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Evidence in history
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outside the Bible Reliable
documents? Real people; real
places: evidence from Archaeology Something to
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Real people, real places - Evidence from Archaeology

Web
sites
Books

Someone wrote to this web site recently saying

I find it funny that you claim archaeological evidence
supports the bible. It's actually a well known fact that archaeology is
the Achilles heel of religion...

They could hardly have been more wrong. In fact there is so much
archaeological evidence supporting the historical accuracy of the Bible
that our problem has been how to make it easily accessible on these pages.
This page is a kind of 'home page' for the archaeological evidence -
expect us to add more to it as time goes on.

photo: BiblePlaces.com

People
Lysanius
- ruler of Abilene Nicodemus
and the ben Gurion family Mary, Martha
and Lazarus The
crucified man Simon of
Cyrene The Pilate
inscription Sergius
Paulus inscriptions Erastus
the treasurer of Corinth Gallio the
governor of Corinth

Places

Nazareth
Where
Jesus grew up?

Capernaum
Peter's
house the
synagogue

Tiberias
The 'Jesus
boat'

Jerusalem
the
temple warning notice the pool
of Bethesda Stone
water jars The pool
of Siloam The Burnt
House - AD70

Caesarea
Herod's
capital

Derbe in Turkey
The city of
Derbe

Ephesus in Turkey
worship
of Artemis Demetrius
the silversmith

Corinth in Greece
the
synagogue the judgment
seat meat
sacrificed to idols Gallio the
governor Erastus
the treasurer

Written evidence outside the Bible
The Roman
historian Tacitus The Roman
governor Pliny The
Roman historian Suetonius The
Babylonian Talmud The
Jewish historian Josephus The
letter of Mara Bar-Serapion a letter
of divorce a
promissory note Legal
documents

Evidence in the Bible
Who
wrote Luke and Acts? Luke's
accurate use of titles Is Luke's
gosepl historically reliable? Evidence
& Paul's journeys

There is a growing mass of evidence from archaeology that the Bible
accounts deal with real people living in real places. But what can this
evidence from archaeology do?

It might disprove something in the Bible documents. If the
Bible was false, we would expect new archaeological discoveries to do
this. In fact, there is no known case where archaeology
decisively disproves the Bible. This itself is strong evidence for the
truth of the Christian message.

It could provide direct confirmation of what the Bible
says. We would expect that in many cases there is no direct
archaeological evidence one way or the other, and this is what we find.
However, there are some cases where archaeology does provide direct
confirmation, and we have listed some of them on this site.

It can provide background information that helps us to
understand what the Bible documents say.

The examples above either provide direct confirmation of something in
the Bible, or provide background information that helps us to understand
what the Bible says.

Other Archaeological discoveries

The NIV Study Bible includes a chart listing more than thirty major archaeological
finds relating directly to the New Testament.  These include
Herod's temple and winter palace, an early synagogue in Capernaum, the
pool of Siloam, an inscription about Pontius Pilate, and many
others.  The 'Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels'[i] has a 13-page article on 'Archaeology and Geography'
listing archaeological information about the background to various places
mentioned in the Gospels.

See also the Century One Dead Sea Scrolls
site
Back to
top

When were the New Testament Documents written?

Jesus was probably crucified in spring AD 30. In 'Are the New
Testament Documents Reliable?' professor F F Bruce says that the
writing of the New Testament was complete by about 100 AD at the
latest.

However, the Gospels may all have been written significantly earlier
than that. (For example, they could all be dated before the Romans
destroyed Jerusalem in AD 70.) In any event, they were written within one
lifetime of the events they described. When they were written, many people
were still living who remembered the events described.

Written sources

Not only that, but scholars today generally agree that at least some of
the Gospels (particularly Matthew and Luke) used earlier written sources -
sources which go back even closer to the events they describe. Some of
Jesus's teaching may even have been written down while he was still
alive.

For much of the New Testament, we do not have any independent evidence
one way or the other.  However, the writers claimed that they were
writing accurate history, and they claimed that what they wrote was based
either on first hand experience or on careful research.

Eye-witness testimony

A number of small touches in the Gospel accounts sound like the
recollections of eye-witnesses.  (For example, John's Gospel chapter 12 verse 3, in an account of Mary
anointing Jesus's feet, says 'the whole house was filled with
fragrance.').  These touches do not appear to have any theological
significance - nothing is made of them.  So why are they there?
The simplest explanation is that the writers included them because that is
how they remembered things happening.  Anyone who has tried to write
accurately about something they have not experienced first hand knows how
difficult this is.  You get all kinds of details wrong. Of course,
some of the details do not matter, but others are important.

So if the New Testament documents had been made up much later (as
scholars have sometimes claimed), we would expect that many of their
incidental details would not be accurate, and that as our knowledge of
western Asia in ancient times grew, we would discover more and more
discrepancies.

