The Sean McDowell Show - From Myth to History: 10 Bible Figures Confirmed by Archaeology

Episode Date: March 3, 2026

Did the people named in the Bible actually exist? In this episode, archaeologist Dr. Titus Kennedy joins me to walk through how archaeology confirms the existence of ten individuals mentioned in Scripture. Dr. Kennedy lays out his criteria for evaluating archaeology discoveries and applies his careful criteria to figures in both the OT and NT. We cover evidence connected to central figures like King David, Ahab, Isaiah, and Belshazzar, as well as obscure figures like Berenice. Let us know what you think! READ: Archaeology and the People of the Bible: Exploring the Evidence for the Historical Existence of Bible Characters Paperback by Titus Kennedy (https://amzn.to/4r4oMhW) *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [smdcertdisc] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://x.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sean_mcdowell?lang=en Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org   Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

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Life Audio Do the people named on the pages of the Bible really exist? How representative are the people in your book of the archaeology we have as a whole for biblical figures? It's probably somewhere in the area of 30 to 40%. We might have significantly higher in the New Testament. And one of the reasons for that is it's closer to our time. Also, it's the Roman period. There's a lot more writing that was done and things that have survived as well.

But, you know, it's a very substantial portion considering how long ago all these events happened and how long ago these people lived. Do the people named on the pages of the Bible really exist? According to our guests today, archaeologist Titus Kennedy, we find evidence for the existence of kings, generals, priests, governors, scribes, and more. From prominent to obscure biblical figures, the historical evidence supports the existence of dozens and dozens of biblical figures. although he mentions 87 Old Testament figures and 37 New Testament figures in his new book, Archaeology and the people of the Bible. Dr. Kennedy is here to talk about 10 of those with us. Good to have you back.

I appreciate you inviting me on the show. Let's jump right in, man. This is probably the fifth or sixth time you've been on. People love it. This is one I've been looking forward to since I knew your book was coming out months and months ago. So I sent you a list of 10 that jumped out to me. me and I said tweak this. So we came up with the list we agreed on. Tell us about why you selected the 10 we're about to talk about. Well, when you first sent it to me, you did six OT and

four NT characters, which I think is a good division based on content and time period. And we had a lot of the same ones in mind. I was targeting for some really important biblical figures, but also for some that are more obscure that maybe people haven't read about, don't know much about some controversial, slightly controversial, evidences for specific characters. Nothing too far out there, but again, wanted people to get a little bit of a sampling of what's the difference between these really firmly established characters and some who we have evidence for, but there's not a consensus on it. That's really helpful. And I picked obscure ones, because we might expect certain evidence for the prominent biblical figures, but these obscure

figures, we find evidence that they exist as a whole gives credibility to the biblical story, which we'll get into. Now, what's your criteria for evaluating these figures and the other once in your book? So the criteria I used is something that I built upon from earlier scholars. There's two or three books that had been done in the past. In fact, one was a PhD dissertation, and they were focusing especially on figures from the time of the monarchy and the kingdom of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. But this applies across the board. And so, First, we have to have the name match. And that may seem super obvious, but sometimes we have situations where scholars have proposed

that a name found in an ancient text is a nickname or an alternative name for a person named in the Bible. And yet, this is pure speculation. So those types that include, we also have situations in the Bible where someone is only named by their title. We don't actually have their personal name. And so I didn't use any of those because, again, this is going to be more speculative. It's going to be based on circumstantial evidence. So we've got to have the same name. Now, everyone should understand that when you transition from one language to another, names can look a little bit different, but we can see where those changes take place in the pronunciation or the spelling.

So it should be fairly obvious. the names match. That's the first thing. The second thing is we would look for something like their family lineage. Now, we don't always have this information, but oftentimes in the Bible it talks about that this person was son of such and such, or brother of someone else, or maybe his wife's name was this or his daughter's name. All right, so we have some of these familial markers. And in some of the ancient inscriptions, we have the same. We have the same thing, especially the son of type of motif. So when we have that, we can look at it if it matches in the archaeological evidence, in the inscriptions or ancient manuscripts. So that's a

second thing to look for. Now, there are times when things are so obvious that we don't necessarily need that, like if it's a king and we know the time period, but when it gets to lesser known or or lower ranking figures that can become very important. The third would be their occupation or their title or some type of accomplishment they had. And this could be king, this could be scribe, this could be servant. So we have a lot of different titles that we read about in the Bible, and in many cases, those match up with the archaeological inscriptions. The fourth would be the chronological setting.

The person that we're looking at in the Bible needs to be in the same time period as the archaeological inscription. Yeah, we can't just pull something from 200 years difference and say, oh look, we have the same name, kind of the same region, so this could be that person. But, you know, it couldn't. It really should be within a lifetime. So we're talking like, you know, 50 to 90 years period, something like that. And another aspect of this chronological criteria is that the archaeological material that we're looking at, it really should come from the time period of that person. It should be contemporary attestation.

