Archaeology | Tags | Bite Sized Truth

As I’m meditating and studying the book of Daniel this morning I stumbled into this recent archaeological find related to the very time the scripture is historically documenting.

The time period where God has given a unbelieving king, a king who did not in fact know the true God, King Nebuchadnezzar, power to conquer and rule over the Jewish people. Scriptures make it clear God allowed this because of the sins of His people and disobedience in refusing to follow His ways.

Clearly a MASSIVE archaeological find of 110 ancient Babylonian tablets being discovered in Iraq is meant to speak to the world, to any who can hear the message.

We have here 2500 year old cuneiform clay tablets dating back to the time of Nebuchadnezzar’s rule in Babylon confirming (yet again) that the PROPHETIC book of Daniel is indeed a historically reliable record. Perhaps some of those who think these writing are simple “mythology” along the lines of other writings to should at least take a 2nd look at the book.

This is especially important when you consider that the scientific find (archaeology is science, right?) hails from an Ancient land that is so relevant it appears EVERY day in our present news on screens everywhere. Perhaps there are reasons to pay attention to these lands and the prophetic words related to what has occurred and we are warned WILL occur in the world as it relates to ancient “Babylon” and the middle east.

2,500 Year Old Jewish Tablets Discovered in Iraq.
Ancient Tablets Confirm Biblical Account of Jewish Exile in Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon.

And why should you or I care today about this “ancient” history? What’s the point?

Eccl 1:9 (NLT)
History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new.

Article segments from: Bible-Science Guy

“On Christmas Eve, 1994, The Times of London reported on its front page an astonishing claim made by the German Biblical scholar Carsten Peter Thiede.
‘A papyrus believed to be the oldest extant fragment of the New Testament has been found in an Oxford library,’ the newspaper said. ‘It provides the first material evidence that the Gospel according to St.Matthew is an eyewitness account written by contemporaries of Christ.”

“The story concerned three tiny scraps of paper belonging to Magdalen College, Oxford … On both sides of the fragments appeared Greek script, phrases from the twenty-sixth chapter of St. Matthew, which describes Jesus’ anointment in the house of Simon the leper at Bethany and his betrayal to the chief priests by Judas Iscariot … Thiede argued that they were of astonishingly early origin, dating from the mid-first century A.D. The argument was complex, based upon expert analysis of the Greek writing on the fragments and upon extensive comparisons with calligraphy on other manuscript fragments.”

The book is Eyewitness to Jesus: Amazing New Manuscript Evidence About the Origin of the Gospelsby Thiede and D’Ancona (Doubleday, 1996).

It describes the worldwide sensation created by the most momentous discovery for Biblical research since the Dead Sea Scrolls were unearthed in 1947.

The key to re-dating the Magdalen Papyrus fragments was Dr. Thiede’s identification of them as contemporary with three other datable collections:
– Greek papyrus fragments from among the Qumran Dead Sea Scrolls,
– Greek papyrus fragments from Herculaneum, and
– Greek ostraca (potsherds with Greek inscriptions) from Masada.

Dr. Thiede based this identification on painstaking analysis of numerous Greek handwriting characteristics and on extensive comparisons of calligraphy on many manuscripts. His conclusions dynamited the foundations of liberal NT criticism.

Thiede’s investigation was the first time Greek fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls had been used for comparative purposes to date other Greek literature

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Biblical Archaeology – Nebuchadnezzar’s Iraq

Biblical Archaeology – The Magdalen Papyrus & Eyewitness of Jesus