Archaeologist's Discovery Shocks the World! National Geographic confirmed evidence of the Bible!

you were part of a groundbreaking discovery that shook the world something that was connected to King David could you tell us about that yeah David is probably one of the most well-known figures of the Bible um he's mentioned I think 990 times 975 times depends on which version of the Bible you look at because some of them have titles as well from the first time he's mentioned early in the Old Testament all the way to the very last chapter of Revelation actually um and yet there have been major questions in the last 30 years about the historicity of David about his background and and all of that kind of thing so this is a National Geographic cover story focusing on our excavations some years ago um we received a grant from National Geographic asking the question what about King David what about that search for King David are you mentioned in this actual National Geographic special yeah our project is yes yes yes so it's it's been it's been really exciting to work at this project because it it connects in so many ways to that very early history of Israel and First Kings right so why is David so important for uh Discovery purposes what does it tell us how does it confirm scripture's authenticity well there's a number of questions around David and um one of the big questions that came up is a question yes that Philip Davies uh posed in 1992 Philip Davies was a professor at the University of Sheffield in England and he questioned the entire narrative whether it was factual or mythical he says basically it's as mythical as the stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table he's an English scholar focusing on that right aspect of English History and he he used the argument that the biblical Empire of David and Solomon um hasn't the faintest arch echo in the archaeological record and basically argued on the basis of absence of evidence for the lack of the existence of David we never found his name in the archaeological record we never found a a whole lot relating to his Empire if you will and I can see why that would be super important because if he has mentioned so much in the Old Testament even the Messiah is called the son of David right confirming David would be very very crucial especially as being the most famous King in the Old Testament right exactly I mean I was living in Jerusalem in 1996 and the entire city celebrated the 3,000 year anniversary of Jerusalem because David conquered Jerusalem and so if David didn't exist there's a big problem for Millions billi ions of people around the world right incredible I can see why so much hinges upon this right exactly what about the evidence that proved the extended Kingdom of David well again he used two words in the in this quote here he said as yet which was a kind of caveat in science you never make an argument on the basis of the lack of evidence scientists always work on the basis of data and so we had to go back in the field and continue to work and look for evidence that's what archaeologists do we uncover Millions of bits of data every project that we work on we have to process that data for years after the project is over and uh so that's uh that's how this project began in 2007 with my colleague at the University of at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem ysf garfinkle a small pilot project and then he invited me that same year to join as the major American partner in the project and so we had a dig going on for from 2007 till 2013 at a little site called kbet kayaa now before we even get to that site though something amazing that as yet on this quote happened the very next year this was published in 1992 in 1993 there was an amazing discovery made at tan this inscription was found by archaeologists in the very northern part of Israel right on the border to Lebanon till Dan as mentioned in the Bible the borders of Israel are from Dan to Beva over and over again you read that in the Old Testament and in this inscription by an aramean King we have a reference to a a campaign that took place against the Kingdom of Israel and Judah and against the Kings of Israel and Judah and the king of Israel or the territory of Judah is referred to as the House of David B David in Hebrew that's exactly the way the Bible refers to the kingdom of Judah over and over again in Kings and Chronicles so when this was found in 1993 we suddenly had David and he was remembered as the founder of the dynasty 150 years later because this dates actually 140 150 years after his his Reign that would have been like front page news this was front page news this was in the Wall Street Journal this was this was everywhere yes incredible yeah what did the Skeptics say as this information started to come out they were very excited I would say 99% of the of the field accepts this as as evidence that David existed there's no question interestingly Davies though who published that book suggested it was a forgery which brings all kinds of questions about the archaeologists one of the leading archaist just who found that used to be the director of the Department of Antiquities in Israel anyway that's another story but he's in the minority there's nobody this is in the Israel Museum on prominent display and millions of tourists see it every year wonderful man so there was when it comes to this discovery what were the challenges the other challenges uh regarding you know the discovery of David that just were there so the the mythical argument was the first one the inscription kind of did away with that argument then the argument went to how big was the kingdom of David the Bible describes this massive Kingdom his son Solomon building the Temple all these kinds of things so another couple of Scholars I know these people very well they they wrote this book in 2006 some years later and they argued as you can see there was no evidence for extensive um populated hinter land that is there wasn't a lot of settlements around Jerusalem there's no evidence for major buildings or fortifications no evidence that Jerusalem was a major city and you can see the argument no evidence no evidence no evidence no evidence so they're making the same argument which is really shocking because this is not a Biblical scholar now like Davies was these are archaeologists you don't make arguments from the lack of evidence you make arguments from evidence right especially when archaeology archaeology hinges upon