/’1 It is only fair to say that archeologists are disagreed as to the date of this fall of Jericho. Some think it could hardly fit the time of Joshua and the conquest of Palestine, varying from it about a hundred years or so. The main excavator of Jericho, however, and some other prominent archeologists maintain a date for the fall of Jericho that is very near the Biblical date. The fact of the conquest of Canaan by the Jews after they left Egypt and came through the wilderness-wanderings period, and came over Jordan into the promised land, is now well established and really unquestioned. We have in Numbers 20 mention of the King’s Highway, east of the Dead Sea, over which Israel came. And recently the King’s Highway has been discovered. As we come on into Canaan we find that beginning from Jericho, the order of cities captured by the Israelites as they went about conquering the territory, fits in with the natural terrain of the hills, so that it is most reasonable that they would take each certain one in the order that the Bible lists it as taken. In the cities of Bethel and Lachish and Debir, we find evidence of violent destruction, dating in this time. So you see, the Biblical account of the conquest is supported by this destruction of these several cities, which accounts are mentioned in the Book of Joshua. We also find at this same time that new Israelite towns began to dot the hill country, and these towns are clearly different from the Canaanite towns which were left standing and also from the towns of the Philistines. This information, it seems to me, is very positive.

We find in 1 Kings 9:19; 1 Kings 10:26 reference made to the fact that Solomon had many thousand horsemen—twelve thousand horsemen, and fourteen hundred chariots. And these were stationed about in certain cities over his empire, probably for military purposes, but in Megiddo his stables have been unearthed. The date of the strata in which they are found, fit the time of Solomon, and they prove to be quite elaborate structures, and definitely are for the purpose of the keeping of horses and chariots. There is room in these stables at Megiddo for 3.50 chariots and for 450 horses. In books of archeology you can see pictures of reconstruction of these finds, as well as of the actual excavations. It has also been established that during the time of the reign of David and Solomon we have a period of prosperity in the land and the strata of the cities all over for this time show a greater degree of prosperity during that period. Whenver we have, prosperous times today, we have better automobiles, finer furniture, (homes and such like, and back in that time people spent more money on their pottery, jewelry, and other things that are found in excavations. There are many trinkets of value that are found in these strata and the evidence of prosperity is clearly there for this period. On the other .hand, during the time of the captivities, whenever the armies from Assyria and Babylonia were keeeping the land of Palestine under subjugation, we do find evidence of the lack of prosperity.

Over in Corinth, Greece, they have found an inscription on a lintel, which is the stone that goes over the door of a building, which reads ‘'Synagogue of the Hebrews/’ It is not far from the main street of Corinth where this was found, and it is quite likely that it is from the very building in which Paul preached, and which was “hard by the house of Titus Justus.” Again, in Isaiah 20 and verse 1 there is a mention of a “King Sargon” from Mesopotamia, and for years and years that is the only mention of him known in all human history, and many people claimed that there was no such person, but archeology has now found even his palace. In Ezekiel 14:14 we have reference to certain men of wisdom of old time: Noah, and Daniel and Job. But if you remember, Daniel was a young man in the time of Ezekiel, both being in the captivity in Babylon, and critics have argued that it is rather strange for Ezekiel to classify Daniel as a wise man of ancient times. But now we have the Ras Shamra tablets, which are Canaanite texts, concerning people who lived up in Phoenicia and the northern part of Palestine, and there are multitudes of these texts—hundreds of tablets, and they mention a certain wise man, a sage by the name of Daniel, and no doubt he is the individual that Ezekiel had reference to rather than the young man who was contemporary with him. As to illumination that archeology furnishes for better interpretation of certain Biblical passages, we note an in-scription in Delphi, in Greece, that gives us the definite date, when Gallio became “proconsul of Achaia.” He is the man before whom the Jews took Paul for trial, as recorded in the eighteenth chapter of Acts. He is dated as being there in 52 A. D., probably about the middle of the year, perhaps July 1 in 52 A. D., and that would show that Paul, inasmuch as he was there eighteen months, according to this record, to have arrived in Corinth the first time in about January of 50 A. D., and this gives us our first probable specific date for that period.

