Abstract

The Bible, like other areas of Christian theology, has actually failed to stand up to the trust that Christians, rightly or wrongly, had put in it.

John Bowden, SCM

© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Thursday, 30 May 2002

Life or Death?

Is the bible fact or fiction? Are the accounts of the bible true? Our answer is a matter of life and death, according to somebody called Paul Billington. The “truth of the bible is of vital importance to all of us”, (he means Christians, not anyone with discernment) because, if the bible is not true, then its promise of life must be false, for “belief and obedience will bring us life, whereas unbelief and sin will result in death” (Dt 30:19; Mk 16:15-16; Rom 6:23; Jn 5:28-29). Moreover, says the bible, the nation that turns its back upon the word of God and His teaching cannot expect His protection or blessing (Gen 12:3; Ps 9:17-20; Jer 18:7-10).

We are back to the heathen hordes who will get no blessing from God, while the Christian nations will. This sort of racist monoculturalism ought to have been rejected even by Christians, but it seems it has not.

Billington wants us to consider the integrity of those who wrote the scriptures, as well as of those who later endorsed them. Of course we should consider their integrity, but there are two possibilities at least—they had it or they did not—and Christians will consider only one. He adds that this includes the recorded statement of the Lord Jesus Christ that:

Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?

John 5:46-47

So the question arises as to whether even the words of Christ are to be believed. It is true, but who knows that these are the words of Christ. It depends on the integrity of the biblical authors, and their human fallibility. What would it matter if they were indeed false words? It is only because Christians believe that the bible is true and Jesus was God that they think the words the New Testament records are true and Jesus could never lie. If he were a man then he could, and if Christ were himself a Christian we can be sure he would! If he were a plain man, he could have been mistaken. Christians cannot consider that either, because they are not considering evidence but only testing their own dogmatism.

“Did Moses really exist?” is a perfectly sensible question, but Billington, locked into Christian irrationality, says it “echoes the scepticism and the agnosticism that is both fashionable and respectable with so many leading scholars and academics today”. He is saying that no one should ask questions like that! Christians do not like to be questioned about their beliefs, ultimately because they know they are irrational and ill-founded. If no one is allowed to question them, then they have no need to defend the indefensible. This was the state of Europe for over a thousand years before the Enlightenment. Why should the emergence from Christendom be called the Enlightenment? Christianity always claims to be light. Yet, history shows that Christian control brought down a profound darkness and it only lifted with the Enlightenment. It proves that even Christian metaphors are lies.

Billington has no idea of how inquiry works, because Christians have never been encouraged to inquire. Christians were expected never to ask anything about what they believed. Never to seek whether it was true, but simply stick to “belief and obedience”. It suited the rulers of society whether it suited God or not. People had to believe it, and that was it. It is not true now, because people have passed beyond this backwards and superstitious phase we had in our history, but backwoodsmen like Billington want to take us back there. He says questioning “reflects the unbelief which we see in modern society”.

Truth or Lies?

Billington says evidence for the truth of the bible is overwhelming, and offers us over 40 major archaeological discoveries (“and this is by no means exhaustive”) which endorse scripture. Well, we shall look in a moment at the evidence Billington offers, but first let us consider precisely what he is trying to claim. He speaks of the truth of the bible, but what does he mean by this? Is he saying he is refuting some such claim as, “The bible is not true”? What does Billington understand by this, if it is what he is refuting?

Is the film Star Wars true? Is the film Four Weddings and a Funeral true? Is the film Gladiator true? Is the film The Madness of King George true? Is the film The Longest Day true? Of course, none of them are true, although they contain various degrees of truth in them. They vary from purely fantastic science fiction, through everyday fiction set in the modern day to fictional representations of events, that really happened in history, in a more or less realistic setting. Yet all of them are fictional! They are not true, and the realism of the setting does not make them true. It might be that the realism of the setting tells us something about history, but it is only something we can accept because we have independent historical proof.

Thus, in Gladiator, we might note that there was a Roman emperor called Marcus Aurelius, and he had a general called Maximus who finished up as a gladiatior. What, in this, is true? We simply cannot tell from the film alone. In fact, there was an Emperor Marcus Aurelius, but he had no general Maximus who became a gladiator. The film contains historic truths but from the film alone, no one knows what they are.

Now Billington, and Christians generally, are so besotted by the book that they have already been told—in their indoctrination into Christianity—is a holy and therefore infallible book, that they believe everything in it. It is not a matter of discernment on their part. It is true! That is the end of it!

Biblical skeptics say no more than that the bible is essentially a devotional literary work, mainly fiction set in a variety of more or less realist settings in the first millennium BC up until the first century AD. The fact that the settings are fairly realistic does not mean that the storyline is true. What is true can only be determined by external evidence, but when it is found in some cases, it does not verify the rest.

Billington rightly says that archaeology puts us in direct contact with the past—and in a different way from written records.

When a stone monument or clay tablet is unearthed bearing the name of a person in scripture, it provides physical evidence of bible truth.

But to say “because Pontius Pilate in the gospels is a real historic figure, the gospels must be true, and so Jesus really rose from the dead” is obviously absurd, but that is what Christian tricksters like Billington try to make out.

