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Archaeology and the people of the Bible revealed · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

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  Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to the 10 Penny Files.
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• 0:30
  Sherry Tenpenny.
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  So now let's get started.
• 1:49
  Today's conversation is with archaeologist, seminary professor, writer, research fellow at the Discovery Institute, Dr.
• 1:57
  Titus Kennedy, to introduce a very interesting book, Archaeology and the People of the Bible, exploring the evidence for the historical existence of biblical characters, um, a vital guide for everyone who desires a better understanding of biblical archaeology and history.
• 2:16
  Dr.
• 2:17
  Kennedy, thank you so much for being with me today.
• 2:19
  I really appreciate you joining us here on the Tenpenny Files.
• 2:23
  Okay, thank you so much for having me.
• 2:26
  What got you interested in biblical archaeology?
• 2:29
  You know, I was four when I decided I wanted to be a doctor.
• 2:33
  And only two other things I ever want to, I ever considered being after that time was I grew up in a farm, so I thought I might want to be a veterinarian.
• 2:41
  And then I said dealing with sick animals is not a not a thing I want to do.
• 2:46
  The other thing was I I really thought I wanted to be an archaeologist because I loved history and I loved, you know, excavating all these things.
• 2:53
  And my mom told me that they lived in tents and used outhouses.
• 2:57
  And that was kind of the end of that for me.
• 2:59
  So I never so that was, but I love reading about archaeology and I love reading about all the findings.
• 3:06
  What got you interested in biblical archaeology?
• 3:09
  Uh, I wasn't four when I got interested in it, but uh, you know, maybe not too far off from that.
• 3:16
  I would say it was around fourth grade uh when I really started to become more interested in archaeology, uh, but biblical archaeology in particular, about seventh grade.
• 3:28
  So I had always liked history, and I had enjoyed other subjects in school, like languages and science and all of those things go into archaeology.
• 3:40
  I just didn't even know that archaeology existed until I went on a trip and saw an ancient site, uh, an archaeological site, actually a reconstructed uh village that had been excavated in Hawaii.
• 3:56
  And then uh the next year, I was given a book by one of my teachers on the archaeology of Troy, the first excavations there that Heinrich Schliemann was involved in.
• 4:09
  And so that opened up my eyes to what archaeology is, and that people went to these ancient cities and they would dig into the ground and they would uncover these buildings and these artifacts, and they would find new information that we could add into the historical record.
• 4:27
  Uh, before that, I just had no idea that these places still existed, or you could find new things.
• 4:33
  I thought that our history generally just came from old books that had been passed down, and we got our information through just the written word.
• 4:44
  Of course, that's very important, but it's not everything, and archaeology opens up all this new information for us.
• 4:51
  So by the time I got to middle school, I started to understand that the Bible also was very connected to archaeology.
• 5:02
  I was I was given several books that addressed biblical archaeology, read through those, found it fascinating, uh, thought it was very, very important.
• 5:13
  And I just continued on uh reading and learning until at the end of high school, I decided I want to try to study archaeology and then see if I can do this myself.
• 5:25
  And so did when you were in say high school and college, did you go on any digs to um to see if this was really the direction you wanted to go?
• 5:34
  I did.
• 5:35
  So the first excavation I did was in my freshman year in college.
• 5:40
  Uh it was uh local United States, California excavation.
• 5:45
  So I started to be introduced firsthand to uh doing archaeology to learning field work then.
• 5:52
  Uh and then about four years later, I went uh to the Middle East and I excavated in Israel.
• 5:59
  So that was my first overseas excavation.
• 6:03
  Did you find anything?
• 6:05
  Oh, yeah, I found all sorts of things.
• 6:08
  So in California, it was mostly things like uh ancient animal bones and also some Native American or Paleo Indian artifacts, campsites, uh burials.
• 6:22
  Uh, but then in Israel, the the first dig that I did there was at a place called Hatsor.
• 6:29
  And this was a major Canaanite city originally, and then it was an Israelite city, and Solomon rebuilt it.
• 6:37
  And so when we were excavating there, we found material from both those early Canaanite days and then the Israelite city as well.
• 6:46
  And there are massive structures still standing today, like the gate system that Solomon built or the Canaanite temples that were destroyed later on.
• 6:58
  Really incredible things.
• 6:59
  I mean, usually you're finding pottery, you're finding uh the remains of walls, you know, stones from walls, sometimes mud brick, uh, maybe some floor that has been uh partially preserved.
• 7:00
  Usually you're finding pottery, you're finding uh the remains of walls, you know, stones from walls, sometimes mud brick, uh, maybe some floor that has been uh partially preserved.
• 7:13
  Uh, but you do you do really find a lot of pottery and then sometimes other artifacts as well.
• 7:13
  Uh but you do you do really find a lot of pottery and then sometimes other artifacts as well.
• 7:20
  Well, that would be pretty interesting because I know people that they they can be um digging and brushing and doing all the things that you do for a really long time and really not find anything.
• 7:20
  Um, that would be pretty interesting because I know people that they they can be um digging and brushing and doing all the things that you do for a really long time and really not finding.
