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Archaeology Is Proving the Bible! | Dinesh D'Souza | The Week in Bible Prophecy · The Week in Bible Prophecy

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  Speaker 1: The Week in Bible Prophecy, a Prophecy Watchers podcast.
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  Speaker 2: Hello, everyone.
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  Speaker 3: Mano Gonzalez here in studio. Welcome to the program today.
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  Speaker 3: We are going to be talking about one of my
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  Speaker 3: favorite two subjects, biblical archaeology and Bible prophecy with Dinesh D'Souza.
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  Speaker 2: So stick around.
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  Speaker 3: I want to invite you all to our Branson Conference,
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  Speaker 3: December 10th through the 13th in Branson, Missouri. It's going
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  Speaker 3: to be a phenomenal time. We got 25 speakers. We're
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  Speaker 3: expecting over 1,200 people there. It's a great venue as
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  Speaker 3: well for people to hang out and just to hear
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  Speaker 3: all of the different prophecy teachers. There's going to be
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  Speaker 3: a lot of messages, as you can imagine. So you
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  Speaker 3: can consider joining us there. Also want to remind you,
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  Speaker 3: if you've ever wanted to go to Israel, we have
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  Speaker 3: two trips planned, one for January and one for March.
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  Speaker 3: We're going to be talking a lot about the land
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  Speaker 3: of Israel today as well. And so all that information,
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  Speaker 3: just go to prophecywatchers.com. Go to our events tab and
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: you can see all the information. If you want to
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  Speaker 3: join us, it's a great time to go to all
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  Speaker 3: of these places.
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  Speaker 2: Janesh, welcome. Here we are.
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  Speaker 1: It's good to be with you again. Thanks for inviting me.
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  Speaker 2: This is great.
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  Speaker 3: And, you know, most people know that, you know, I
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  Speaker 3: love archaeology so much. You know, I went and got
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  Speaker 3: a master's degree in biblical archaeology. So coming along and
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  Speaker 3: seeing all this stuff you're doing is my two favorite topics,
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  Speaker 3: is Bible prophecy and archaeology. So this is phenomenal. Your
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  Speaker 3: new book, Stones Cry Out. Biblical archaeology, prophecy, and the
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  Speaker 3: last days is just, again, makes me really happy even
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  Speaker 3: to say that. And so for our audience who might
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  Speaker 3: not know about you, kind of give us a little background.
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  Speaker 1: I'm an immigrant to the United States from Bombay, India.
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  Speaker 1: I spent most of my career as a political writer, author,
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  Speaker 1: and filmmaker. I've made a number of documentary films on history, politics, culture.
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  Speaker 1: also written some books on Christian apologetics and debated some
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  Speaker 1: of the world's leading atheists. But for all of that,
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  Speaker 1: I was not very familiar with biblical archaeology until just
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  Speaker 1: a few years ago when I made my first trip
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  Speaker 1: to Israel, the end of 2022. And I was charmed
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  Speaker 1: to be in the land of the Bible, but then
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  Speaker 1: I began to experience some of these artifacts that have
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  Speaker 1: come out of the ground that corroborate the Bible in
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  Speaker 1: ways I had not realized. not just in big ways,
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  Speaker 1: but also sometimes in really small ways. And I turn
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  Speaker 1: to my wife and I go, you know, I'm really
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  Speaker 1: a little shocked because shouldn't this information be shouted from
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  Speaker 1: the rooftops of every synagogue and every church? I realized
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  Speaker 1: subsequently that that is not so, in part because a
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  Speaker 1: lot of pastors are a little uncomfortable with archaeology. It's
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  Speaker 1: not their subject. It's not what they learned in divinity school.
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  Speaker 1: And on the other side, a lot of archaeologists like
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  Speaker 1: to see themselves as secular. They're in academic departments. They
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  Speaker 1: don't want to be seen as like proving the Bible
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  Speaker 1: to them. The Bible is a religious text, a work
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  Speaker 1: of revelation. And so what happened is you have a
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  Speaker 1: sort of a chasm here between all these marvelous discoveries
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  Speaker 1: that are coming out of the academic world and people
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  Speaker 1: don't know about them. I said, look, I need to
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  Speaker 1: spend a couple of years, three years, as it turns out,
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  Speaker 1: digging into all this, really coming to understand the field,
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  Speaker 1: understand how biblical archaeology works, and convey that excitement, and
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  Speaker 1: also lay out all these discoveries, by the way, over
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  Speaker 1: 150 years, more than 100 artifacts, and it covers the
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  Speaker 1: whole scope of the Bible. Very exciting stuff.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, to me, in getting into the material, it's just, again,
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  Speaker 3: so phenomenal. And you make it really, really easy because
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  Speaker 3: it's very logical how you've organized the book. And we
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  Speaker 3: were talking earlier, maybe help people understand that in addition
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  Speaker 3: to the book, which comes out in October, you have
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  Speaker 3: a very, very nice way for people not just to
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  Speaker 3: read it on a paper, but also to see it visually.
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  Speaker 2: Talk about that.
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  Speaker 1: Well, I'm a filmmaker as well as an author. And
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  Speaker 1: so essentially, I took the Bible divided into 10 chapters,
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  Speaker 1: so to speak, or large episodes. Remember, the Bible goes
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  Speaker 1: back to Abraham and the patriarchs. That's about 2000 BC,
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  Speaker 1: so 4000 years ago. And the scope of the Bible
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  Speaker 1: runs all the way from then through about 50 AD,
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  Speaker 1: which is, of course, the Book of Acts, the early
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  Speaker 1: Christian movement. And It'd be one thing if there was
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  Speaker 1: good archaeology on one particular segment of the Bible, but no,
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  Speaker 1: there's fascinating archaeology all the way through. So when I
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  Speaker 1: finished my research, it's almost like I had not a
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  Speaker 1: second Bible, but sort of a tapestry running on top
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  Speaker 1: of the Bible with all the dates dropped in, and
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  Speaker 1: all the artifacts. I mean, think about it. You go
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  Speaker 1: to church, you'll hear a sermon on Jeremiah, but very
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  Speaker 1: rarely do you find out, well, what century was this?
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  Speaker 1: You know, what was going on in Israel? Who was
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  Speaker 1: the king? What else was happening in the region at
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  Speaker 1: the time? The Bible isn't just a collection of morality
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  Speaker 1: tales or parables. It is grounded in history. God chose
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  Speaker 1: a particular people, particular place, particular times to sort of
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  Speaker 1: disclose or unfold history. his story of his relationship with man. Now,
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  Speaker 1: the book has, it has timelines, it has maps, it
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  Speaker 1: has lots of photographs, color photographs, and it also has
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  Speaker 1: these QR codes. This is modern technology, right? And so
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  Speaker 1: the QR codes take you to on-site video footage, so
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  Speaker 1: the book becomes sort of interactive. Obviously, the very best
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  Speaker 1: thing is go to all these sites yourself, but the
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  Speaker 1: next best thing is to experience them through this book.