Sometimes we have this from like the next century and that's all right. It's not as strong, but it's fine. but we do have situations where we have a biblical character name from a long time later, you know, far, far into the future. And while that's interesting and it's some sort of evidence, it's more, it's more in the vein of a tradition and it's just not as strong. And so I didn't include things like that. For example, Lot is named in inscriptions of the Byzantine period,

but that is so many centuries after his lifetime that we can't really say this is a this is a historical attestation for lot it's a attestation that people believed at that time that lot was a historical character but so same time period and then the fifth would be the geographical setting they need to have lived in that place where the bible says they lived makes sense so all these things need to match. You know, what was the artifact found in Jerusalem and did the person reign in Jerusalem, that sort of thing? So those five, if we have all those five, it's very firm. If we have three or four of them, depending on which three or four, it might be firm or very plausible. So I did a rating system, basically A, B, C, and D, with A being the strongest,

and D being the weakest, being speculative. And so the, all, these things were taken to account now there's a sixth one that occasionally comes up and that's more about the artifact itself is the artifact surely authentic or not so there are some situations where we have artifacts that were not excavated in a controlled archaeological project maybe they were found on the ground by a tourist or they they were found under unknown conditions and turned up on the antiquities market or they were looted in an illegal excavation. So these need to be examined and evaluated by experts to see if they are indeed authentic because we do have archaeological forgeries. So that's one to look at in some cases as well. And we have increasingly quality forgeries that even

experts can't discern at time. So that last one is really a chain of custody. Can we get it to the place and the time? That's really important. Just to emphasize the first one before we jump in, even doing my work on the apostles it was like there's three james that could qualify his apostles brother jesus son of alpheus brother of john and sometimes the descriptions are not given you have satonius who mentions crestus is that christ like each one of these are far more in depth and debated than people realize so this careful uh kind of lineage or delineage that you put into this i think is really really helpful all right well let's let's one more question we We're going to look at, again, 6th the Old Testament for the New Testament.

So you have 87 in the Old Testament, 37 in the New Testament. I mean, if you had to guess, is this 10% of the biblical figures that are at least somewhere on your scale? Is this half? Is it just hard to know? Like, how representative are the people in your book of the archaeology we have as a whole for biblical figures? in terms of significant characters in the bible you know not getting into all the random names that occur once or we have no information about them it's probably somewhere in the area of 30 to 40 percent i think the the kings of israel and judah are are tested somewhere around that level and i think it's it's fairly similar we we might have you know, significantly higher in the New Testament.

And one of the reasons for that is it's closer to our time. Also, it's the Roman period. There's a lot more writing that was done and things that have survived as well. But, you know, it's a very substantial portion considering how long ago all these events happened and how long ago these people lived. I love it. That's great. All right.

We'll circle back to that sometime. Let's jump in. And the first one is my favorite biblical character. of course, Jesus aside, especially in the Old Testament, is King David. Yeah, David is incredibly important, both historically and theologically, throughout the Bible. So this is really a foundational person. But oddly enough, until the early 90s, we had essentially no archaeological evidence for the existence of David. kind of a head scratcher there, especially since so many excavations had been done, but this is just

what happens with archaeology. You never know what you're going to find and you never know what you're not going to find. And because of this, most archaeologists and ancient historians and even a lot of biblical scholars through the 80s and to the early 90s were of the opinion that David was a mythological or fictional character. Again, because we had. no archaeological evidence for him. All of that, though, changed in 1993, and then from that point on, just more and more and more has been discovered. So, 1993, the ancient site of Dan, north of the Sea of Galilee, being excavated. And in the plaza in front of the city gate, they take up this large stone slab, and they look at one of the sides of it.

And on the side, there is an Aramean inscription. And so that immediately is of great interest because you just don't find stone inscriptions all that often. But as they looked at it, they noticed this phrase there, House of David, which is a phrase that occurs in the Bible, for example, in the book of Samuel. And that's in reference to King David and the dynasty of Israelite kings. that he founded. So they translate this and they find that it's a victory steely of the Arameans, probably Hazahel. And so we have the enemies of the Israelites talking about king of Israel and Judah that they defeated and how these were of the house of David. And so we know from the context immediately it is indeed talking about King David and the royal dynasty that he founded. And so this changed

everything almost overnight in terms of the evidence for David being a historical person. And after that, the Mesha Steeley was reassessed and the phrase House of David was shown to be on there too. So that was also an enemy of the Israelites who knew about David and his dynasty. Both of these from the 9th century BC, so pretty close to the time of David. And then there's one other scholar who actually suggests that David is referenced on this inscription or wall relief of Pharaoh Shoshank the first. It's maybe a little bit more tentative, but worth mentioning. So we've got two, maybe three inscriptions attesting to David. And then a few years later, Mazar writes an article suggesting that she knows where the

Palace of David is, that based on Kenyans' earlier excavations in Jerusalem, there's some evidence for it and wants to excavate. Several years later, they start an excavation. This building is where geographically we would expect the Palace of David to be in Jerusalem on the north side of the city of David on the slope down into the Kidron Valley. And the floor, the original floor of this building, when it was constructed. It had pottery dating to before 1,000 BC underneath it and after 1,000 BC above it. So it seems like it was built right around 1,000 BC. That's the time of David, and when he constructed that palace, it's got massive walls. There's a Phoenician column capital that was found, what's called Ashlar Masonry, a type of stone blocks. Phoenician ivories were found

in there. And recall, in the book of Samuel, that it says, says that this Palace of David was built by Phoenician artisans. So we would expect some Phoenician construction techniques evident. Well, you go forward in time, and you see that this building continues to be used by the royal administration of Judah because of the evidence from many administrative boule, these little clay stamp seals or stamp impressions from seals. If you've ever been asked or have asked yourself, why did God do that when reading the Bible?

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even in the most difficult sections of the Bible. You'll come away with greater confidence of Scripture and a deeper trust in God's character. Plus, when you join Sightline You, you get access to a library of free resource designed to help you tackle even more challenging passages. You can take the course for free right now at Sightlineministry.org slash Sean.

Check out why did God do that today and get equipped to see God's goodness even when the text feels hard? Head over to sightline ministry.org slash Sean. And so it all seems to collect together quite well. Now, not everyone agrees that that's the Palace of David, but a lot do. There's also possibly David's tomb in the city of David, that's southern part. There's two monumental tombs. One might be David's. One might be Solomon's.