In fact, exactly opposite has happened.  As more archaeological
evidence has been discovered, the accounts in the New Testament have been
confirmed again and again.  This tends to show that they really are
based on the testimony of eye-witnesses.

Conclusion

Although archaeology cannot prove that the Bible's accounts are true,
it certainly does not disprove them, and recent archaeological discoveries
have tended to confirm the accuracy of many background details in the
Bible narratives.   This in turn tends to support both their
historical reliability, and the claim that they are based on the testimony
of eye-witnesses. (It is very difficult to fake the appearance of being an
eye-witness if you do not really know first-hand what you are writing
about.)
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to top

Back to
'Confident in the Truth'

[i] 'Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels', IVP 1992, edited
by Joel B. Green, Scot McKnight, and I. Howard Marshall

Web sites

Web sites can appear, disappear, and change their addresses - specially
on less well-established sites. If you cannot find the article you want,
try looking for the title of the article using a search engine, e.g. Google.com. If you find any of these
articles have moved, we would really appreciate it if you could let us know.

This site records the results of nineteen seasons of
archaeological research at Capernaum, the town where Jesus made his
home.

Although not mentioned in the New Testament, Sepphoris is an important
archaeological site. It was a major town in Galilee, four miles from
Nazareth, built by Herod Antipas during the time when Jesus was a young
man. As Jesus followed Joseph's trade of a carpenter, he would almost
certainly have worked on the vast building project so close to home. It
may be that when the work on the new town came to an end, Jesus took this
as his moment to start his public ministry.

Books

Is the New Testament Reliable?

A look at the historical evidence
Paul Barnett, InterVarsity
Press 1986
Barnett looks at the early non-Christian evidence for
Jesus, the question of how accurately the New Testament documents
have been transmitted to us (i.e. whether we can be confident that
what we read is what the original authors wrote), the testimony of
two of the key figures behind the New Testament (John and Peter), as
well as that of Matthew, Luke, and Paul's relation to the historical
Jesus. He also tackles the question of the miracles in the New
Testament accounts, including the birth narratives. Finally he looks
at the historical reliability of the Acts of the Apostles.
Paul
Barnett is bishop of North Sydney, Australia.
Order
from the UK
Order
from the USA

The Historical Reliability of the Gospels

Craig Blomberg,  InterVarsity Press 1987
This book is a
one-volume, popular level summary of the Gospels Research Project of
Tyndale House, Cambridge, published in the six-volume 'Gospel
Perspectives' series. Seven main sections deal with traditional
approaches to the reliability of the Gospels; New methods in Gospel
Study; Miracles;Contradictions among the Synoptic Gospels? (Matthew,
Mark, Luke); Problems in the Gospel of John; The Jesus tradition
outside the Gospels; Questions on historical method. The sections on
the historical study of the Gospels are very helpful indeed. The
section on the miracles, although helpful, is not as
strong.
Craig Blomberg is assistant professor of New Testament at
Denver Seminary.
Order
from the UK
Order
from the USA

The New Testament Documents- Are They Reliable?

F F Bruce, IVP
This is a classic that has not lost any of its
punch. Bruce explores:Why the historical reliability of the New
Testament documents matters; The dating of the New Testament
documents, and testimony to their origins; What makes up the New
Testament canon, and why (i.e. why certain books are included in the
New Testament and others are not); The reliability of the Gospels;
Miracles; The importance of Paul's evidence; The writings of Luke;
More Archaeological evidence; The Evidence of Early Jewish Writings;
The Evidence of Early non-Jewish writers.
F F Bruce (1910-1990)
was Rylands professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at
Manchester University, England.
Read
it on the Internet
Order
from the UK
Order
from the USA

Discoveries from Bible Times

Professor Alan Millard
Subtitled 'Archaeological treasures
throw light on Bible times'
This beautifully illustrated,
academically accurate, and popularly accessible book is a
combination of two earlier titles, 'Treasures from Bible Times'
(about archaeology and the Old Testament) and 'Discoveries from the
Time of Jesus' (about archaeology and the New Testament).
Alan
Millard is Rankin Professor of Hebrew and Ancient Semitic Languages
at the University of Liverpool.
Order
from the UK

Evidence & Paul's Journeys

An historical investigation into the travels of the apostle
Paul

By Jefferson White, Parsagard Press 2001

One of the most important questions we can ever ask is whether
Christianity is historically true. The purpose of this book is to
look at just how persuasive the evidence is in one particular area -
the travels of the Apostle Paul, as they are recorded in the New
Testament book of Acts, and also as incidental light is thrown on
them by comments in Paul's letters. 'Evidence & Paul's Journeys'
is highly recommended for anyone who wants to understand
the reliability of the historical accounts in the New Testament.

Go here for
a detailed review

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