this idea of the doctrine of Discovery we're in the process of learning more and we can't say something doesn't happen because it may come out in the future exactly and that's exactly what happened after this book was published we started our excavations in 2007 the next year and we began to fill those gaps this is the little site of kbet kayaa it's in a very strategic location on the road leading up to Jerusalem and On the Border to philistia and it actually overlooks the famous Valley of ela where the story uh and the uh fight between David and Goliath took place probably one of the most famous stories in the Old Testament um and that made it very significant and what was really important about this site is that as we began to excavate it we found hundreds and hundreds of pots vessels different vessels that dated back to that time period of the uh 10th Century the pottery that was found in these massive destructions that took place a massive destruction where you have hundreds and hundreds of various types of vessels that are that are taking that are going on and that we're finding there and these vessels are reconstructable um and they provide a whole um chronological Anchor Point for the period that we're talking about the period of David incredible incredible so what was uh what was the the the conversation amongst archaeologists when information more more of this contributing information start to come out was there uh just fair this is agreement this is all yes this is confirmed now or was this something that took some time for them to process it was it was controversial because we were we were going up against uh a new paradigm a new revisionist paradigm for history and trying to argue now for the um more traditional approach that archaeologists had accepted for decades you know this was not a question until until the late um let's say the the late 80s early 1990s that this began to be questioned so before that time we had a lot of um archaeologists from across the field here at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore William Albright others who accepted this as the foundation for Biblical history but now that we have this challenge right so so we had we had these massive amounts of pottery we had seal Impressions that dated back to this time period we had radiocarbon dates from uh Oxford University that solidified the time of the 10th Century we had a pristin site that was founded at the time of Saul and David and this was uh really unique because it was on the border it was you know a Day's Journey from Jerusalem quite a ways away from Jerusalem and yet here we have a fortified City we discovered Mass not just fortifications but massive fortification these fortifications were double walls double walls that that um were actually quite deep the the the site was only occupied during two periods the time of Saul and David and then there was a 700-year gap and Alexander the Great built over the top of it as well because of its strategic location right at the crossroads uh there and so we we have this early site with these massive massive walls these these huge Gates one facing towards Felisa the enemy on the other side the Philistines and one facing towards the road that leads up to Jerusalem but these fortifications really um were enormous uh we're talking about a 100,000 tons of stone that were used um to build these walls and and these fortifications so not somebody building you know a a pen for sheep or or cows or something like that so really massive stuff the design of these walls actually this is the gate going in you can see the you can see the uh drain going out of the gate um that a drainage uh system that's moving out of the gate so they had an extensive infrastructure structure exactly this was not simply something that was built out here on its own we think this this implies organization from Jerusalem um or from some kind of capital you don't put a a small Garrison Fort like this city which had maybe 500 600 inhabitants out by itself it had to have some backup because it's right on the border to these massive Philistine sites what do you think the site was used particularly for was it just a a military Outpost what was it exactly used for I think it was a military Outpost right on the border of Judah to kind of protect that main road that leads up to Jerusalem later on in history we have multiple cities like this we have Lish we have AA we have Sukho we have bet Shemesh where the ark came to after it was captured by the Philistines all these cities are fortified a little bit later but this is one of the earliest ones dating back to Saul and David and you can see you know those fortifications are huge too because they answer one of those big questions right was this what did we have fortifications at that time right you can read about that in in the book of Kings and the in Chronicles you see that several of these kings were building fortifications that's right right like it lines very much with scripture right that's incredible and as you're going about as your this discovery is taking place you're seeing more and more confirmation of of the Bible's accuracy you know it's when you look at other religious literature let's say for example other ancient NE Eastern accounts right what makes the Bible so unique and so different than some of the other accounts from other cultures that's really good question you know we have an Institute of archaeology at a Christian University where I teach and um it's you it's focusing on biblical archaeology and you normally wouldn't have I mean where else would you have that you know um the Bible lends itself to that because the Bible is actually a book that's constituted in history or a series of 66 books that are constituted in history it it talks about a God who acts in human history and in that sense God allows him self to somehow be tested as well because we can go back into that history and check all these places all these geographical locations where God is working with his people and figure out what was going on at that time you know archaeologists have now we've talked about the discovery of the name of David but we've we've discovered about 120 names of of individuals that are mentioned in the Old Testament some of them are famous Kings like Nebuchadnezzar or sakb others are people that are mentioned in one verse just in passing um and that that confirms the history it and the authenticity of what we are reading when we read these stories you know I