WHAT DOES ARCHAEOLOGY SAY ABOUT THE BIBLE ACCOUNTS?
Archaeology has made hundreds of discoveries, which corroborate the times and events cited in the Bible.
One of the foremost authorities on the archaeology of Israel and the Middle East, Professor W. F. Albright of John Hopkins University, declared: According to our present knowledge of topography of the eastern delta, the account of the start of the Exodus, which is given in Exodus 12:37 and Exodus 13:20, is topographically absolutely correct. Further proofs of the essentially historical nature of the Exodus story and the journey in the area of Sinai, Midian, and Kadesh can be supplied without great difficulty, thanks to our growing knowledge of topography and archaeology. We must content ourselves here with the assurance that the hypercritical attitude, which previously obtained in respect to the historical traditions of Israel has no longer any justification. Even the long disputed date of the Exodus can now be fixed within reasonable limits.... If we put it at about 1290 B.C. (the approximate time period posited by Judaism] we cannot go far wrong."
In the book Archaeology and the Religion of Israel (page 96, 1969), the same Professor Albright stated: The Mosaic tradition is so consistent, so well attested by different pentateuchal documents, and so congruent with our independent knowledge of the religious development of the Near East in the late second millennium B.C., that only hypercritical pseudo-rationalism can reject its essential historicity."
TO HAVE MORE FAITH IN G-D AND HIS TORAH 21
He also wrote in his book The Biblical priod ( page 1-3) concerning the tradition of the Jews: “Hebrew national tradition excels all others in its clear picture of tribal and family origins. In Egypt and Babylonia, in Assyria and Phoenicia, in Greece and Rome, we look in vain for anything comparable. There is nothing like it in the tradition of the Germanic peoples. Neither India nor China can produce anything similar. In contrast to other peoples, the Israelites preserved an unusually clear picture of simple beginnings, of complex migrations, and of extreme vicissitudes, which plunged them from their favored status under Joseph to bitter oppression after his death. Until recently it was the fashion among Biblical historians to treat the patriarchal sagas of Genesis as though they were artificial creations of Israelite scribes of the Divided Monarchy, or tales told by imaginative rhapsodists around Israelite campfires during the centuries following their occupation. Eminent names among scholars can be cited regarding every item of Genesis (chapters XI-L) as reflecting a later invention, about which nothing was thought to have been known. Archaeological discoveries since 1925 have changed all this. Aside from a few diehards among older scholars, there is scarcely a single Biblical historian who has not been impressed by the rapid accumulation of data supporting the historicity of the patriarchal tradition.... Numerous recent excavations in sites of this period in Palestine, supplemented by finds made in Egypt and Syria.
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