There are now investigations into all these different fortified towns in his kingdom. It shows there was a centralized government. So places like Quebec Kayoffa, Lakish, Mitspah, Bateshemesh, Dawara, all of this is piling up and showing not only that David was a historical person, but that he ruled over an actual kingdom. There's evidence of literacy at this time. could write down the events in the Bible. It's really become very strong archaeologically. That is a stunning reversal. I was in the palace in 2018 and 2019. And our Jewish guide, he's like,

you just go back three decades ago. And what people believed about David has utterly been transformed and changed. All right. Let's shift to a different historical period, kind of into the more divided kingdom of a wicked king, King Ahab. King Ahab is talked about mostly in first king 16. There's a little bit of reference to him afterwards. So he doesn't get as much word count as David, obviously. But he was one of the more prominent kings of the Northern Kingdom. And geopolitically, he was fairly powerful as well at the time.

So he's the son of King Omri, who, by the way, is mentioned on the Mesh, Steeley that I referenced before. He married the Phoenician princess Jezebel, whose seal with her name on it has been found, or at least, let's say, probably. It's not 100%, but likely her. One of his sons was Jehoram, and he's referenced on the Tel Dan Sealy.

So we see all of these people within his family who are also attested. But as far as his archaeological attestation, a couple of major things. The most prominent, the most definitive is reference from a steely of the Assyrian king, Shaamenezer III, who Ahab fought against in a coalition of kings. And Shaomenezer the third named Ahab as the king of Israel in this steely. And he also mentioned that he had 10,000 soldiers and 2,000 chariots. This is interesting because Ahab has more chariots than any other king in that coalition. So we know he had this sizable cherry force.

Well, when Jesreal was excavated, which is where Jezebel died, they found that this was a fortress town that had a huge open area inside the walls, basically like a massive parking lot that would accommodate storing or parking his chariots. And we read, you know, by the Assyrian sources, he had 2,000 chariots. So possibly that's where he kept them. Now, there are a few other things that relate to this king Ahab. One is a bronze ring that has a Hebrew inscription that says belonging to Ahab, King of Israel. But this is one of those cases where we don't know the provenance.

And we also don't really have great artifact parallel. to evaluate it. Now, I don't think this is in question as to its authenticity, but maybe it's date. However, I would say that there's a ring of Jotham that's authentic, and it's got a lot of similarities. So I don't think it's a huge problem, but we do have the Assyrian inscription. And then finally, I'd say one other really interesting and important thing, archaeologically connected to Ahab is the palace at Samaria, which his father, armory originally built, but Ahab expanded it. And the excavations found within this what's called the ivory house of Ahab in First Kings 2239. So it was this room in the palace that had all of these

elaborate Phoenician ivories in it. And then his tomb is probably one of the two tombs discovered at the palace also. That's amazing. And I want to make sure people know that Ahab was the king and Jezebel who resisted Elijah, one of the most. most important prophets of the Old Testament who appears in the Transfiguration in Mark Chapter 9 so to have so many people, so many figures strongly confirmed in the archaeological record long before the time of Christ is quite significant. All right, let's shift to biblical figure number three, Uzziah slash Azariah. So this one is maybe a little bit more obscure.

I don't think everybody has probably heard about this king or read much about him. He's not as prominent in the biblical narrative, but he did actually reign for a very long time, 52 years. And yet his attestations are quite limited, and in fact, the most important one is disputed by some scholars, even though it seems to be a clear mention of him. So if we go back to 1 Kings 15, where Uzziah or Azariah is discussed, in 1st Kings 1529, the Assyrian king, Tiglath-Pyleser III, is mentioned as fighting the northern king of Israel, and this is during the reign of Azariah of Judah. So we know that those two kings overlap. Tiglath-Pileser III, and Azariah or Uzziah, same guy.

Now, we go forward a little bit in the passage, and we see in the reign of his grandson, Ahaz, the Assyrians, again, under Tiglath Pilesa III, they take a tribute from the kingdom of Judah. That's what we read in the Bible. So, it's very plausible or even likely, that these tributes were going on just a few years earlier during the reign of Azariah as well. Now, I say this because the texts, the Assyrian text that we have relating to Azariah, it comes from Tiglath Pilesa the third, okay, who overlapped with him. It's from 743 BC. This is in the middle or the first half of the reign of Azariah. And it says that he took a tribute from Azar Yahu of Yauda. Okay. So this is where the dispute comes in. Some scholars are saying, yeah, that's obvious that it's Azariah of Judah. And others are saying, no, this could be somebody else.

We have no evidence for someone else with that same name and essentially the same name of the country. So I don't know why it's disputed so much really. But this seems fairly clear. However, we do have some additional archaeological attestation for this king, and that comes from two 8th century BC stone seals of some of the people in his royal administration. One is Abiyah, servant of Uzziah, and then the other is Shebnahahu, servant of Uzziah. So those pretty solidly attests to his reign as king of Judah as well. And then the third one, which I think probably more people actually know about, because they may have seen this in the museum or read about it,

it's a little bit more widely circulated and pictured, is something that's often called the Uzziah tablet. The problem with this is that it's almost certainly a much later tomb memorial. that was made around the first century. So it's kind of like the thing I mentioned with Lott earlier. It's talking about him as a historical character and, you know, it's from antiquity, but it's not from his time. So we can't really use that in the same way that we would,

this Assyrian source that's contemporary and those two seals that are contemporary. That makes a lot of sense. And I want to highlight for folks that we have King David, one of the most prominent figures. We have King Ahab, who is time after David, a wicked king, and then a more obscure figure like Uzziah with multiple lines of evidence that he existed in that time and that place. Now we're going to move to arguably, if not the most important, the most commonly cited in the New Testament, Old Testament prophet, Isaiah. virgin birth Isaiah 7 the suffering servant Isaiah 53 what's some of the historical evidence that Isaiah was a real figure well the archaeological evidence for Isaiah primarily comes from one artifact although I also think it's worth mentioning that the great Isaiah scroll which is probably the pinnacle of the Dead Sea Scrolls

is his complete book in ancient Hebrew and the scroll dates to the fourth century BC, according to radiocarbon tests from two different labs. So it's one of the earliest, maybe even the earliest of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and it comes from the intertestamental period, and it's not too far off from Isaiah's time. So that's, I think, very interesting, but not contemporary, right? So we go to Archaeological excavations in Jerusalem. Fairly recent,

really only several years ago this happened. And Mazar's digging there and they find this boule. Okay, again, this is a result of a seal.

