biblical archaeology

Rohl attacks early Biblical archaeologists for jumping to conclusions that supported the Bible and then does the same thing himself.Rohl's rewriting of Egyptian chronology has been rejected by mainstream Egyptologists.Here's one site discussing it.Stijlvol interieur in Scandinavisch design BGA.NL

From my reading the old equation of Shoshonk = Shishak is most probably correct. Rphl's alternative requires that the Biblical account uses a relatively obscure alternative name for no apparent reaon.I would say that Rohl has some interesting ideas but the weight of evidence is against him, and his own tendancy to jump to conclusions undermines his chances of finding anything of genuine value.The real upsets will probably come from the archaeologists working in Israel now. There is a very real dispute, for instance, over whether there was ever a united kingdom ruling Israel and Judah - it is possible that the historical David and Solomon (if there were such people - that is itself not certain) ruled Judah and not Israel.
I would suggest reading _The Bible Unearthed_ by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, as an introduction.

quote:

---

Also did anyone watch a program on recently by historian Nigel Spivey?

​

The conclusion reached was that archeology now does more to support the narrative of the gospel accounts than contradict them.

---

I didn't see the pr0ogram but I would say the phrasing of the conclusion in itslef betrays a strong bias. Archaeology can do very little to confirm or deny the narrative parts of the Gospel. We can establish that a few important people and some places existed but that information would not be hard to come by at the time the Gospels were written.Consider for instance the "massacre of the innocents". If we do not discover any evidence of a the massacre itself but we hae archaeological evidence for the existence of Herod and Bethlehem should we say that the archaeology does more to confirm than deny the story ? Technically that would be correct, in that almost nothing beats nothing - but it would still be misleading to fail to mention that archaeology offers no significant evidence either way.Archaeology is only really useful in dealing with cases like the Book of Mormon - where the writer is relying heavily on imagination for even basic issues that archaeology can more easily address.

I'm afraid Jackie's research isn't that good. Or she'd have spotted the fact that the Jehoash inscription has been exposed as a fake.

Presumably you mena my bias against frauds and liars ?Archaeology is useful against the BoM because the BoM makes up many things. It refers to animals, plants and technologies that are either not found in the Americas or found to no significant extent.Wehreas the most important parts of the Gospels are things that archaeology simply cannot investigate. Can you use archaeology to even confirm that Jesus really said even one of the teachings attributed to him ?As far as I am aware the finndings she reports also do not deal with items that have been contested to any great degree and so have little usefulness there. And as I have stated that Jehoash tablet is a fake and so of no value at all.

You're really reaching here. The real problem is that people are too willing to placew faith in fakes and frauds that supposedly confirm the BIble - while real archaeology causes serious problems for anyone taking the Bible as a completely reliable historical record.Since you are discussing David, archaeology provides little evidence that he existed, no support for the claimed size and grandeur of his kingdom, none for a combined rule of Judah and Israel and so far it appears that if there were such a kingdom Samaria would be a more likely capital than Jerusalem.On the other hand even though it has been reveaaled in this group that Ron Wyatt and his crew are ignorant and incompetent at history - to the point where they cannot even manage to read a popular level book accurately. That they are also incompetent at archaeology (the foolishness over the non-existent "land bridge" at Nuweiba, the lack of scale on the photographs, the use of a dowsing device as if it were a valid tool). And that they are prone to making grandiose and implausible claims which they - for some reason - are always unable to support. Anyone who takes these people as a credible source is displaying a gross bias.