Historical Settings

So let us be clear, because much of Billington’s “evidence” is simply that the settings of the biblical stories actually fit the first millennium BC, that such “evidence” does not prove the bible stories to be true. At best all it shows is that the authors made some effort to be sure that the books they were writing for their own political purposes were as historically accurate as they could make them. Since they were originally written by the Persians who had access to the royal and diplomatic archives of Assyria and Babylon, it is true that there is genuine history in the bible, but only verification from outside proves it. All Billington is doing is finding the parts of the biblical setting for which there is external evidence. Rarely, if ever, is it particular evidence. It is general evidence that any intelligent person—of the type likely to be writing such a book—would know at the time, or could find out.

An example of recent battles over historicity has been one concerning the Ebla tablets discovered in 1976. An Italian archaeologist, professor Giovanni Pettinato, epigrapher of the Italian excavation team, was discredited for saying that the Ebla tablets referred to Sodom and Gomorrah and other biblical cities. His successor, Alfonso Archi disagreed. Pettinato identified as Sodom a city mentioned in the Eblaite tablets as Sidamu, but Archi said another tablet placed Sidamu in northern Syria, nowhere near the Dead Sea. Using the vilest calumny, Billington blames the change on to pressure from the Syrian Government, even though he deigns to accept that “professionals” were involved, and he can hardly deny that even the Syrian government could not alter baked clay tablets 4000 years old. Billington even says without a blush:

Anti-Zionist elements did not want to see any evidence brought to light which might support the book of Genesis—and therefore Israel’s early claim to the land of Canaan.

One could claim with equal ease that Billington is doing the opposite. It shows the scandalous depths that supposed Christians will sink to to defend their so-called faith. It is not isolated. Scholars with the temerity to question the validity of scriptural ideas have been faced with this unpleasant and intimidating baloney. The Inquisition is not yet repealed. Let us be clear again. If scholarship finds that the Passion of Jesus was a mystery play, or that Moses was invented by the Maccabees, then scholars must say so. Christian “truth” says otherwise, but scholars should never mix up truth with Christian “truth”. Christian truth is too often pious lying, and even Christian scholars should not indulge in it. If they believe in God, why do they think He wants them to lie for Him? If He has a purpose in exposing Christianity as a scam, do they want to defy their own God?

Another fierce controversy has raged over the Dead Sea Scrolls, with awkward questions being asked as to why the scrolls were not being published—and why even fully qualified experts were not being permitted to see the unpublished material. Evidence has been presented to show how that the Vatican was at work suppressing scroll material. Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archaeology Review defended the Vatican (Nov/Dec issue 1991). If Rome was involved in suppressing evidence, then it has been thoroughly suppressed because, although what remains strongly suggests Jesus was an Essene with an eschatological aim—well outlined on these pages—not enough alters the essence of Christianity, for believers, to damage it. If any did, then it has gone for good!

Billington thinks whether Joshua conquered Palestine (as the bible says), or whether Israelites lived there all the time because they were Canaanites as claimed by bible skeptics is a controversial question. The question has been settled apart from dyed-in-the-wool rednecks who will not accept plain evidence because of their faith or politics. Billington deceptively writes:

When experts themselves cannot agree, what are laymen to make of it all?

Billington wants to use the close examination of experts as part of his argument for biblical truth, but typically, it has to uphold the bible, otherwise he does not want to hear it, or calls the experts “skeptics.” Thus he says:

When, as often happens, that evidence is examined, scrutinized and questioned—and yet survives the scholarly critics and sceptics—then we know that it is reliable indeed; far more so than if it had not been subjected to that process. It is not merely a question of certain discoveries supporting the bible’s record, but that those discoveries have been subjected to the most rigorous examination possible by men who are often hostile to the concept of bible truth.

And, on the other hand, will resist anything contrary to the bible, in many cases, whatever the evidence.

House of David?

In 1993, in Dan, the first inscription apparently bearing the phrases “House of David” and “King of Israel” was found. Billington tells us a critic, Philip R Davies, challenged the claim, saying the inscription had been wrongly translated. “Davies was later roundly defeated by two other scholars.” The skeptic wants to know what position these “scholars” held vis-a-vis biblical truth. Were they objective or did they have the biblical truth axe to grind? The fact of the matter does not need scholars, but can easily be explained for people to make up their own minds.

The inscriptions says “bytdwd”. The debate is over what it means. It seems to say, as Billington tells us, “House of David”, but it is far from certain. Let us say it does mean that, though. What does “House of David” mean? The bible truth crackpots immediately say it refers to the Jewish founder David, and that house means dynasty. It is nothing less than the line of people that led to Jesus, Christians like to think. But “house” is more likely to mean a… er, house! Or rather, since people lived in tents or simple houses, a house really meant something grander, a dwelling for a god—a temple. Billington actually admits this in his list of examples, hoping that no one will notice. So, it could imply that David, who has never been mentioned as a king of Judah outside the bible in any documents, might have been a god with a temple.

He might even have been a god with followers, if house means followers as it often does. The Assyrians called Israel the House of Khumri, so everyone in the country were of Khumri’s house. Khumri, apparently the biblical Omri, certainly had a dynasty which ruled Israel for a short while, but House of Khumri in Assyrian records did not mean the dynasty but the country. Skeptics are interested in history, not dogma. If David is shown to be a great tenth century prince, they are glad that the evidence is clear. When it is not, only fools and charlatans pretend it is, for their own reasons.