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  Speaker 1: I love the idea that I'm not just telling you
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  Speaker 1: about these things. I'm sort of taking you there so
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  Speaker 1: you can see them for yourself.
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  Speaker 2: No, absolutely.
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  Speaker 3: And I've got to see, you know, those, you know,
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  Speaker 3: in advance, I got to see this, the places you've gone,
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  Speaker 3: which of course I've been to Israel many, many times
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  Speaker 3: and done archaeology there. And it's just, what I find
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  Speaker 3: awesome is that, you know, you bring up, you know,
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  Speaker 3: James Hoffmeyer. He was one of my professors, you know,
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  Speaker 3: so you're bringing up all these well-known individuals, archaeologists who
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  Speaker 3: love scripture, who love the Lord Jesus, who love to
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  Speaker 3: see The Bible show its historical.
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  Speaker 2: Nature and character. So this is just absolutely incredible.
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  Speaker 3: And this is, you know, maybe if you don't mind,
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  Speaker 3: you know, you reference it in various places. And I
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  Speaker 3: really appreciate how you do, because when I was in
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  Speaker 3: graduate school, this is kind of what we had to
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  Speaker 3: do is, you know, you had to interact with those
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  Speaker 3: that were maximalists or those that minimalist, you know, Israel
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  Speaker 3: Finkelstein and others. But you, as you mentioned as well,
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  Speaker 3: you've dealt with apologetics. And talk about just the kind
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  Speaker 3: of the background of how apologetics works and when you're
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  Speaker 3: engaging not just with the evidence, but you're also engaging
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  Speaker 3: with the skeptics, which is a good thing.
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  Speaker 1: Absolutely. I want the book to be not just an
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  Speaker 1: encouragement to the believer, which it really is, because most
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  Speaker 1: of us have believed these things on faith since we
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  Speaker 1: were kids or sometimes in adult life. But. Many of
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  Speaker 1: these archaeological findings that have come out, sometimes in the
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  Speaker 1: last 10 years, last 25 years, last few decades, these
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  Speaker 1: things have been in the ground for centuries, for thousands
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  Speaker 1: of years. Think about it. King David's palace has been
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  Speaker 1: in the ground since about 1000 BC. It's coming out now.
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  Speaker 1: Surely that's going to have some significance that it's almost like,
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  Speaker 1: and this is the title of my book, the idea
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  Speaker 1: that the stones cry out. It's like God is choosing now.
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  Speaker 1: to speak out or cry out through the stones, using
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  Speaker 1: almost a different language, the language of science and dirt
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  Speaker 1: and archeology to say, hey, listen, the historicity of the
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  Speaker 1: Bible is something that can be corroborated, can be substantiated. Now,
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  Speaker 1: from the beginning of biblical archeology, going back to the
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  Speaker 1: middle of the 19th century, there were skeptics who, some
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  Speaker 1: of whom would actually hope that archeology would be used
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  Speaker 1: to disprove the Bible, And they jumped on some of
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  Speaker 1: the early findings of archaeologists who say, you know, here
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  Speaker 1: you go. You know, these flood narratives are not unique
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  Speaker 1: to the Bible. We find them in all these other cultures.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe the biblical writers just plagiarized them straight from Mesopotamia.
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  Speaker 1: So the skeptics kind of got on their high horse.
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  Speaker 1: But it's been bad news for them ever since because
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  Speaker 1: in 150 years of biblical archaeology, there are now just
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  Speaker 1: dozens upon dozens of findings that confirm the Bible and
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  Speaker 1: And there's not a single significant archaeological discovery that refutes
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  Speaker 1: the Bible. So there are ongoing disputes, like when Jesus
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  Speaker 1: walked the Via Dolorosa, is it this road or is
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  Speaker 1: it that road? The journey of the Israelites through Mount Sinai,
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  Speaker 1: is this the peak or is that the peak? There
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  Speaker 1: are some legitimate arguments about locations and dates. but there
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  Speaker 1: are no important findings where someone can say that the
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  Speaker 1: archaeology definitively shows X and it contradicts the Bible, which
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  Speaker 1: says Y. Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: To me, the amazing thing, especially what you've done here,
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  Speaker 3: is the Bible is filled with historical reference, people, places, wars, etc.
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  Speaker 3: It's not just some book on theology that is unrelated
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  Speaker 3: because ultimately, The gospel, the gospel that we hold to,
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  Speaker 3: salvation through Jesus Christ alone, it happened in a particular place,
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  Speaker 3: at a particular time, in a particular context, etc. And so,
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  Speaker 3: you know, with that as a backdrop, how do you
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  Speaker 3: balance the theological messaging of the Bible with the historical
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  Speaker 3: and now the archaeological?
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  Speaker 1: I take a very simple approach, which is this. I
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  Speaker 1: sort of narrow the field and I say, look, I'm
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  Speaker 1: not going to try to prove the theology of the Bible,
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  Speaker 1: I'm not going to try to prove the miracles. But
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  Speaker 1: if I can support the historicity of the Bible, including
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  Speaker 1: tiny details, guys who make cameo appearances in the book
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  Speaker 1: of Jeremiah, and I can show you, here's a clay
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  Speaker 1: seal with that guy's name on it. And if I
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  Speaker 1: can show you that even some of the more mythical
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  Speaker 1: sounding characters, you know, Balaam, son of Beor, this guy
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  Speaker 1: supposedly has a talking donkey. And you can just imagine
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  Speaker 1: the field day the skeptics had. It was ridiculous, obviously
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  Speaker 1: made up. And then here's a plaster inscription in Jordan,
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  Speaker 1: which is Moabite country. Balaam, son of Beor, was a
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  Speaker 1: fortune teller. And there in the plaster, the ancient plaster,
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  Speaker 1: it says the warnings and sayings of Balaam, son of Beor.
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  Speaker 1: There it is. So this guy jumps into the pages
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  Speaker 1: of history via the pathway of archaeology. This happens again
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  Speaker 1: and again. So my point is this. Look, you know,
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  Speaker 1: here's this biblical narrative. And if the historicity of it, which,
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  Speaker 1: by the way, the skeptics have been poo-pooing for decades,
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  Speaker 1: can be affirmed, it makes it much more likely the
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  Speaker 1: rest of it is true. Kind of like if you
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  Speaker 1: or I are in a jury and we're listening to
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  Speaker 1: a suspect describe what he did for the past 30 days,
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  Speaker 1: and some of it is kind of exotic and far
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  Speaker 1: out and can't be verified, but a lot of it can, right?
