6. Historical Reliability of the Bible (1)

What Can We Expect?

Blessed in so many ways unknown to the generations before us, we have a large toolkit available to research the history of the Bible and the historical reliability of the Scriptures. Our tools include:

• History: Through sources outside the Bible we can reconstruct the history of the Bible and the timeline of past events, often with remarkable accuracy. We can pinpoint the dates of empires and kingdoms, rulers and battles as well as explore discoveries and inventions, early technology and ancient economies. In doing so, we can determine if the Biblical accounts “fit” into the history of the world, spanning from the political landscape even to particular customs such as the cost of a slave or the price of sharpening plow points.
• Bible Archaeology: Through Biblical archaeology and painstakingly careful excavations at far flung sites, many of the Bible’s records of cities, fortifications, and structures have been verified. Artifacts and documents from distant time periods help evaluate both history and the Biblical record.
• Other supporting sciences: A number of additional scientific disciplines support our findings through history and archaeology. These disciplines include geology to date large scale events, radio-metric dating to determine the age of documents and artifacts, textual scholarship to analyze the background and interpret documents, and so on.

This toolkit gives us a solid base for effective research, but never lose sight of limitations of this exploration. In many cases, this is not solid, objective science, but actually requires lots of subjective interpretation and creative solutions to puzzles so as to define the “total picture” when only a small number of the pieces of the puzzle are present:

• Unlike many fields of science, history cannot be re-created in a laboratory. Archaeologists and historians can only study and interpret the evidence left behind, often after many years. New discoveries can upset many comfortable conclusions.
• Interpretation of archaeological evidence depends on a researcher’s presuppositions and worldview. A believer of the Bible searches for evidence that confirms it's history and interprets all findings within that particular perspective. Many researchers are openly skeptical of the Scriptures and hostile to its worldview. They can be tempted to reach conclusions that discredit Biblical accounts.
• Thousands of documents have been discovered even whole archives, but a staggering amount of material has been lost. For example, the famous library in Alexandria, Egypt once held more than one million codices and manuscripts; unfortunately, all were destroyed in a seventh century fire.
• Lastly, whatever we find can only corroborate Biblical accounts and events. We can never prove them beyond dispute, nor can any of these discoveries prove the Bible is inspired.

The power of Bible archaeology and historical research is not just the ability to confirm the history of the Bible and the accuracy of the Biblical record. Its inability to disprove Biblical accounts is an even more significant contribution to the credibility of the Scriptures.