We read in 1 Corinthians about the eating of meat sold in the “shambles,” meat that had been sacrificed to idols; and in the ruins of ancient Corinth we have the word “makkelon,” which means market place, and is the Greek equivalent of our word for shambles or meat market, and archeologists have located these market places. You might wonder about the keeping of meats, in a market at that time, but a very interesting thing found there is that from springs up in the mountain about a mile or so out of the city, they made underground tunnels and brought the cold water down through the city; and right over this tunnel of cold water, the shops were built. Right at the back of the shops they had wells, and they could put these meats or any other perishables down in the wells and keep them cool for a while. This is an interesting sidelight. Another interesting discovery is the Oracular Shrine that has been unearthed in Corinth. People went to consult the oracle, or to have the heathen god to give them an answer to a certain question, and we find a shrine there in the middle of the city of Corinth that served that purpose. This shrine was a small building fully enclosed, except the front door; and it had a little water fountain bubbling up right in the center. This water was bubbling up from one of these underground tunnels from the mountain springs, and of course the spring was higher in altitude than this outlet, so that the water would flow through the fountain, overflowing into a basin and making a nice decorative effect. It then flowed into an outlet tunnel that went under the floor and out down to a lower level, and emptied from a spout in a retaining wall. But the excavation of this shrine has found that not only was there a tunnel through which the overflow water could pass out and away from the building, but there was also another tunnel right by the side of this one large enough for a man to crawl in. Thus a man could crawl right up under this water fountain; and there was a hole there into the shrine room. When a person came in and asked his question of the god, there was, then, someone there who could hear the question and would speak out through the hole, an answer. And so it is true that these men actually “consulted the oracle” and got an answer to their life problems. Now it so happens that there was a trap door down where this man crawled into his tunnel; it was covered by the same style of architecture, so that it couldn’t be detected. In use it moved to one side, and on the inner side of this false door there was another door that was kept locked, and they discovered an inscription nearby warning people on penalty of fine and punishment to stay away from that area. All of this information aids us in understanding the use of the word “oracles” in the Bible. My early teachers of Bible used to tell me that the word “oracles” means simply the utterances of God— God has spoken unto us. But whenever we see what these oracular shrines were back in that time, and what they meant to these people, and the fact that they could have a problem in their life and go and consult the oracle and get an answer to it, we recognize that when Paul says that the Word of God is the “oracles” of God, it seems to me to have a stronger meaning—that it is God giving to you and me the specific answer to our problems today, to our individual needs, if you please.

Archeology has, of course, unearthed a good deal of infor-mation that gives us light on the life of people who lived in Bible times, in the papyrus documents found in Egypt. Many non-literary papyri, such as business documents, wills, tax rolls, tax receipts, appeals to the sheriff to watch out for somebody who has been breaking into your vineyard, and all manner of details of life are recorded in the papyri. People did not write them for publication, so they are of especial value for insight into the life of the times. Many private letters of great interest have been found, and the study of these papyri for a time will help one to see that the people who lived then are just exactly the same people that we are today, with the same emotions and the same great human problems. And when we realize that the gospel is the thing that met their needs in a spiritual way, it helps us to appreciate the fact that we also have the very thing today for humanity’s needs, in the word of God. There are papyri known today that are dated in every year of the first century A. D. There have been literally tons of those documents found, and of course many are not even translated yet. For the Old Testament times we have the Ras Shamra texts, or the Canaanite texts, that we mentioned—hundreds of tablets. Also thousands of tablets in cuneiform have just in the very last few years been unearthed in Mesopotamia at Nuzi and Mari and other places, and these are giving light on the lives and customs of the people in Old Testament times, the time of Moses and the time of Abraham.

There is a great deal of information now known in the way of textual materials and textual aids for Bible study. The finding of the “Dead Sea Scrolls” in 194,7 is going to throw a great deal of light, I am sure, on the Hebrew language in Old Testament, and probably with all the recent finds, we are going to need revisions in lexicons and grammars and commentaries, which try to bring in all of these new points of information with respect to the language. The Arabic language is now in second place as far as comparative grammar is concerned. When I went off to school in 1945, Arabic was required as a course for Old Testament students for the purposes of comparative grammar. But since that time Arabic is now put to one side, because we have something that is more contemporary with the Hebrew language of the Old Testament, and in the Canaanite literature of Ras Shamra there are many parallel passages, phrases, and words that throw much light on the Hebrew of that period. In bringing this lesson to a close, I want to talk about the greatest challenge that has ever come to the faith of Christians. You know that to be “Modernism.” Modernism has destroyed for many, faith in the Bible, and consequently, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Modernism is best expressed in “Wellhausenism,” which includes the documentary hypothesis of the Pentateuch—claiming that Moses did not write the first five books of the Old Testament, but that different men wrote documents and gathered them together in the eighth and ninth centuries B. C. and later, which would be at least four or five hundred years after Moses’ time, and thus these five books are not dependable, and contain many errors of statement. During Mr. Wellhausen’s time (1850-1880) there was practically no archeological information available. Archeology as such had not really been born, and there were some very great mistakes in this man’s knowledge, on which he based his theories. One of the theories that Wellhausen had was that Moses could not have written the Pentateuch for the simple reason that writing was unknown to the Hebrews in Moses’ time. And that was what he actually thought. But of course you know that we now have writing, an abundance of it, documents that go back even into the third millennium B. C., past 2,000 B. C., and thousands of tablets dating between 2,000 and 1,500 B. C. So writing and learning and literature was well on its way in Moses’ time, and this man, of course, based his documentary theory, partly at least, on that idea!

