If You Think The Bible is FAKE, Watch This | Theological

First and foremost one needs to know that God exists. Without that knowledge you can't do the Shabbat, you can't do the kosher, you can't do the prayers because there needs to be this foundation And what does it mean to know that God exists, says Maimonides? To know in the same way that there are mathematical certainties. To know like quantitatively and qualitatively that God exists and that approach has always been how I understood biblical archaeology. It's not In my view, what archaeology does is it doesn't prove the theology of the Bible. It certainly is not an attempt to prove the miracles. But it is an attempt to authenticate the historicity of the Bible. Not just with big events, but also small. Some of the most stunning findings of archaeology is you'll take a biblical guy who's like a cameo appearance in the Bible. He's like one line, or three lines, and then disappears. And fast forward, and somebody is, a secular archaeologist is looking in, let's say, the archives of Nineveh. You know, he's looking at the Assyrian capital, or he's digging in Babylonia, and you find And this random guy in the Bible. There he is, suddenly he becomes historically validated. So, to me, the overall credibility of the Bible is greatly enhanced if the historicity of it can be proven. And that's what the book sets out to do. So then let me push back respectfully. If I'm a skeptic, why should I really care about the value of the history or legitimacy of the historicity? Because my true gripe here is the theology. I don't care if there was a temple. I care if the sacrifices in the temple were being accepted by this God. That's what I'm interested in discovering. Does the God of the Bible exist? Yeah. Well, first of all, one of the points that skeptics have made for a long time is, you know, that The Christian and the Jewish God is in the same position as, let's say, the Muslim God or the Hindu God. Like, how do you know it's your God, right? And the answer is, archaeologically, the only... Bible, the only sacred book that can withstand and has withstood 150 years of skeptical scrutiny is the Bible. You can't even attempt it with the Quran. No one even tries with the Hindu scriptures or the Buddhist scriptures. So, that tells you right away that the only contender is right here. Now, I think here's the second point. If you and I were jurors in a murder case, and it was a very exotic situation, And we had a suspect who told you, I'm now going to tell you what I did over the last, let's say, month. And he gives this far out tale, some of which is unbelievable, hard to verify. But embedded in this narrative are a lot of specific details. He's like, you know, on this date, I ate a Chick-fil-A and here's my receipt. And then I crossed over state lines and you can see me on the video camera. In other words, you are able to check him out at, let's say, 30 separate points. And you also ask yourself a different question. Is there a single fact that I can check out where he's lying? And let's say that at every point you're able to check him out. There's some things you can't check out. But at every point you can check him out, it's true. There's not a single finding that you have where you can show he's a liar. You're more likely to say, even though you told me some crazy stuff that on the face of it, I have a hard time believing. I'm more likely to believe you're a truth teller because where I can check you out, you're telling the truth. So, you know, on that note, we had in that chair Rabbi David Wolpe, one of the most prominent conservative rabbis in America, and he got into a lot of trouble 20 years ago. I mean, he's gotten into a lot of trouble since, but 20 years ago, because he comes out and says that the story of the splitting of the Red Sea and really the story of the Jews in Egypt under bondage, it just never happened. I mean, it's just so unbelievable. How can I, as a rational, logical person, how can I really go in front of my congregation and preach this thing? He's a smart guy, you're a smart guy. When you talk about being able to prove the historicity of, again, something like the temple or the birthplace of Jesus, I can certainly accept that, because why would I believe those things didn't happen? Jesus certainly was a human being who existed. But when it goes to more fanciful narratives like the splitting of the Red Sea, like the raining down of frogs, how are we as men of science and logic, how are we meant to, I don't know, suspend disbelief or try to understand things that is just simply unfalsifiable? We'll never be able to archaeologically ascertain whether there whether there was this mass splitting of the Red Sea. Okay, so now I think we are... Talking about two things that need to be separated. One is historical events, where if they occurred, it is reasonable to expect that they would leave some imprint. And you have to always go based upon expectation. And here's what I mean. Let's look at Abraham. Abraham was a nomad. He never had a home, right? He lived in tents. He moves with cattle. Uh, and... And so what are you looking for? Like, you know, now Abraham did buy a burial cave from Ephron the Hittite. And there is a good argument to be made that that cave has been located for reasons I can go into. But let's put that to the side. My point is you would expect to find very little in the footprints of Abraham. But if you find anything, you're super excited A, it's very ancient, and B, the guy moved around, right? Now we go to the Israelites in Egypt. The Israelites, first of all... There is uncontested evidence that there were Israelites or Semites in Egypt, a lot of them. There are cave paintings, they're not cave paintings, they're tomb paintings that show these people, you can obviously see Semites, the Egyptians had certain stylistic ways to draw people and there's also evidence from the Rekhmire tombs of Israelites and foreign slaves uh working with brick and straw you can actually physically see them in the paintings there are these egyptian overseers and so the scenes where pharaoh says you know i'm not going to give you as much straw you need to make the same amount of bricks i mean those scenes come to life in just looking at these egyptian paintings from the tombs of the pharaohs um and you can see that there's a kind of a consistency here it's not a proof but it's like yeah it's this is coming out of egypt And this is a depiction of a scene right out of the Bible. Now, the Egyptian royal literature is triumphalist. They're not unique in this regard. They never describe any defeats. So, right away you go, if the Israelites had kind of beaten them at their own game and taken off like this major embarrassment, they're not going to make any mention of it. You don't expect them to, and they don't. Now, so this, and I can obviously go into this, I have a chapter on this, the issue of were there Israelites in Egypt? Did they get away? And the other thing is, if they got away, you would expect to see a swelling of the population of Canaan. When the Israelites return, right? Because they're now coming across the desert and they're entering the promised land. You would expect to see some evidence in the promised land of these new people showing up. And indeed there is. We do know that by 1207, which is the date of the Merneptah stele, it's a pharaonic, it's from a pharaoh, basically boasting about having conquered Israel. And he doesn't mean the place Israel, he means the people of Israel. So obviously by 1207 BC, You do have Israelites who have returned to Canaan and in fact are strong enough that a pharaoh is like trumpeting, I got him, I beat him. Now, this is all completely different from something like the parting of the Red Sea because now you're talking about a miracle, right? And we also should be careful what we mean by miracle. What we mean by miracle is not necessarily a suspension of a natural law. What we mean by a miracle is that it is highly surprising that this strange thing happened at that time. So when they say, for example, like the walls of Jericho fell down, There's good reason to believe that the walls of Jericho fell from an earthquake. But the question is, why did the earthquake occur when basically Joshua and his forces were right there, boom, the earthquake, the walls come down. That's a miracle. It's a miracle not because God intervened and changed the laws of nature. It's a miracle because it happened miraculously at the time when the Israelites were attacking Jericho, right? Right. So, again. Archaeology does not prove miracles, and so if you're looking for proof of the miracles, we now have to start with David Hume's argument against miracles. I'm happy to do a show with you on this topic. I'm very interested in it, but it is beyond the province of archaeology. Hey, if you enjoyed that clip, make sure you click the link below to watch the full episode of Theological.