Israel

Background

• While empires from Sumeria to Medo-Persia are fighting to control Middle East, the nation of Isreal was born
• Isreal was on the trading crossroads linking Middle East and the Mediterranean
• Assyria
• Neo-Babylonia
• Medo-Persia
• Often a chess piece in the game of geopolitics
• Begin with Abraham and end with Jesus
• The issue of the Messiah
• Gen 3:5 – the seed of the woman
• Gen. 12 – God calls Abraham (covenant)
• Covenant throughout OT – faithfulness
• Idea of a Messiah becomes clearer

How Do We Understand Biblical History?

• Two basic approaches
• Hermeneutics of suspicion
• Hermeneutics of faith

"The basic problem of the minimalist is that they usually argue from the absence of evidence, and that is a problem for them logically." Why? "It's not really a valid form of argument," Shanks contends. "You have to be very careful when you so argue, especially when you're talking of something that didn't happen thousands of years ago, that it didn't happen because you can't find evidence of it. You have to establish that you really should be able to find evidence, and that's a hard case to make.” (source)

-Herschel Shanks, Editor, Biblical Archaeology Review

• Bible has overcome objections in the past
• Archaeological evidence is mounting
• Sodom and Gomorrah
• “Archaeologists have searched the Dead Sea region for many years in search of Sodom and Gomorrah. Genesis 14:3 gives their location as the Valley of Siddim known as the Salt Sea, another name for the Dead Sea. On the east side six wadies, or river valleys, flow into the Dead Sea. Along five of these wadies, ancient cities were discovered. The northern most is named Bab edh-Drha. In 1924, renowned archaeologist Dr. William Albright excavated at this site, searching for Sodom and Gomorrah. He discovered it to be a heavily fortified city. Although he connected this city with one of the biblical "Cities of the Plains," he could not find conclusive evidence to justify this assumption. More digging was done in 1965, 1967, and 1973. The archaeologists discovered a 23-inch thick wall around the city, along with numerous houses and a large temple. Outside the city were huge grave sites where thousands of skeletons were unearthed. This revealed that the city had been well populated during the early Bronze Age, about the time Abraham would have lived. Most intriguing was evidence that a massive fire had destroyed the city. It lay buried under a coating of ash several feet thick. A cemetery one kilometer outside the city contained charred remains of roofs, posts, and bricks turned red from heat. Dr. Bryant Wood, in describing these charnel houses, stated that a fire began on the roofs of these buildings. Eventually the burning roof collapsed into the interior and spread inside the building. This was the case in every house they excavated. Such a massive fiery destruction would match the biblical account that the city was destroyed by fire that rained down from heaven. Wood states, "The evidence would suggest that this site of Bab edh-Drha is the biblical city of Sodom."(source)

• 1993/1994 – three cases where name of ‘David’ is mentioned
• 1990s – seal with name of David on it

Early History

• Begins with Abraham in 2000 B.C. – Sumer – Ur – “father of a great nation”
• The archaeologist W.F. Albright believed that Abraham was one of the many "Donkey-caravaners" who traveled and traded along the route from the south of Sumeria to the borders of Egypt during the end of the 2nd millennium BC
• God’s covenant promises (Gen. 12, 15, etc.)
• Begin of talk about the Messiah goes to Gen. 3:5 and reiterated throughout Jewish history
• Isaac --> Jacob
• Jacob plus his 12 sons are Patriarchs
• Patriarachs settle in Egypt under Jacob and his sons (proof)

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Sidebar: Evidence of Hebrews in Egypt

• Israelites had multiplied and did 'fill the land' (Exodus 1:7)
• Egyptian tomb paintings and inscriptions in the time of Thutmose I (1495-1490 B.C.) and Thutmose III (1479-1425 B.C.) indicate Semite slaves were used in construction projects.
• Amarna Letters (14th century B.C.) state that a people designated as the "Hab(or p)iru" (i.e., Habiru) is still considered by many scholars to be a possible mention of the Hebrews.
• An Egyptian stele in the temple at Thebes gives us the earliest known mention of Israel. It is a 7.5 foot high funerary monument of Pharaoh Merneptah, who ruled from 1213 to 1203 B.C. He refers to conquering Israel (among others) and says, "Israel is laid waste, his seed [people or grain] is not."

