Written by John D. Currid |
Friday, September 8, 2023
Archaeology is a sword in the battle against ahistoricism. It truly demonstrates the “earthiness” of the Scriptures and how the episodes of the Bible occurred in time, place, and history. History is a pillar of Christian thought. God is the God of history: He created history, and time is moving historically from creation to consummation. Creation- fall-redemption-glorification is both a theological and historical construction and movement.
Just about fifty years ago, I participated in my first excavation in modern-day Israel. The site was Tell Qasile, an ancient Philistine town located within the bustling metropolis of Tel Aviv. In my excavation area, we discovered the first signs of a now-famous Philistine temple when we uncovered two pillar bases that stood in the main hall of the building. These two round stone bases were approximately ten feet apart, and they would have supported two large wooden pillars. The pillars, in turn, held up the second story and roof of the temple. The diggers in my area will never forget when Ami Mazar, the site’s chief archaeologist, announced to us: “You have just discovered the Philistine temple!” Right then and there, I caught the proverbial archaeological bug.
Why was this discovery so important? One reason is that it helps explain the story of the death of Samson. After the capture of Samson, the Philistines paraded him in the temple of Dagon in their city of Gaza (Judg. 16:23). Mocking Samson, the Philistines made him stand between the two foundational pillars of the temple (v. 25). When he pushed them, the entire edifice collapsed, including the roof, and killed many of the attendants. The archaeological finds of the temple in Tell Qasile help us understand that the events related in the Bible actually took place in space and time—that is, these events occurred in history. Archaeology can enlighten us regarding many aspects of daily life and how people lived in ancient times. It provides an “earthiness” to Scripture.
Rahab at Jericho
Another example may be helpful. In Joshua 2:15, in the account of Rahab the harlot, we read the curious statement, “Then she let them [the two Hebrew spies] down by a rope through the window, for her house was built into the city wall, so that she lived in the wall.” The configuration of city walls surrounding ancient cities varied from age to age. During Rahab’s time in the late Bronze Age, many Canaanite cities had thick outer fortification walls. We know through excavation, however, that some of the cities had what is called a casemate outer wall system. It was formed by two parallel walls with periodic perpendicular walls that created rooms in which people could live. In times of siege or war, these double outer walls were filled with boulders, and this would make the outer wall of the city stronger and thicker. Thus, Rahab, just as the book of Joshua says, could indeed live “in the wall” of the city of Jericho.
Earlier in the story of Rahab, she is pictured as hiding the two Hebrew spies on the roof of her house under stalks of flax that she had laid down on the roof. That is curious. But archaeologists have uncovered many houses from this time that have staircases leading to a roof. As is done today in numerous villages in Israel, the roof in ancient times was used for drying foodstuffs in the sun. What Rahab had on her roof was common for the day, and it would not have raised suspicion from the authorities. It would have been a perfect place to hide the Israelite spies, and thus they went undetected.
The weight of archaeological research is that it deals with the very physical nature of things and that it is therefore grounded in the realia (real things) of what happened in biblical times. We live in an age, however, in which history is typically seen as irrelevant, as meaningless, and as having little application to modern living. Common thinking today is ahistorical, in which scholars argue that there is no history that reflects truth and reality. Thus, many people today believe that history may be rewritten to suit one’s own agenda and purposes. Archaeology is a sword in the battle against ahistoricism. It truly demonstrates the “earthiness” of the Scriptures and how the episodes of the Bible occurred in time, place, and history. History is a pillar of Christian thought. God is the God of history: He created history, and time is moving historically from creation to consummation. Creation- fall-redemption-glorification is both a theological and historical construction and movement.