Claim:
Archaeology supports the accuracy of the Bible. The Bible's historical account has many times been substantiated by new archaeological information.
Response:
1. Archaeology supports at most the general background of the Bible and some relatively recent details. It does not support every biblical claim. In particular, archaeology does not support anything about creation, the Flood, or the conquest of the Holy Land.
If a few instances of historical accuracy are so significant, then an equal claim for accuracy can be made for the Iliad and Gone with the Wind.
2. Archaeology contradicts significant parts of the Bible:
- The Bible contains anachronisms. Details attributed to one era actually apply to a much later era. For example, camels, mentioned in Genesis 24:10, were not widely used until after 1000 B.C.E. (Finkelstein and Silberman 2001).
- The Exodus, which should have been a major event, does not appear in Egyptian records. There are no traces in the Sinai that one would expect from forty years of wandering of more than half a million people. And other archaeological evidence contradicts it, showing instead that the Hebrews were a native people (Finkelstein and Silberman 2001; Lazare 2002).
- There is no evidence that the kingdoms of David and Solomon were nearly as powerful as the Bible indicates; they may not have existed at all (Finkelstein and Silberman 2001; Lazare 2002).
Many claims that archaeology supports the Bible, especially earlier ones, were based on the scientists trying to force the evidence to fit their own preconceptions.
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