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Historicity of the Bible


Since the Bible is a library, rather than a single volume, and since it was written from ca. 850 BCE to ca. 150 BCE for the Hebrew Scriptures or Old Testament (OT), and from ca. 50 CE (for the earliest Pauline epistles) to ca. 125 for the Christian Scriptures or New Testament (NT) One cannot give a simple answer as to whether or not the Bible is historically true.

As an example, let us compare Sennacherib's Chronicle with 2 Kings and Isaiah and these sourced with 2 Chronicles, regarding King Hezekiah's revolt against the Assyrians under Sennacherib. In the next few posts, I'll look at each of these separately and try to consider each as dispassionately as possible, bearing in mind the in all of these accounts an editorial bias figures prominently.

I'll start in the next post with Sennacherib's chronicle of Hezekiah's revolt.

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Re: Historicity of the Bible


Regarding the revolt of Hezekiah, Sennacherib says (ANET, p. 288):

As to Hezekiah, the Jew, he did not submit to my yoke, I laid seige to 46 of his strong cities, walled fortresses, walled forts and to the countless small villages in their vicinity, and conquered them by means of well stamped earth ramps and battering rams brought thus near the walls, combined with the attack of foot soldiers using mines mines, breeches as well as sapper work. I drove out of them 200,250 people, young and old, male and female, horses, mules, donkeys, camels, big and small cattle beyond counting, and considered them booty. Himself I made a prisoner in Jerusalem, his royal residence, like a bird in a cage. I surrounded him with earthwork n order to molest those wo were leaving the city's gate. His towns which I had plundered I took away from his country and gave them Mitinti, king of Ashdod, Padi, king of Ekron, and Sillibel, king of Gaza. Thus I reduced his country, but I still increased the tribute and the katru-presents due to me as his overlord, which I later imposed on him beyond the former tribute, to be delivered annually. Hezekiah himself, whom the terror-inspiring splendor of my lordship had overwhelmed and whose irregular and elite troops, which he had brought into Jerusalem, his roya residence, in order to to strengthen it, had deserted him., did send to me, later, to Nineveh, my lordly city, together with 30 talents of gold, 800 talents of silver, precious stones, antimony, large cuts of red stone, couces inlad with ivory, nimedu-chairs inlaid with ivory, elephant hides, ebony-wood, box-wood and all kinds of valuable treasures, his own daughters, concubines, male and female musicians. In order to deliver the tribute and d to do obeisance as a slave, he sent his personal messenger.

I'll comment on Sennacherib's chronicle in my next post.
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Re: Historicity of the Bible


When considering Sennacherib's claims, I made the following observations. His description of Assyrian siege warfare matches the images the Assyrians left behind in reliefs of their armies attacking cities. Furthermore, archaeological evidence supports the Assyrian destruction of most of the cities of Judah.

His description of the tribute Hezekiah paid him is specific concerning the gold and silver: 30 talents of gold and 800 talents of silver. 2 Kings 18:14 says Sennacherib required of Hezekiah 30 talents of gold 300 talents of silver. While there's a disparity between the two accounts as to the amount of silver exacted in tribute, there's general agreement between Sennacherib and 2 Kings that the Assyrian king took a big bite out of the wealth of Judah.

There's a bit of bombast when Sennacherib refers to Hezekiah as one "whom the terror-inspiring splendor of my lordship had overwhelmed." However, over all, particularly wen it comes to archaeological evidence, Sennacherib's account seems credible.

In my next post I'll look at the account of the siege of Jerusalem in 2 Kings.

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Re: Historicity of the Bible


Up to a point, 2 Kings 18 agrees with Sennacherib's chronicle. However, 2 Kings has th Assyrian king besieging Jerusalem after Hezekiah has paid him the demanded tribute. When the Assyrian army arrives before the gates oft he city, a high Assyrian official, the Rabshakeh, accuses Hezekiah of depending on Egypt for support. This was true of the actual revolt by Hezekiah and other kings of the land of the Assyrian Empire that lay west of the Euphrates. The area wide revolt collapsed when Sennacherib arrived with the Assyrian army before the rebels could muser and coordinate their forces. Only Hezekiah remained obdurate, still hoping for Egyptian aid. However, once Hezekiah realized his position was hopeless, he capitulated and sent Sennacherib the tribute.