grew up in in the Hindu culture and in Hinduism there are many obviously God-fearing Hindus and stuff but you know the literature is is a lot of myths and stories exactly but many of these don't have archaeological confirmations it sounds like the Bible is definitely a a real book describing real people in real locations exactly who had real experiences with a very real God exactly and and Hinduism and many of these Eastern religions it's it's there there it's more ephemeral there ideas philosophies that kind of thing this is something that's rooted in everyday life this is rooted in history and and it makes God is a TR he's he's he's he's a God who interacts in human history interacts in our lives and so that that is something that is very very unique and really makes the Bible unique when compared to all these other major religions out there you're not going to find an Institute of Hindu archaeology or Buddhist archaeology or taist Arch iology because it doesn't lend itself to that kind of Investigation that's incredible just more evidence for why we can trust the scriptures right but I got one more question for you as someone who has studied ancient near Eastern accounts as you look at uh these other cultures and and uh their description of History uh whether it's creationism whether it's a flood whether it's uh you know some of their their kings what do you notice as distinctives of of bibl IAL history versus these other ancient near Eastern accounts in regards to their understanding of God of humanity what do you notice are clear differences here oh I have a list of 24 of those so it's going to be a little bit more than than what we can handle here but there's definitely a difference between what I would refer to and other Scholars have referred to as the mythical view which the Bible has been accused of but it really doesn't fit into that genre at all the mythical view which is polytheistic which is pan theistic where where the cosmos and God are the same in one the Bible teaches that the B that God is the Creator and separate from the cosmos and it's something very very different that allows him to interact in the cosmos otherwise we just all are really part of God right in in the end when you boil it down um the other thing that is really um when I compare it to other literature in the ancient year East which I've read a lot of it's very different because those are also po theistic those are all they worshiped nature they they deified everything in nature you know sun and moon obviously but then everything else as well yeah one account that I read they oftentimes these other creation accounts for example they start off with um uh there was the universe and then there was a cow and then the cow gave birth to a god so in other words the universe was in existence often times well before the deity shows up right whereas the scripture said wait a minute God was was there in the beginning God created the heavens and earth so nature in the universe follows uh from God's creation as opposed to being something before him right right it's very different many of these myths uh in the ancient world are actually they're theogenes not cosmologies they're theogenes they actually describe the creation of of the the universe as gods and and and they're kind of personified I mean the Egyptians had 22,000 Gods everything was deified um I think in Hinduism that has been multiplied to 33 million Gods right so that's continuation what was that word you theog theoy it's a theog it's a it's a it's a it's a creation of gods by the gods wow so in these other accounts you see the creation of gods whereas the scriptural account says no God has always been there you look at Greek and Roman mythology and the gods are very capricious they're very much like us they they have relations they have children they get into fights they get into conflict exactly you don't have that in the Bible there's one God he's Sovereign he's wonderful he creates a perfect world and he finds a solution for Humanity in that perfect world in that imperfect world after sin enters and there's something something amazing about that the other thing that is really amazing in the Bible while we're on this tangent a little bit is is this when I read the Bible and I read ancient Egyptian text for example I'm an egyptologist and um you in in in the Egyptian text you never the Egyptians are always victorious in their military campaigns there's never an admittance of defeat ever you read the Babylonian texts the hittite texts the Assyrian text they get rid of it they get rid of all they get rid of the defeats or they're quiet about them they never talk about them at all you read the Bible it's filled with God's people's triumphs as well as their defeats they're they're the things that that that they did well and the things that they really didn't do well at all on so what you're describing essentially is evidence for this embarrassment evidence seems to actually work in in favor of the accuracy of scripture I think I think the Bible gives us some more accurate account of what really happened in the ancient world whereas many of these and of course you you talk to an egyptologist or an as serologist or some of the experts and and they might not see it quite that way but there's definitely an element of of whitewashing History where you don't have that in the Bible I think and the Bible gives us then as a result of that the Bible gives us not only the the realities of what people faced back then like we do today but it also gives us Direction on how to deal with those realities from a Biblical perspective I love what you're saying the the Bible tells us the truth about God's goodness but also tells us the truth about man's Brokenness Professor uh hosle we've been taking a good look at this uh archaeological site that you were a part of this this fortification what else did you discover in regards to the gates the very entrance of this fortif well the name of the modern name of the site is kbet kayaa that's an Arabic name and so sometimes Arabic names tie into the Hebrew names because these are sister languages kind of like Dutch and German and they're related historically but the reality is that sometimes they don't and in this case the modern name doesn't help us at all so what was the identification of the ancient site actually the two we found two gates at this site which is very unusual especially for a small site like this we know Jerusalem had multiple gates in ancient times the