Billington turns again to context, seeking to amaze ignorant Christians by citing the kings of Israel and Judah whose names have been found in Assyrian and Babylonian records. David and Solomon, supposedly the greatest kings of Israel and Judah, are not among them, but he is pleased to announce that by 1870, Omri, Ahab, Jehu, Azariah, Menahem, Pekah, Hoshea, Hezekiah and Manasseh, and several Assyrian kings, several Syrian kings, an Egyptian king, a Babylonian king and several Persian kings found in the bible had been identified in external records. Billington desperately seeks to prove that the bible is not science fiction like Star Wars, but skeptics already accept that it is not!

What he succeeds in doing is showing that the bible was not written until the last of these kings lived, otherwise he could not have been in it. The last one is probably Darius II of Persia, called Darius only and wrongly assumed by biblicists to be the Great Darius, Darius I. However, a later king is alluded to so clearly that he can be identified without a name. Daniel alludes so plainly to events of the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes of Seleucia that the book can be dated within a year or two of 164 BC. Christians will tell us it was prophecy, but after 164 BC, Daniel suddenly lost his prophetic skills, because nothing after then can be identified.

Shishak—Sheshonq?

Billington goes on with his citation of kings, not always honestly, naturally:

In 1799 the discovery of an Egyptian relief depicted Pharaoh Shishak who is mentioned in 1 Kings 14:25-26.

The Egyptian kings, there are five of them, supposed to be Shishak are called Sheshonq or Shoshenq, not Shishak. The “n” is absent from the Hebrew rendering, but the biblicist Egyptologist, professor Kenneth Kitchen, says that the “n” was silent in the Egyptian pronunciation. Others are less convinced and think that Shishak might have referred to Rameses II, whose popular name was Shisha. The “k” was a diliberate addition by the biblical authors to make the name sound like “Hooligan” in Hebrew. If the “k” was deliberately added, it means that the various Sheshonqs are less likely as Shishak because even if Kitchen is right that the “n” was silent, the “q” was not as well! Shishak is assumed to have been Sheshonq I because he lived at the right time for Solomon, but, if the story of Solomon is a romance, any of the Sheshonqs could have been the model for Shishak.

The best candidate is the last, Sheshonq V who reigned 773-735 BC, and was a contemporary of a Jeroboam, but not Jeroboam I, but Jeroboam II (794-754 BC). It so happens that Shalmaneser IV (782-773 BC) was a strong king of Assyria at this same time, and his name is Solomon (Salimanu-eser, Solomon directs). A king of Phœnicia also at this time was a Hiram. It looks more likely to the skeptic, in the absence of any evidence of the biblical stories of the tenth century, that a set of kings from the eighth century have been written backwards in history as the basis of the biblical romance of the greatness of an Israelite Solomon.

The discovery of the Moabite Stone in 1868 revealed that 2 Kings 3:4-5 was describing a real event involving real people.

Billington, like all Christian apologists, finds it impossible to tell the truth. The Moabite Stone tells a different story from the bible, and, indeed, the two cannot be reconciled, according to N P Lemche. The Moabite Stone tells us that certain things were common between Moab and Israel, such as that they both had the same attitude to god, but the Moabite god was not Yehouah!

Billington jumps to Hezekiah of Judah. In about 1850 an Assyrian prism was discovered which described Sennacherib’s invasion of the kingdom of Judah. The Taylor Prism, which refers to King Hezekiah of Jerusalem by name, is the Assyrian version of the story told in 2 Kings chapter 18 (2 Chr 32:1-23; Isa 36-37). The prism shows that Sennacherib seiged Jerusalem into submitting and Hezekiah paid a large tribute to be spared. There is no mention of a murderous angel killing a large body of Assyrians, but the prism and the bible are unanimous that Hezekiah paid a large tribute.

In 1880 a plaque was discovered in a tunnel in Jerusalem and describes the construction of the conduit that brought water into the city:

And the rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and all his might, and how he made a pool, and a conduit, and brought water into the city, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?

2 Kgs 20:20

“Hezekiah’s” tunnel can be seen by visitors to Jerusalem still today. Billington does not stop to consider that, since it can be seen today, it could be seen by the authors of the bible, who could have reported with no other knowledge that the tunnel was built by Hezekiah. In no way does the biblical mention show that the reports in the bible of Hezekiah are contemporary. Indeed, the single biblical verse is so terse and out of context, some of those skeptics that Billington does not like to open their mouths think the verse was added because the tunnel was built by the Maccabees.

The same applies to the seige of Lachish by Sennacherib. We are now well into recorded history, with the Assyrians keeping concise but well publicised records and drawing bas reliefs of their campaigns. Records like these would certainly have been known by the Persian or Greek authors of the bible as we know it.

Since the skeptics are not questioning the historical background to the bible after about 850 BC—except perhaps that Judah was never a parallel kingdom with Israel, other than in the last decade or so of Israel’s existence, when Judah probably seceded from Israel with Assyrian support—Billington turns to the real points of contention, the history of Israel and Judah before 850 BC—the period of biblical history before the so-called divided monarchy.