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• After 400 yrs in Egypt, children of Israel are enslaved
• Joseph becomes a "very senior member of the royal court" at a time of "tolerance and cooperation between the Egyptians and the proto-Israelites"
• "The pharaohs of the Middle Kingdom employed Asiatic officials" who "must have been more numerous during the Hyksos period" (Roland de Vaux, The Early History of Israel. Trans. David Smith. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1978, 298).
• Under Hyksos (1663-1550 B.C.)
• Semitic origin
• Possibly Hittites? (proof?)
• Compund bows, horses and chariots
• woolen tartan kilts
• Ahmose I (1570-1546) Pharaoh who “knew not Joseph” (Exodus 1:8)
• From Thebes in Upper Egypt
• Founds 18^th Dynasty
• Ousts Hyksos
• great slaughter was recorded in all the battles
• A non-Semitic, non-Hyksos Pharaoh
• Jospeh lived in the capital of Avaris in the Delta region with the old Pharaoh
• enslaves Jews and others
• Thutmose I (1525-1512) –
• Moses born
• Moses grew up in the courts of Egyptian royalty (cf. Ex. 2:10; Acts 7:22)
• “By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to share ill treatment with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; accounting the reproach of Christ greater than the treasures of Egypt: for he looked unto the recompense of reward” (Heb. 11:24-26).
• Deliverer under Moses (see “In Search of Moses,” Time magazine)
• Moses writes Pentateuch (evidence; rebutting the Documentary Hypothesis; reliability of OT)
• Born c. 1523 B.C.
• Thutmose II (1512-1504) –
• Hatshepsut (pharaoh, 1503-1482) the Great Royal Wife of Thutmose II
• Hatshepsut (pharaoh, 1503-1482) the Great Royal Wife of Thutmose II did not give birth to a male child but did give birth to a daughter named Neferure.
• she had no natural male heir to the throne
• It is likely that Hatshepsut would seek to adopt a male child
• Moses was to be her heir-apparent.
• Some claim to the throne, as Thutmose II did not have a male child by Hatshepsut
• Thutmose II wants line to pass to Thutmose III, son by a concubine
• Thutmose II dies while Thutmose III is young, and Hatshepsut and boy are co-rulers
• As a gift of the god of the Nile, Hatshepsut adopted the baby as her son and named him Moses  (Exodus 2:10)
• Thutmose III stages coup d’etat of sorts
• Ends up eradicating almost all her monuments throughout Egypt
• Speculation that she adopted the Jewish faith
• Nevertheless, in ca. 1483 B.C. Moses fled Egypt and it is exactly in this period (give or take a year) that chronologists pin the successful revolution against Hatshepsut and when Tutmose III seized the throne.
• We can logically connect these two events
• Hatshepsut had groomed Moses as her successor
• implication is in Acts 7 that Moses could have become the ruler of Egypt (cf. Hebrews 11:24), but turns them down in 1512 when Thutmose I dies
• When Thutmose III received word that Moses had killed an Egyptian it was a defining moment, a politically expedient opportunity to use this information to rid himself of this hated rivals Hatshepsut and Moses
• Moses, apparently anticipating this, fled from Egypt to Sinai (Ex. 2:15)
• Amenhotep II (1450-1425) – Pharaoh of Exodus (c. 1443/1438 B.C.)
• Indirect proof:
• “Furthermore, we learn from the Dream Stela of Thutmose IV, son of Amenhotep II, that he was not the legitimate successor to the throne (J.B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near-Eastern Texts, p. 449). This means that Thutmose IV was not the firstborn son, who would have been the legitimate heir. The firstborn son of Amenhotep II had evidently died prior to taking the throne of Egypt. This would agree with Exodus 12:29 which says the pharaoh's first-born son was killed during the Passover.” (source)
• Exodus (Sidebars: Did the Exodus Never Happen?; Dating the Exodus)
• Advocates of the 13th century place Exodus about 1260 or 1250 BCE., but Merneptah stele seems to indicate that Israel was established in Canaan by 1200-1250 B.C.”

Israel functioned as an agriculturally-based/sedentary socioethnic entity in the late 13th century B.C., one that is significant enough to be included in the military campaign against political powers in Canaan. ... While the Merneptah stela does not give any indication of the actual social structure of the people of Israel, it does indicate that Israel was a significant socioethnic entity that needed to be reckoned with (Hasel, M.G. 1994 "Israel in the Merneptah Stela". Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 296: 54; 56, n. 12).

• Lends further credence to traditional date of 1450-1400 B.C. for the Exodus
• Tomb No. 353 – for Moses? Never finished once he abdicated
• Sidebar: Why no Egyptian documents attesting to Exodus?
• No surviving papyrus docs of any kind from Nile Delta
• Ten Commandments
• Wandering in desert
• Moses never steps foot in Promised Land