Bible talks about that today there are eight gates in in the old city of Jerusalem um in ancient times uh though most cities besides large cities like Jerusalem most cities only had one gate because it was the weakest point of of Defense you know it was the hole in the wall that you could easily go through right that's where they take the battering L exactly exactly so they have more than one gate weakened your city and for a little fortification like this with only 500 Garrison troops maybe here families this would be very very difficult and very unusual to have two gates so when we found those two gates we're like man two gates that's interesting because there's a verse in the Bible in 1st Samuel 1752 telling the story of Goliath as we go through the story the famous story of David and Goliath where Goliath has been slain by David he's been hit by the sling Stone his head has been chopped off and then it says when the Philistines saw that their hero was dead they turned and ran and the men of Israel and Judah surged forward with a shout and pursued the Philistines to the entrance of gath into the gates of erron their dead were strewn along the shaam road to gath and ekron now when you and I read this it's like all these names just you know but the reality is the the narrator that the writer wanted you to know exactly where this took place and exactly how this happened and when you stand in the ELA Valley and you look down from AA which is on this slide here down into the Eli Valley you can see the layout perfectly of how this all would have would have transpired and so what's interesting with these with these two gates is in that verse shaarim we actually have possibly the identification of our site because shaar in Hebrew means gate and I am is the Dual ending I am is the Dual ending which means two so this is maybe the city of two gates we have suggested this in the in our Publications it's been accepted by number of uh you know uh historical geographers and if this is the case we've actually found a city that's me mentioned in the story of David and Goliath for the first time more verification of what the scriptures are saying exactly exactly so that's that was very exciting what other evidences did you find besides uh the Judean inscriptions how do we know this is a a Judean site actually diet is a very important part of determining some of these things we we can see that that there's kind of this line this this this line arbitrarily that we put here that separates the territory of Felisa on the left from the territory of Judah on the right you see the sites of ekron and gath that are circled here those are Philistine sites I excavated at erron for many years in the 90s I excavated at ashalon on the coast with Harvard University in the early 90s we've excavated all those sites 15 to 30% of the bones that we find because we collect all the funnel funnel material all the bones we want to know what people ate right 15 to 30% of the bones that the Philistines sites are pig bones right and that would indicate that that part of their por was a major part of their diet right major part of their diet we've also done DNA analysis this is just very recent in The Last 5 Years four years we've done DNA analysis on those pig bones and we know that they were not indigenous to this territory they actually are European pigs so they were brought in they were brought in and where did the Philistines come from they came from the aan world from Greece from m in that area and brought their culture with them and their diet with them as well what's interesting at our side of KET kayaa in seven seasons of excavation we've uncovered 25% % of the site we have tens of thousands of Bones we don't have a single Pig bone in any of that wow not a single one verification of the the Jews were in that place exactly I was there a few years ago um and and I there were four buses of of tourists that that were coming to the site it's now national park by the way they were coming to the site and and there was a group of of students that were being toured by a professor and and as I was walking by somebody in our group heard my name mentioned and they said oh Dr hosel right there one of the directors and so I went and talked to this group of young students training to be Educators in Israel and uh and I said let tell me do any of you keep kosher and most of them raised their hands because this was a Jewish religious University that they were attending and I said um yeah well you know what that that tradition goes back here 3,000 years they were doing the same thing at this site this is part of your identity and part of who you are and part of the biblical narrative that we have in Leviticus 11 so that was really exciting yeah wow it's incredible just all this confirmation or all is just contributing this idea that this was very much a Biblical site that's right what about the idea of literacy well literacy was a big problem and uh it's one of the major issues that we dealt with you know in in that book you know no evidence for extensive literacy so the accusation was that literacy was not something common exactly or or maybe even non-existent in the 10th Century in the in about 10,000 BC when David and Saul were around that's a problem because in the Bible we have the largest book of the Bible is the Psalms which is kind of the hym book for for the ancient Israelites and uh a large number of those psalms were written by David 78 of them so if David did David didn't write those psalms what what does that do to the whole thing of David right um we found this inscription uh in 2008 um on October 30 of 2008 it was the second top story on CNN.com this is the oldest Hebrew inscript ever uncovered in Israel uh five lines of writing you can see on the first line you can see the letter a kind of sideways and you can see it upside down and later on a couple lines down you can see it right side up actually the upside down is the correct version that's the ALF in Hebrew this is the alphabet already being being written out there's a lot of letters that are missing that were not preserved because this is written an ink on a broken piece of pottery about this size but uh but we know that it says begins with the words do not do which is something that we find a lot in the Bible right and uh and so it's a typical Hebrew phrase and when we first found it we brought it in 2008 to Boston where we had our professional meetings and here were is my colleague standing ysf garfinkle