So, I was sitting in this "Exploring the Hebrew Bible" class at IUPUI and the professor tells us to write a paper.  Okay, fair enough.  This paper must be on one of a few carefully selected subjects.  (Uh-oh! I smell a rat!)   What subjects?  Nice objective ones like:  why Moses couldn't have written the first five books of the Bible; why Isaiah didn't write the Book of Isaiah; why Daniel couldn't have been written by Daniel himself around 600BC...all contradicting the position of the Bible itself.  Me?  I chose the kings of Genesis 14.  This chapter reveals two groups of kings, four against five, whose war resulted in the capture of Abraham's nephew, Lot.  The story made my professor's "hot list" because he (along with other anti-biblical scholars) did not believe these kings are historical.  Why?  Get this...because the Bible is the only place they are mentioned!  Gotta love those guys...don't you love the way they give the Bible the benefit of the doubt?

This class set in motion for me a desire to explore in more detail the historical reliability of the Scriptures.  Most importantly, this class revealed to me that what often  passes for "modern biblical scholarship", in reality, is nothing more than an attempt to discredit the Bible under the pretense of objectivity.  By modern biblical scholarship I mean the sort you see in the secular media that always tends to doubt anything the Bible says as being historical or reliable.  Just where would we be without these purveyors of wisdom to guide us to the truth of what happened thousands of years ago?  How could we be so simple-minded as to believe the testimony of those who were actually there?  I guess we should just blindly follow the "wisdom" of the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, and the National Geographic Channel like good little sheeple. 

Well, there I sat...feeling a bit rebellious in my class.  Billed as an objective exploration of the Bible, in reality it was nothing more than a concerted effort to tear down the bible and destroy any vestige of faith/confidence in its message.  (Seemed more like a thorough attempt at brain-washing to me....)  The favorite phrase of the professor was:  "The Bible says this, BUT we just can't be sure...."  This was his mantra for the whole semester.  So, you'll forgive me if, by the end of the semester I was feeling a little...uh...no pun intended...devilish?  I guess it's okay in a publicly funded university to talk about and even...perish the thought...READ the Bible... so long as you're doing so to tear it down.  What were our poor misguided Founding Fathers thinking anyway...sending their children to the neighborhood schoolhouse and using the Bible as their main textbook to teach reading, spelling, etc.!!  If only they had our modern judges to tell them what they really meant when they wrote the First Amendment!! 

Sorry, that's another article...

Anyway, this class troubled me.  For one, I was a fairly new Christian and certainly didn't have the ability (without further research) to defend the Bible against this professor's attacks.  However, I did know that my life had changed dramatically since placing my faith in the message of this Book (no small testimony to its authenticity in my opinion!)  Though I couldn't out reason this man, my heart told me that all of this doubt the professor was trying to sow just wasn't adding up.  Several people in the class felt the same way.  So...I went searching.

And my search brought me to some very interesting discoveries...

As a result of my studies, I found that many of the arguments this professor was touting were old, already-discredited ones.  Most of them originated in Germany in the late 1800's and had been proven false by archaeological discoveries since. 

Take my 14^th chapter of Genesis for instance...

As I said, the long held view in the "higher critical" camp was that these kings could not be historical simply because they are not mentioned anywhere else in antiquity other than the Bible.  I mean...we can't take the Bible alone as an authority can we?  Or can we?

The first thought that came to me as I heard this argument was this:  Isn't the Bible itself archaeological evidence?  Isn't it ancient historical evidence?  I've said this before, but it bears repeating...the Bible is "packaged" the way it is (in book form) for convenience.  No other reason!  It is actually a collection of scrolls - ancient scrolls, mind you - dating back to thousands of years before Christ!   I'm not sure I would be so flippant as to disregard its ancient witness so off-handedly. 

But, such arguments weren't going to appease my professor...so, off I went to find these kings or archaeological evidence for them.  And do you know what? 

They had already been found...

In the early 1900's, a skeptical archaeologist named William F. Albright believed the Bible to be merely legend.  In particular, regarding Genesis 14, the route supposedly taken by these kings in their escapades was so far east of the normal trade route for that area that he thought for sure this story and these kings were legend.  But, in 1929, farther east than anyone had supposed, he unearthed the route they had taken.  Prior to this no one believed that anyone had settled so far east, but he found cities along the eastern border of Gilead and Moab that proved the area to have been extensively inhabited around 2000 BC - during the time of Abraham and the story in Genesis 14.  In addition, he found the route of destruction taken by these kings.  At last, archaeological evidence had been found to refute what "scholars" had assumed for years.  And, in the end, Albright himself, as a result of his own archaeology, went from being a skeptic to a conservative believer in the literal history of the Bible.

Closely linked to this issue of the kings of Genesis 14 is the account of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis.  As with Genesis 14, the account of Sodom and Gomorrah was thought to be mere legend as well.  But now, the account of Sodom and Gomorrah (and by extension Genesis 14) has been verified by the finding of the ruins of these cities on the eastern side of the Dead Sea.  Archaeology has unearthed five cities (including Sodom and Gomorrah) in this area and their condition is striking.  In the case of Sodom and Gomorrah, there is strong evidence that great layers of the earth were disrupted and hurled high into the air.  Layers of sedimentary rock in this area were molded together by very intense heat, especially upon nearby Mt. Sodom.  It is evident that a great amount of fire and debris has been rained upon these cities at sometime in the past - just as the Bible records in Genesis 19.

Another favorite theory by these "higher critics" of the Bible was called the "Documentary Hypothesis".  (We studied this extensively in class - the professor loved it!)  This hypothesis stated that Moses could not have written the first five books of the Bible as traditionally contended.  The reason? According to Bible critics, writing of such sophistication hadn't been invented yet.  Moses himself (in their view) had to have been a primitive man.  And then, in northern Syria a discovery was made by two professors from the University of Rome which shook the scientific world.  They discovered the Ebla kingdom which existed 1,000 years before Moses.  Since 1974, 17,000 tablets of writing have been unearthed from the era of the Ebla Kingdom.  This completely refuted the popular view that Moses and the Israelites were far too primitive at the time to have written the great code of priestly laws as contained in the Books of Moses.  Instead, this find showed that such writing was in existence years before Moses.

Well...much more could be written about the things I found and the facts that exist to support the historical reliability of the Bible.  But, listen to Albright:

"Until recently it was the fashion among biblical historians to treat the patriarchal sagas of Genesis as though they were artificial creations of Israelite scribes...or tales told by imaginative rhapsodists around Israelite campfires...Archaeological discoveries since 1925 have changed all this.  Aside from a few die-hards among older scholars, there is scarcely a single biblical historian who has not been impressed by the rapid accumulation of data supporting the substantial historicity of patriarchal tradition."

Translation? Since the early 1900's, only fringe, fanatical Bible critics would dare to discount the Bible as a source of reliable history.  Meditate on that one and its implications for a moment...

Which brings me back to my class.  If almost all of my professor's arguments were refuted by archaeology in the first two decades of the 1900's, then why was I sitting there, in the late 80's, listening to him prattle on as if he were really giving us something new?  Captive audience maybe? 

I got a C on my paper.  I told him in my paper that the kings and their route and their cities had been found as early as 1929.  So, why did I get a C?  He said that some of my sources were a bit - get this - dated.  I tried not to laugh as I sat back and listened to him expound yet another tired theory from...

1875?