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  Speaker 1: He's like, I ate a Chick-fil-A, here's my receipt. I
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  Speaker 1: crossed state lines, you can see me on the surveillance camera.
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  Speaker 1: So in the many cases where you can check him out,
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  Speaker 1: you find he's telling the truth. There's not a single
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  Speaker 1: case where you can find that he's lying. You're more
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  Speaker 1: likely to say, well, pretty much the rest of his
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  Speaker 1: story is probably true because it's pretty obvious this guy's
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  Speaker 1: a truth-teller, not a liar.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, 100%.
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  Speaker 3: And I know for those that are involved in apologetics
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  Speaker 3: or just even the Bible, we can't prove the resurrection
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  Speaker 3: in the sense of redoing it like empirical data, empirical
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  Speaker 3: science that, you know, archaeology, there's carbon-14 data, there's all
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  Speaker 3: these different technologies that are used. We can't prove a miracle,
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  Speaker 3: those we do take by faith. But as you said,
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  Speaker 3: those kind of things that are out there that can't.
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  Speaker 2: Be reproven according to the scientific method.
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  Speaker 3: However, when you look at these other evidences that line up,
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  Speaker 3: you go, hey, there's a preponderance of bona fide evidence
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  Speaker 3: here that is building a case. And so let's jump
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  Speaker 3: into it because you start out talking about, which I
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  Speaker 3: thought was pretty neat, the importance of the cities of
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  Speaker 3: Jerusalem and Athens, you know, and why did you start
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  Speaker 3: that way?
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  Speaker 1: For many people, this book, The Stones Cry Out, is
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  Speaker 1: simply a corroboration of the historicity of the Bible. And
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  Speaker 1: they're like, wow, this gives me confidence, added confidence that
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  Speaker 1: the Bible is not just a matter of faith, it's
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  Speaker 1: also a matter of fact. That was my main motive here.
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  Speaker 1: But I realized as I dug into it that there
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  Speaker 1: are some important political and cultural and moral implications. So
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  Speaker 1: for example, there's a big debate going on right now
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  Speaker 1: about whose land is it regarding Israel? Well, the archaeology
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  Speaker 1: demonstrates the presence of the Jews in their ancient homeland
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  Speaker 1: going back 4,000 years. You just can't deny. So suddenly
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  Speaker 1: when you hear someone go, well, the Jews are colonizers,
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  Speaker 1: you go, wait a minute, you know, are you saying
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  Speaker 1: they colonize their own land? I mean, this is like
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  Speaker 1: accusing the Indians of colonizing India, you know, or the
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  Speaker 1: Irish of colonizing Ireland. I mean, it doesn't make a
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  Speaker 1: lot of sense, right? The other thing is that A
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  Speaker 1: philosopher named Leo Strauss said that Western civilization, the civilization
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  Speaker 1: that built America, is based on Athens and Jerusalem. And
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  Speaker 1: by Athens, he's referring to Socrates, free speech, classical reason,
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  Speaker 1: the birth of democracy, all of that. But by Jerusalem,
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  Speaker 1: we mean, of course, the idea of divine creation, the Exodus,
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  Speaker 1: the Ten Commandments, the teachings of the prophets and the Psalms. Now,
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  Speaker 1: Jerusalem has always been more vulnerable than Athens because, of course,
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  Speaker 1: if someone is an unbeliever or a skeptic, they're like,
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  Speaker 1: I like Athens, but I don't like Jerusalem. So this
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  Speaker 1: book is a fortification of the Jerusalem pillar of Athens
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  Speaker 1: and Jerusalem. So above and beyond authenticating the Bible, it's
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  Speaker 1: also supporting the founding pillars of America and the West.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's a great way to say it.
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  Speaker 3: It reminds us that, again, Jerusalem, just by its very nature,
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  Speaker 3: is a reminder that God has spoken. And as we know,
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  Speaker 3: this is the place where, you know, the son of
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  Speaker 3: God came and gave his life for humanity. So it's,
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  Speaker 3: it's a real location. And, but it's also, again, a
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  Speaker 3: theological reality in contrast, as you mentioned, you know, in
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  Speaker 3: the book where a lot of Athens is a little
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  Speaker 3: bit more secular in its approaches, but nevertheless, you have
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  Speaker 3: this one is again, they're both pillars in their own way. And,
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  Speaker 3: So what you did in the book, which, again, is
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  Speaker 3: very helpful, is you go back, and as far as
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  Speaker 3: we can, because archaeology obviously is a relatively, I would say,
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  Speaker 3: new science, as you mentioned, basically the mid-19th century. So
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  Speaker 3: you go back, you start with basically the person of Abraham,
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  Speaker 3: and talk about what that looks like in the archaeological record.
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  Speaker 2: The.
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  Speaker 1: The way archaeology works, the further back you go, in
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  Speaker 1: a way, the harder it is to find artifacts, right?
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  Speaker 1: Because things are more likely to be lost if there's
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  Speaker 1: a greater expanse of time. The other problem is that
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  Speaker 1: the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, were nomads. They didn't have
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  Speaker 1: a fixed abode. They didn't have a house. They moved around.
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  Speaker 1: They lived in tents. They had cattle. And so the
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  Speaker 1: chances of finding like the footprints of Abraham would seem
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  Speaker 1: extremely remote. You wouldn't expect to find anything. And yet,
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  Speaker 1: there are things that are found. And they are the
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  Speaker 1: great trees of Mamre. Abraham did buy one piece of property.
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  Speaker 1: He actually bought a burial cave, the Bible tells us,
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  Speaker 1: from Ephron the Hittite. The location of that cave is known.
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  Speaker 1: And it is now, there's a big monument there that
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  Speaker 1: was actually built by King Herod called Mephela. And so
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  Speaker 1: there's all kinds of fascinating archaeological stuff on Abraham. Even
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  Speaker 1: some of the kind of weird practices in the Bible.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, think about it. Abraham can't have a son,
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  Speaker 1: so he conceives with a concubine. That son has certain rights,
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  Speaker 1: but then suddenly, you know, Isaac shows up. So Isaac
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  Speaker 1: becomes sort of the legitimate heir. Well, all of this is,
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  Speaker 1: you know, then a little bit later, you have Jacob
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  Speaker 1: and getting a blessing from And so this odd idea
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  Speaker 1: that one brother kind of gets the blessing that was
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  Speaker 1: meant for the other brother, all of this stuff that
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  Speaker 1: seems kind of exotic and unique to the Bible, turns out,
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  Speaker 1: guess what?