from the Hebrew University with two of the leading Scholars from Harvard University Frank Mor cross is looking at the object right now he couldn't sleep that night he was so excited because he's he's the world's leading epigrapher he passed away a few years ago that keep archaeologists up at night yeah right this was the first inscription the oldest Hebrew inscription and he has been studying this in his entire life and he says I couldn't sleep this was so exciting you know so and Larry stagger in the background sitting in the chair as the Director of the ashalon excavations for 35 years the letters were so faded we took this to a number of Imaging labs in Santa Barbara Cedar sin Hospital in Los Angeles different places to just get the best images of of this so we could read it and there have been at least 25 scientific articles written with different readings of what this is whether it's a list of names or whether this is describing the establishment of kingship in Israel as one person says anyway there's a lot of different discussions about it and you have to reconstruct the text by putting in letters that are are not visible anymore but at any rate was very very exciting and and this is one of those images and you can see you know some of the clarity that comes out with that this is the uh this is the Genesis of our alphabet you know 3,000 years later that we're still using um this made the cover of biblical archaeology review the popular magazine um a few years later in 2012 we found another inscription in one of the houses a part of a jar actually um with an inscription on the shoulder of the jar and uh here you can see the inscription on the shoulder of the jar which is really amazing it's enzed into the jar before firing not written by ink this time so this was much better preserved you can see the jar was smashed and we had to put it back together again but it mentions for the first time an individual that's also mentioned in the bible at least the name is mentioned in the Bible That's eshbaal or ishbaal he was one of the sons of Saul and one of the major um princes of Israel now the ishbaal we have on this inscription is not the eshbaal of the Bible it doesn't say eshbaal the son of Shaul if that was the case that would be amazing right but it's another esbal son of beta but it's the same name dating to the same time period which gives us and this made headlines again in May of 2015 when we published it in our scientific um Journal um and it elicited a call from the prime minister's office in Israel Benjamin Netanyahu calls my colleagues I wasn't in the country at the time but he didn't call one of his associates called my colleagues and said you have a meeting with the prime minister in in 10 minutes and they didn't even have he's Professor garfinkle is wearing jeans here and a shirt he didn't even have time to chains you know for this meeting but why would a prime minister be interested in a broken piece of pottery that's been laying in the dirt for for you know 3,000 years he's interested because this is again the earliest Hebrew inscription and this is about ident it's about the identity of a people it's about the identity of a people of the book and it's about the identity of of these cities and these places that still are there to this day so this was a very exciting moment and it just goes to show that if we have two inscriptions at a a border site you know far away from Jerusalem and now we have new inscriptions since then that have been found in Jerusalem as well and dating to the same time period if we have these inscriptions we know that that people if they're writing you know on on jars and and on on on broken pieces of pottery they were literate and they could have been writing other things as well and David certainly could have been writing the Psalms this is the irony here because the professor Davies the archaeologist who said hey look we haven't found anything that says that David or or these Kings existed and then right afterwards it's just been this series of find confirming and and and as far sites go kbet kayaa was the first one that we excavated dating back to that time period in the last 10 years since those excavations we have six more sites that date to the same time period in the same part of the southern part of Judah and and they we refer to the pottery that we find even at those sides now as kayaa Pottery because that that our site has become the type site for that what we call Iron Age 2A period And so it's very exciting and and there's just been an explosion of discoveries now that we kind of know okay this period existed these people existed at this time and these were judahite people je Jud yeah judian people that lived here in this in this vicinity it dismisses this idea that David was this just tribal local tribal leader but that we see that his kingdom was very much extensive yes spread out and recognized exactly how the Bible describes because because if you look at this picture K kayaa there these are you can still see the roads the modern roads there that's the gas station by the way where we always get gas um right next to the Philistines there but anyway yeah and Ace Hardware is just up the road by the way that's where we get our tools sharpened but anyway um KET kayaa was a guardian was guarding these major roads leading up to Jerusalem so if you think of I95 here in the DC area um or the Beltway you know what would guard um the capital of of of our country here in in Washington DC um what would guard the capital of Jerusalem these fortified cities and now we have a whole plethora of them popping up and being excavated right now by other teams wow in addition to your work being found in the academic literature where else was this documented well we of course publish our results and and scientific reports and we have a I think six volumes now out on our scientific Publications as well and uh and then we've published a popular book um called um in the footsteps of King David Revelations from a Biblical city which was published by a British press TS and Hudson um and available for people to to purchase as well and I don't make any royalties on any of the stuff and it's scientific stuff so it's very technical and you know you sell a few here to a few libraries but publication is the very important you excavate these sites you know and if you don't publish the material that information dies with you so when you get a license to excavate in another country um it's like taking a