• 7:30
  So that that must have been really inspirational for having you move forward.
• 7:34
  So that's really pretty cool.
• 7:36
  You know, in your book, archaeology and the people of the Bible and in your other books, you note that an increasing number of people believe that the Bible is just mythical, it's just uh a mythical or an allegorical story.
• 7:49
  Is it really true that the number of skeptics out there that really don't believe in the Bible is growing?
• 7:56
  Yeah, I think that's what the surveys show us.
• 7:59
  So it's primarily a cultural shift.
• 8:02
  So if we're talking about the United States or even uh the West in general, particularly uh the English speaking world, I think we see many different surveys that have been done that that shows over the last 60 plus years, there has been a steady decrease in people who believe that the Bible is true, and of course, historical accuracy and archaeological evidence connects into that, and so the predominant view in academia, which then filters down to students and often into pop culture, uh, movies, newspaper articles, things like that, is that the Bible is basically a mythological book.
• 8:53
  It's got a lot of fairy tales in it, and uh yes, it might be set in a historical location or context, but usually people think that the events didn't happen, and that the people didn't really exist and a very popular uh, or at least used to be popular, people don't read the classics as much anymore, but well known book that I think is a good way to look at the Bible and mythology, uh, is to compare the Bible to the Iliad and look at the the archaeology of the Bible versus the Iliad.
• 9:33
  And so that's something that I wrote about briefly in the introduction to this book.
• 9:39
  And the Iliad, of course, takes place where we have uh these people from Mycenaean Greece, and they go and they attack Troy in Western Asia Minor.
• 9:52
  And so we have the the kingdom of Mycenae, we have the kingdom of Troy, you know, these are real places.
• 9:59
  When Heinrich Schlemann excavated Troy, he found this city.
• 10:03
  Uh there were multiple layers of it and multiple destructions, but most likely the destruction that the Iliad is talking about is from the 12th century BC.
• 10:14
  So it was a real place, and probably even talking about a real destruction of the city.
• 10:22
  And yet, when you read through the poem, there's obviously a lot more going on.
• 10:28
  There's all sorts of interactions between people, there are characters themselves in the in the book.
• 10:34
  You know, we have Achilles, we have Hector, we have Priam, we've got Paris and many, many other characters, right?
• 10:43
  So those are the people that are doing all the major actions, and yet we have no archaeological evidence that any of those people existed.
• 10:54
  And so it may be in a historical place that that is real, it may be in a historical context, and yet the details of the story and the people of the story, those aren't real, they are mythological.
• 11:07
  We have no evidence they existed.
• 11:09
  But when we compare that to the Bible, we see something quite different.
• 11:15
  We see, of course, the same historical context, real places, but the people in the historical narratives in the Bible, we have verifiable proof for so many of them.
• 11:28
  In my book, I address about a hundred and thirty people in the old and new testament total.
• 11:36
  And we could probably stretch it out to maybe about 140.
• 11:42
  There's there's a there's some I didn't put in there that are very speculative, uh, the the evidence is very tenuous, but this is not mythology, because if those people really existed in that time and place and they did many of the things that we read about in the biblical narratives, we see that that is history, not mythology.
• 12:05
  So people just aren't aware of these things.
• 12:07
  They've been taught or told or heard that the Bible is mythology or fairy tales, and yet if they looked into it in detail, they would find that is not the case.
• 12:21
  You know, in the introduction of your book, you clearly define five strict criteria used to determine whether a person mentioned in the Bible was indeed real or living, and then uh whether or not it was included, and like you said, about 135, even though there are many, many more people, characters in the Bible than that.
• 12:40
  But how did you choose those particular criteria?
• 12:43
  And I really like how you know each one is for the listener, each one of these um, I guess chapters in your book are about maybe two to four pages long, but at the very top, when you name the character, you use these criteria to define, you know, how they were chosen, and you gave them a score of like A, B, or C of whether that was absolute proof or speculative proof or not really sure, or maybe tentative.
• 13:08
  How are those criteria picked?
• 13:10
  Uh, and how difficult was it to match those criteria with the archaeological data to a person in the Bible?
• 13:20
  So I built upon some previous work by other scholars and just use the logical thinking as well.
• 13:27
  I mean, what do we need in order to demonstrate that a person in this text is the same as the person that is written about in an inscription, for example.
• 13:40
  And so though those criteria are, first of all, the name has to match.
• 13:45
  That's very obvious, should be self-evident to people.
• 13:49
  However, there are scholars, researchers, people who will sometimes say that they've identified a person from the Bible, uh, but it's a totally different name.
• 14:01
  But it's a totally different name.
• 14:03
  Well, it's very, very difficult to make that claim.
• 14:03
  Well, it's very, very difficult to make that claim.
• 14:07
  You have to have a huge amount of evidence showing that it is that same person.
• 14:07
  You have to have a huge amount of evidence showing that it is that same person.
• 14:12
  So we're going to start, it's the same name.
• 14:12
  So we're going to start, it's the same name.