Having the Assyrians unreasonably lay siege to Jerusalem after the tribute has already been paid seems to b a story device to set them up as irrational tyrants, part of the "pride comes before a fall" motif. This is continued when Eliakim and Hilkiah, Hezekiah's ministers ask the Rabshakeh to speak in Aramaic, rather than in Hebrew. They don't want his threats to be overheard by the common soldiers manning the wall. He, however, refuses (2 Kgs.19:27 - 29):

But the Rabshakeh said to them, "Has my master sent me to speak these words to your master and to you and not to the men sitting on the wall, who are doomed to eat their own dung and drink their own urine?"
Then the Rabshakeh stood an called out in a loud voice in the language of Judah: "Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria! Thus says the king:'Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you out of my hand.

The Rabshakeh goes on to promise decent treatment of the people if they surrender and tells them that their God, Yahweh - referred to in the English text as "the LORD" - won't save them and adds (2 Kgs. 19:33 - 35):

Has any of the gods of the nations ever delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Separvaim, Hena and Ivvah? Have they delivered Samaria out of my hand? Who among all of the gods of the countries have delivered their countries out of my hand, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?"

Hezekiah appeals to Isaiah to intercede with God, and Isaiah assures him that Gd will save Jerusalem. Nevertheless, the Assyrian threats continue, and the Assyrian arrogance builds until God acts (2 Kgs. 19:35 - 37):

And that night the angel of the LORD went forth, and slew a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians; and when men arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodie. Then Sennacherib king of Assyrian departed, and went home, and dwelt at Nineveh. And as he was there woshiping in the house of Nisroch, his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer, his sons, slew him with the sword, and escaped into the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his stead.

To test the historical veracity of the Bible we need to answer three questions:

1) Did Jerusalem fall to the Assyrians, and ,if not, why not?

2) Was the 185,000 man Assyrian army besieging Jerusalem annihilated.

3 Diid Sennacherib's sons kill him?

I willl answer these question in my next post.
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Re: Historicity of the Bible


Here are the questions I posed in my last post:

1) Did Jerusalem fall to the Assyrians, and if not, why not?

2) Was the 185,000 man Assyrian army besieging Jerusalem annihilated.

3 Diid Sennacherib's sons kill him?

The Assyrians did not take Jerusalem. According to Sennacherib's chronicle he let Hezekiah off the hook after devastating every city in Judah but Jerusalem, giving bits of his kingdom to other tributary kings and beggering him with an excessive tribute.

According to 2 Kings the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem came after Hezekiah paid either all or part of the tribute, and Sennacherib's army, intent on destroying Jerusalem, was itself destroyed supernaturally in a single night.

So, which of these accounts is true, or does the truth lie somewhere in between the two? For the answer to that question, we must consider the fate of the huge Assyrian army, relations between Assyria, its neighbors and its tributary kings; and Assyrian policy toward rebellious kings. Had the Assyrians lost an army of 185,000 - wiped out to the last man - they would have been greatly weakened. In the wake of such a loss their neighbors, who hated them, would have attacked on all sides. Egypt would have occupied the Levant, the Chaldeans, living just west o fthe Euphrates river in southern Mesopotamia would have occupied Babylon (which they had done before) and the Medes would have made raids into Assyria. We know this because, once te Assyrian Empire did weaken during the lat days of the reign of Asshurbanipal, Egypt stopped paying tribute. Afte Asshurbanipal died, the Chaldeans and Medes invaded, the Scythians raided as far as the borders of Egypt, and the Egyptians invaded the Levant and Syria.

Assyria was also plagued by frequent revolts. Tiglath-pileser had to put down a revolt of Israel and Syria after crushing Urartu. Hezekiah's revolt was part of a general revolt on the part of all the subject kings west of the Euphrates. So had te Assyrians lost an entire army of 185,000, they would have face not only invasions, but as well widespread revolts from their tributary kings. None of this happened. Thus, it's highly improbable that the Assyrian army was annihilated.