loan out from the bank and and Publishing this material is paying back that loan to that company country and and and disseminating that information for others as well well wow incredible in wrapping all of this up why is this really important what makes David So Central to Bible the Bible's history he is hugely important hugely important as aot Mazar who just passed away a year ago said in this article in in National Geographic she was an archaeologist working in the city of David in Jerusalem she saidif you take David and his kingdom out of the book you have a very different book The Narrative is no longer historical but a work of fiction I mean think about it David is the most mentioned most talked about person in the Bible almost a thousand times mentioned from The Book of Ruth all the way through to the last and and he's pivotal for the whole Kingdom of Israel what would there be without David well he wouldn't have defeated Goliath on that day and perhaps Saul's armies and Israel would have been wiped out by the Philistines um without David um Jerusalem would not have been established as the capital because it was David that conquered the capital and without that Capital being there as Jerusalem um his son Solomon couldn't have built the temple there which served as a temple for the next 400 years and even beyond that after the Babylonian destruction was rebuilt again and then rebuilt by Herod later on and was around during during the the the the New Testament period as well um but the most important aspect of this of course we talked about the Psalms already the most important aspect of all this is it is the son of David that is prophesied as the coming Messiah and if you take David out of the picture what hope do you have for a messiah that's right that is essential and I just want to turn to the last chapter of the Bible and this is Jesus this is red letter in my book Bible you know that means Jesus is speaking behold I'm coming quickly blessed is he who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book and then a little further down it says I Jesus have sent my angel my Messenger to testify to you these things to the churches I am the root and The Offspring of David the bright and Morning Star and then it concludes he who testifies to these things says surely I am coming quickly amen even so come Lord Jesus the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all amen that's how the Bible ends if you take bavid it out of the picture you have to take Jesus out of the picture right and um that's an important issue not only for Jews of course because of the hope of the Messiah which they haven't accepted yet as coming but for Christians billions of Christians around the world who are looking forward to that second coming that's right and if we can trust what the Bible is saying about David we can trust what the Bible is saying about uh you know the history of Israel we can trust what it tells us about Jesus that's right and and and the and the words of Jesus and that makes the Bible also unique that's the second thing that makes the Bible unique it was constituted in history and 30% of the Bible is prophecy no other religion has that no other religious sacred work has that 30% prophecy and there are about 350 of those prophecies in the Old Testament that point towards the Messiah and specifically Point towards the Fulfillment that Jesus makes and part of that of course is David but everything else that moves along with that so those two things allow us again to go back and test the scriptures and to see whether these things are so Dr H I can see why you're so excited about archaeology it's contagious and gets me really excited about archaeology thank you so much for being here your mind may have been blown on some of these discoveries or perhaps you've just uncovered more questions for yourself after our break we'll see if the questions of our studio audience matches up with yours and what Dr hosle has to say about them so don't go away [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome back to Hope at night we've been digging into archaeological evidences with Dr Michael hosle and some of his Landmark discoveries right now I'd like to turn to our in studio audience for some questions we have any questions right over there why do they make historical inscriptions on pottery basically it was something that was readily at hand if you walk over a site in Israel even today any archaological site you have literally hundreds of pieces of pottery on the ground um as you're walking I have tourists that I you know and students that I take over there and they want to pick them up and put them in their suitcase and bring them home you're not supposed to do that but basically when a pot broke um sometimes they would broke break into smaller pieces but uh but you could pick one of those up and and just write on that we get the word paper from Papyrus and Papyrus was extremely complex to make in Egypt um it was very expensive to make and um and so we call them ostria these these uh inscriptions on pottery and and we probably find more of those because they're also preserved over Time Pottery just lasts forever it's kind of like plastic you know um and so we we we find those a lot more and the other materials that maybe they wrote on whether that was parchment which was leather or whether it was um unless it was in a very dry area like the Dead Sea Scrolls down near the Dead Sea they would deteriorate with in the rains and the winter rains after time just like they would here so the answer to the question is they would just pick up a piece of pottery and and use that to inscribe with ink um it was readily at hand it was easy to preserve and it was something that they didn't have to pay a lot of money for hey let me ask you a question Dr hosel do you have any artifacts at your home no I'm not allowed to have artifacts at my home I have a museum I we I curate a museum at our University and um and we have a lot of artifacts there got yes I can imagine the Temptation yeah any other questions right over there hi we talked a lot about um evidence for David and other historical figures um in the Bible but I was wondering if there was also evidence to um bring in the presence of God in these people's lives so how do you find that in the archaeological record one of the big problems in the Iron Age that is the Old Testament biblical period is we don't have a lot of inscriptions that was part of the accusation we had by professor