Into the Land

• Claims much of Canaan, but doesn’t eliminate all native peoples
• Take Jericho
• “According to the Bible, the conquest of Jericho occurred in approximately 1440 B.C. …First, they discovered that Jericho had an impressive system of fortifications. Surrounding the city was a retaining wall fifteen feet high. At its top was an eight-foot brick wall strengthened from behind by an earthen rampart. Domestic structures were found behind this first wall. Another brick wall enclosed the rest of the city. The domestic structures found between the two walls is consistent with Joshua's description of Rahab's quarters (Josh. 2:15). Archeologists also found that in one part of the city, large piles of bricks were found at the base of both the inner and outer walls, indicating a sudden collapse of the fortifications. Scholars feel that an earthquake, which may also explain the damming of the Jordan in the biblical account, caused this collapse. The collapsed bricks formed a ramp by which an invader might easily enter the city (Josh. 6:20). Of this amazing discovery Garstang states, "As to the main fact, then, there remains no doubt: the walls fell outwards so completely, the attackers would be able to clamber up and over the ruins of the city." This is remarkable because when attacked city walls fall inward, not outward. A thick layer of soot indicates that the city was destroyed by fire as described in Joshua 6:24. Kenyon describes it this way. "The destruction was complete. Walls and floors were blackened or reddened by fire and every room was filled with fallen bricks."{7} Archaeologists also discovered large amounts of grain at the site. This is again consistent with the biblical account that the city was captured quickly. If it had fallen as a result of a siege, the grain would have been used up. According to Joshua 6:17, the Israelites were forbidden to plunder the city, but had to destroy it totally…a piece of charcoal found in the debris was carbon-14 dated to be 1410 B.C. The evidence leads Wood to this conclusion. "The pottery, stratigraphic considerations, scarab data and a carbon-14 date all point to a destruction of the city around the end of the Late Bronze Age, about 1400 BCE." (source)
• ”
• Phillistines
• Just as archaeology has shed new light on the Bible, the Bible in turn has often proved a useful tool for archaeologists. Yigael Yadin, the Israeli archaeologist who excavated at Hazor in the 1950s, relied heavily on its guidance in finding the great gate of Solomon at the famous upper Galilee site: "We went about discovering [the gate] with Bible in one hand and spade in the other." And Trude Dothan notes that "without the Bible, we wouldn't even have known there were Philistines." (source)
• Monarchy begins – Saul-->David (cap. Jerusalem)-->Solomon (Temple)

o “Before the discovery of the "House of David" inscription at Dan in 1993, it had become fashionable in some academic circles to dismiss the David stories as an invention of priestly propagandists who were trying to dignify Israel's past after the Babylonian exile. But as Tel Aviv University archaeologist Israel Finkelstein observes, "Biblical nihilism collapsed overnight with the discovery of the David inscription." (source)

• “Given the grandeur of the Israelite monarchy under the two kings as described in the Bible, how could such an influential and popular regime have attracted so little notice in ancient Near Eastern documents from the time? The answer, suggests Carol Meyers, professor of biblical studies and archaeology at Duke University, may lie in the political climate in the region at the time, when, she says, "a power vacuum existed in the eastern Mediterranean." The collapse of Egypt's 20th dynasty around 1069 B.C. led to a lengthy period of economic and political decline for a nation that had exerted powerful influence over the city-states of Palestine during the Late Bronze Age. This period of Egyptian weakness, which lasted for over a century (until around 945 B.C.), saw a "relative paucity of monumental inscriptions," says Meyers. "The kings had nothing to boast about." (same source as above)
• Brief period of greatness c. 1000 B.C. as there is a power vacuum in the region
• By 1100 BC, complete collapse of urban civilizations of Mycenae and Hittites
• Destruction of cities along Syrian coast - Ugarit, Carchemish, Sidon (soon rebuilt, however), collapse of Canaan with invasions of Philistines
• By 1000, New Kingdom Pharaohs (20th dynasty) were defeated by bedouin warriors from Libya (Psammitic Pharaohs of OT)
• Idolatry leads to divided monarchy: Northern/Israel (721 B.C.) and Southern/Judea Kingdoms (586 B.C.)
• Northern Tribes scattered – ‘Ten Lost Tribes of Israel”
• Diaspora
• “With a new technique based on the male or Y chromosome, biologists have traced the diaspora of Jewish populations from the dispersals that began in 586 B.C. to the modern communities of Europe and the Middle East. The analysis provides genetic witness that these communities have, to a remarkable extent, retained their biological identity separate from their host populations, evidence of relatively little intermarriage or conversion into Judaism over the centuries.”
• Babylonian captivity 586-536 B.C.
• Return to build Temple after Decree of Cryus
• Jews come under Greek and then Roman rule

Jesus

• Born c. 6 B.C. in Bethlehem
• Born into a Jewish family – Mary and Joseph
• Cousin of John the Baptist
• He was a tekton (“craftsman”), which has broader meaning than “carpenter”
• Likely that he worked as a stonemason and woodworker in neighboring Sepphoris (one hour’s walk away)
• Fulfills 324 different messianic prophecies
• Lord, liar, or lunatic? (C.S. Lewis)

[part of lecture excerpted in part from A 15^th Century Exodus?]

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