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  Speaker 2: No.
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  Speaker 1: In ancient Mesopotamia, in ancient Syria, these practices were in
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  Speaker 1: fact commonplace, and it's now verified from archaeological records.
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  Speaker 2: So.
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  Speaker 1: The point here is that this all renders the biblical
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  Speaker 1: account far more anchored in history and far more believable.
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  Speaker 1: So I begin with Abraham and the patriarchs, and I
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  Speaker 1: continue with, of course, the Sodom and Gomorrah. Where is Sodom?
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  Speaker 1: Where is Gomorrah? Very fascinating archaeological debate. There are, in fact,
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  Speaker 1: two contested locations. and I give you the arguments for
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  Speaker 1: and against each one. I'm not myself sure which one
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  Speaker 1: it is. I lean one way a little bit, but
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  Speaker 1: more evidence could come out that points the other way.
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  Speaker 1: it kind of shows you part of the benefit of
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  Speaker 1: reading the book is you also understand kind of how
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  Speaker 1: this discipline works because the archeologist kind of working with
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  Speaker 1: the Bible in one hand and the spade of the
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  Speaker 1: trowel in the other hand, and the Bible is giving
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  Speaker 1: you clues. Like Abraham is standing, by the way, I
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  Speaker 1: don't know in location, but he can see the smoke
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  Speaker 1: from Sodom, which means Sodom has to be kind of
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: within his range of view. And so the archeologist then goes, okay, well,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: let me go look over there. Obviously, you have to dig,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: you have to find charred remains, you've got to look
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: for the stones to speak out, so to speak. But
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: it's a marvelous discipline. I almost feel like if I was,
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: you know, 19 years old all over again, that's something
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: I might like to go into.
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I mean, this is, that's one of the
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: reasons why I did what I did in the sense
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: I was pastoring. And I'm like, you know, I was pastoring,
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: but I'm like, I've always loved biblical archaeology.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: And so I'm going to go, I'm going to go
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: do this. I'm going to go to school.
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: And But, you know, and again, these are it's so
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: fun for me because these are things that we had learned.
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: You bring up often and I saw this myself again
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: in the academic world where you have those that are
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: skeptics and the accusation going all the way back. Certainly
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: to David and earlier to Abraham. They will say, well.
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: all this stuff about Abraham or maybe the Exodus, et cetera,
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: was written down much later. And then you have in
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: the book, the discussion of the Mari and the Newsy tablets,
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: where these are ancient records and you describe how, how
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: would these people later maybe unpacked it for how would
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: these people later writing in the fourth century or fifth
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: century BC, how would they even know about these, these
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: ancient customs, but yet now the tablets, these ancient tablets
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: come along and show us.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: Help us unpack that for us.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so the skeptics in archaeology, they're called the minimalists.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: They make two points. One is they say the absence
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: of evidence is evidence of absence. And that's actually a
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: flawed principle in science and in archaeology because the absence
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: of evidence simply means, or could very well mean, you
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: just haven't looked in the right place. It doesn't prove
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: that something doesn't exist because you haven't found it yet.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: You could find it tomorrow or next year. The other
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: point that they make is that they presume that the
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: Bible must have been written hundreds of years after the
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: events that it purports to describe, and therefore they say, naturally,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: the people who wrote it weren't there and They embellished,
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: they made up a bunch of stuff. They might have
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: had some fragments of oral history, but they added a
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: bunch of stuff. So the Bible is a kind of
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: big mixture of a few facts and a lot of legend. Now,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: the problem for that view, I think, all these many
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: years later, is biblical archaeology is at this for now
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: over a century. Many of the skeptics are not archaeologists.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: I call them armchair critics. They go, you know, I'm
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: sitting in my armchair here in Oxford. I don't see
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: how this could have happened. But what you find is
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: that the Bible has details that require a familiarity with
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: the culture and practices of the time. So here's a
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: very good example. The Bible tells us that when Joseph's brothers,
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: this is Joseph of the coat of many colors, sold
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: him into slavery. the price was 20 shekels. Bible happens
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: to just drop that little detail. Archeologists have basically now
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: checked out the price of a slave around 1900 BC,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: which is when Joseph lived. And the price turns out
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: to be all across that region, 20 shekels. Now, it
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: wasn't even that all the way. The price was lower
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: before and it was higher later, which is telling you
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: that kind of inflation is doing its work just like now, right?
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: So think about it. If someone's writing the Bible, let's say,
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: 500 years later or a thousand years later, how on
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: earth would they know what the price of a slave
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: was in 1900 BC? They have no written records. How
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: did they guess right? And if it was just one guess,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: it's one thing. But I show in the book dozens
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: of examples of this kind of detail, which really requires
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: you to be either on the scene or or getting
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: really good information that is passed down that is meticulously
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: transmitted and accurately transcribed.
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that is the important thing because we've
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: come to understand, like you just said, the record of
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: 20 shekels because of archaeological finds that have been in
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: the ground for 1,500 years. And so that would be
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: one of the only reasons why we would now know
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: what it was. And so you imagine people a thousand
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: years ago, or 2000 years ago that are allegedly writing
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: these things that they wouldn't have had most likely access
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: to those things that have been in the ground after
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: a destruction of a city, you know, a library gets collapsed.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: All the cuneiform tablets are buried.
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's just, to me, it's just another reminder
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: of the reliability of some of these very interesting details
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: in the, in the book, as you are going through,
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: you are discussing, you know, timeframes. And so you kind
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: of brought up Joseph and, let's not go too far
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: fast beyond him. Let's bring him up again because very
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: obviously in the Bible, here's this guy, this Hebrew guy
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: that gets elevated to the second in command. I mean,
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: what a, what an embellishment that is right in, in
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: trying to establish the legitimacy of, of Israel. So what
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: do we know from the archeological record that comes along
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: and gives us some insights into him and that period?