So it's stamped in the clay. So it's not the seal itself, but it's what the seal creates. So it's the impression of the seal used to put over documents. And they find one of Hezekiah, King of Judah, which is really significant because that was the first Hezekiah Bula to be found in a controlled archaeological excavation. Well, right around there then, though, they find another Bula, and this one has the name Isaiah on it. Now, it's not just Isaiah, though.

it is Isaiah on one line and then on the bottom line we have this word which looks a whole lot like profit now I say looks a whole lot like it because the very end of it is broken off so we're missing the final letter of profit but it's it's really implausible to suggest that it's anything else. There, there were some ideas that maybe it was a reference to a place name, but this is not consistent with what we see in Boulay. They're, they're either talking about their family relationships or their occupation. So Isaiah the prophet there. That is the opinion of many scholars. Others still, you know, dispute a little bit or say, you know, Maybe it's some other word at the bottom there.

But that would be our archaeological attestation for Isaiah the Prophet. His seal impression from Jerusalem, from 700 BC when he lived, right in the area of one of Hezekiah's seal impression, the king that he served under. So I think pretty powerful evidence there. We've got four of the five criteria. and he was so prominent, really the only prophet there in Judah serving in that role, that it's very difficult to say that could have been someone else. That's a great fine. Now, of course, so far, anyone who's read the Bible for five minutes or been to church on Christmas

knows King David and knows Isaiah. But the next one, some people might think, you might have even made up this name. And I might even mispronounce it. The funny thing is you read these names, but then when you pronounce it, might be a little different, would it be Adramlech? So correct my pronunciation if that's not right and tell us about this figure. Yeah, this guy in the Bible, he is called Adramelik. But in Assyrian sources, it's Arda Moulisu. So here's some of the situations where we have a little bit of change from one language to the other. Sometimes consonants get flipped. This is called metathesis.

It's a common issue. It doesn't disqualify the name equivalence. And in fact, this identification is really not disputed. But he is a very obscure character because he's really mentioned in one specific event that is recorded in one verse in 2nd Kings 19 and then in a verse in Isaiah 37. And it's it's the same. event, it's the same words even. So kind of doubling up on this. It is a significant event geopolitically, but it's not that significant in terms of the kingdom of Judah or the Israelites. So Adramelik was one of the sons of King Sinakurib. So King Sinakrib, for those who don't remember this guy, he was the Assyrian king who came and he attacked Jews. Judah during the time of Hezekiah basically took all the cities and towns of Judah except for Jerusalem, besieged Jerusalem, wanted to take that over. But the Lord came and destroyed his officers, mighty warriors, and then he went back to his capital, Nineveh, just with a tribute from Hezekiah. So his father was really prominent and powerful king.

where he becomes important, Audra Melech, is that he's involved in the assassination of his father, Sinakarib, which is recounted in 2nd Kings 19 and Isaiah 37. So both kings and both Isaiah... Have you ever read a passage of the Bible and thought, what is going on here? You're not alone. Sightline ministry, formerly Josh McDowell ministry, is all about helping people cut through cultural confusion so they can see Jesus clearly. They just launched a new on-demand learning center called Sightline View.

Right now, you can take a free course there called Why Did God Do That? Confronting Hard Passages in the Bible. The course is hosted by my friend Matthew Tingblad and based on the book he wrote with my dad, Josh McDowell. It walks through some of the toughest passages in Scripture. The ones that seem harsh, violent, and unloving in terms of God's character, both historical context and careful interpretation, Matthew shows how these passages actually point to God's goodness and his redemptive love. By joining Sightline You and taking this course, you'll gain confidence in God's character, strengthening your trust in Scripture, and get access to a library of free resources

to help with even more difficult texts. You can take the course for free right now by heading to Sightlineministry.org slash Sean. Check out why did God do that at Sightlineministry.org slash Sean. They give us his name. And ironically, he wasn't the only one involved in this association. assassination, but he is the one that a lot of the blame gets pinned on and he's the one that's the best attested. So that's why we're talking about him. Yeah. But this is even, this is even recorded in Assyrian sources, this assassination of his father, Sinakrib. So we've got him

attested as a prince of Assyria, Boat Vent that he's involved in. It's recorded in the Bible. This is recorded or attested corroborated in Assyrian sources as well. And to top it all off, we might even have an image of this guy. So there's a Assyrian stone relief that came from the southwest palace of Sinakri of the capital city of Nineveh. And it shows a crown prince, which based on the time period and his position was probably Adramelik. So we've got a couple of sources that not just name him, but talk about his involvement in the assassination plot. And we may even have his image. That's pretty amazing for somebody that is important in the story.