Exodus

Scholars say that there is no proof whatsoever that the exodus took place. William Dever, a University of Arizona archaeologist and scarcely skeptical, calls Moses a mythical figure. Even Father Anthony Axe of the Ecole Biblique, Jerusalem, a Vatican institution, admits:

A massive exodus that led to the drowning of Pharaoh’s army would have reverberated politically and economically through the entire region.

Billington resorts to the old Christian fall-back, “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” He says that those who sensibly think without evidence nothing should be presumed to exist are on the “dubious ground of having to argue from silence”. When something is believed despite the silence, it is impossible to argue rationally for it. Billington therefore leaves it at that, although, he cannot resist returning to it in a few paragraphs.

He does however have a go at British archaeologist, Kathleen Kenyon, a popular pastime for timewasting believers these days. She found no evidence whatsoever of Joshua’s conquest of the city of Jericho. The city was deserted during the time of Joshua. Other biblical critics argue that the Israelites cannot have settled the land of Canaan by conquest because there are no signs of any such conquest that are not better explained by local wars, and most importantly, there is no sign of cultural change in the centuries of deposits excavated around the supposed conquest.

Billington, like most apologists, take comfort in the ramblings of Bryant Wood. A singularly inconsequential man, his only claim to fame is that he contradicts every reputable archaeologist about Jericho, and so regularly gets cited by crooked apologists like Billington. He simply contradicts Kenyon. He did find evidence of Joshua’s assault on Jericho and Kenyon was biased or got it wrong. Archaeolologist, William Dever, is no biblical minimalist but says of Kenyon’s work at Jericho (emphasis added):

Garstang had dated a massive mudbrick city wall to the fifteenth century BC and thus adduced it as evidence of the Israelite destruction claimed in Joshua 6 (relying on the date of c 1446 BC for the exodus as typical of the scholarship of the day). Kenyon, however, showed conclusively that this was the city wall of the last urban Early Bronze phase, c 2300 BC at latest.

Lutterworth Dictionary of the bible, sub voce “Jericho”

To believe Wood against these reputable archarologists is like believing Yuri Geller against Einstein. No one who is sane would do it.

Nor is it strictly true that there is absolutely no evidence of the Exodus—an ancient Egyptian account of a series of disasters suspiciously like the famous ten plagues came to light several years ago. This evidence was quickly buried…

Billington often likes to hint at suppressed evidence, implying some sort of conspiracy against the faithful ones. The conspiracy has always been by professional Christians against those who want to get at the truth. Needless to say, it would be remarkable if a civilization as long as Egypt’s did not have plagues and pestilence, and obviously they did, but they did not have the biblical sequence of plagues, and especially the last one!

Billington’s excuse for the absence of archaeological evidence of Moses and the exodus is that no one really knows just where to look. “The real historical location of Sinai is still largely guesswork.” He must mean the mountain, because there is no need to guess where the Israelites had to go to get from the Nile Delta to Jericho. He even tells us among his set of examples that maps have been discovered of their journey. Do not expect biblical apologists to be self-consistent. It is far from being quantum mechanics, but gets pretty hazy from sheer dishonesty.

Billington introduces the same excuse over the conquered city of Ai. “Scholars just aren’t sure if they have the right spot!” The truth is that Ai means ruin. The biblical authors knew it as a ruin at best, and otherwise a place called “Ruin” because it had once been a noted ruin, and the name had stuck. The conquest of it is therefore an attempt to explain aetiologically why it was ruined.

Ur or Urfa?

Ur of the Chaldees—the native city of Abraham (Gen 11:31) has been identified.

Has it indeed, or is this more chicanery? In the bible Chaldaea is synonymous with Babylon, but the scholars consider it was only so in the last millennium BC, not in the previous one when Abraham is supposed to have founded the patiarchal tradition. The city of Ur is in the very south of Mesopotamia, and most Christians intelligent or curious enough to know this think that this Ur is the one meant in the bible. The fact is that the Moslem tradition, supported by many modern scholars, and implied by the bible is that the city of Ur is really Urfa in modern Turkey, near the border with Syria. This is a neighbouring town to the city of Haran with which many of the patriarchs were plainly associated in the bible. Billington is merely stating his beliefs in that the home of Abraham was the southern Ur rather than the northern one. He simply does not know, but if the scholars find out, he will not want to know. He asks:

What reason is there then, to doubt that a man called Abram travelled from Ur, to Haran, and from there to Canaan?

Especially if the Ur is Urfa, there is every reason to think that a lot of men and women undertook the journey, and it is possible that any of the men could have been called Abram. The route was a regular trade route and was plied with caravans. Haran was famous as a transit and trading city. What is impossible is that the detailed adventures of one of these should have been set down contemporaneously for us all to read 4000 years later. Keeping diaries on tablets of stone was not practical.

Wanderers like nomads and travellers kept each other entertained at night with tall stories just as Chaucer told 3000 years later. Possible also, since the bible implies it, is that ancestor worship developed heroic tales of the ancestors and these became local gods. Abram, Isaac and Jacob were possibly local gods still remembered when the bible was first set down in the middle of the first millennium. It is unlikely and unreasonable to believe that the tales told of them are true history miraculously preserved.

Billington fatuously argues:

Is it reasonable to claim that the bible account of this is a fable, merely because we have not found any external evidence to confirm it? To reject the bible on such grounds must, perforce, require pre-conceived anti-bible prejudice.