• 14:15
  Uh that should be obvious.
• 14:16
  That should be obvious.
• 14:18
  Second thing we look at is their family lineage.
• 14:18
  Second thing we look at is their family lineage.
• 14:22
  So often in the biblical text, we will have some mention of a person's family members, whether it be their father or their son, something like that.
• 14:22
  So often in the biblical text, we will have some mention of a person's family members, whether it be their father.
• 14:32
  All right.
• 14:33
  So we can learn about their family.
• 14:36
  And in some of these inscriptions or some of these seals, we have son of.
• 14:42
  And that tells us the family lineage.
• 14:45
  And you know, we have other family connections as well.
• 14:47
  But that's that's the most common.
• 14:50
  So if we have that, that's another piece of the puzzle to add into to see that it looks like this is a person from the same family.
• 15:00
  Uh the third thing we would want to look at is their chronological placement.
• 15:05
  Did they live in the same time period as the person in the Bible?
• 15:11
  So are they from the 10th century BC?
• 15:14
  Are they from the first century AD?
• 15:16
  They should be matching up in the same century.
• 15:19
  I would say ideally, they should be matching up uh within the same generation, even.
• 15:25
  So that is very important, obviously, because sometimes people have the same name and they live hundreds of years apart.
• 15:33
  Well, then it's just a coincidence, it's not the same person, obviously.
• 15:38
  So name, family lineage, chronological placement.
• 15:43
  The fourth would be the geographical placement.
• 15:47
  So did they live in the right place?
• 15:49
  So if we read about uh a person living in Jerusalem during the first century, and then we find the evidence for this person in Jerusalem, that is a very helpful match.
• 16:06
  So if we find either the the name, the archaeological evidence for the name and the lineage and so forth in the same place that the person lived in the Bible, that again, another piece of the puzzle.
• 16:19
  Or it could be from a another source, a foreign source, say, but it could be saying that they live in Jerusalem or they live in Judah or they live in Israel, something like that.
• 16:31
  So geography is another piece.
• 16:34
  Uh, the fifth would be something like their title or their occupation.
• 16:40
  And we often find this in archaeological inscriptions.
• 16:45
  Uh kings, that's going to be something that we find more often.
• 16:50
  Uh, they have official documents written about them or monuments erected more often.
• 16:55
  So king, you know, King David or King uh Rehaboam or Jeroboam or King Hezekiah or something like that, King Sennacharib.
• 17:05
  So that's obvious.
• 17:06
  Sometimes those scribes, we have scribes as well.
• 17:10
  Uh, we have prophets like Isaiah.
• 17:13
  So that is something that should match also.
• 17:17
  Now, ideally, we would have all five of those criteria present.
• 17:22
  And indeed, in many cases we do, but not every case.
• 17:25
  So weigh more heavily than others, some are more important.
• 17:30
  But of course, we have to have the name.
• 17:32
  We have to have the chronological placement and the geographical placement.
• 17:36
  If we've got things like family lineage and titles, that also helps immensely.
• 17:43
  And I would throw a sixth in there as well, uh, that doesn't come about in every case, but we do have artifacts that were not discovered in sanctioned archaeological excavations.
• 17:55
  Maybe they were looted, maybe they were picked up off of the ground by a tourist.
• 18:00
  And so we don't know their provenance exactly.
• 18:03
  But these can be examined, they can be analyzed and going through testing to prove that they are authentic, they're not modern forgeries.
• 18:13
  So sometimes we have to address that as well.
• 18:16
  But if we've got all those things, then I would rate that an A.
• 18:20
  We're looking at a very firm identification.
• 18:23
  And sometimes we can do that without all five.
• 18:26
  Um, but it just depends on the particular situation.
• 18:31
  Well, I I would say when I got your book, I was really excited, you know.
• 18:35
  I uh to get to the, you know, I have a list of people that I'm interviewing, and then I have their little their books, and I was really excited to get to read yours because I was really looking forward to what you had to say.
• 18:45
  And I would say it's a it's a really intellectual book.
• 18:49
  I mean, it's it's very uh well written, but it's very intellectual, and it's loaded with history and biblical texts and photographs and inscriptions.
• 18:58
  Um, do you read Hebrew or Aramaic or are hieroglyphics?
• 19:03
  Because there are a lot of a lot of pictures of artifacts that had hieroglyphics.
• 19:06
  Do you read those languages?
• 19:08
  I do, I do.
• 19:09
  Yep.
• 19:10
  Some of them I did in undergrad, some I did in graduate school.
• 19:14
  Uh, some things I have picked up during my professional career.
• 19:20
  And you know, the other thing that I that I found really fascinating was when I first read the book, you're in I get a book, I usually read the introduction, then I'll skim down the table of contents.
• 19:30
  And I was looking at all the names that were listed there, and I barely recognized any of them.
• 19:35
  But you have the biblical reference text of where that person is found.
• 19:38
  And sure enough, I looked it up, and there's a name that I kind of read over and didn't really ignore or didn't really acknowledge when I read it.