But you're right in terms of a minor figure compared to Isaiah and compared to David, that we still have some good historical evidence for his existence, I think reveals a lot. One more. Right. And he wasn't even a king himself. he was a prince and i mean he wanted to become king and that's that's probably part of the whole story why i ended up assassinating his father but yeah he himself in world history was not that important either and yet we do have attestation of he his existence and a major event that he was

part of and that's significant because today we can we can record everything people are literate, we have the technology. So they were very careful because of ability and expense to record significant figures. So the fact that it was recorded, and we still have it today and shows up in the Bible, that's a significant fine. I think it's very significant. I'm glad you pulled this figure out. We've got one more from the Old Testament, Belshazzar, Belshazzar, from a very different time period. Tell us about him. He was a Babylonian. In fact, He was the son and the crown prince of the last king of Babylon. But he's one of my favorite because the passage in Daniel about him is so interesting.

This is the handwriting on the wall. And he's another one of these examples where in the past, scholars were saying he was a made-up character. He was fictional. And therefore, the book of Daniel is not a historically reliable. Bible source. And the reason they said that, once again, is that outside of the Bible at that time, we didn't have any evidence for his existence and his role. So they said, look, we know who the last King of Babylon is. It was Nabonitis. We've got lists. We've got these classical authors who are talking about it as well. And there's no mention of any Belchazar. You know, who is this guy? So he

just be created and then what happened is that more things started to be discovered and translated and the most important of these was attesting to his existence with his his name and his position and that was on one of the cylinders of nabonitis where it says that belshazzar was his firstborn son so suddenly we've got his name and he is the firstborn son of Nabonitis, the last king of Babylon. This also tells us that he is the crown prince. Well, if we go to the Babylonian Chronicles, we see that for many years, the crown prince of Babylon was the one who was actually ruling in Babylon while his father Navonitis was off in Arabia and other places. So that puts Belchazar in the position of

of acting king. Then if we go to what's called the verse account of Nabonitis, we read that Nabonitis actually appointed his firstborn son, who was Belchazar, as king of Babylon. He gave him the kingship, it says. So that's why Daniel talks about him as the king of Babylon, because he was holding that position. Now his father was still alive, and that's an important point for for another part of the passage in Daniel because Daniel is offered third place in the kingdom if he can decipher the handwriting on the wall. And people might wonder, you know, why isn't he offered second place in the kingdom? What's going on with that? Well, it's because Navonitis was still alive, even though he wasn't in Babylon. So he was actually first in the kingdom. Belchazar was second

in the kingdom and so he couldn't give any higher position. amazing than third place in the kingdom. Since some of those earlier discoveries, there have been more Babylonian documents that have been found, naming Belshazar. And one that I think is pretty important in the whole discussion of, you know, was he really king of Babylon? Did he really hold that authority at the time? Is a cuneiform tablet where someone swears an oath to both Nabonitis and Belcheon. Chazar. So it seems like they had equal status and power or at least close to it. There was a co-regency with the father being number one. But it wasn't that he was just some prince who had

a little bit of authority. No, the Babylonian documents really indicate that he did exercise the power of kingship in Babylon during that time that the book of Daniel talks about. That's amazing. Now, we've discussed six figures in the Old Testament. You discussed 81 others and there's a ton more. I just want to remind people, if we go back to really Genesis 12 with Abraham, there's evidence for Abraham, evidence for the patriarchs,

there's evidence for Moses, there's evidence for Joshua, there's evidence for Ezra, Nehemiah, I mean, go through the Old Testament. It's like a drumbeat from obscure to prominent figures. And the narrative I don't want people to miss is there's consistently

doubt about the existence of Belchazar, doubt about the existence of David. Of course, the Bible has recorded this all along, and then a tablet shows up, and then a palace, and then some kind of stamp shows up in the right time and the right place, seems to confirm what the Bible has said all along. Now, of course, we don't have all the biblical figures because so much of the archaeological record has not even been excavated yet. But let's put a pin in that, and let's shift to four in the New Testament. Now, we could talk about evidence for the apostles of course evidence for jesus you and i did a whole program just on the historical

archaeological evidence for jesus but this first one i'm really curious where you'll take this because he's a controversial figure is corinius corinius the the controversy around him stems more from the chronology of the birth of jesus and how he connects into that exactly but But as far as his existence and position, I don't think we have any controversy as well. So I get into some more of those details in my book on excavating the evidence for Jesus. But in this book, I primarily am just talking about his position and how that connects to the Bible and the gospel specifically. So he's named once Luke Tutu, and he is said to be a ruler of Syria.

And so from that Greek word, we could infer that he held a position such as legate. All right. Now, there's a couple different types of legate. We can have one that is a governor of a province, and we can have one that is a military commander, commander of legions. And at this point in time, I think that it's talking about Carinius as the commander of a legion. And that is where we see some direct corroboration from archaeology. There are a number of references to Carinius in Roman sources.

We could look at historical manuscripts like those of Josephus and Tacitus and Pliny the Elder and Soutonius. All these, they talk about Carinius and we actually know quite a bit about his life. But as far as archaeological inscriptions and for what we're looking at in connection to the Gospels, we have a couple of very important artifacts. One is the Lapis Venetus, which was discovered in Beirut, which at that at the Roman period time was part of the province of Syria. And that's important because in Luke 2,2, it says that Carinius was a, a ruler of Syria. All right. So on this inscription, which is in Latin, we have mention of Augustus. We have mentioned of a census that was ordered and being carried out. We have mentioned of the legate

Corrinus. And then we have mentioned of one of his officers carrying out a census in a town or a city of Syria, Apamia. So all of these things connect well to what we see going on in Luke chapter 2, and certainly they verify the existence of Carinius, not just as a prominent Roman, but in this position of Leggett. Now, if we go to the writings of, or probably the autobiography, better, to call it of Augustus, Emperor Augustus, rest guest day. Then we see that he actually commanded or ordered a census to the whole Roman

empire in 8 BC. So that's actually what I would connect to the census of Luke. But Corinius very solidly attested the right kind of position, the right time period. So even if we don't all agree on the exact year that those things are going on and their specific correlation to Luke, There's no question that this guy was a real person and held those positions or that prominent position in the Roman government. It's amazing we have both the archaeology and the extra biblical writings that confirm the time and the place of Corrineas. How about another figure people might recognize but not know exactly how he fits in is Eretis the fourth? Or maybe it's Eretis the fourth? Yeah, probably a lot of different pronunciations, Aritas.