Is it reasonable to claim that Humpty-Dumpty is a fable, merely because we have not found any external evidence to confirm it? To reject Humpty-Dumpty on such grounds must, perforce, require pre-conceived anti-Humpty prejudice.

Going to desperate extremes, Billington claims now that the fact that the bible contains so many identifiable early and widespread myths is proof of it!

The creation of man, the role of the serpent, the fruit of the tree, the fall into disgrace and the expulsion from paradise, are themes which are found in various forms and in most cultures throughout the world—and those themes are found to be as old as the cultures themselves.

So, those among you Christians who thought the bible was the unique revelation of God will have to think again. But fear not, Billington notices a potential gaffe here and turns it to his advantage—all world cultures are derived from a common beginning—Noah and his sons (Gen 9:19; 10:32). Noah already had the bible complete in those just post-diluvian times because Billington declares the bible “is the original (as this writer believes)”, and other myths must be “corruptions that have evolved from that source”. This sadly simple man says the mythology of India has the Nagas which “usually appear in the form of ordinary snakes”, statues of which “are always placed under a tree”. Buddhism has “the tree of wisdom.”

Such echoes of Genesis are too close to be missed!

Anything so foolish can hardly be argued against. The plain original of the Genesis Creation myth has been found in Mesopotamia in more than one version, it seems, and the general set of myths in Genesis obviously originate as a whole from Mesopotamia as the story of Tower of Babel plainly shows, if nothing else. Yet their author was supposed to have been an Egyptian! If the bible preceded all these other myths and they were derived from it, then why were not equivalent myths from the rest of the bible so derived, and how is it that the bible plainly relates historic events up to the second century BC when it was, according to Billington, the original of myths thousands of years older? Prophecy? Even Christians must have difficulty accepting this, surely?

Belshazzar and Darius

Billington tells us that Dr Farrer, in 1895, stated: “There is no Belshazzar.” No such king was known and indeed, no such king ever existed, so Farrer, the devout Christian scholar and Dean of Canterbury, thought he was an invention—like Maximus in Gladiator. In fact, Belshazzar was the son and regent of king Nabonidus, and the offer to Daniel that he would be “third ruler” meant just that, because Belshazzar was regent (second ruler) to the king and Daniel would be the next in authority. So, Farrer was proved wrong, and the bible right in this instance, and Billington concludes hopefully:

The unexpected sometimes shows up!

What Billington does not want to tell his little luvvies is that Daniel was written 400 years after all these events, some of which had already become legendary. Belshazzar’s feast was well known widely. Xenophon refers to it in Persian times. John C H Laughlin in Lutterworth’s Dictionary, sub voce Belshazzar, says:

The story of Belshazzar has all the hallmark’s of historical fiction and needs to be read in the light of the Jewish persecution by Antiochus IV Epiphanes…

Belshazzar was not the king (Dan 5:1), was not the son of Nebuchadrezzar (Dan 5:2) and probably died fighting the Persians rather than while feasting, though he evidently did have a great feast at some point. The conqueror of Babylon was not Darius the Mede (Dan 5:31), like Belshazzar at the start of this section, an unknown man. The Persian king when Babylon fell was Cyrus, but the confusion is that Babylon rebelled at the start of the reign of Darius the Great and he recaptured it in 521 BC. Whoever wrote the romance of Daniel in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, 400 years after the events, mixed up these two conquests of Babylon. So, Billington retrieves the historicity of Belshazzar but omits to tell his admiring clappies the rest of the story. That is God’s Truth!

The city of Lachish was one of the few remaining cities prior to the complete collapse of the kingdom of Judea (Jer 34:7). Billington now comes to the Lachish letters, discovered in the 1930s. They mention several names that also appear in Jeremiah—Gemariah (Jer 36:10), Jaazaniah (Jer 35:3), Neriah and Baruch (Jer 36:4), Mattaniah (who is King Zedekiah, 2 Kings 24:17). These letters also refer to a prophet who was seen to be demoralizing the people and instigating a policy of non-resistance to the Babylonians (Jer 38:1-4, or Jer 26:20-21). Billington jumps to the conclusion, with most scholars admittedly, that these are the people mentioned in the bible and he writes:

The reality of these people and of the situation as described in the bible is thus confirmed for us.

Well, the people might have been real, but was the situation the right one, or had Jeremiah done what the author of Daniel and other biblical authors did—written pseudepigraphs, works set in the past but really allegories of the then present day? The Persian period is almost absent in Judah for the simple reason that the bent scholars dated all Persian strata as Babylonian or Assyrian strata. The destruction found at Lachish among which the letters were found was assumed from a comparison with Jeremiah to have been the conquest by Babylon in about 587 BC.

The actual situation might have been 100 years later when the Egyptians, assisted by the Jews, revolted against Persia and had to suffer corrective expeditions which were quite savage. The author of Jeremiah had written his account dated at the time of the previous conquest by Babylon to show that the situation was parallel and so would the fate of the Jews be, unless they came to order!

A number of seals were identified in 1986 which dated to this same time (supposedly 586 BC). The dating is circular in all of these instances. One of these seals read “Belonging to Baruch son of Neriah”. Billington says:

Without any doubt this is the man who was Jeremiah’s scribe (Jer 36; 45). A finger print on the seal is probably his.