• 19:46
  How did you pick these particular people to investigate?
• 19:50
  Or did the investigation lead you to these people?
• 19:54
  Uh, the investigation led me to those people.
• 19:57
  So the the object of the book was to present every person who is named in the Bible for which there is archaeological evidence.
• 20:07
  So I try to use everybody, and like I said, there are there are a few others that I might have put in there, but they are extremely speculative, so much so that I chose not to put them in because I didn't want to really stretch things as much.
• 20:25
  Uh, I did include some speculative cases in this book, and the reason that I did that, and in some cases, I think the evidence is sufficient to at least consider it.
• 20:38
  Um, but in some cases, I also did it because I thought people should know about the possible evidence for this character, or uh that maybe what has been said about about the evidence for this person is not quite uh, you know, what it what it appears to be.
• 20:58
  So try to give all of them there.
• 21:00
  Them there.
• 21:00
  Uh that's why, like you said, you know, the the sections are fairly short, two to four pages, so that we can cover a lot of ground, but hitting all of the major evidence, biblical references, archaeological references, showing pictures of the artifacts that relate to those people.
• 21:01
  That's why, like you said, you know, the sections are fairly short, two to four pages, so that we can cover a lot of ground, but hitting all of the major evidence, biblical references, archaeological references showing pictures of the artifacts that relate to those people.
• 21:20
  And at the beginning of each section, when you're talking about the person, you tell a little story about the person, so it makes it contextual too, so that you understand who this person.
• 21:20
  And at the beginning of each section, when you're talking about the person, you tell a little story about the person, so it makes it contextual too, so that you understand who this person is.
• 21:30
  You know, there are a lot of different places in the Bible that have very long and I would say complicated genealogies, like in First Chronicles chapters one through nine.
• 21:40
  I mean, it just goes on forever about all these sons and their sons and their sons and their sons.
• 21:46
  Um I would guess that finding a lot of those people would be impossible to really find given how long ago that was.
• 21:56
  That would have been, you know, 3,000 years ago, and you're finding all these.
• 21:59
  Do these names have any contextual uh investigative things that you work at from an archaeological standpoint, or are they as put into the category of maybe they're myths, maybe they're not.
• 22:11
  I mean, how do you define those sections like that in the Bible?
• 22:16
  Uh, so those are their genealogical lists, and they can be very useful for tracing who is related to who and how many generations are between different people or events.
• 22:28
  Uh, but you know, a lot of them are only mentioned in those genealogical lists, so we have no other information about them.
• 22:35
  Uh, but but in some cases, there are sections in chronicles where we get a little bit more historical context.
• 22:44
  Uh, one example would be in First Chronicles 4.
• 22:48
  Uh, there's a section that talks about a daughter of Pharaoh named Bithia.
• 22:54
  And so in my book, I give a tentative identification for who this daughter of Pharaoh is based on the time period match between the Bible and Egyptian sources, uh, names, title, princess, you know, daughter of Pharaoh.
• 23:12
  And so there's one example from Chronicles, but you know, of course, we've got others in Chronicles that appear in different books of the Bible.
• 23:21
  David, of course, is addressed in the book of Chronicles, and we have a lot of other biblical and now non-biblical sources about him.
• 23:29
  So really just depends on the person and what kind of information we've got.
• 23:35
  If it's only a name, it's extremely difficult, if not nearly impossible to be able to identify that person archaeologically, because someone else could have the same name, even in the same area in the same general time period.
• 23:51
  You know, um, you say in your book, Archaeology and the people of the Bible that up until recently, many scholars considered King David a mythical king.
• 24:01
  I mean, how can that be?
• 24:03
  I mean, King David is sort of a central character to the entire Bible.
• 24:07
  Um, and you even noted that David is mentioned in 19 Old Testament books and nine New Testament books.
• 24:14
  So, how could scholars say that he was a mythical character?
• 24:18
  And what happened does change that opinion?
• 24:21
  Oh, they said it because they had no archaeological evidence from David's time for his existence, and so uh they're looking at biblical history from the perspective of the Bible is fictional or mythological, unless we have very clear archaeological evidence that says otherwise.
• 24:46
  And of course, up to this time, we're talking uh the early 90s, 1993 is really when this changed.
• 24:54
  There was evidence for several other kings of Israel and Judah.
• 25:00
  And so they they knew that that many of those existed, but they were later than the time of David, and the idea in scholarship was essentially that the early narratives of the Bible were propaganda, uh, it was not history, so it was fictional propaganda.
• 25:20
  And so throughout the 80s, this became uh very very common view into the early 90s, then in 1993, excavations at the city of Dan, north of the Sea of Galilee, uncovered part of a stele, this stone monument with an Aramaic inscription on it.
• 25:41
  So it had been placed there by the Arameans after they had achieved victory over the northern kingdom of Israel.
• 25:50
  But then when the Israelites took the city back, they smashed this and it got reused, and it was used as a building stone in this plaza area in front of the city gate.
• 26:03
  So this was found.