Two of Sennacherib's sons did assassinate him, though not with swords. Rather, they beat him to death with stone idols the were carrying in a religious procession. However, the implication in 2 Kings is that this happened almost immediately after Sennacherib went back to Nineveh. In fact, Hezekiah's revolt was from 704 to 701 BCE. Sennacherib came to the throne in 705. The reason for the revolt was that empires are weaker at the time of the accession of a new king, it being a period of transition. Sennacherib wasn't assassinated until 681 - 20 year after the end of the revolt.

While the annihilation of the 185,000 man Assyrian army is fiction, we still have to account for why Sennacherib spared Jerusalem. Once he had moved west, the revolt of the tributary kings collapsed, and each of them hastenedo make amends with their Assyrian overlords. Only Hezekiah remained obdurate. The usual Assyrian policy in uch occasions was to put the offender to death in some particularly brutal fashion. For example, Asshurbanipal responded to a revolt of some Egyptian princes by flaying them and covering the walls of their city with the skins.

I'll look into why Sennacherib didn't destroy Jerusalem in my next post.

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Re: Historicity of the Bible


In Sennacherib's chronicle, after saying he plundered 46 of the cities of Judah, the Assyrian king says of Hezekiah:

Himself I made a prisoner in Jerusalem, his royal residence, like a bird in a cage. I surrounded him with earthwork in order to molest those who were leaving the city's gate.

However, he did not take the city, but rather accepted a staggering tribute from Hezekiah. Could it be that he came to terms because a plague had indeed broken out among the ranks of his army, preventing him from stoming the city? That's always possible. Obviously, it wasn't the loss of 185,000 men. However, if an outbreak of dysentery immobilized the Assyrian army. Sennacherib might have allowed Hezekiah to surrender without demanding his death. This could have been the historical kernel of the mythic destruction of the Assyrian army.

Another possibility is that, given Jerusalem's location - on a mountain - Sennacherib weighed the situation in terms of a cost / benefit analysis and decided that, having destroyed most of Judah's cities it would be better to accept Hezekiah's tribute than to lose a large number of men in a protracted siege.

In the end, we will probably never know why Sennacherib spared Hezekiah.

In my next post I will compare the accounts of Sennacherib's chronicle and 2 Kings with the account in 2 Chronicles.



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Re: Historicity of the Bible


The last entry in 2 Kings tells of The Chaldean king Evil-merodacch (Awil-Marduk), son of Nebuchadrezzar, letting King Jehoiachin of Judah out of prison and allowing him to live at court. Conquered kings were frequently allowed to live at the court of their conquerors and often served as counselors to them. For example, after the Lydian Empire fell to Cyrus of Persia, King Croesseus of Lydia served as one Cyrus' best advisors. Since this is the last entry in 2 Kings, a faintly hopeful sign - that there was still a scion of David's line living and that he was now no longer in prison - we can pinpoint when this last entry to the Book of Kings (originally one book) was made to within a two year period. The reason for this is that Awil-Marduk only reigned two years (562 - 560 BCE) before being assassinated.

Therefore, despite the spin-doctoring of having the 185,000 man Assyrian army wiped out in a single night by the Angel of the LORD, 2 Kings gives a reasonably accurate account of the destruction wrought in Judah by the Assyrians

Isaiah also laments the status of Judah (Is. 1:7 -9):

     Your country lies desolate,
          your cities are burned with fire;
      in your very presence
          aliens devour your land;
           it is desolate, as overthrown by aliens,
     And the daughter of Zion is left
          like a booth in a vineyard,
     like a lodge in a cucumber field,
          like besieged city.

The "daughter of Zion" is Jerusalem. Jeremiah also uses this poetic terminology (Jer.4:31). So, Isaiah's description of Judah is that it is desolate, its cities destroyed and Jerusalem is left standing alone, like a single building in a field.

The last entry of 2 Chronicles (like Kings, Chronicles was originally one book) is that in his first year Cyrus of Persia issues a decree allowing the Jews to return to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. The first year of Cyrus would be 538 BCE, year Babylon fell to the Persians. Thus, since this is the last entry in Chronicles, we can accurately date it as not being too much later than that year. The Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, detailing the tribulations of reestablishing the community of returning exiles in Jerusalem, were written during or after the reign of Artaxerxes I (465 - 425). Nehemiah was governor of Judah from 445 to 443, a much later period.