The seal is dated from Jeremiah, but Jeremiah is dated from its own account. It is like someone dating the Last Days of Pompeii, by Bulwer Lytton, to the first century AD because that is what its contents were about! The seal should have been dated independently and the book called Jeremiah dated from that, if the identities were felt to be secure. One thing is certain, and that is that many more seals and bullae come from the Persian period than from earlier times in Judah!

Another example is a seal-bulla found in excavations in Jerusalem (1982-1983) which reads “belonging to Gemariah son of Shaphan”. This man was among the first audience ever to hear the prophecy (Jer 36:12-13). The seal of Gemariah, together with other seals and bullae, were discovered in a “thick level of soot” according to The Jerusalem Post. The Babylonians burnt the great houses of Jerusalem to the ground (Jer 52:13).

Yet in “the burnt remains of a home” were pig bones and other un-Jewish items! A toilet was also discovered which revealed that the people were infested with tape worms from pork, and other parasites. The biblicists immediately react that it is proof of “idolatry and wickedness”. If the archaeologists have dated this layer correctly, it is proof that before the Persian conquest the religion of the people was not Judaism as it became. If the dating is wrong, and the destruction is from more than 100 years later in the Persian period, it suggests that the Persians had still not introduced Judaism, or that people being settled in the area by the Persians did not have the same taboo against pigs that the Jews had, or were to have.

Biblicists see in it evidence of the Babylonian siege, and note the absence of grain foods and the presence of pollens. It might indeed be interpreted as a seige, but if one happened in about 450 BC, soon after tha city had started to be rebuilt, that would be the most evident destruction layer.

Some false weights were also discovered, hollowed out to give less than true value. Billington says it brings to life the picture described in Jeremiah 9:2-6. Inded, it does, but that does not date the account. The Persians were sticklers for honesty because of the importance of trade to the empire, and introduced coinage, and fixed weights and measures, to improve trade through improving trust. The tirade of Jeremiah against deceit is far more appropriate for the Persian period that any time before.

Overwhelming Evidence?

Let us look at the list Billington gives as his overwhelming evidence of the truth of the bible, remembering that the realistic setting of a novel does not make its storyline true. A lot of the evidence is merely commonplace historical information that was well known when the bible was written, and can not be used as evidence that the events in it actually happened. For this reason, simple historical facts from the bible that have been shown to be historic are simply listed at the end. They show the biblical authors were not dunces, but that ought to be clear enough anyway.

1. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah, And Resen between Nineveh and Calah: the same is a great city.

   Genesis 10:10-12

   Billington says, these cities, the earliest that are mentioned in the bible were uncovered by archaeologists over a century ago and have been positively identified. So also the ancient Canaanite and Egyptian civilizations are known. Thus the setting for the Genesis narrative, the call of Abraham and his journey of faith has a historical basis to it that cannot be denied.

   Typical Christian trickery. The setting is not denied. The argument is not that the bible is set in an imaginery place. It was written in the ancient near east where these cities were famous cities of ancient civilizations. Why should anyone imagine that the ancient authors did not know about them? The fact that it is set in the ancient near east does not make its content true! Compare the film, Gladiator. It was convincingly set in the second century Roman empire, and even had some historic characters in it, but the story and the main characters were still fictional.

2. And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto Aaron and unto his sons, saying, On this wise ye shall bless the children of Israel, saying unto them, The LORD bless thee, and keep thee: The LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The LORD lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace. And they shall put my name upon the children of Israel; and I will bless them.

   Numbers 6:22-27

   Billington says a silver scroll dating to 600 BC quotes this passage, showing that this scripture existed before the date admitted by critics.

   This is outrageous trickery. The scroll does not quote this passage but only: “May Yehouah bless and keep you; May Yehouah cause his face to shine upon you and grant you peace”. The trickster wants his converts to think that Moses, Aaron and the Children of Israel are all mentioned. They are not. The scroll has a plain and simple blessing which does not say “the LORD” but Yehouah, a god that no one doubts was Canaanite, but he was one of the Canaanite pantheon of deities. The old scroll shows that the authors of the bible wrote into it a simple, and doubtless well-known blessing.

3. Balaam the son of Beor

   Numbers 22-24

   Billington says an inscription found in 1967 and published in 1976 refers to Balaam Son of Beor and records a prophecy similar to that found in scripture.

   The inscription was found in the Jordanian village of Deir Alla, which was Moabite territory in the first millennium BC. This inscription tells of a Balaam ben Beor, known to the locals as a prophet who would receive his prophecies at night. The biblical Balaam was a Moabite, but lived in Mesopotamia, not in Moab. Another minor detail is that there is a 700 year difference between the Balaam in Numbers, supposedly about 1400 BC and the Balaam in the Ammon inscription, supposedly about 700 BC. Most scholars would be troubled by a difference of 700 years but not Christians. Balaam might have been famous locally as an oracle (his donkey talked like Francis, the talking mule) or perhaps even a god (“Lord of the People”) and was incorporated into the Hebrew bible because Moabites lived in Abarnahara under the Persians too.

4. Exodus route maps?

   Numbers 33

   Billington says Egyptian maps found at Karnak confirm the geography of the exodus route taken by the children of Israel as recorded in the bible.