the fourth we could call him as well. And I like this one because he's one of those obscure figures in the New Testament who has mentioned just once, although geopolitically he was fairly powerful. He was king of Nabatia. And he's mentioned by Paul in 2nd Corinthians 1132, when Paul is talking about his escape from Damascus. and we read that Aritas the 4th, or during his reign, one of his officials was trying to pursue and capture Paul in Damascus, but Paul gets away with the help of other Christians there. Now, Aritas de 4th, very well attested archaeologically in an ancient history.

For example, we have coins that he minted that have his name and his image on them. We have burial inscriptions of some of his government officials that refer to him. We have other really interesting biblical connections like his daughter was married to Herod Antipus before Herodontapus divorced her and married his brother Philip's wife, Herodius, who was the mother of Salome. And of course, John the Baptist condemned all this. And John the Baptist, and this whole debacle is written about in Josephus as well. So all those people, too, that I just mentioned, they are all part of this archaeological corroboration. They're all attested by archaeological finds and ancient manuscripts.

But I think one fact that people will find really interesting is that if you go to... If you've ever been asked or have asked yourself, why did God do that when reading the Bible? This is for you. Sightline ministry, formerly Josh McDowell. ministry exists to help cut through cultural confusion so people can see Jesus clearly. They just launched a new on-demand learning center called Sightline You. And right now, they're offering a free course called Why Did God Do That? Confronting Hard Passages in the Bible.

It's hosted by Matthew Teingblad and based on the book, he co-wrote with my dad, Josh McDowell. The course walks step by step through difficult passages that often seem to portray God as harsh or unloving. But instead of avoiding those texts, Matthew shows how careful study and proper context to reveal God's goodness, justice, and redemptive love, even in the most difficult sections of the Bible. You'll come away with greater confidence of Scripture and a deeper trust in God's character. Plus, when you join Sightline You, you get access to a library of free resource designed to help you tackle even more challenging passages. You can take the course for free right now at Sightlineministry.org slash Sean. Check out why did God do that today and get equipped to see God's goodness even when the text feels hard.

head over to sightline ministry.org slash Sean. Petra, where probably a lot of people have been or they want to go in there, they will someday. Yeah, and you walk through the canyon and you go and then the first of those incredible carved buildings that you see that's called the treasury, the most famous one that's in Indiana Jones, this was almost certainly the tomb of Aritas the Fourth. Wow, that's cool. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. When I first learned about that, I was like, okay, very cool. Everybody knows about this iconic location, but not that many know that it's the tomb of this person who is mentioned in the letter of Paul.

The reason that archaeologists attribute this to Aritas IV is because, according to the findings, that tomb was constructed in Carrey. during his reign and those monuments. So there are other tombs like this all through Petra. These are all tombs of the Nabatian kings. So even though his name wasn't found on it, it's almost certainly his because it was made during his reign. So he would have made it for himself. That's so fascinating.

I never made this connection, Titus. But Aritas is not mentioned in Acts 9, which of course is after the conversion of Saul. he goes and preaches in Damascus, and that's written by Luke, right? Even though he's an eyewitness of Paul. And then in 2nd Corinthianschise chapter 11, he mentions in Damascus the city, the governor the position under King Aritas, he was lowered in a basket which lines up with Acts chapter 9, fascinating further details given there than in some ways you could call it an undesigned coincidence that advances the narrative, especially with the tomb. I had no idea that was

in Petra. That was one of my favorite places in the world I went to as a kid and have always wanted to go back. So that's, that's fascinating. All right, we got two more New Testament figures. This one should be more recognized, although there's a number of different Herods, of course, starting with Herod the Great during the birth of Jesus. Herod Agrippa, the first. So Herod Agripp of the First. He is, I think, fairly well known to readers of the New Testament because he is the local ruler, a local king, that we see first start to take persecution of Christians to the next level.

So if we go to Acts Chapter 12, I'll just read this right here, says, now about that time, Herod the king, laid hands on some who belonged to the church in order to mistreat them. And he had James the brother of John put to death with a sword. When he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also. So he kills James, the brother of John, and he arrests Peter. And Peter may have been his next target for execution, but God saved it.

So he was really opposed to the Christians and the apostles. And as we read later in that passage, though, we see his death comes at sort of unexpected circumstances, certainly for him and I think most of the people in his kingdom. He's at Cessarea Maritima, which we know that because Josephus actually tells us the story as well. Josephus gives us his account of the events of Acts 12. And he goes out and he makes this speech and he's got on this garment that's sparkling in the sun and people are calling him a God. And he just laps it up and he loves it. He doesn't reject that at all.

And then he's struck by God and he ends up dying soon after because of that. And so this is written about. in Acts 12, but it's also written about in Josephus, who recorded or put together this history at the end of the first century, so very, very, very close, almost the contemporary account there. So that's one really important source, but Herod Agrippa of the First is also attested just by so many different archaeological finds. He minted coins, his own coins. He puts his name and his title on them he's talked about by other authors historians of the the first and second centuries we have a lot of his building projects that he did as well so you know this is not not a person who we have questionable

evidence for you he's very obvious but what i find so incredibly interesting and important is is that Josephus account corroborates the details of Acts 12 also. There's another undesigned coincidence in there I remember because James is one of two apostles that are mentioned in the Bible about their martyrdoms, Acts 122, and of course Peter at the end of the gospel of John. And people have said, well, Agrippa wouldn't want to please the people, which it's described that he wanted to please the people, in the passage in Acts 12.

