Blog #455: Ancient Israel: Fact of Fiction?

‘A common accusation by some of Israel’s neighbours and protestors in the U.S. is that Israel today is guilty of occupying the Palestinians’ homeland’, so starts Dr. Don Bierle in an article posted on the faithsearchlearning.org website. (As an aside, Dr. Bierle was our keystone speaker at our church’s 50th Anniversary celebration in 2015).

Dr. Bierle continues, ‘As recently as 2016, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) approved a resolution that Jerusalem is indeed significant – but only to Islam, not to Israel. According to the declaration, Palestinians are the only true indigenous people. UNESCO’s position is that the Old Testament is not historical, and that the Jews had no ancestral connection with the Holy Land or an ancient Israel. The resolution maintained that there never was a Jewish kingdom under a real King David a thousand years before Jesus Christ came. Thus, the Jews had no rights to Jerusalem, the Temple Mount, and Palestine. They were an “occupying” power – in other words “colonialists”.’

As a Christian, I cannot accept such a contention. I agree with Dr. Bierle’s concern. If the Jews had “no ancestral connection with the Holy Land or an ancient Israel” then we may as well throw out the Bible as it is simply untrustworthy. Thankfully, as Dr. Bierle writes, ‘Recent excavations in Jerusalem are dealing a fatal blow to the rampant propaganda and historical revisionism which denies that the Jewish people have been indigenous to the land for more than 3,800 years. These discoveries are also reaffirming the historicity of the Bible and a real ancient Israel.’ Archaeology is God’s answer to critics, has long been my contention. We are privileged and blessed to live in this age in which archaeology has refuted all the untruths said by critics and opponents of Judaism and Christianity and the Bible.

Here are a few of the archaeological discoveries Dr. Bierle cites to prove that ancient Israel was fact, not fiction:

1. The Siloam inscription/Hezekiah’s Tunnel. The Bible says that in the eighth century B.C. King Hezekiah constructed a tunnel through the mountain from the eastern Gihon Spring to a pool on the southwest corner of the City of David (2 Chronicles 32:30). Archaeology has proven this to be true.
2. The Pool of Siloam. Subjected to much ridicule and dismissal, the Pool of Siloam mentioned in Isaiah 8, Nehemiah 3, and John 9, has been discovered by archaeologists in recent years. Excavations have revealed an astounding 180-feet-wide, and sixteen-step staircase. It led down to a larger than an Olympic-sized pool which is dated to the eighth century B.C., affirming the accuracy of the biblical accounts of the Pool of Siloam as well as the presence of Jews in ancient Jerusalem.
3. Royal Seal of Yahuchal. In 2005, a royal clay seal was found in the excavation of the City of David. The inscription on it, written in paleo-Hebrew, read, “Yehuchal, the son of Shelemiah”, which matches one of the officers of King Zedekiah who tried to kill the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 38:1) in the sixth century B.C.
4. Golden Bell. Exodus 28:34 describes God’s instruction for making the robe of the High Priest. The hem was to be lined with small gold bells with a chime inside. None had ever been found to document such, until recently when one was discovered with the chime still inside and working!
5. Pilgrimage Road. The Pool of Siloam was so large, it is thought, to serve the tens of thousands of pilgrims needing ceremonial cleansing before going to the Temple. The Pilgrimage Road leading to it has been discovered and will be excavated as a tunnel and opened to the public in the future.
6. Tel Dan Inscription. In 1993, an inscription was uncovered at Tel Dan in northern Israel mentioning King Hazael of Aram-Damascus celebrating a victory of the “King of the House of David”, silencing those who claimed that King David and his house (his family dynasty) were fictional.

This is only a fraction of the evidence. For example, The Merneptah Stele, was created in the time of Merneptah, a pharaoh in ancient Egypt and who reigned from 1213-1203 B.C. The nation of Israel is mentioned on the last three of the 28 lines of the stele as one of the nations Merneptah went to war against. The stele represents the earliest textual reference to Israel and the only reference from ancient Egypt (discovered so far).

As archaeology continues to prove the existence of ancient Israel, the truth of the Jewish history is confirmed, and the bible as a whole is validated. This doesn’t mean that we need to agree with everything going on in modern Israel, but it does take away the fraudulent claims that ancient Israel never existed and that Jews have no historical ties to the land.