ACCURACY OF THE BIBLE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18192, 13 September 1933, Page 5

ACCURACY OF THE BIBLE

A TRUE HISTORY EVIDENCE OF ARCHAEOLOGISTS The London Observer recently published nu interview with Sir Charles Marstou, the well-known archaeologist. Sir Charles discussed some of the recent archaeological discoveries, and pointed out that they till tended to verify the substantial accuracy of Old Testament history from the Deluge on wards. Sir Charles said that one could go as far as stating that the cumulative effect of all recent archaeological discoveries of outstanding importance, combined with recent anthropological discoveries, demolishes the foundation upon which the whole elaborate theory of the evolution of religion has been built up. “To-day,” he said, “the discoveries of Dr. Langdon, the famous Assyriologist, arising out of his excavations on the sito of the ancient city of Kish, adjoining old Babylon, enable him to assort with complete conlldeucc that: —‘.In my opinion, the history of the oldest religion of man is ct rapid decline from Monotheism to extreme Polytheism and widespread belief in evil spirits. It is in a very true sense the history of the fall of man.’ In tho face of u statement like this, backed up by concrete evidence, the unsoundness of the evolutionists’ position, hitherto concealed by the dogmatic manner in which it was put forward, stands clearly revealed. ‘‘The story of how we have reached our present knowledge is as fascinating in the telling as it is sensational in Its results.

“For years past archaeologists have been painstakingly' digging amid the buried remains of civilisations which go back live to six thousand years, leaving their traces buried beneath the sandy wastes of Mesopotamia, now the British protectorate known as tho IvingVloui of Iraq. Bit by’ bit those romantic baked-olny tablets, closely indented with wedgeshaped lettering, which we call •cuneiform,’ have come to light and have passed into the hands of scholar? to bo deciphered. “And so we have eome to something more than a fragmentary knowledge of the vast literature compiled by these ancient races. The evidence thus gathered, that monotheism was Uio original religion of civilised man, has been further endorsed bv the discovery of the anthropologists that the original religion of the primitive races, or uncivilised man, was also monotheistic, with a universal betlief iu another life.

EARLY WRITING. ‘ ‘ Another mistaken assumption of 01.1 Testament criticism is that writin-; was not used by Hebrew scribes until the sixth or seventh centuries, B.C. Now archaeology tells us that j alphabetical writing existed in the time of Moses, for evidence of it. has been discovered in the Sinaitie Peninsula, inscribed on stones before Moses led the Israelites into those barren wastes. ••‘Again tne results of Dr. Lauguon's i excavations in Mesopotamia, as set out I m Ins ‘Semitic Mythology,’ has already led him to the conclusion that 'the Semitic word for God originally nieant ‘He Who is High—a Sky God.’ So ‘El’ was actually worshipped by the ancestors of Abraham as their supreme divinity. This assumption, based on a lifetime of study or cuneiform inscriptions, lias now been confirmed in a remarkable manner by the alphabetical cuneiform tablets, dating back to the days of Joshua, discovered at Has-Shamra* a place on the coast of Syria opposite the Isle of Cyprus. ‘“But Jericho should certainly take pride of place as iu itself an examplo of the extent to which modern archaeological researches have gone to confirm the Old Testament history. Although Professor Oarstang’s labors were made far more difficult than they would otherwise have been, owing to the fact, that the ruins had been badly disturbed by the pre-war excavations of German archaeologists, a close examination. particularly on the western side of the city, which had been least interfered with, proved wonder fully productive. JERICHO’S WALLS. ••It was definitely established that old Jericho had two walls, an inner and an outer. Hill, and Git. wide respectively. and about 30ft. high and some Lift. apart. Now the foundations of these walls were far from irnod. In fact. the walls had literally I

boon ‘jerry-built’ —n term which may have derived its real origin from this city’s defences. “So the old builders, probably tn iln- hope of strengthening their faulty workmanship, ‘tied’ the walls together | with houses built across the intervenj iug gap. But. as it turned out, this had just the opposite effect, for when the earthquake came, one wall in its fail seems to have pushed the other outwards down T.lie slope. “Further excavations inside The J ruins proved that oh hough the city was burnt it was not plundered. For amongst the debris of the houses and in wliat was once the store-rooms of the palace itself, were found the re- ! mains of wheat, dates, barley, olives, lentils, dough, and other foodstuffs, j reduced to charcoal by the terrific i heat., ami so preserved to tell their story dOOO years later. This affords i a minute confirmation of the Joshua , narrative. I ‘ ‘ It has also proved possible to es- ji;

tablish the date of the capture of the city at about 1400 8.C., or some 220 years earlier than had previously been supposed. This, in turn, threw out the ‘Higher Critical’ dating of the Exodus by the same number of years. And this, in turn, upset the critical finding that the Tribe of Asher, traces of which had been found in its proper place in North Palestine as early as 1300 8.C., could not have gone down to Egypt with the rest. In fact the theories of the critics have fallen almost as flat as the walls of Jericho themselves! “These are examples of tne way m which present-day researches are revolutionising the attitude of scholars to Biblical history. Such work is steadily progressing Tear by year in Bible lands; and it seems safe to prophesy that we may be on the verge or even moro remarkable discoveries. These will simplify our increasing knowledge of the development of the religion and customs of mankind. fc>o the rising generation may find their education made much easier by the elimination of whole cargoes of what has passed for learning, jettisoned because it was all based on erroneous conjecture.”