Theology in the Raw - 817: Is the Bible Reliable? Evidence from History and Archaeology

Episode Date: September 7, 2020

Does archaeology prove or disprove the Bible? What about ancient historical records? Do they correlate or conflict with the biblical account? Is the Bible historically accurate or inaccurate? In this talk, I discuss the reliability of the Bible in light of ancient historical and archaeological records. As we'll see, the Bible actually has a very good track record when it comes to history and archaeology. Watch this episode of the podcast on YouTube Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Youtube | Preston Sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw, which you're about to listen to is part two of a three-part series on the Bible. The last episode, we talked about where the Bible came from, or the fancy word that theologians use to describe that is the canonization of scripture. For this one, I want to talk about the reliability of the Bible, wrestling specifically with history and archaeology. What do we do when extra biblical history, like, you know, historical records outside the Bible seems to conflict with the Bible or does it conflict with the Bible or does it actually support the Bible? What about archeology when archeologists are digging up

stuff in the land of Israel and, and Asia minor modern day Turkey, like, does it actually support the Bible or does it contradict the Bible? And the answer is it's a little messy actually. Um, and that's what we're going to dig into here. Again, I did a YouTube, this, I did the video of this talk is up on my YouTube channel at Press and Sprinkle. Um, so this one does have some visuals. You might want to go check it out. I show some pictures, I'm drawing on them. I'm doing kind of PowerPoint stuff or keynote stuff. And you might find that helpful there. So if you hear me reference something visual, that's what's going on there. If you'd like to support the show, please consider it. Please pray about it. And if

you have a little extra money, consider supporting the show at patreon.com forward slash theology in Iran. Many, many thanks to those of you out there who have been faithful supporters of the show. Some of you have been supporting me for like three, four years, and that's incredible. So thank you so much for those of you who are part of the theology in the rock community. Okay. Without further ado, let's rest, continue to wrestle with the reliability of scripture. Hello, Valley Christian. It's good to be with you virtually again for another Sunday where we're going to dig into the reliability of the Bible. the reliability of the Bible. Today, we're going to talk specifically about the historicity or the historical reliability of the Bible and why we can trust what the Bible says

when we look at the historical accounts within Scripture. Before I jump in, I just want to acknowledge that we are living in trying times. I've been really excited to see how Roger and the leadership at Valley Christian has been handling the various things going on in society and providing space for people to process, to think, to learn, and to listen. I've been doing a lot of listening these days. So just a massive thank you to Valley Christian, the leadership out there and all of you who are really wrestling with the really difficult times we're living in right now. And that's actually a perfect segue into our topic for today, because when you're living in difficult times, it's all the more reason to go back to the scriptures, to try to understand God's plan for society, to understand God's moral direction, how he wants us to live. And so all the more reason for us to cling to an authoritative source like the scriptures.

Now, if the scriptures are not reliable, then we shouldn't cling to them. And the historicity of the Bible or the historical accounts, the historical accounts within scriptures, the scriptures have been subject to a lot of debates, a lot of attacks. And so I want to address some of that with you today. I almost said this morning, but probably a lot of you are listening to this after the fact. But for those of you who are listening live Sunday morning, then it is the morning. Okay. So I made a comment in the last video a couple of weeks ago that trusting the Bible does take faith, but it's not a blind faith. There's always going to be a measure of faith that we're going to have to exercise when we say we believe in the Bible, but it's not a blind faith. I do believe, and here's the phrase that I want

to use. I do believe that we have sufficient and compelling evidence that the Bible is historically reliable. We have sufficient and compelling evidence that the Bible is historically reliable. is historically reliable. And as we'll see, the historical message in the Bible is bound up with its moral message or even its theological message. And so since these are all intertwined, the moral message, the theological message, and the historical context, since these are all intertwined, it's important to understand the veracity or the truthfulness of the historical message, because that's not just some separate compartment within the Bible. The Bible's moral message in particular is bound up with the history of the Bible. So it is important for us to understand the evidence for and against the historical reliability of the scriptures. Now, before we even dive in, when we ask questions about the evidence for the historicity of the Bible,

we have to understand the kind of evidence that we should be looking for. It's not like, I heard a philosopher once talk about the cookies in the cupboard argument. Like if somebody says there are cookies in the cupboard and you demand evidence for that claim, well, to find out whether that claim is true or not, all you have to do is get up, walk over to the cupboard and open the door to see if there's cookies in the cupboard. Okay. It's, it's a, it's a, it's a real black and white kind of, um, truth claim that you can clearly see if it's true or not. Okay. I guess there could be, it could be the case that maybe you're, you're having a vision or you heard something, or maybe you saw cookies and it was actually crackers. Okay. So don't push the metaphor too far. But when we look at the historicity of the Bible, it's not like we're looking for cookies in the cupboard.