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: The first thing we know is that there is clear
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: proof of Semites from the region of Canaan and right
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: around there, that's Israel, greater Israel, in Egypt. That is
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: beyond a doubt. We also know from something called the
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: Tomb of Rechmeyer, the Rechmeyer paintings, that there were foreign
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: servants and slaves who were put to work by Pharaoh.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: And when I say put to work, put to work
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: doing the exact work described in the Bible, which is
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: to say building using clay or mud and straw. And
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: you can see in the paintings these foreign workers, darker skinned,
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: they're under the supervision of supervisors. It brings to mind
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: the passage in the Bible where Pharaoh, you know, very
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: sternly says, I'm not going to allocate any more straw
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: to the Israelites, but I want them to make just
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: as many bricks as they did before. This is like,
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: you're looking at it. Now, Joseph, for some decades, the skeptics,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: the minimalists said it is very implausible that a foreigner,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: a Semite, a Canaanite could rise up high within the
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: Egyptian hierarchy. But James Hoffmeier and others, Kenneth Kitchener, have
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: shown that no, this actually did happen from time to time.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: And not only that, But a little bit later in
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: Egyptian history, you have the Hyksos dynasty, which was a
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: dynasty made up of foreigners. So it went all the
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: way to the top. And so if Joseph happened to
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: live under the Hyksos, and there's some debate here going
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: on about when exactly we're talking about, but putting that
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: aside for a moment, the idea that under the Hyksos,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: a fellow Canaanite, a fellow Samite would be given an
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: important position a role as a public official in the
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: kingdom of Egypt, this is hardly implausible. And so, and
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: the other thing, by the way, that I go into
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: is not only can you find Israelites sort of in Egypt,
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: but you can also find Egypt in Israel or Egypt
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: in the Bible. And here's what I mean, that if
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: you look carefully at the writers of the Exodus, you
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: happen to notice that they are more familiar with Egypt
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: than they are with Canaan. It's the way they talk.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: When they're talking about Egypt, they have detailed knowledge of locations,
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: cultural practices, diet, all those sorts of things, which again,
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: how would they otherwise know if they weren't there? But
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: when it comes to Canaan, the rhetoric that they use
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: makes it feel like they're a stranger. It's kind of
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: like if I was talking to you, Mondo, and I
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: said something like, let's go to Washington, D.C., the capital
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: of America. Now, I wouldn't say that to you if
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: you and I were both Americans. It's a very strange
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: thing to say, but if you have two French guys
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: that are talking, they're likely to say, let's go to
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: the capital of America because they're outsiders and they have
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: to use that kind of language to describe what they're
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: talking about. So in any case, the point is there
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: are multiple converging lines of evidence here that support the
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: notion of the Israelites in Egypt.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: And, you know, it's interesting because I got to spend
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: a couple of weeks with James Hoffmeyer in going all
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: through Egypt and seeing these these like you mentioned, the
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: paintings inside the caves and everything else. But also discuss,
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: because I know you bring this up, is the way
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: that there's a difference in the way an Egyptian looks
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: and there's a difference in the way that these Canaanite looked.
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: And it's there it is on the wall. And yet
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: maybe discuss that, because, again, that's just another little nugget
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: showing you. that these foreigners building, you know, with straw
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: and everything else, they were definitely foreigners.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: They weren't Egyptian slaves.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and secular archaeologists, by the way, think of it,
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: most Egyptologists are not Bible believers. They are just guys
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: who went to university, have an interest in the pharaohs.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: And so they acknowledge the presence of the Semites in Egypt.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: The other thing is to notice that, take a name
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: like Moses. You know, if you're in Canaan, you've never
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: been to Egypt, you're making this stuff up, you're likely
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: to come up with a Canaanite type of name. Moses,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: as it turns out, is an Egyptian name. Not only that,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: but now from other royal records, it's a name connected
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: to Egyptian, the upper class, to royalty. In fact, if
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: you listen to the sound of Moses, it sounds like Ramos.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: It sounds like Ramesses. It sounds like Thutmose. Notice that
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: Thutmose sounds a lot like Moses. So these are the
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: actual names of Egyptian pharaohs. And so again, the writer
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: of the Exodus was quite knowledgeable about Egypt. Bullrushes, the
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: servants and slaves are fed leeks and onions, this kind
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: of minute detail. Or even things about when they describe
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: the type of birds that you see when you're crossing
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: the desert. Bedouins can tell you today, yeah, those are
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: the birds we see now. You see then later the
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: population of Canaan begin to grow rapidly once the Israelites
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: come over. No surprise, there are new villages, new settlements.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: You basically see a population explosion. Kenneth Kitchener writes about this.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: So even in a period, which is very long ago,
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: we're talking about around 1500 B.C., when you get multiple
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: lines of archaeological evidence pointing in the same direction, then
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: you've got something there.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, to me, it's phenomenal.
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: And especially when you look at archaeology in general, depending
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: on the site, but most archaeological sites, especially in the
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: land of Israel, it'll be less than 8% is uncovered.
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: And so this just shows you With that little bit
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: that we are able to see that has been brought
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: up out of the ground at 8%, the connections are amazing.
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: So imagine if you had 90% of the knowledge, it
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: would be absolutely incredible in one of those things. important
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: steles that has ever been found and you bring this
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: up is the merneptah stele talk about the importance of
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: that because again this is an egyptian reference to one
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: of the pharaohs and talking about the people.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: Of israel 1207 BC, if I'm going from memory, but
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: I'm not far off, the pharaohs were very powerful. Egypt
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: was the kind of great power of that time. And
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: Egypt also had a powerful presence in Canaan. And so
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: the pharaoh, in the Manap-Testelli, is boasting about his conquests.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: And he says things like, Israel has been laid waste.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: He's boasting about it. And when he says Israel... he
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: uses a term that isn't just the place Israel. He
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: means the people of Israel. The Israelites have been defeated.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: So think about that for a minute. What he's saying
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: is not only are there Israelites now in Canaan, that's
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: an important point that corroborates the Exodus, but number two,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: they have been there for a while. They are a
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: kind of force. And he, Pharaoh, a very powerful figure,
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: is actually boasting, I defeated them. So they have probably
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: been there decades, if not a couple of hundred years,
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: and they have formed a powerful entity. And the Merneptah
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: Stele tells you that whenever you want to date the
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: Israelites back in Canaan, It's no later than 1207 BC
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: because that's the date of the stelae. So archaeology supplies
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: these kind of decisive markers. I think the other thing
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: for me that's really cool is that not only, you know,
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: you take something like the biblical account of the battle
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: between the Israelites and the Moabites. The Moabites are from
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: what is now modern-day Jordan, and the Bible gives you
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: the battle from the Israelite point of view.