• 26:05
  Uh, you don't we don't really find a lot of monumental inscriptions in excavations during what's called the Iron Age of Israel.
• 26:14
  So this is really significant, you know, immediately they know this is going to be significant, and it gets translated, and we see on here that it's an Aramean king who says that he has defeated two kings of Israel and Judah, and then he says of the house of David, and so immediately things change, you know, overnight, because you went from David is a mythical character to oh, we have a ninth century BC victory steley of an Aramean king who references the house of David, that is the dynastic line that was started by David, and of course, you have a couple other biblical kings mentioned on there as well.
• 27:11
  So this changed things, uh, some some scholars resisted, but most they acknowledged that all right, I guess David was a real king, and that he was the founder of the dynasty of Israelite kings that you know eventually, of course, went through the kingdom of Judah.
• 27:34
  And after that, there was a reanalysis of another victory stele, another monument called the Meshastele, also from the ninth century BC.
• 27:44
  And this was from another enemy of the Israelites, it was the Moabites.
• 27:49
  And this also had the phrase house of David on it.
• 27:53
  So then there were two that had David's name and his dynastic line acknowledged on there.
• 28:00
  Dynastic line acknowledged on there.
• 28:03
  And so since then, really the evidence is just built.
• 28:03
  And so since then, really the evidence is just built.
• 28:06
  Uh there's a third inscription that's possibly mentioning David from Egypt or at least referencing his name.
• 28:06
  Uh, there's a third inscription that's possibly mentioning David uh from Egypt, or at least referencing his name, and then there's the discovery of the palace of David in Jerusalem, and just evidence for his kingdom.
• 28:14
  And then there's the discovery of the palace of David in Jerusalem and just evidence for his kingdom.
• 28:23
  Well, I'm so glad those are found because it's sort of the basis of the whole Bible.
• 28:23
  Well, I'm so glad those are found because it's sort of the basis of the whole Bible, sort of there's so much of.
• 28:28
  Sort of, there's so much there.
• 28:30
  And this is a really good place for us to take a short break.
• 28:33
  So hold that thought right there, Dr.
• 28:35
  Kennedy.
• 28:36
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  We hope that this is something that will be a value to you.
• 29:42
  Sit tight.
• 29:42
  We will be right back with more from Dr.
• 29:44
  Titus Kennedy discussing his very interesting book, Archaeology and the People of the Bible, exploring the evidence for the historical existence of Bible characters.
• 29:57
  A vital guide for everyone who desires to learn and understand more about archaeology and history.
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  We will be right back.
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  Welcome back, everybody.
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• 36:19
  Today's conversation is with Dr.
• 36:21
  Titus Kennedy to discuss his interesting book, Archaeology and the People of the Bible, exploring the evidence of the historical existence of Bible characters.
• 36:30
  Let me tell you just a little bit more about today's guest.
• 36:33
  Dr.
• 36:33
  Titus Kennedy is a renowned field archaeologist and a biblical scholar, specializing in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean world.
• 36:42
  He earned his doctorate in biblical archaeology, focusing on archaeological demographics.
• 36:48
  In addition to being a field archaeologist, he is a university and seminary professor, a consultant, a writer, and a guide for history and archaeology documentaries and curriculae.
• 36:59
  He regularly publishes articles on biblical archaeology and history in academic journals and magazines.
• 37:06
  That is a lot of knowledge there, Dr.
• 37:09
  Kennedy.
• 37:09
  I tell you so much.
• 37:11
  You know, when I read your, when I read your Bible, and I was uh inviting you on the show, I was expecting to see somebody in their 70s that you've done you've accomplished a lot in your young years.
• 37:21
  So welcome so back to the show.
• 37:23
  We're so glad to have you here with us today.
• 37:25
  Yeah, thank you.
• 37:27
  Um you begin the New Testament section, you divide the the uh people that you published in your book into the names from the old testament, names from the new testament, and you uh you see you clarify that by saying, you know, finding uh the evidence from people that are in the new testament is a little bit easier because it's it's more rewritten and it's closer in time to where we are today.
• 37:49
  But uh, you start the section by talking about Herod the Great.
• 37:53
  Why did he have such a hatred for the Jews?
• 37:58
  Well, Herod the Great, I wouldn't say that he had a hatred for the Jews.
• 38:05
  Uh, they in general hated him, but he was not himself a Jew, and so there was always this tension between him and the people.
• 38:17
  Uh classically, in fact, his family had been enemies of the kingdom of Judah.
• 38:24
  So if we we go back in time and we see that he is descended on one side from Idumeans, the Edomites, and on the other side, the Nabataeans.
• 38:37
  And so we're looking at traditional enemies or uh neighbors who are often enemies of Israel, both to the east and to the south, and he was not chosen by the Jews themselves.
• 38:51
  He was not chosen by the people in Judah, and he was just projected onto the scene essentially with the approval of the Romans.
• 39:03
  So at the time that Herod gained power, the Roman Empire, or actually the end of the republic, really, was in control of the area of Judea.
• 39:16
  And so he was crowned king by the Romans, and he went back to Judea after this.