Okay. I mean, it's a lot more of a complex question that we're seeking to address, whether or not the Bible is historically accurate. Okay. So again, the phrase that I like is, I do think there is sufficient and compelling evidence that the Bible is historically reliable. Notice I didn't say that the historicity of the Bible is perfect and uncontested. As we'll see, there are places in the Bible that we simply don't have an airtight, cookies-in-the-cupboard kind of response to some of the problems raised regarding the historicity or even the ethics of the Bible. And hopefully after this talk, you will see that that's okay. We shouldn't fear some of the remaining problems that remain in the scriptures. A couple other points of

introduction before we dive into some examples is that, well, two points, one with regard to extra biblical history and another point with regard to archaeology. When it comes to evaluating the historicity of the Bible, it's not like we have loads of other historical sources to compare the Bible with. And this is a mistake I think some critics often make. They'll say, well, the Bible's proven to be wrong here or there. And you say, well, what's the standard by which you're measuring the Bible? And then they, oftentimes they don't even know, or they'll refer to some other ancient source. And it's like, well, how do you know that ancient source is reliable? We don't have a lot of parallel historical sources

to measure the historicity of the Bible with, okay? It's not like the Canaanites left behind a whole 10-volume series on the history of Canaan, and then, you know, we can kind of read that fictitious series of books and say, wow, the Bible doesn't match up here. You know, we don't have a lot to go on. One of our earliest sources, especially for the later parts of the Old Testament, one of our primary sources is Herodotus, the fifth century BC Greek historian. Well, Herodotus is, first of all, notorious for kind of embellishing stuff. And he's not living in the land of Israel. He's writing from a distance. He's, you know, and so it's not like Herodotus is, you know, so overwhelmingly accurate and verifiable while the Bible, you know, when it's measured up against Herodotus, then we should,

you know, then the Bible is proven to be wrong if it doesn't agree with Herodotus. Like we're dealing with two historical sources. And even from a very unbiased perspective, like if you just approach this as a neutral judge, like not, not, you know, assuming your Christian faith, like if you just looked at these historical documents, Herodotus and the Bible, it's not clear that one would be clearly more authoritative than the other. In fact, as we'll see, I think the Bible actually has a better track record than even someone like Herodotus. Okay. So, so it's not like we have an overwhelming stack of, you know, ancient historical sources to compare the Bible with. Another thing to understand about archaeology is that archaeology is an inexact science.

Whenever you hear the phrase coming from somebody else's mouth, whenever you hear the phrase coming from somebody else's mouth whenever you hear the phrase archaeology has proven you just need to stop them right there maybe you know go ahead and let them finish their sentence but when people say archaeology has proven major red flags go up in my mind because archaeology is a very inexact science. You could say some archeologists suggest, and then they'll come up with, you know, some theory about the date of this city or, you know, the size of that battle or whatever. Archeology is an inexact science. And there's a very small percentage, a small percentage of the ancient world that has been dug up by archaeologists and has been analyzed. And the results of that analyzation have been published. There's a very small percentage,

especially in the land of Israel, but even the larger biblical world, a very small percentage that has actually gone through archaeological scrutiny. I remember when I lived in Israel for a number of months, as I said last time, and I've toured around like Turkey and Greece. And it's fascinating how some of these cities haven't even been touched. I remember driving up to the city of Colossae. Okay, I wanted to go to Colossae. It's in modern day Turkey. And we rented a car, me and some friends, we drove out there and it was a long drive to get out there. And we pull up to Colossae and all it is, is this large dirt hill with a sign that says Colossae, ancient Colossae. It's like, well, no one's even dug it up. We know nothing about the ancient ruins of Colossae because

archaeologists simply haven't examined it. And there's a lot of cities in Israel that are the same way. We know very little from archaeology about what has happened in history. And again, I don't want to downplay it. There's some archaeological finds that have been really helpful. And I don't want to say archaeology isn't helpful in many ways to illustrate the biblical record, but we just can't think that it's not like the whole entire land of Israel has been unearthed, analyzed, and now we have this airtight archaeological record. Archaeology is an inexact science. Okay. So I do think the Bible has a remarkable historical track record. When people have these assumptions that the Bible is like filled with historical problems, I think those assumptions are incredibly naive. And again,