   Maps? Most of the cities along the alleged route that the Israelites traveled immediately before reaching the Jordan River—Iyyim, Divon, Almon-divlatayim, Nevo, and Avel Shittim (Num 33:45-50)—have not been located, and those that have been found did not exist at the time the bible reports. Yet Charles Krahmalkov notes what are apparently the same names on the walls of Egyptian temples like Karnak, not in any context of exodus. It seems it was part of a standard highway to Jordan. If the places are marked on the temple walls in precisely the same order, and are so obviously places on the way from Egypt to Canaan, then that could have been the source of them used by the much later author.

5. And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the LORD, and served Baalim, and Ashtaroth, and the gods of Syria, and the gods of Zidon, and the gods of Moab, and the gods of the children of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines, and forsook the LORD, and served not him. And the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel, and he sold them into the hands of the Philistines, and into the hands of the children of Ammon. And that year they vexed and oppressed the children of Israel: eighteen years, all the children of Israel that were on the other side Jordan in the land of the Amorites, which is in Gilead. Moreover the children of Ammon passed over Jordan to fight also against Judah, and against Benjamin, and against the house of Ephraim; so that Israel was sore distressed.

   Judges 10:6-9

   Billington tells us the earliest known reference to Israelites says that they were “laid waste”. It appears on the Merneptah Stele dating to 1209 BC.

   What dishonesties will these Christians not sink to? The passage in Judges does not say “laid waste” but “sorely distressed”, and it has nothing to do with the Merneptah Stele which told us that the Pharaoh, not the Philistines was doing any “laying waste” to be done. If Merneptah laid Israel waste in the time of the Judges, the bible does not record it!

6. An inscription discovered by archaeologists refers to “the House of Yehouah”—Solomon’s Temple at Jerusalem (1 Kg 6).

   Billington assumes that the House of Yehouah mentioned on the inscription is Solomon’s temple. Yehouah was a Canaanite god and will have had more than one “house”. Solomon’s temple is more likely to have been a temple to the god, Solomon (Shalim, the sun). The Jewish scriptures are full of names of temples to gods and goddesses other than Yehouah. They are names like Beth-El (Bethel), the House (Temple) of El.

7. An inscription found at Tel Dan in 1993, refers to the “House of David” and thus shows that David is a real historical character. (1 Kg 12:19-20)

   Billington repeats what has been noted above. Here his juxtaposition of the “House of Yehouah” meaning a temple and the “House of David” meaning a dynasty shows perfectly well why some scholars will not jump to the conclusion that “bytdwd” refers to a historic David. David and Solomon, in the biblical myths, could have been popular gods brought down to earth as heroes, to leave Yehouah as the only “true” god. That would explain the absence of any mention in external annals of any such astonishingly great men in reality.

8. A seal bearing the inscription “Shema servant of Jereboam” is but one confirmation of this king’s existence in history. (1 Kg 12:20)

   There are two Jereboams in the biblical account of Israelite history. One is likely to be historic and one is likely to be a myth, perhaps based on the historic one but set 200 years earlier. This seal is obviously of the historic one.

9. Jereboam’s “High Place” was discovered at Dan in 1979. (1 Kg 12:28-31)

   Billington assumes the “bamah” is Jeroboam’s. The Canaanites probably set up their temples in high places, and this one might have been there for centuries.

10. Victory relief of Shishak discovered at Karnak in 1799 shows him with prisoners from Palestine. (1 Kg 14:25-26)

    This has already been discussed above. Christians assume biblical Shishak is Sheshonq I.

11. The Royal buildings of Omri and Ahab were found by archaeologists in 1933. (1 Kg 16:23-24)

    Omri is accepted by biblical critics as the founder of the statelet of Israel. The historical setting of the bible approximates more closely to the historic from Omri onwards. The details of Israelite kings will have been taken by the Persian authors of the scriptures from Assyrian annals.

12. The black basalt Moabite Stone discovered in 1868 describes the battle between Mesha King of Moab and Ahab son of Omri. (2 Kg 3:4-5)

    What is surprising, among other things, about the stone is that it does not mention Ahab even though it mentions Omri! The attitude of the king of Moab to his god, Chemosh, is precisely that of the Israelites to their god, Yehouah, including the savage use of the “ban” (herem) whereby whole populations are murdered as a promise to the god!

13. An inscription of Shalmanezer II, known as the “Kurkh Monolith” mentions Ahab the Israelite. (2 Kg 17:3).

    The monolith mentions “Akha-Abbu matu Sir-’la-ai”, who, most scholars agree, is Ahab.

14. The Assyrian Black Obelisk discovered in 1846 depicts king Jehu. (2 Kg 10:31-32)

    This is correct and it is the only picture ever found of a contemporary likeness of a king of Israel. The rubric to the relief describes the king as “Iaua (Yehouah) the son of Khumri (Omri)”, but the main account around the top and base of the obilisk makes no mention of him. The bible says Jehu was “the son of Nimshi” (1 Kg 19:16) or he was “the son of Jehoshaphat the son of Nimshi” (1 Kg 9:14), and not of the “House of Omri”, the dynasty founded by Omri, which he rebelled against!

15. The tomb of the Caiaphas family was discovered in Jerusalem in 1990. Scholars believe that the tomb of Caiaphas himself is among them. (Mt 26:57)

    What is Billington trying to prove? No one doubts that Caiaphas was the High Priest at least some time during this period. What is in question is what happened when he was.