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: It involves this guy named Mesha, who's the king of Moab.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: He rebels against Israel and there's a big.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: Fight over it.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: Now, the Moabite stone is a very important artifact, which
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: tells the account of the exact same battle, but from
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: the Moabite side. So now it's kind of like World
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: War II. You know, we've got the Allied side, we've
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: got the kind of the German, the Nazi side, and
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: that's cool enough. But not only that, there's information on
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: the Moabite stone That's not in the Bible. So now
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: you're not only getting a corroboration or a perfect match,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: you're getting added information for a student of the Bible
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: where you learn new information about this particular conflict and
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: what it was all about. And so archaeology in a
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: way supplies a sort of added, I would say, texture
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: or depth for the student of the Bible. And that's
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: why I find this kind of stuff endlessly fascinating.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, 100%.
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: When you think about just some stone that was That
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: was discovered, and yet it makes a great connection. And,
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: you know, give us a little bit, again, going on
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: just from a timeline. You spend a whole chapter talking
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: about Joshua and the conquest. And what can we know?
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: Give us some hints about that. Give us some teasers
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: on that one.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: Well, the walls of Jericho, according to the Bible, fell down.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: And they fell down not because they were battered down.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: the Israelites marched around them for seven days and they
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: fell down, like a miracle, right? And normally, how do
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: you corroborate a miracle? Well, you go look at the
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: ruins of those walls. And the archeologists say, first of all,
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: that just as the Bible says, Jericho was burned. You
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: can see all the charred remains now. Number two, the
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: Bible tells you that the walls fell. And if you
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: look at the walls now, the ruins, it's very obvious
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: the walls fell outward. They didn't fall inward. Now, if
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: you ran and hit a wall with a battering ram,
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: it would fall inward. But if the wall fell some
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: other way, like an earthquake, the wall could fall outward.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: In other words, the stones end up on the outer side.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: And that's what we see. It's very obvious from the
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: archaeology that Joshua attacked in the spring. And the reason
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: you know that is you see the remains of grain
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: that is still there. in the ruins. And that's also
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: important because according to the Bible, Joshua was instructed by God,
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: do not eat the grain. See, in ancient armies, when
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: you conquer a place, you know, you need supplies. So
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: you're going to plunder the place. You're going to eat
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: the grain. But in this case, Joshua followed God's command, evidently,
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: because the grain is untouched. It's uneaten. It's still in
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: the jars. So Look at all this. We're not just
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: talking about kind of corroborating a generic event. We're talking
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: about corroborating it down to some of the rather minor
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: details that are given. And Joshua is said to have
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: burned three cities, which is Jericho, Hazor, and Ai. Now,
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: one of those cities, Ai, there's a debate about its location.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: So I admit that we're not 100% sure about where
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: biblical Ai is located. But we do know where Hazor
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: is located. And guess what? Hazor, in fact, shows the
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: same charring, the same burning that the Bible talks about.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: Hazor was definitively burned. And then you go onward with
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: the royal period with King David and Solomon. You go
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: a couple of hundred years later, the period of the
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: great prophet Isaiah and the king Hezekiah, a little further
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: to Jeremiah. I mean, the archaeology just like never stops.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: And And again, part of what fascinates me from the
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: later period, this is Isaiah and Jeremiah, is the emergence
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: of these clay seal impressions out of the ground. They're
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: called bula or bule, plural. And these are seals that
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: were used to tag merchandise or they were also used
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: to seal correspondence. And the correspondence is gone, but the
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: clay can harden over time. And so these clay seals
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: sometimes have names on it. really fascinating because an archaeologist
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: picks up a seal, it has a name on it.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: The archaeologist has no idea who it is. He just
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: puts the seal somewhere into an academic collection or into
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: a museum and some other guy comes along and goes,
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: wait a second, that guy's in the book of Jeremiah.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: You know, a cameo appearance of, you know, Jehukal son
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: of Shalamiah or Gedalia son of Pashur. These are kind
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: of sidekicks of King Zedekiah in the time of Jeremiah.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: But wait a minute, here's a seal. That seal was actually,
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: you know, on this guy's ring finger, and he pressed
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: it into a piece of clay. So isn't it remarkable
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: to like, you know, having that to look at now,
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: 2500 years later. And of course, there's also wonderful archaeology
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: on the New Testament.
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, that to me, all the stuff that
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: Eilat Mazar has done, you know, that she was involved
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: with the City of David, you know, and again, a
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: lot of these discoveries, you know, it's 2026. So I remember,
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: you know, again, a lot of the stuff that I
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: did was, you know, right around 2008. But to see
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: what has just been discovered in the last 25 years,
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: all these little things, the more and more they get
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: in there, I think one of the things you bring out,
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: like you just said, is so important, is these random, unimportant,
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: relatively speaking, characters, are getting validated.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: And sometimes these characters are, they have a mythical feel
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: to them. You know, in the book of Daniel, you
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: have this guy named Belshazzar. And there's a kind of
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: a miraculous account of writing on the wall. And we
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: read that Belshazzar took, put a kind of, he put
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: a robe on Daniel and he He named him, quote,
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: the third ruler of the kingdom, a very odd phrase.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: And historians thought for a long time, well, we don't
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: know about this Belshazzar, the last king, Nabonidus of Babylon.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: This Belshazzar is obviously a made-up character that the biblical
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: writers conjured up, except the Nabonidus cylinder now found in Babylon.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: And it talks about, number one, that King Nabonidus had
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: a son, His name was, you guessed it, Belshazzar. And
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: another cylinder says that when Nabonidus was out of town,
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: who ruled in his place? Belshazzar. So think about it
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: this way. Nabonidus is the first ruler of the kingdom.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: He's the king. Belshazzar is the second ruler. He's his son.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: And now that cryptic phrase from Daniel, which is that I, Daniel,
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: was named the third man of the kingdom, makes sense.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: Daniel couldn't be the first man, that's the king. He
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: couldn't be the second man, that's his son. But he
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: could be the third man. And so this cryptic reference
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: in the Bible is illuminated by indisputable historical evidence of
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: the existence of Belshazzar.
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just absolutely, again, incredible evidence And seeing these
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: things come to be in the record. And let's talk about,
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: you know, the archaeology of the time of Jesus. I mean,
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: are we left, is it all over and done with?
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: It's just Old Testament or do we have stuff for
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: the New Testament?