I just, I want to emphasize again, I want to approach this topic as neutral as I possibly can. Now that's totally impossible. I still have my Christian bias, but I don't want to just bend the evidence around my Christian assumptions. I want to kind of just look at some things just from the perspective of like an unbiased judge as much as I can. So I want to look at four examples of things in the scriptures that we know from either history or archaeology, when they do intersect, when the Bible intersects with historical sources or the archaeological record. I want to look at four examples that I find to be not just remarkable, but typical of many other examples we can look at. Okay. The first one I will look at is Hezekiah's tunnel. Hezekiah's tunnel. And here I'm going to bring in a PowerPoint here to illustrate this. I got to realign myself

here. Okay. Hezekiah's tunnel. Now let me just set the context here. In the year 701 BC, In the year 701 BC, Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, invaded the land of Israel. He marched down the western coast of Israel, knocking out city after city after city. And then he turned inland to head to Jerusalem. to Jerusalem and one of the main kind of last stands, the sort of Israel, Israelite Alamo was the city of Lachish. And we're going to get to Lachish in a second, but we have loads of historical records surrounding Sennacherib's battle and siege of Lachish. And then once he conquers Lachish, he heads to Jerusalem. You could read about this in second Kings and in, uh, in the book of Isaiah and in second Chronicles, it's the only,

uh, event that's recorded in three places in the old Testament. Not only is it recorded in three places in the old Testament, but Sennacherib himself, um, left behind a record of his siege of Jerusalem and his conquering of Lachish. Now, one thing that's fascinating is that prior to Sennacherib's siege, Hezekiah, the king of Israel, or specifically the king of Judah at that time, at that time to prepare for Sennacherib's seed. He built a massive near mile long canal to, uh, underneath the city of Jerusalem to divert the waters, to divert the waters from coming outside the city to coming inside the city. Okay. So one of the main water sources of Jerusalem is, um, uh, the pool of Siloam is a, is a,

is a, is a spring outside of, or sorry, the Gihon Spring. The Gihon Spring is the main water source. It's a natural spring underneath the city of Jerusalem. Well, outside of the city of ancient Jerusalem. And that's where the Jerusalemites got their water from. Well, that spring happened to be outside the city walls. Bad place for your water place to be when you're under siege, okay? If your water's outside the city walls, you can't go outside the city walls. Bad place for your water place to be when you're under siege. Okay. If your water's outside the city walls, you can't go outside the city walls

because a bunch of Assyrians out there ready to skin you alive, literally. So that's, we need to divert that water to go inside the city. And that's exactly what Hezekiah did. He built a, he dug a near mile long trench underneath the city walls so that he can funnel the water into the city of Jerusalem. Now let's, let's read second Chronicles 32 here. It says, um, after all Hezekiah had so faithfully done Sennacherib, the King of Assyria. Okay. And he's a real historical figure. We have loads of records of Sennacherib King of of Assyria, came and invaded Judah. He laid siege to the fortified cities. We have a record of that.

Thinking to conquer them for himself. When Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib had come and that he intended to wage war against Jerusalem, he consulted with his officials and military staff about blocking off the water from the springs outside the city. You can go there today. You can see the ancient remains of Jerusalem. You can see the water source. It is outside the city walls. And they helped him and they gathered a large group of people who blocked all the springs

and the stream that flowed through the land and saying, you know, why should the kings of Assyria come and have, find plenty of water? And they said, they said, and then they worked hard repairing all the broken sections of the wall and building towers on it. And he built another wall outside the city, that one, and reinforced the terraces of the city of David, this other wall. Um, I don't have a picture of this. I'm going to show you a picture of Hezekiah's tunnel in a second. Um, there's archeological remains of a massive,

they call it the broad wall outside the ancient gate, uh, walls of Jerusalem. You can see that wall today here. The Bible says he built an extra wall, a big wall outside the city. And you can go see that wall today. Here, the Bible says he built an extra wall, a big wall outside the city, and you can go see that wall today. Secular atheist archaeologists date that wall to the reign of