finklestein and others who said you know the lack of evidence so we're beginning to find more of those but even today we have six inscriptions that are you know um partial and sometimes broken and sometimes not complete but we have another very important source and these are seals and seal Impressions which was like the ancient signature of an individual they would wear these either as a ring around their finger or around their necks and in Jerusalem in particular in other sites too we have found hundreds of seal Impressions this is the the impression they would make in clay with their seal then they would put that on a document and send the document off if they used papyrus or parchment or whatever they would tie a string around it send that off to another person and so we have these and and they all contain the names of individuals and in those names by the way Hebrew names all have meanings um our names do too we don't always know what they are but they have meanings my name is Michael and it ends with eel and eel or L is the generic Semitic term for God so my name means who is like God Daniel means God is my judge so all these names had meanings and and a study was done some Years Ago by Jeffrey tigay on the animasa or these names on these seals he's a professor was a professor at University of Pennsylvania and he discovered that 94% of these of these names on these sources all had the theophoric or God element of either Yahweh the personal Covenant name of God or L the the name of God often referred to in the Bible as Elohim and this tells us that people who named their children named them in ways that was reminiscent of their faith and of their religion and he made a very compelling case that even though we may not have many images because they weren't allowed to make images the second commandment we have this element that indicates that there was some continuity of religion over over centuries of time it showed their faith in God it showed their worship yes exactly if you're if you're going to name your child that now of course today we have many Christian names and that doesn't mean we necessarily are practicing Christians or practicing Jews if we have a Jewish name um that may just be part of the Heritage that we've inherited you know but it shows anyway that that is culturally rooted in the people and that continued on through through the centuries I saw a meme that said stop naming your children after biblical names if you're not practicing it they said earlier today I got robbed by Abraham so oh boy any other questions right over there how in the city with only two gates did the Army communicate across the long distances yeah that's a very good question and I think if I understand your question it also is relating to you know there were no cell phones back then how did they communicate with Jerusalem how did they communicate well these sites are actually Jerusalem is on 2700 feet above sea level and then you have the the Hill Country and these sites are kind of in the Foothills leading from the coastal plane from the Mediterranean Coastal plane in the Foothills leading up to Jerusalem and we know today based again on some of these um inscriptions that have been found on Pottery there was a whole cache of them that were found um by uh James Leslie starky at Lish another site that I excavated recently and in the 1930s he found a whole grouping of these in the gate of the city um that had been placed there just before the Babylonians destroyed the city on their way up to destroy the temple in Jerusalem and in that particular case um one of those we call it um the ostria number four in this group of inscriptions it said Beware we are searching for the signal fires of Lish because we no longer can see the signal fires of AA so these are two cities and in Jeremiah Jeremiah who was a prophet at that time and predicting that these things would take place in the future he actually writes and says of all the cities of Judah only two cities still remained outside of Jerusalem AA and Lish wow so here we have a a text in the gate of Lish probably sent there as a last minute warning message we're looking there like smoke signals you know like the uh the natives of this country used to do and and we're we're communicating we no longer see the signal fires of AA which means it was already captured and destroyed by the Babylonians watch out you're next and we know the next step we know Jeremiah what Jeremiah says now we have the text at Lish and we know Lish was destroyed next on the way up to Jerusalem so yes from that from that little bit of evidence we know that they that's one way they could have communicated any other questions right over there in order for the average person to find these historic and scientific facts they have to be very curious so my question is for Christians that are living today how can we combat the suppression of these historic facts by the Science World where can you find more information about this material actually probably right and and how how how's that disseminated yeah you know this is a big frustration that I have in my field because we all are kind of in our Ivory Towers and our silos and we're writing to a very small group of people that are listening to each other and and we need to popularize this material that's a very huge thing right now that we need to do and we I just came from a conference in Houston two weeks ago where a group of an international group of archaeologists got together um to honor my my my former professor at the Arizona where I studied he's 90 years old now and he's the leading AR ologist in our field in the world and he was reflecting on 60 years of of scholarship in this world and one of the big issues that came up is how do we how do we keep this going how do we keep biblical archaeology going because the humanities are shrinking stem is is growing how do we keep this field particularly growing and it was kind of depressing because a lot of the m i mean we had PE we had professors from UCLA from University of California San Diego from Dartmouth you know ivy league Institution um University of Chicago and and other institutions as well discussing this issue and um and I I think popularization is one of the things that we talked about we have to get the message out of of the valuable things that we do for the community and we had a number of young doctoral students in this group as well it was a small kind of think tank of about 25 professors and and uh you know