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: No, there is remarkable stuff on the New Testament. And
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: here's an interesting thing. A lot of the archaeology in
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: the Old Testament is coming not from the Israelite side,
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: but from the enemies of Israel. So it has even
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: more credibility, right? You have King Hazael of Aram boasting
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: about his victories over the house of David. He has
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: no reason to lie. He's super excited. He just won
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: these victories. And so it corroborates the house of David.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: Obviously it corroborates the existence of David. And now we
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: have the ruins of David's palace. Now, fast forward to
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: the New Testament. In the second century AD, there was
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: a Roman emperor named Hadrian. And he knew that there
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: were venerated Christian holy sites that had been preserved from
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: the time of Jesus. These are people, by the way,
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: think about it. Jesus dies around 32 AD. The apostles
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: continued to live and write through about 90 AD. So
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: even in the early second century, there are people who
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: knew the apostles, people who absolutely knew where Jesus was born.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: They absolutely knew where he grew up. They absolutely knew
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: where he walked and taught. And they knew the site
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: of the crucifixion. So Hadrian decides, you know what? I
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: hate these Christians. I'm going to go stamp out all
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: the holy sites. He knows where they are. So he
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: goes and builds pagan monuments on top of them. But
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: little does he know, this enemy of Christianity, that in
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: doing that, he is in a way marking the site
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: for later historical identification. So in the fourth century AD,
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: when Constantine converts to Christianity, he sends his mom, Helena,
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: to Jerusalem to find the holy sites. Well, she knows
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: exactly where to look. She goes to all these pagan
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: monuments that Constantine's predecessor, Hadrian, had erected. She pulls them
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: down and basically builds churches on those locations. So this
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: is one way in which, by a kind of strange
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: twist of history, many would say providence, we have the
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: legacy of these sites preserved, oddly enough, by a Roman
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: emperor who was a great persecutor of the Christians.
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it just reminds you of Genesis 50-20, that what
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: the enemy intends for evil, God is going to make
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: good out of it. Just historically, especially archaeologically, many of
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: the places... Sometimes it's hard to know, but when you
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: have that level of ancient history going back to Hadrian,
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: it's phenomenal. And talk about as well, so there you're
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: bringing up places. Let's talk about some of the people
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: of the New Testament, you know, the villains and others.
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: Well, let's look at the great trial of Jesus, because
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: it's just such a dramatic scene. You have four main characters,
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: all of whom are very different from each other. One is,
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: of course, King Herod. One is the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate.
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: One is the accused man, Jesus. And then there is
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: the high priest, Caiaphas. Now, there's fascinating archaeology on all four,
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: but I'm going to just focus for a moment on one,
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: and that's the high priest, Caiaphas. So the Bible only
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: gives us one name. He's Caiaphas. But the historian Josephus,
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: a Jewish historian who served kind of in the Roman Empire,
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: he gives us his first name. Joseph Caiaphas. Now, Caiaphas
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: is a really big villain in the Bible, right? He's
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: the guy who, well, when Jesus is arrested, he's taken
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: to Caiaphas' home. Caiaphas whips up the priestly council called
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: the Sanhedrin against Jesus. They are the ones who go
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: to lobby Pontius Pilate, and Pilate is initially reluctant because,
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: I mean, think about it. The Romans have followed theism.
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: He's like, okay, this guy claims to be the Messiah. Well,
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: we have hundreds of Greek and Roman gods. Who cares?
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: They have to intimidate him into going along with the crucifixion.
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: Caiaphas is the kind of orchestrator of the crucifixion in
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: a way. Important guy. Now, fast forward a couple of
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: thousand years, and they're digging in the priestly quarter, also
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: the aristocratic quarter of Jerusalem. and out of the ground
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: come these little stone boxes that are called ossuaries. So
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: in the first century AD, if you died, you were
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: buried in a tomb, but when your body decayed, they
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: would take your bones out and put it in a
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: box and put your name on it. This was the
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: customary practice. And so the archaeologists are looking at these ossuaries,
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: and there's about two dozen of them, about 20 of them.
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: And as they're looking, they see one of these boxes
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: is particularly decorated or ornate, and it has a name
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: on top of it. Yehoseph bar Kayapha. So Yehoseph is Joseph, bar,
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: son of, Kayapha, Caiaphas. It's him. And you open the box,
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: and inside are the bones of a 60-year-old man. You
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: date the bones, and they're dated to the first century AD.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: It's him.
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: Who else?
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: So think about it. It's one thing, Mondo, if you
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: and I are looking at some stone inscription or some
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: historical reference that some historian wrote 200 years later, It's
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: another whole feeling to be looking at not just the
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: guy's burial box, but his actual bones. It kind of
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: brings with a certain kind of historical force the presence
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: of all those great and dramatic and world-changing events that
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: were happening that this guy was part of.
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, again, I'll say it again, just phenomenal.
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: You know, one of your subtitles, you talk about biblical archaeology, prophecy,
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: and the last days.
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: And so how do you bring that?
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: Now we've kind of given a little bit, I mean,
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: people got to get the book to get all the
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: rest of the deals.
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: How do you bring it to the last days?
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: The prophetic side of it, I approach a little cautiously,
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: but I focus on the big signposts of the end times.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: So one of them, of course, and you know more
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: about this than even I do, and that is the
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: sort of the return of the Jews to their ancestral homeland.
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: That's predicted in the Bible. It's a very implausible prediction
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: from many, many centuries. It would have seemed ridiculous and impossible.
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: Even as late as the 20th century, it was thought
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: to be very far-fetched, and yet it happened in 1948.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: That's clearly an important marker. It is also said, I
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: think this is Matthew 24, where he talks about, in
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: the end times, every eye will see. In other words,
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: events will occur of great significance and the whole world
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: will be able to observe them simultaneously. Well, think about it.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: If we lived 50 years ago, I mean, I lived.
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: 50 years ago.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: You know, how is that possible? How can the whole
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: world see an event at the same time? But we
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: can now recognize under technology and, of course, the technology
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: of the future that this is possible now and will
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: be even more possible in the years and decades to come.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: The other thing I think is really interesting is to
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: ask this question. Why are the stones crying out now?
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: If I look at biblical archaeology, it covers three phases.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: The first phase is sort of 1850 to 1947. I
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: pick 1947 because Israel is formed in 48. So in
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: the first phase, you get some important discoveries, but it's
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: relatively few. 1948 to 2000, a lot more. So there's
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: a kind of acceleration of the pace of archaeological discovery.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: And 2000 to the present, phase three, the most. The
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: most spectacular discoveries in the last 25 years. So it's
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: almost like God is like ramping it up. You know,
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: he's upping the ante, as they say. And so my
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: question is, why now? And my answer is this, and
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: that is, number one, we are living in a secular
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: age where Young people go off to college and they
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: learn to respect the language of reason and science and archaeology,
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: and God's like, okay, well, guess what? I'll speak to
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: you in that language also. You have the Bible, but
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: this is going to be me speaking through science and
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: through objects. That's what archaeology is. It's objects that come
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: out of the ground. And so I think the fact
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: that this is happening now is almost like God is
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: removing people's excuse for not believing in in the events
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: and people and places of the Bible. God is sort
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: of saying like, look, you know, regardless of your mindset,
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: I'm giving you enough evidence and here it is in
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: front of you. You can look at it. You can
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: touch it in some cases. You really have no reason
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: except a kind of obstinate refusal to dismiss it.