• 39:23
  And although he had that title, he actually had to fight for it.
• 39:27
  And so we see that there is a period of about three years in between when he is made king or up to four years, and when he actually gains control over the whole area and over all of Jerusalem.
• 39:42
  And then to sort of uh ingratiate himself with the people, he starts various building projects, and he modifies his behavior, perhaps a bit.
• 39:56
  Um, he also has some some key family relations, uh, marriages to try to solidify his rule and connect him to the Judean elite.
• 40:06
  But the most famous of all these building projects was, of course, the temple.
• 40:12
  So he rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem.
• 40:16
  Uh according to Josephus, he replaced every stone.
• 40:20
  So it was a complete remodel of it.
• 40:22
  And he provided a lot of jobs to people, and he also beautified the most important building in Jerusalem in all of Judea for all the Israelites.
• 40:34
  And so those are some things that he did to try to make himself a little bit more popular.
• 40:40
  But in the end, it really didn't work.
• 40:43
  Uh, he was also quite brutal, carried out a lot of executions, uh, political assassinations, even killed many members of his own family, uh, including his uh his wife, who had been part of the the Jewish Hasmonean dynasty.
• 41:04
  And then after he died, it seems that the people are desecrated his burial place, his tomb and his sarcophagus, because uh, when that was discovered by Ahud Netzer not too long ago, uh, it was found smashed, his sarcophagus was found smashed.
• 41:23
  And so he probably was not ever successful in really getting the people to like him.
• 41:30
  Well, you know, you can you can't really buy your friends, and that goes back like thousands of years, doesn't it?
• 41:36
  It really does.
• 41:36
  Right.
• 41:37
  Now, um, you know, we talked about at the beginning of the show about that the a lot of people look at the Bible itself with a skeptical eye, and they think it's a mythical mythical book, and a lot of people, and you and you describe that as being more of a cultural phenomenon, and I believe that the same sort of cultural phenomenon is applying being applied towards Jesus himself, that he's not he was just a mythical figure, not even a historical figure, and let alone the Messiah.
• 42:00
  Mythical figure, not even a historical figure, and let alone the Messiah.
• 42:05
  But what archaeological evidence have you found for the existence of Jesus and for him being a historical figure and miracle worker?
• 42:05
  But what archaeological evidence have you found for the existence of Jesus and for him being a historical figure and miracle worker?
• 42:15
  Yeah, you're absolutely right that it is a cultural phenomenon.
• 42:15
  Yeah, you're absolutely right that it is a cultural phenomenon.
• 42:20
  I think it is uh really a targeted belief system and it's uh propagandistic type of.
• 42:20
  I think it is uh really a targeted belief system and it's propagandistic type of uh teaching or rumor spreading that there's no historical evidence that Jesus existed.
• 42:36
  So if you go out and you talk to random people on the street or at the grocery store, and you ask them don't ask them, do you think Jesus was a real person?
• 42:48
  Uh, because a lot of them might say yes, even though they don't think there's any evidence.
• 42:52
  Just simply ask them, do you think there's evidence that Jesus was a historical person?
• 42:58
  You're going to get so many responses of no, you know, no, and that's why I don't believe in him, or no, but I have faith, or something like that.
• 43:07
  So this could even be true in uh different church or Christian or Christian friendly circles, they may just be unaware.
• 43:18
  And the reason is because people are constantly being told that, whether it's in school or quote unquote documentaries or TV movie, things like that, or just uh general general culture and discussions.
• 43:33
  But in fact, Jesus is one of the better attested historical figures from antiquity, and we could start by just looking at ancient historians, ancient authors who write about Jesus who who mention him and aspects of his life, and there are several within the first and second centuries who do so, but if we even just restricted it only to people who lived in the first century, who write about Jesus and for whom we still have their writings, we have people like Josephus, Serapion, Tacitus who lived in both the first and second centuries, Pliny the Younger as well, and Suetonius also.
• 44:22
  Uh, some of these are very, very famous Roman historians, and none of them say that Jesus was a mythical character, or he is some religious icon that the Christians invented.
• 44:36
  They all acknowledge him as a real person.
• 44:39
  Uh, we see discussion about his trial before Pontius Pilate and his crucifixion and so forth.
• 44:46
  So, from a historical perspective, we've got all these ancient accounts, and we have the ancient manuscripts of those accounts.
• 44:54
  From an archaeological perspective, we're looking at the actual artifacts, and we're looking at artifacts from the first century, the time of Jesus.
• 45:04
  We also have evidence from that category as well.
• 45:09
  Probably the most well known at this point is the James Ossuary.
• 45:14
  So this was a bone box, a burial box of James.
• 45:19
  And how do we know that?
• 45:20
  Because there is an Aramaic inscription on it that says James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.
• 45:29
  So we talked earlier about discussing the same name and family lineage as a couple of qualifiers.
• 45:37
  Okay.
• 45:38
  So here obviously we have the name Jesus, and we also have the name James.
• 45:42
  So this would attest to James as well.
• 45:45
  Uh, we have the right family relationship.