Hezekiah. Here's a parallel passage in 2 Kings 20. It says, now the rest of the acts of Hezekiah and all his might and how he made the pool and the conduit and brought the water into the city. Are they not written in the book of Chronicles of the Kings of Judah? Yes, they are. We just read it. They're written in the book of Chronicles of the Kings of Judah. Here is a picture of Hezekiah's tunnel. You can go walk through it today. I have walked through Hezekiah's tunnel. It's amazing. So here's what's fascinating is you have a very detailed account of something that happened in the history of the Bible. And you can go there today and verify that historical claim all the way down to the smallest details, like walking through this tunnel. And even today, there's water flowing through the tunnel from outside the city to inside the city. Okay. So Hezekiah's tunnel is a classic example, a historical claim in the Bible that is verified by simply going to

the land of Israel and visiting exactly where the Bible says this took place. Another example, number two, second example is the city of Jericho. The city of Jericho has been subject to much archaeological attention. Many archaeologists have done extensive excavations in the city of Jericho. So what I said before about many cities that haven't been given a lot of archaeological attention, the opposite is true of Jericho. Loads of archaeological attention. One of the first archaeologists to really do extensive work there is a British archaeologist by the name of Kathleen Kenyon, not a Christian, okay? Not religious. And she said that the city of Jericho was destroyed. It was leveled.

And she came up with a date that was slightly different than the biblical date, than the majority opinion about the biblical date of the city of the destruction of Jericho. And other archaeologists have actually argued against Kathleen Canyon's date and said, no, this actually does match the biblical record. Either way, we have clear archaeological evidence that Jericho was absolutely leveled. In fact, I don't know if I should say this, but when I lived in Israel and we went and looked at Jericho, I remember seeing this, they call it like a burn layer, where you can see where the city collapsed. And it's just kind of this charcoal layer that you can see in the side of the wall. It's kind of hard to explain, but I remember when nobody was looking. I actually took a piece of the burn layer.

Like, actually, I don't know where it's at. I misplaced it. I don't know where it's at. How did I misplace it? But I have a piece of Jericho's walls. Like, I literally took against, you know, what the authorities said I should have done. But, like, it's, I just want to kind of evidence that this actually happened. This isn't just a myth.

I just want to kind of evidence that this actually happened. This isn't just a myth. And somebody, I guess somebody could say, well, the miraculous, you know, you know, marching around Jerusalem and God leveling the city through a miracle. You can't verify that. And I guess you can't verify that kind of miracle, but we can say the city of Jericho was destroyed around the time when the Bible says it was destroyed. Let's talk about Belshazzar. Oh, sorry.

Here's a picture of Sennacherib's siege. This is a picture I actually took in the British Museum. This is a wall relief that decorated Sennacherib's palace to commemorate his siege of Lachish. And here, if you can see this, these are Israelites being impaled on a pole by Assyrians. These are Assyrians and these are Israelites. And there's lots of other details here that are commemorating the siege of Lachish. And the Bible talks about the siege of lakish and the bible talks about the siege of lakish and um so does sennacherib he i mean he's kind of a sick and twisted person sennacherib is i mean he lined his palace walls with all these gruesome images of his

of his um battle his victory over the the city of lakish let's talk about Belshazzar. Belshazzar in Daniel chapter five, it says King Belshazzar summoned the enchanters, the astrologers and the diviners, diviners. And he said to these wise men of Babylon, whoever reads this writing and tells me what it means will be clothed in purple and have a gold chain placed around his neck, and he will be made third highest in the kingdom, third highest ruler in the kingdom. There's two questions here that used to be the attention of many critics of the Bible. The first question is, who in the world is Belshazzar? in the world is Belshazzar? We know from history that Nabonidus was the king over Babylon at this time. And for the longest time, people, you know, kind of laughed at the Bible and mocked the Bible

saying the Bible talks about Belshazzar being kind of the ruler over Babylon when Persia ended up conquering it. That's the larger context of Daniel 5. You have Persia is about to conquer Babylon. And for the longest time, people were kind of saying, oh, the Bible is obviously not true. They made this up. Everybody knows Nabonidus was the king. That is until we discovered the so-called Nabonidus cylinder in 1850-ish.