Again, Mr. Wellhausen held that Abraham was a fictitious character, and I have myself sat in classes in the Old Testament under a Modernist teacher, who said that Abraham was “possibly a tribebut certainly not an individual. I had another teacher to tell me that they knew the Bible story of Abraham’s coming from Ur of the Chaldees was fictitious, because they had dug up a lot of remains over in Ur and hadn’t found anything about Abraham! An argument from silence. Of course the Bible didn’t say that if you would dig at Ur that you would find Abraham’s name all over the place, but the Bible did say that he was there. And they have unearthed houses at Ur which date in his time. They have learned of the Mitannians, the Horites, the Amorites and the Hittites, who formerly were just mere names, like that of Sargon. Archeologists have found that the towns, which the Bible says were contemporary with Abraham, were all actually there and occupied in* Abraham’s day. I would like to quote here a statement from a man who is probably the most eminent Palestinian archeologist in the world today. He says, “Abraham, Isaac and Jacob no longer seem isolated figures, much less reflections of later Israelite history. They now appear as true children of their age, bearing the same names, moving about over the same territory, visiting the same towns, practicing the same customs as their contemporaries.” In other words, the patriarchal narratives have a historical nucleus throughout, so you see, Abraham is not a fictitious character after all.

Another argument of Wellhausen that we want to note in closing, is also concerning whether Moses wrote the Pentateuch. In this he says that the information about the customs, habits, and the details of the environment that are given in the Pentateuch, could not have been written by Moses, because they. reflect 'ideas and customs and habits of people who lived in the eighth and ninth centuries B. C. The patterns of thought were like those of people who lived in this later time rather than the earlier period, and therefore, it could not have been written by Moses. Now, the Modernists are having to retreat at this point also. The Ras Shamra texts, mentioned before, tell of the same deities, the same pagan gods, Baal, Ashtaroth, Beelzebub, Dagon, and so on, that are mentioned in the Old Testament, with respect to the Canaanite religion. In these texts we find also that the poetry of these Canaanite peoples is similar to the poetry of the Hebrew Old Testament with regard to form, number of lines, and the number of beats to the line, and so on. There are also many parallel words and phrases. Critics used to argue that Miriam’s song could not have been written by Miriam because in it she mentions “the mountain of thine inheritance,” and they reasoned that this referred to Mount Zion and the temple that was in Jerusalem—Solomon’s temple; and since it had that expression in it, it had to be written in Solomon’s time or later. But in these Canaanite texts, which were written actually in the time of Moses, we have found the expression “the mountain of thine inheritance.” This is, then, a proof that this argument was based altogether on a subjective judgment. The names of people in the patriarchal narratives—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the sons of Jacob—all of the commonly used names of that period of time fit in with the names of people that are found in these texts, which date at the same time. And they do not fit in with the names that people were using in the seventh and eighth centuries B. C. This, then, is proof of the fact that the material in the first five books of the Old Testament is actually material that was contemporary with Moses. And we quote again from Albright: “Biblical historical data are accurate to an extent far surpassing the ideas of any modern critical students who have consistently tended to err on the side of hyercriticism.” This is a strong statement, from no doubt the greatest Palestinian archeologist in the world in the present day.

What does all of this mean? It means that although people have told you in days gone by that you could not believe the Bible, and that you could not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, because much of what is in the Bible is not the truth, archeology is now able to tell you that these people are just making pure subjective judgments, without certainty of what they are saying. How do we know that they are making subjective judgments without a proper foundation? These people claim to be “scientific,” and that is why they have been able to overthrow the faith of many, in the past 200 years. They say that they are doing it the scientific way—that they are dealing only in facts. But the truth is that they get a feiu facts and then they spin a whole theory on a “perhaps,” on a “possibly.” We have found that these men desire to overthrow faith, and they will stand in their classrooms today and make bold and blatant statements, as though these things were positively true; statements that really do affect the eternal welfare of human beings, when in reality they are based, not on facts, but on mere subjective judgments. The reason we know that they have done that in the past is because we found that the statements they made were just not so. My teacher, that I mentioned before, publicly stated concerning the Wellhausen hypothesis, that critics of the Bible at one time have said that the truth of the Wellhausen hypothesis is certain and final! But he now admits that “the truths in the story are much earlier than the 850-750 dates given by Wellhausen.” He says that there is much dissatisfaction with the Wellhausen theory now by critics, though he insists that it is still “the orthodox critical theory.” And he says there is some skepticism about whether the theory is true at all or not. So you see that Modernism has gone to the end of its rope, and now it is casting about to see where else to turn. And this man acknowledges that they have gone to extremes—“that whenever you take one verse and assign it to one document and then you say the next two and one-half verses belong to some other document, you are just going too far.” But whenever you accept the theory of Wellhausen, and then believe that some human being who is living 2,000 to 3,500 years after these things happened, has the infallibility to decide today that one verse was written by one man and some other verse written by another man, of course, you realize that you are making a god out of your critic—and nothing short of it.

There is reason to have faith. There are facts to support it. The Bible has stood and is standing the test of time. The word of God stands ever true and ever strong to aid you to believe in Christ, to obey his will and to grow in your faith and in his grace and knowledge. Are there those tonight who would respond to the gospel invitation? We urge you to accept Jesus and obey his will even now as we sing.