• 45:48
  Uh, we also have it coming from Jerusalem in the first century, actually prior to 70 AD.
• 45:54
  So it fits the geographical chronological family and name.
• 45:59
  The only thing we don't have is title.
• 46:01
  Okay, so it doesn't say Jesus the Messiah, it doesn't say James, the leader of the Jerusalem church, but we do have all the other things.
• 46:11
  And this was involved in a long decade-long antiquities trial, but uh it was analyzed by countless experts in different fields, and in the end, really it the evidence showed that it was a legitimate artifact, the whole inscription was, and when a statistical analysis was done with the names and the population of Jerusalem, the the determination was that the Jesus that's written about there, uh it would have been applied to less than two people in Jerusalem at that time, and so we really don't have other options, but I think one of the one of the ways that we can demonstrate that this really looks like it's pointing to Jesus Christ, is that his name is tacked on to the inscription as the brother of the deceased, and that is incredibly rare.
• 47:06
  So, of all the ossuary inscriptions that have ever been found, there's only one other one that mentions a brother.
• 47:13
  So normally you had the name of the person, sometimes their father, uh, or sometimes their profession, or sometimes the place that they were from, but you didn't put the brother.
• 47:23
  This one has the father and the brother.
• 47:26
  So it is unique in that respect and tells us this brother was somebody very important, which obviously Jesus qualifies for.
• 47:36
  And then there's another inscription that very few people I think are familiar with.
• 47:43
  It was discovered more recently than this James Ossuary, and that is a cup, an inscribed cup that was found in the harbor of Alexandria, and on it is written through Christ the magician.
• 47:59
  So it uses his title instead of his name.
• 48:03
  But this is from the first century, and this is reflecting the strong belief in magic in Egypt and the idea that Jesus would have been then a magician, a powerful magician.
• 48:17
  Um, we see this in things like the writings of Kelsis from the second century, who was a critic of Christianity, but he said that Jesus was in Egypt in his childhood, and there he learned magic, the magic of the Egyptians, and he went back to Judea and he performed miracles and then proclaimed himself God.
• 48:36
  So this all fits together.
• 48:38
  And in fact, in the Egyptian magical papyri of not 200 years after Jesus, probably have some sources, it talks about a formula for casting out demons, and it says that you do this by invoking the name of Jesus, God of the Hebrews.
• 48:58
  And so again, they looked at him as a magician, they looked at him as a source of power.
• 49:00
  At him as a magician.
• 49:02
  They looked at him as a source of power.
• 49:04
  And so I think that's what this cup was also used for.
• 49:04
  And so I think that's what this cup was also used for.
• 49:08
  Uh, beyond those two inscriptions, uh, we've got the earliest depiction of the crucifixion of Jesus from maybe about a hundred AD, and it was found in Rome on the Palatine Hill, and it was it was scrawled by once again people who were opposed to Christianity, they were actually mocking.
• 49:08
  Beyond those two inscriptions, we've got the earliest depiction of the crucifixion of Jesus from maybe about 100 AD.
• 49:18
  And it was found in Rome on the Palatine Hill.
• 49:21
  And it was scrawled by once again people who were opposed to Christianity.
• 49:28
  They're actually mocking Jesus' crucifixion and Christians worshiping a God who got crucified.
• 49:35
  And then we've also got the what might be uh considered very controversial by some, although uh more and more research being done, I think makes it less controversial, and that is the shroud of Turin.
• 49:49
  So I would once again, I would connect that to Jesus.
• 49:53
  I can't 100% say that it is Jesus' shroud, but it certainly uh has been demonstrated to be a burial shroud from that time and period.
• 50:04
  So a lot of evidence for Jesus, uh, more than you know, we have time to talk about, but certainly he was a real historical person.
• 50:14
  There's no question about that.
• 50:16
  You know, when I was in when I was in college, um almost all of the humanity courses that I took, because you had to take so many, you know, courses in humanities, almost all of them were in Roman history.
• 50:28
  I had almost a minor in Roman history, uh, because I was just fascinated by that period of time.
• 50:34
  And the the um historian, Josephus, um, must have written volumes and volumes of books because everywhere when you read in those period of times, he's referenced.
• 50:47
  Um, did he write really voluminous amounts?
• 50:50
  And where are those books or scrolls or whatever he wrote on?
• 50:54
  Where are those stored?
• 50:56
  Well, we know of at least three works that he wrote or that he published, and that would be the Antiquities of the Jews.
• 51:06
  So that's his longest one, and what what most people are probably familiar with.
• 51:12
  He also wrote Wars of the Jews, and then he also wrote about his own life.
• 51:19
  So we've got various manuscripts, uh, typically the older oldest ones are either in Greek or in Latin.
• 51:28
  And those are stored in different libraries around the world, uh, either where they were rediscovered or brought or they were purchased and then placed there.
• 51:38
  But uh people can go online oftentimes and look at the manuscripts or look at uh transcriptions of the manuscripts, and then of course, there have been many translations of Josephus published as well.
• 51:53
  And so you can read read through it in English and see for yourself what he wrote.