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, 100%.
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: And I mean, so at the end of the day,
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: you know, we've kind of just been able to kind.
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: Of get some of the highlights. How does this... It
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: kind of closes out here.
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: Imagine you have somebody who is a skeptic who's like, OK, well,
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: you bring that guy, that guy. I don't know who
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: he is, but he's bringing up some good points. How
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: does all this draw people to the person.
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: Of Jesus and the work that Jesus did?
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: The first thing to note is that biblical archaeology is
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: exclusive to the Bible. And what I mean by that
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: is you cannot even attempt this kind of archaeological scrutiny
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: to any other sacred book. There's no archaeology in the Koran.
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: Nobody even tries. Or the Buddhist scriptures or the Hindu scriptures.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: And what that tells you is that the Bible is
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: in a different category than these other books because it
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: has withstood now 150 years of withering archaeological scrutiny, often
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: driven by people with a, I mean, it's not an
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: exaggeration to say a mad hatred of the Bible.
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: True, yep.
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: You know, looking to find something where they could go, ha,
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: and they haven't got it yet. So that's very telling,
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: isn't it? And, you know, for me, it has been
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: a very powerful experience to... I have an archaeological Bible
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: that is the script of the Bible, but in the
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: notes it has all the artifacts and lots of pictures.
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: So it kind of hits you with a certain force
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: because as a kid, you know, you learn about Noah's Ark,
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: you learn about Jonah and the belly of the whale, right?
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: there's a kind of a way in which all of
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: this kind of comes together. And as an adult, you wonder,
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: is it really all true? I mean, I believe it,
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: but there's a little part of me that wonders, did
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: all of this really happen the way the Bible says?
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: So you have this little skeptic in all of us,
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: including the believer. And so the archaeology then comes with
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: a sort of refreshing, okay, let's go take a look.
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: And I think we live in an age where people
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: are very oriented toward experience. You know, even Mondo, a
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: decade ago, when I debated these new atheists, I realized
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: that one thing they have going for them is that
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: they'd say, all right, well, you say that God exists, like,
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: show him to me. In other words, don't just talk
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: about God. Give me some evidence that I can kind
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: of put my hands around. So this desire in our
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: time to have direct experience, and the beauty of archaeology
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: is it can deliver that.
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: And it can deliver it unquestionably. Now, I will say
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: as a small qualification that there are certain archaeological objects
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: I've left out of the book because sometimes like an
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: antiquities dealer in Cairo will say, hey, I've got, you know,
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: this is the box of the brother of Jesus, but
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: it didn't come out of the ground. It just mysteriously
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: appeared in his shop. And so I'm like, guess what?
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to be including that because we don't
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: really know where that came from. So there is a
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: little bit of hocus pocus in the archaeological sort of
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: open market, this book is very careful in only looking
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: at artifacts where, whether it's a believing archaeologist or an unbeliever,
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: they're going to go, oh yeah, that's the Tel Dan Stele. Yes,
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: that does confirm the existence of the House of David.
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: That is really, you can argue about what that means,
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: but the fact that we're looking at that stele, that's
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: an authentic archaeological artifact.
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you have people that, I remember when they, you know, 1993,
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: when you have those that are responsible for trying to
• 51:05
  Speaker 3: discredit the archaeologist, you know, Abraham Baran, and you're like.
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: This guy's a solid individual.
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: And so, you know, maybe my last question here for
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: you is, you know, in all the work that you've
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: done in all the last few years, you know, writing,
• 51:20
  Speaker 3: of course, bringing it all together, how has it impacted
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: your faith personally?
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: First of all, just being in Israel has given me
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: that sense of being in my spiritual homeland. All these
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: places that I had heard about, are sort of there
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: to experience. And I hadn't quite expected that, Mondo, because
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: I've actually traveled a lot, and cities these days have
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: become very homogenized. They're a long way from their ancient past.
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: And not only that, but in places like Greece and
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: Rome and Egypt, the history is there, but it's no
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: longer relevant, right? The pharaohs aren't around. You've got to
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: go find them in a museum somewhere. Where is the
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: empire of the ancient Greeks? It doesn't exist anymore. But
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: in Israel, the Jews are back, you know, and they
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: look the same. They dress the same to a considerable degree.
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: They eat the same food. They speak the Hebrew language,
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: which they've revived. They, you know, they have shekels and
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: they worship the same God, celebrate the same holidays. So
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: you have this kind of eerie sense that you're not
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: that far removed from the world of the Bibles. And
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: then the archeology kind of comes in at that point. And,
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: and it's, by the way, a lot of it, of course,
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: is in Israel, but not only in Israel, there's important
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: archeology in Jordan, in Syria. Some of this stuff is found,
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: you know, in the ruins of Nineveh, all over, right
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: in what is now modern day Iraq. And then the
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: New Testament changes the geography because now we're talking about
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: the journeys of Paul. He's moving through Greece. He gets
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: up to Turkey, or at least Anatolia, which is now
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: modern-day Turkey. So you have a very interesting timescale from
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: 2000 BC to about 50 AD, and then a very
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: interesting geography, which is largely in Israel, particularly the Old Testament.
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: But in the New Testament, you've got Rome, you've got Ephesus,
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: you've got Greece, you've got Turkey.
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Dinesh, this has been great.
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: And for those watching, what he has done in this
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: book is so great because it establishes the foundation, as
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: we've been discussing today, the historicity of the Bible and landing, again,
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: on the person and the work of Jesus. And that,
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: to me, to see Caiaphas there, the guy that sentenced
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: Jesus to death.
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: And what's our goal?
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: Our goal is to talk about these things, but ultimately
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: to point people to the death and resurrection of Jesus
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: in the first century for humanity. God's love is demonstrated here,
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: and again, it's not just fiction. All these little things
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: point to it, and God is setting a foundation for
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: us to understand not just what the Bible said historically,
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: but actually not only what Jesus did historically as well,
• 54:10
  Speaker 3: but the message of salvation through him.
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: So, as always, we.
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: Appreciate your support and prayers for what we do here.
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: Thanks for watching this week. I hope you've been very blessed.
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: This has been a great time to see again how
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: God has spoken, and as As Dinesh's book says, the
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: stones are crying out. And we're seeing more and more
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: of it every week when more and more stuff is uncovered.
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: So thanks for watching today and we will catch you
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: next time.