1854, the Nabonidus cylinder in 1850-ish, 1854. The Nabonidus cylinder was discovered where we read Nabonidus himself saying, I, Nabonidus, king of Babylon, never fail you. And may my firstborn Belshazzar worship you with all his heart. I think he's writing this to his God. And then there's another portion of this cylinder that talks about Nabonidus entrusting his kingdom to his son Belshazzar while he was away. So here's an interesting case where the historicity of the Bible seemed to be completely wrong. And people were really eager to say that the Bible is historically false until an archaeological discovery showed that the Bible is actually true. This is a good example,

actually, because when we come to problems today, and there are some problems today, there are remaining problems in the scriptures that we don't have a Nabonidus cylinder kind of response, but maybe we will in five years or in 10 years or in 10, 20 years or in a hundred years, just because we don't yet have archaeological or historical evidence to back up a certain claim within a passage or whatever doesn't mean that we won't in the future. And this is a classic example of that. Okay. Another example of the Bible agreeing with what we know of the extra biblical historical

record is the city of Hazor, the city of Hazor. This is Hazor here. So if you know your geography of Israel, you can see the Sea of Galilee here so this is in the very northern end of Israel and in Joshua 11 it says at that time Joshua turned back and captured Hazor and put its king to the sword and then look at this parenthetical phrase hot sore had been the head of all these kingdoms okay everyone in it they put to the sword and they totally destroyed them not sparing anyone that breathed and hot and joshua burned hot sore to the ground it's one of the few cities actually that joshua burned to the ground.

And I bring this one up because this isn't a very glamorous, this isn't like the kind of Nabonidus cylinder kind of aha moment. But this is just an example where the very kind of almost mundaneness by which the Bible describes a historical event is also verified by the historical record. This is a picture of ancient Hazor. Here is the city proper. And then you have this massive area here where a lot of people ended up leaving. Hazor is one of the,, actually I think it's the largest city in ancient Israel. 200 acres.

And so being the head of all the kingdoms matches the archaeological record that this was a massive city with huge fortified walls. Bigger, a lot bigger than Jericho. Jericho is only like 13 acres. Hazor is 200 acres. Jericho is only like 13 acres. Hazor is 200 acres. Also, it says that he burned Hazor to the ground. And we have a massive three foot burn layer that dates right around the time of Joshua from the archaeological record. So even without going super out of our way, if we just look at kind of a mundane detail here, we see that this also matches the biblical record.

So I could go on and on and on. I could do this all day. There's so many interesting things where the Bible, when it's put up against an extra biblical, you know, a source that's outside the Bible, either historical record or an archaeological record, that when we put those up against each other, in as much as they both talk about the same thing, that the Bible is shown to match both the historical and the archaeological record. We could talk about geography, cultural practices, even climate, or even things like the ancient roads in Israel. Like when the Bible talks about ancient roads, how, you know, where people were traveling from this city to that city. I won't go into details on this. And then you go there today, you can see that even the description of the ancient

roadways matches the geography of Israel. So again, the Bible has sufficient and compelling evidence that it is historically reliable. What about the problems? Let's talk about some problems. I don't shy away from the so-called problems in the Bible. And I think it's, here's my perspective. I think it's okay to admit when we come face to face with something that is a bit troubling in the scriptures. Maybe it's a moral question, like the conquest of the Holy Land in the book of Joshua. I have moral hesitations with God saying, go kill everyone that breathes. This comes from Deuteronomy 20, verse 16 and 17. God says, when you enter the land, save alive nothing that breathes. That, I have moral reservations about that.

And you should too, okay? And I won't get into all the responses. I think there are decent responses to that moral question, that ethical problem, but it's still, I think it's okay to admit, like when I read that, I have a certain moral reaction to that. That doesn't just immediately sit well with me. I think that's okay to admit. Or I think there are historical questions in the Bible that we don't have perfect answers to. The very claim that two million Israelites left Egypt and conquered this massive empire and entered the land of Canaan like that. We don't have a lot of clear archaeological or historical evidence that 2 million slaves left Egypt. Again, we don't have evidence against it, but we don't have a lot of evidence for it. We do have some. We do have

some evidence, though, that Jewish people did live in Egypt. In terms of the archaeological record, most archaeologists would say that there's about 20, know, 20,000 to 100,000 people that lived in Canaan around the time when Israel entered in, like the idea that there's 2 million Israelites, that really presses the archaeological record there. Okay. So I'm saying that's okay. It's okay to not have an immediate answer to that. Maybe there's an interpretation with 2 million that, you know, that would suggest that it's actually a lot less, or maybe the Bible is being hyperbolic, overstating something to make a point. It's okay to admit that we have remaining questions about the historicity of the Bible. But let me give three thoughts about these problems. Number one,