• 51:59
  But yeah, his his works, the book on his works, if you print it in English, you know, it's it's about that thick.
• 52:06
  So it's it's quite large.
• 52:08
  And he probably wrote more than what we have today.
• 52:11
  It's just those are the three that have uh been preserved.
• 52:15
  You know, your book is so good, and it's it's such a great uh addition to anything, anybody that's a that likes to study the Bible and likes to, you know, really learn this.
• 52:25
  And we've done, I think, a good overview here kind of of what you've written.
• 52:29
  But why would you what would you say to people to encourage them about why they should get this book and read it and put it in their personal library?
• 52:37
  Oh, if you want to know or learn and then have access to the evidence for the existence of the people that are talked about in the Bible, and you want to see the actual artifacts that demonstrate that evidence, then this is a book for you.
• 52:58
  And you, you know, you may read through it and find it interesting, if you especially if you like biographies or like little mini bios.
• 53:06
  Uh, you're probably not going to remember every detail in there.
• 53:09
  But if you want to go back and reference it, either you're doing a Bible study or you are talking to someone who wants to know, you know, is there any evidence for this person or this narrative in the Bible?
• 53:24
  Then you can go back to it as a as a quick reference.
• 53:27
  So I I wrote it, it's presented in chronological order.
• 53:31
  So all the people are in chronological order.
• 53:34
  But if you just want to look up a particular name, you can go to the back to the appendix, and there's an alphabetical index of the names of the people.
• 53:44
  And so you can quickly look up who you are interested in, go to that page number, and there you've got the information.
• 53:51
  I've also got some bibliographic references in the books, too.
• 53:56
  So if people want to look up some academic articles or excavation reports or some other publications that talk about this evidence, then they've got some references there as well.
• 54:09
  You have another book uh called um titled Uarthing the Bible.
• 54:15
  Uh it just sounds so fascinating.
• 54:17
  What I've read about it.
• 54:18
  I'd love to have you back and to go through that book a little bit more on the archaeological part of that.
• 54:23
  Can we can we have you back to discuss that at a later date?
• 54:27
  Sure, I'd be happy to.
• 54:29
  That would be great.
• 54:30
  Um, and we've got one last minute.
• 54:32
  What would you like to leave people with uh today as uh as a final closing point for this the material that you've so highly researched?
• 54:43
  I want people to understand that the Bible is definitively not a book of mythology or fairy tales uh that when we just apply historical archaeological criteria to it, that's what we see that it is a book of historical events, historical places, and in this case, historical people, and we have the evidence for that.
• 55:10
  They they are not mythological characters, they're not comic book characters, they're they're real people.
• 55:16
  We've got real evidence for it.
• 55:18
  You can see the evidence for yourself and know and understand that what you're reading happened in history.
• 55:26
  That's just great.
• 55:27
  And that's that's what we really need, particularly in this day and age when everything about our faith has just been uh tried to be thrown underneath the bus.
• 55:35
  So, Dr.
• 55:36
  Titus Kennedy, it is just been a pleasure to have you here with us today and to explore all of the work that you've done.
• 55:42
  And it's a really intellectual text, but it's easy to read, and it's kind of fun to go through each one of the stories and read them along the way, particularly when you get into the New Testament stories and you can see how they interweave with the people that are there.
• 55:55
  So um, and anybody that's looking for this book, you can go to our bookstore, which is bookstore.drtempity.com, where we keep all of where we have all of the books from all of our authors that are there.
• 56:01
  Where we keep all of where we have all of the books from all of our authors that are there.
• 56:05
  And this one is archaeology and the people of the Bible.
• 56:05
  And this one is Archaeology and the People of the Bible.
• 56:08
  So it's just been such a pleasure.
• 56:08
  So it's just been such a pleasure.
• 56:10
  So thank you so much for being with us today.
• 56:10
  So thank you so much for being with us today.
• 56:12
  I'm going to hold you to that to come back and talk about your other book, Unearthing the Bible, so that we can get more information about that.
• 56:12
  I'm going to hold you to that to come back and talk about your other book, unearthing the Bible, so that we can get more information about that.
• 56:18
  So, with that, I want to thank everybody that's joined us here today, and anybody who's listening to this in the future, uh, that really have a lots of great conversations.
• 56:18
  So with that, I want to thank everybody that's joined us here today, and anybody who's listening to this in the future, uh, that really have lots of great conversations.
• 56:27
  And I want to close out with one of my
• 56:27
  And I want to close out with one of my favorite verses from the Bible I close all my podcasts with, whether they are live or pre recorded, which is Romans 12, 12.
• 56:36
  Rejoice in hope, be patient in trouble, and be persistent in prayer.
• 56:40
  Trust God for everything.
• 56:41
  He'll not let you down.
• 56:43
  Even though his timeline may not be your timeline, he's always there with you.
• 56:47
  So I will see you tomorrow or the next time here on the Ten Penny Files.
• 56:52
  Have a great rest of your day, everybody.
• 56:54
  Goodbye and God bless.