And yet Josephus, at that time in the reign of Herod Agrippa, it matches that he was wanting to please the Jews as a whole. It's kind of an additional support for it. We get outside of the scriptures. But your point, just the little doubt that Herodigua was a real historical person, I think is significant. And of course, in the other book we talked about on the historical Jesus, You list each of the different herds and historical evidence for each one of them.

But that's the story for another time. All right. The last one. And again, correct my pronunciation. Is it Bernice or Bernice the second? Yeah, it's rendered both ways. So it can be pronounced either way. So this is Julia, Baranese, also known as Baranese the second in Acts 25 and 26.

She is named. And even though she is not that important on the political stage, she was part of the Herodian dynasty, so the Herodian royal family. She was the daughter of Herod Agrippa I just talked about. Okay, so more family connections here. She was the great-granddaughter of King Herod, the Great, who, of course, we have massive archaeological attestation for her as well. One of her brothers was Herod Agrippa the second, who he's also named in Acts, and we've got plenty of archaeological attestation for him. So she, of course, wasn't a king, didn't really hold any political office, but I think she was well known in the upper echelon social circles because of her family. and maybe some of her poor choices or possibly strange relationship going on with her brother.

But she is named in Josephus and Tacitus and Scytus and Cus and Cacetius Dio. And then we have a couple really important archaeological inscriptions. The first, it was found in Beirut. Okay, so again, Syria province. This is connected to Judea in ancient. ancient times and in Roman times. And there's an inscription there, a Roman inscription of baronese and agrippa. So it names her and it names her brother on it as well. So in nice, big, bold Latin letters, you can see her name baronese. So that's her right there. But

there's another one that I think is probably even cooler because we have a statue of baronese or what was originally a statue of her and there's an inscription on there in Greek that says Julia baronese great queen so it's it's unquestionably her it's got both of her names it's got her title It's from the first century. In this case, it was found in Athens. So they had a lot of influence throughout the Roman Empire, and she traveled a lot as well. Why exactly she got a statue in Athens? I don't know.

Maybe there was a statue maker there that really thought she was worthy of it. But we've got these two inscriptions with her statue. We've got all these ancient manuscripts that mention her. So even though she's only talked about a little. little bit near the end of Acts, very, very well attested archaeologically in an ancient history. I love that. By the way, I'm sitting here doing the math going, okay, we just talked about 10 biblical figures and, you know, roughly an hour. Your book has 80, so we can multiply it by eight. If that's 30%, multiply that by three, you and I could spend, you know, I don't know how many

dozens of hours just spending five minutes on each historical person. So, of many ways, we just kind of laid the most basic foundation of these figures that are so well supported in the archaeological record. Two last questions for you. One, as far as you're aware, is artificial intelligence transforming archaeology? And in what way would it relate to biblical figures and or just archaeology for the New Testament or the Bible as a whole? Okay. First thing I'll mention, I have 135 people named in my book. A few of them don't get their own entry, but there's a lot and there is continuing discovery that keeps going on, right? In fact, there's a new one that I identify more recently that didn't make it into the book because I figured it out just after this. But as far as artificial intelligence, That's an interesting question because I will test different AIs sometimes on on these types of issues and see, you know, what they, what it knows and what it can find and what it can't find. And it's it's good at combing through the internet and finding things and kind of compiling it and assessing it.

But if it's not accessible, freely accessible online, then it's not going to know about it. So if there's an article publication that's behind a paywall or something, it's not going to have that data. If it's just in print, it's not going to have that data, right? And someone else somebody puts it online. However, it can be a really powerful tool because there's just so much out there now that we can't read every single thing, right?

And so, you know, what if, what if there's some obscure publication or, or, or, you know, writing and you know we miss that you know AI might be able to direct you to that as far as doing archaeology though i don't think AI at this point is really changing anything we still have to go out there and physically dig there are there are aspects of AI that we could apply to excavations for example software that allows us to uh film the excavation site and then from that, it builds out a 3D model with measurements of the excavation. Wow. So that's something that can be really useful.

But I don't think that overall archaeology is going to be too affected by AI. I imagine there could be tools, just like doctors are able to assess, you know, MRIs, and they can look for patterns. Of course, there's going to be less when it comes to archaeological finds, but look for patterns the human eye might miss. Yeah, yeah, you know, that pattern recognition, that came up in an article that, you know, it's archaeological related. It's Dead Sea Scrolls topic. But it is a study in which the authors built an AI algorithm to look at the radiocarbon dates of the Dead Sea Scrolls versus the paleographic dates of the Dead Sea Scrolls. and then to look and compare the paleography, the form of the letters. And their conclusion based on the output of the AI model was that a lot of the Dead Sea Scrolls are older than the traditionally assigned paleographic dates.

So in things like that, where you're talking pattern recognition, it's supposed to take away human bias, although you know, you still have to think about it's ultimately it was. programmed or trained, but it's supposed to be able to take away human bias and maybe get some more objective look at things. So in stuff like that, when we're talking about translations and linguistics and pattern recognition, I think that's helpful. But again, the computer's not going to go out and dig for you. So we've still got to do that type of work. Makes total sense. So last question, and you and I were chatting before, and this is what I... If you've ever been asked or have asked yourself, why did God do that? that when reading the Bible, this is for you. Sightline ministry, formerly Josh McDonough ministry,

exists to help cut through cultural confusion so people can see Jesus clearly. They've just launched a new on-demand learning center called Sightline You, and right now, they're offering a free course called Why Did God Do That? Confronting Hard Passages in the Bible. It's hosted by Matthew Teingblad and based on the book, he co-wrote with my dad, Josh McDowell. The course walks step by step through difficult passages that often seem to portray God as harsh or unloving. But instead of avoiding those texts, Matthew shows how careful study and proper context reveal God's goodness, justice, and redemptive love, even in the most difficult sections of the Bible.