the Bible. But let me give three thoughts about these problems. Number one, sometimes historical problems can be overplayed. Let me give you an example of the apparent contradiction between the numbers in 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles. Okay. So just so we're all on the same page. First Chronicles overlaps with Second Samuel. So First Chronicles retells the same storyline as Second Samuel. And then Second Chronicles retells the same story as First and Second Kings. So Second Chronicles is a much more condensed version of First and Second Kings. So we read about the same event in two accounts, and a lot of people assume that, oh, there's just loads of contradictions between Samuel and Chronicles. Here's one example, and this is talking about the same event.

In 2 Samuel 24, it says that there were in Israel 800,000 valiant men who drew the sword, and the men of Judah, there were 500,000, whereas the parallel account in 1 Chronicles 21 says, all is Israel, um, were over a million men who drew the sword and Judah was 470,000 men that drew the sword. So we can just, let's just single out, you know, this one here. Um, this, these numbers don't match up. And if you're a critic of the Bible, you will say, see, here is a blatant contradiction. The author of Chronicles is fabricating the numbers here. Or

maybe you can say the author of, well, the Chronicles is written after. So whatever problem there might be, it would be with the author of Chronicles. Let me give you a few responses to this apparent contradiction. First of all, if you just read the next verse in of Chronicles. Let me give you a few responses to this apparent contradiction. First of all, if you just read the next verse in 1 Chronicles, it adds a statement that's not in 2 Samuel. It says, but he did not number Levi and Benjamin among them. So maybe if he did number Levi and Benjamin among them, maybe that would bring the number up from 470,000 to 500,000. Maybe that's the case. I'm not saying for sure. I'm just saying it's a possibility. Secondly, I don't think we should be troubled when the Bible speaks in terms

of generalities. Like if I said, if I said this talk is going to be a half hour, I've already just passed that. And it actually went 35 minutes. I'm going to try to make me the 35 minute mark here. I don't think you would accuse me of lying because if I say, oh yeah, I gave a half hour talk to Valley Christian, that's a round number. It's a generality. And we're very okay with people today speaking in generalities. We don't accuse them of lying if they're not very precise. So maybe Samuel was giving a more general number, whereas Chronicles was giving a more precise number. That's a possibility. Another thing to understand when it comes to the numbers between Chronicles and samuel kings mentions a number of the same event

there are only 17 times okay follow me with the math here 213 parallels when it comes to numbers and all in only 17 cases do those numbers not match up? That means, let me do my math, in 194 of the 213, in 194, the numbers are perfectly congruent. They're exactly the same. Now, if you just approach this from an unbiased judge, you're going to say, wow, this is actually very historically remarkable. That's pretty amazing that these two authors writing in different times would actually record the same event. Leave it aside, inspiration.

But if you just treat them both as historians, you're like, wow, they both, more than 90% of the time, recorded the same number. Okay? OK, also, when you look at the differences, the author of Chronicles records a higher number, 10 of the 17 times, and yet records a lower number, 7 of the 17 times. So the reason why that's important is that if the chronicler, if the author of Chronicles was simply trying to embellish the numbers, he would think that they were always, whenever they were different, that they would always be higher. Or if he was trying to diminish the numbers, they would always be lower. The fact that some are higher, some are lower shows that I don't think he really has some kind of agenda, like some people say. Okay, so when it comes to the problems of the Bible, number one, sometimes the historical problems I think are overplayed.