In the 22 years that elapsed between 560 and 538, the dates of the final entries, respectively, of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles, the memory of how disastrous Hezekiah's revolt was had faded. While 2 Kings and Isaiah (along with the archaeological record)declare that Judah was devastated, leaving Jerusalem as the only city standing, 2 Chronicles has an entirely different take of the outcome of Sennacherib's invasion. Following the story of the destruction of his army and his sons assassinating him, 2 Chron.32:22, 23 say:

So the LORD saved Hezekiah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem from the hand of Sennacherib king of Assyria and from the hand of all is enemies; and he gave him rest on every side. And many brought gift to the LORD in Jerusalem and precious things to Hezekiah king of Judah, so that he was exalted in the sight of all nations from that time onward.

Well, that simply isn't true. There were not gifts of precious thing for Hezekiah. Not only was his kingdom devastated and reduced to what amounted to a city-state centered on Jerusalem, but he was the one giving the gifts - to Sennacherib in the form of a heavy tribute. Hezekiah was also definitely not "exalted in the sight of all nations." So the history of 2 Chronicles, even compared to that of 2 Kings, with its miraculous destruction of the huge Assyrian army, is utterly unreliable.

I'll sum up my view on the historical validity of the Bible in my next post.


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Re: Historicity of the Bible


Well, I've waited awhile for any response to my posts on the historical validity of the Bible. Since there's been no response, I'll go ahead with my summation.

First of all, the books of the Bible must be considered individually. Thus, there might well be varying levels of historical validity depending on when the book was written and what was it's point of view. Thus, I see Kings as more authoritative than Chronicles.

Second, we need to compare the transmitted ancient documents of the Bible to the preserved documents from the ancient Near East, such as Sennacherib's chronicle. This is not to say that we automatically give the latter precedence.

For example, the black obelisk of Shalmaneser III mentions the Battle of Qarqar, at which an alliance of western principalities and kingdoms opposed the westward expansion of Assyria. Shalmaneser III says that the largest numbers of men and chariots were provided by King Ahab of Israel and Hadadezer (the Bible's Ben-Hadad), prince of Damascus. All told, according to this record, the western allies mustered an army of about 60,000 men. Shalmaneser claimed to have won a great victory at Qarqar. Yet, by his own records, the allied losses were 15,000 men. While that's a quarter of the army, high losses are to be expected in battles of such magnitude.

Comparing Shalmaneser's boast to the silence of the Bible concerning that Battle of Qarqar, we can be reasonably sure - particularly because the author(s) of Kings had nothing good to say about Ahab and would have delighted in highlighting his defeat by the Assyrians as a manifestation of God's wrath - that the western alliance either fought the Assyrians to a standstill or defeated them at Qarqar.

We must also consult history and archaeology to either support or debunk the claims of any ancient document. History tells us that the Assyrian expansion halted for 11 years following Qarqar.It resumed once Israel and Damascus had resumed fighting each other and when both Ahab and Hadadezer were dead, Ahab killed in battle and Hadadezer assassinated by Hazael.

Concerning Sennacherib's chronicle, archaeology tells us that just about every city on Judah was violently sacked at this time. History tells us that the Assyrian Empire kept expanding without a hitch after Hezekiah's revolt. So the Bible's record of an Assyrian army of 185,000 wiped out in a single night doesn't hold up in light of history.

The Bible and the preserved Assyrian records serve to corroborate one another as to the existence of such kings as Ahab, Hezekiah and others, as well as for such kings as Sennacherib. Beyond that, their respective claims of great victories must be corroborated by what we now of the history of that time and what archaeology tells us.
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Re: Historicity of the Bible


quote:

Tim Callahan wrote:



We must also consult history and archaeology to either support or debunk the claims of any ancient document.




Is this how you do it?




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8/19/2010, 4:12 pm Link to this post Send Email to Mega3   Send PM to Mega3
 
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Re: Historicity of the Bible


No, TV debates are not how you do it. About five minutes after that debate with Gary Habermas, I thought of a whole lot of things I should have said. That's one reason I prefer print.

So far, Mega3, you've made two posts on this forum. One is a link to a video, the other is a cut and paste job. Let's hear what you have to say. Would you like to discuss the historical basis of the resurrection? If so, post your own arguments or at least give proper citations for the arguments of others.
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