16. Two separate inscriptions have been found mentioning the name of the Roman governor Pontius Pilate. (Mt 27:2)

    What is Billington trying to prove? No one doubts that Pontius Pilate was the Prefect of Judaea. What is in question is what happened when he was.

17. The foundations of Jesus’s synagogue at Capernaum were identified in 1983, it lay underneath a later construction built by Jews around the third century. (Mk 1:21)

    This is quite simply Christian trickery at its most elementary and crudest. The Franciscans excavated a site which is most unlikely to be Capernaum, and the foundations are most likely the foundations of the later building, full stop. They are not earlier. Few of the places mentioned in the exploits of Jesus, like Capernaum, are identified, and it is likely that they will never be because they are Essene code names for other places, possibly major cities or possibly simply their own “camps”.

18. The huge platform upon which the temple was built in the time of Herod is there for all to see in Jerusalem today. Archaeologists have also uncovered amazing evidence of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, fulfilling the prophecy of Jesus in this chapter. (Lk 21:5)

    The platform there today might be part of Herod’s, but since Jerusalem was completely razed in 135 AD and rebuilt as a Roman city by Hadrian, what we see now is more likely to be the platform of Hadrian’s temple in Aelia Capitolina, the name of the new city. As for the earlier destruction of Jerusalem being a prophecy of Jesus, it was an easy one to write since the gospels were not completed before the temple was destroyed. The earliest gospel written was Mark, and few will deny that it was written at the earliest, during the Jewish War, and so could easily have been revised in the immediate years after it, to include a prophecy that was already fulfilled. Only drunkards and dunces ignore these truths.

19. In 1947 the now famous Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in caves. They demonstrate the accuracy and reliability of the biblical text. (Isa 30:8).

    The usual dissimulation. While it is true that the Great Isaiah Scroll, almost the complete text of Isaiah, is astonishingly similar to the present Masoretic version, other texts are astonishingly different considering these are sacred books that are always assumed to be unalterable. The text of Jeremiah from Qumran comes in two versions, one broadly like the Masoretic and the other broadly in agreement with the Septuagint. The Septuagint version is about 12 per cent shorter.

    The same observations are true for 1 Samuel which also seems to exist in different versions equivalent to the Septuagint (33 verses) and the Masoretic (58 verses). One of the Qumran versions supports the Greek over the height of Goliath (four cubits and a span) but otherwise seems like the Masoretic. A whole passage missing from all modern recensions but mentioned by Josephus in Antiquities of the Jews, is found at Qumran. The versions of the Psalms also differ considerably at Qumran.

    Thus, though we can praise the abilities of copyists to copy the ancient texts correctly most of the time, no one should imagine that there is some divine perfection in the transmission of these sacred works from a divinely dictated original. The clear evidence from Qumran is that originally there were different versions in circulation. Holy Ghost was being slack as it usually is!

The following set of examples have been considered already in the discussion, but were listed separately by Billington. All are examples of the bible being validated by external sources, but none are anything that an educated man writing in the latter half of the first millennium BC would not know. To repeat, biblical skeptics are not saying that the bible is made up in its entirety. It is set in a historical sequence of kings and major events. What is in question is the detail, which is a fictional, devotional romance about the intervention of God in human affairs, and little or nothing has so far detracted from that view. The history before Omri, however, seems almost total fantasy.

• A Hebrew seal found bearing the inscription: “belonging to Jehoahaz son of the king.” (2 Kg 10:35)

• A cunieform text discovered about 1850 is the record of Tiglath-pilesar and mentions kings Pekah and Hosea. (2 Kg 15:29-30; 16:7-9)

• In 1955 a tablet was deciphered which records the captivity of king Jehoiachin and the appointment of Zedekiah. (2 Kg 24:10,15,17)

• A Babylonian tablet describes the capture of Jerusalem by king Nebuchadnezzar. (2 Kg 24:10-17)

• The Yaukin Tablet found at Babylon (1932/3) mentions king Jehoiachin and the rations allowed to him. (2 Kg 25:27-30)

• A relief discovered at Sennacherib’s palace in Nineveh (about 1850) include the seige of Lachish. (2 Chr 32:9)

• The famous Cyrus Cylinder—a clay cylinder of king Cyrus describes the restoration of people after the liberation of Babylon. (Ezra 1:1-4)

• A reference to Sanballat, the governor of Jerusalem was found. (Neh 4:1-2)

• In about 1850, the records of Sargon were discovered. (Isa 20:1)

• Evidence of the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah (ie when this king supposedly lived) found at Gezer and other locations. (Amos 1:1)

• Reliefs found at Nineveh in the 1850s, and which can be viewed in the British Museum are burnt black by the fires of destruction. (Nahum 3:7,15)

This evidence—which to any reasonable man would be considered overwhelming—still isn’t enough!

Paul Billington

This biblical “evidence” is no more convincing that a man rose from the dead than that Bulwer Lytton was able to write a realistic story about the destruction of Pompeii, 1800 years later. Certainly, if anyone wanted to persuade people of impossible things then they would try not to get elementary things wrong. So, it is with the biblical authors. That they knew some battles and some kings should not easily persuade anyone that the supernatural events in these romances actually happened. Only a gullible fool would believe it. “Any reasonable man” would remain skeptical.

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