Number two, we must understand the biblical writers in their own historical and cultural context. in their own historical and cultural context. We shouldn't expect modern standards of historiography from ancient biblical writers. And some people say, well, aren't they inspired? Yes, they are inspired. But remember, inspired means that God breathed out his word through human writers in their own real historical,

cultural, and let's just say scientific context. So for instance, the classic mistake in the Bible is Joshua 10, where Joshua says that the sun stood still. And people say, aha, we know that the sun doesn't stand still or the sun doesn't rotate around the earth. We know now that the earth rotates around the sun. And so Joshua is making a historical or scientific mistake. And I, well, two things. First of all, I don't say that when anybody says, wow, look at the beautiful sunset. I don't say, ah, but the sun's not setting. The earth is actually rotating. You

know, we don't, we say stuff like sunset, it's not a big deal. But secondly, I think it's okay to understand the biblical writers in their own historical, cultural, and scientific world. I think Joshua and the author of the book of Joshua believed that the sun revolved around the earth. That's okay. That's the context in which they were living in. I don't think we should expect modern day, 20th century scientific precision from ancient biblical authors. Remember,

inspiration does not mean dictation. It's not like God whispered into the ears of these ancient writers and they were sitting there in some trance foaming at the mouth, saying things that they had no clue about. They were writing within their own historical, cultural, and scientific context. Number three, you may not solve when it comes to the problems of the Bible. You may not solve every problem. That's okay. It's totally fine because the Bible has an amazing track record. The Bible has an amazing track record so that when we come to some of the problems in the Bible that we still don't have a really great response to, we don't need to frantically scramble around needing to solve every little problem. Otherwise, our whole faith in the Bible is torn to shreds. For instance, I'll be honest with you, the genealogy

of Jesus in Matthew 1 is different than the genealogy of Jesus in Luke 3. And I have read through all of the suggestions about why that is. I've read some of the proposed solutions to that apparent contradiction, and I'm not really satisfied by them all, to be quite honest. Some of them are okay. I'm like, yeah, but it's still, if I was an unbiased judge, I would be not terribly convinced by the suggested solutions to this apparent contradiction. Maybe like the Nabonidus cylinder, we will discover something in the future that will shed light on this apparent contradiction. Or maybe we won't.

It's okay because the overwhelming track record of the Bible is one of historical reliability. So we don't need to freak out every time we encounter a problem that we don't have an immediate answer to. I want to give a few practical takeaways, a few practical takeaways. Number one, our historical God is a relational God. And that's such a, it's such a beautiful thing. We serve a God who's not just some wise teacher, isn't just some God of some ancient myth. We serve a God who incarnates, who entered into human history and not just entered into human history, but he entered into our own personal histories. We serve a relational God who is also a historical God. He's not afraid

to enter into our lives. The fact that the Bible is bound up with a historical backbone is so important to understanding the relationality of God, the God who left heaven to come to earth, who left his divine abode and incarnated so that he would not just speak into our story, but he would enter into our story. Our historical God is relational God. Number two, the Bible's historical message is also a moral message. It's not enough just to encounter the history of the Bible and to spend all our energy determining that this history is true. I know some atheists who would say, no, the Bible is really historically accurate. It's not enough simply to acknowledge the historicity of the Bible because the historicity of the Bible is intended to send us a moral theological message. The Bible doesn't recount history just for history's sake.

It recounts God who enters into history to reveal himself to us and to elicit a response to an encounter with God. an encounter with God. When we read about the history of the Bible, when we read these stories in Kings and Chronicles and Samuel, it's not just to, you know, impress the historical buffs among us. It is to reveal God's moral and theological will for our lives. When we encounter God in the history of the Bible, we are encountering the living God who demands a response from us. When we read Chronicles, when we read Kings, it is historically reliable, but that historical reliability should push us to respond in obedience. Number three, the Bible has a timeless message, one that is very, very relevant for our cultural moment in 2020. It's been said that the Bible was not written to us, but it was written for us.

I love that statement. Some people are thrown off by that. Like, wait, no, no, the Bible is written to us. Well, no, the Bible is written to, directly to its ancient readers. It's not like Paul the apostle had 21st century Americans in mind when he wrote it. He was writing to his own historical context. Bible's not written to us, but it is written for us. These localized historical contextual messages in the Bible are very relevant for all cultures of every time. So even when we're wrestling with things like racial tensions, violence, power, immigration, forgiveness, injustice, injustice, when we're wrestling with these very profound themes in 2020, as we should wrestle, the Bible gives us timeless guidance for how to wrestle with the moral fabric of our current context today. We're wrestling with a lot of things today.

today. We're wrestling with a lot of things today. What one might say the moral fabric of our nation here in America is being, um, is being, I don't want to say torn to shreds, but it is being reevaluated. How's that? All the more reason to turn to the scriptures that are reliable to understand, not just the ancient record of Israel or the ancient record of first century Christianity, but to understand how we are to live in today's very volatile world. Thank you.