experts and then and then we had doctoral students as well and and they all said what are you guys doing have you not heard of social media before you know why aren't you why aren't you doing this so this is something we really have to do I would say there's a couple of resources there's biblical archaeology review which is a magazine I mentioned they come out twice a year and it's a popular magazine and you can find them at the Barnes & Noble bookstore or online everything is online right now so biblical archaeology Society um online you can also look at um another organization called the associates for biblical research um which is a more um Evangelical I would say a group of Christians and and and trained archaeologists that are putting stuff out they have a website and they also publish an a magazine called Bible and Spade those are the two kind of popularization mediums that we have right now but we definitely do have to make more thank you and I think especially with this episode all that we've learned I think it' be great to share this with somebody else who may have some questions about the B absolutely absolutely that's right wonderful any other questions right over there you said earlier that uh it was only in the Bible that you would find prophecy and facts but couldn't we find that also in the Quran and the Torah since they were also made by God even in ancient uh societies there there there were elements of Prophecy they didn't quite operate the same way that prophecy operates in the Bible in the sense that um you know even even in even in spiritualistic forms you know you you can go to a um you know a truthsayer or you can go to someone to try to see what the future holds we know that Saul did that King Saul did that in the Bible as well um this is not something that is accepted in the Bible but I'm just saying you don't have long range Prophecy in the same way in many of these sources now that you mentioned the Torah the Torah is part of the Bible it's the first five books of the Bible so you definitely have it there there's no question about it the first prophecy in scripture is Genesis 3:15 which is a prediction about the Messiah Crush ing the Serpent's head so that certainly is is there and so you'll find that and you'll find prophecies relating to Abraham um and his his descendants uh which is found in Genesis 12 and 15 and and there's there's that's that's the foundation Genesis is the foundation for the rest of scripture but the Quran doesn't really have Prophecy in the same way um when you read the Quran it's it's it's more of um the Revelation that you know Muhammad received from Allah and it's it's it's much more teric it's it's just to give you an example if you were to take the Bible and add up all the place names cities Rivers countries places where where these stories took place and you do the same with the entire Quran okay you do the same thing there by the time you get to Genesis 10 you will you have used up all the number of place names that the entire Quran has you just you know so there there there's definitely a difference in terms of History because they weren't concerned about The God Who interacts in history in the same way in the Quran as we have in the Bible um and and for that reason because the Bible teaches a linear view of history and a forward looking view of History you also have a God that can predict the future as well as relate to us what happened in the past and so he's the god of uh the past he's the god of the present and he's the god of the future and that's a huge element that we find in scripture that's right and it sounds like you know when you read the Bible too like you see plenty of examples where God is predicting something that that took place and we can see from history it took place and it gives us confidence wait a minute that's right what he said in the past took place we can trust him for what he says for us in the future exactly exactly wonderful any other questions right over there if the Jews have direct access to history and these findings and they've been authenticated then what makes it so hard for them to accept the existence of Jesus Christ oh that's a that's a loaded question and one that's very difficult to answer because every person that is part of of that group of people would have to give different answers maybe for that I think if we go back historically and look at the New Testament we already see um some evidence of of that there um we we see the wise men coming from the East and asking where where is this King to be born they were following the star you know and they come to King Herod and what does King Herod do he calls he calls the the priests he calls the the scholars the the Jewish retical Scholars and he the je Jewish Scholars and he says you know what do the prophecy say and what did they answer Bethlehem of of of eph they pointed back to Micah 5:2 and uh and and so that's where they went um so yes they knew but they were expecting something very very different and um and there's just so much history that has gone on over the centuries between Christians and between Jews it makes it very difficult in many in many ways we think of the Holocaust we'll talk about that maybe in another program we we'll you know we think about some of these difficult things they experience there's there's really a divide between Christianity and Judaism just from that cultural uh kind of thing we share so much and yet there's a divide there um and and yet we have a growing number a huge growing number of Messianic Jews who have accepted Jesus as the Messiah who have accepted the New Testament and still identify with their Jewish roots and I I see them when I when I travel to Israel I I um I meet with them some of them are actually Scholars as well and they they're openly professing their belief in in Jesus Christ so I think when you really carefully study the evidence and study the evidence for yourself people are coming to that realization even in their Jewish tradition and of course we have to understand the first apostles the first Disciples of Jesus they initially saw themselves as true Jews who had accepted Jesus as the Messiah and the concept of Christianity was something that came a little bit later in time as that movement continued to grow thank you so much Dr hosle this has been an exciting Journey journey into biblical archaeology it's fascinating and uh I'm excited for what the future holds in regards to the things you're going to share with us