You'll come away with greater confidence of Scripture and a deeper trust in God's character. Plus, when you join Sightline You, you get access to a library of free resource designed to help you tackle even more challenging passages. You can take the course for free right now at Sightlineministry.org Sean. Check out why did God do that today and get equipped to see God's goodness even when the text feels hard. Head over to sightline ministry.org slash Sean. I call the Spider-Man objection. Of course, I'm wearing my, actually my Biola Spider-Man shirt interestingly enough, kind of fun. I'll show it off here. One of my favorites of all

time is that people say, okay, it's a completely fictional story but takes place in New York City. So there's some real figures. There's some real figures. There's some real places. So the existence of these places does nothing to tell us that anything within the Spider-Man accounts is actually true. How do you respond to that kind of objection in light of all these biblical figures that line up? Does this prove anything about the Bible being reliable and or true? It's an interesting argument if we are only displaying the evidence for the existence of cities and historical context. So we could say, look, Jerusalem has been discovered.

They found this palace. They found these other buildings. They found the steps up to the Temple Mount, stuff like that. And then someone could say, all right, that's fine. Jerusalem existed in those biblical times. Those buildings were present. That doesn't mean that David, existed, that Jesus existed, that these events happened, and so on and so forth. Now, if we're just

looking at the sites themselves and the architecture, I think that is a criticism that makes sense. But the difference between a mythological story in a historical setting and an ancient document like the Bible is that we do have archaeological corroboration for those specific people named and those events. So Spider-Man, obviously, we don't have evidence for his real existence, okay, Peter Parker. We could go look at a historical example that is similar to that, and that is the Iliad. So the Iliad, the historical setting of the Iliads about the 12th century BC, although it was written later by Homer. So Troy was a real place and the kingdom of mycenae was a real place and there was actually a some kind of war and the city got

destroyed that's been verified archaeologically but that doesn't mean that Hector and Achilles and Priam and Helen and Paris and all these people doesn't mean they existed or that you know they fought a duel and all these things happened right because we actually have zero archaeological evidence for the existence of any of those characters none of them are named until long after Homer writes the epic and then we see like on Greek vases some of the scenes from the Iliad shown with the names of the people so they're they're actually just depicting the story in Homer they're not they're not back there you know 500 600 years earlier with contemporary archaeological evidence so what you're talking about with the Spider-Man's fallacy that that can

apply to the Iliad but it doesn't work with the Bible because we do have archaeological evidence for these people like David, like Hezekiah, like Adramelik, like Belchazar, and so forth. And so it's not just in a real place or a real historical context. They're real verified people. And a lot of times the specific events are even verified by outside sources as well. That's great. And of course we know Spider-Man exists in a genre known as a comic book, and we all know that. But we've got historical books here, like kings, books like Joshua, books like Genesis. We have Gospels, letters of Paul, and these historical figures transcend many of these different genres. And of course, multiple of the New Testament examples you

gave come from the writings of Luke. And Luke starts by saying, in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, Herod being Tetar from Galilee, his brother Philip, Tetrarch of the Rain of it, Eurya, and Trachonitis, and Lysanis, tetrach of Abilene, during the high priest of Anus and Caiaphas. There's historical evidence, if not for all of these, most of these people, places, and times. And then Luke says, for all of them. The Word of God came to John, the son of Zachari, in the wilderness. So just like these governors are real, these places are real, this time is real.

the Word of God coming to John is real. So it's framed in a way that you should expect to find these people and places. And so when we go there and find it, it at least gives some corroboration and support that the author got things right. Minimally should make us say, all right, if they got every single thing listed here, right, did they get it right about John? Minimally, I think we should ask that question. Titus, this is awesome.

always enjoy interviewing you, enjoy each one of your book. It's just encouraging and it's interesting. Maybe we'll have you back to explore some of these biblical figures in depth. If anybody's watching, like, wait a minute, I don't know about Abraham. Tell me about the historical evidence for Hezekiah. Tell me about whatever figure, let us know which one would be interesting. We'll take a look and see if we could come back and have a discussion about that. Again, we're here with Dr. Titus Kennedy's book is called Archaeology and the People of the Bible. Archaeology and the people of the Bible. He lists a 135 from the Old Testament and from the New Testament with very quality pictures for each one. Now, you might be thinking, well, I could just search this on the Internet, but the key is he laid out

his criteria at the beginning where these are very carefully assessed. AI and online is not going to give that to you. So it's a very quick, helpful reference guide for students, for pastors, and those who just want some reliable data on these biblical figures. Make sure he hits subscribe because we will be certain. Reckling back to archaeology regularly. And by the way, those of you watch, if you hear of breaking stories, send them my way, and we'll bring an archaeologist on to talk about it.

We've done a couple recently, Titus, one on the archaeology taking place in Colossi, being head up by Clint Arnold, or he's one of the key people that's helping it out, a scholar at Talbot. The case for Jericho being City 5, we had a conversation about that. So folks watching, if you hear of new breaking stories, Let me know and we'll keep circling back to that. And make sure you hit subscribe because we actually have Dr. Kennedy come and teach a class for us on archaeology as often as we can. In our master's program, we'd love to have you.

It's online and in person. Information is blown. By the way, if you're not ready for master's, we have a full certificate program now, totally updated, big discount in the description on each of my YouTube videos. Dr. Kennedy, really appreciate your time. It's always fun. Thanks for coming back. Thanks, Sean.

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