Bible Backgrounds/Church History 2012

We're starting off on going through Old Testament history, and what we'll do is just kind of a quick sweep, looking mostly at timelines and key historical events. One of the things to keep in mind is we'll be going back through it to look at the culture of the major empires that impacted Israel. And one reason for looking at the cultures is because as we read the Bible, we'll understand why things were the way they were.

One of the things we pointed out last week was, for instance, the Babylonians would threaten people with fire, and not with lions, because they held lions sacred. Whereas the Persians, who then took over the Babylonian Empire, held fire as sacred and not lions. So they'd throw Daniel to the lions, right? So even differences like that, why do those differences show up?

One of the ways to insult a pharaoh, and even pharaohs did this about prior pharaohs, was to either not mention the name or to erase the name. So guess what? Do you know the name of the pharaoh that was there when Joseph went into Egypt? No. And when Moses brought the Israelites out? Do we know the name of the Pharaoh?

No. So it actually fits with the culture. One way to deal with things in the Egyptian culture is don't mention the name. That says bad things about the person. So that's an example of one cultural pattern. Every empire had their own cultural philosophy, philosophy of empire, as we'll call it.

Alright, here we'll be going through Old Testament history, creation of Jacob. Over the next, this week and the next two weeks, we'll be going through the Old Testament. Then in number six we'll go, what happened between the Old and New Testaments, that four-year gap, and it does make a difference. Because there are a lot of things that suddenly become clear. And even, as Paul writes, at the right time God sent his son. and we'll see why that's the case.

Alright, now you have a handout like this. This is smaller scale, and I admit it may be a little tougher for some of you to read, unless you're the kind of people that like to watch movies on iPhones and Blackberries, you know. It may be tough to read, but last week's handout had the same on a much larger scale, if that's handy.

But the point that we made was, if you can keep in mind, Abraham was about 2,000 BC, Moses about 1,500 and a little bit thereafter, and then David about 1,000 BC, and then Saul, David, and Solomon each reigned about 40 years, so you keep that as sort of a framework. The Jews exiled to Babylon in 586 and the New Testament being in the first century. If you get those, just those points of outline, then you can figure out, okay, where does everything else fit around that, okay? And so that's why we reproduce it here, but refer you to last week, where the scale is a little easier to track. Now, a key thing, this is big. There are views of history, and the Bible presents a view of history. And I won't go through all of them, but I will go through a few.

And a materialist view, this is the person who who says either there is no God, or if there is a God, he's basically irrelevant. The materialist view says that history is either random and meaningless, or mechanical and meaningless. Now, I'll have to confess that I frequent atheist and skeptic websites. I often look at them, occasionally get in discussion with them. And the thing that I press them on is I say, you know, your viewpoint makes life have no meaning. And of course they object.

And I say, forget it. You have no way to tell me that you matter. Because all you are is biological and chemical and physical processes, period. And when you're done, you're done. To which they really have no answer. So, the materialist says history is either random and meaningless or mechanical and meaningless. So when you go through studying history from a materialist standpoint, it's some kind of meaningless. And you either got to work on mechanical, it's the big machine, or random. But either way, it's meaningless. This is the materialist viewpoint.

Eastern philosophy and religion does have a direction, but it's primarily cyclical. The billions of years of time that modern secular science has given to the universe is no problem. As a matter of fact, the Eastern philosophy says it's even older, because there are just thousands and thousands and thousands of reincarnations. You've got to go through one reincarnation, and the next, and the next, and the next, and the next. And so it's just a matter of going through those, and you're not going to change it, you're not going to stop it.

Yes? Do you always get reincarnated as a person, or do you... Well, let me switch over to the large picture. What you see here is, at the top, They've got a person going into death and then being reincarnated as a child. But one of the things you see here below is animals, various animals, and then what's interesting is they show an animal after that.

So it is possible to actually retrograde in terms of, you know, from human to something else in the Eastern system. Now in some instances they, and it depends on which system you're talking about, in some instances they have particular, you know, that's my grandfather so to speak, real specific.

Years ago I had a friend whose name was Ted Wise and he and another friend of mine named Lambert Dolphin went over to India and Lambert went into some shop to get something taken care of or done. And meanwhile, Ted Wise was standing out in the street with their luggage, just to try to make sure it was safe. Well, unfortunately, a cow came by and started chewing on the luggage. And so Ted punched the cow in the nose. That started a riot. Because why? This cow is not tomorrow's hamburger. This cow instead is grandpa, right? So anyway, that's the difference in viewpoint.

But think of it, in the Eastern system, it is compulsory that you go through all these endless reincarnations, and so the cyclical nature is more primary and substantial than the where is this going, linear kind of nature. And it's not where is history on the whole headed so much as each person going through these endless reincarnations.

I used to sit down with a fellow, his name was Dr. Banu Dave. He used to teach religion over in India. And he said, we are living a dream of God. And when God wakes up from the dream, this will be all over. That's the way he kind of paraphrased the Hindu system.

So that's the Eastern approach. Biblical Christianity says history is linear. Is there some rhyming? Yes. But the primary thing in biblical worldview is that history is going somewhere. History was begun. God said, let there be light. History is going somewhere.

Ephesians 1, 9 and 10 says that God is summing up all things in Christ. Everything is to be summed up. in Christ, and he is managing, that's the word that's used there, he is managing, administering history to that end. So you're wondering, oh man, we've got these elections coming up, and we've got crazy things going on in the Middle East, what's the world coming to? That's what it's coming to, it's going to be summed up in Christ.

But until he comes back, it's going to look nuts, right? So, Christianity is linear, it has a purpose and direction, which is hugely significant. As opposed to the Eastern philosophy and religion, it says that Christianity, by great contrast, gives you one life, not thousands. It gives you one life, with grace, and not thousands of lives with no grace. Karma, which is an Eastern principle, karma allows zero grace. You will pay out according to karma. If you want karma, it's easy. All you have to do is walk in this in nature.

Yes. material time space and matter, whereas Eastern philosophy is all enclosed within this material world. Yes, that is another important point. In Christianity, not only is history linear and going somewhere, but the physical world is a separate creation from God himself. God himself originated this, whereas in the Eastern view, everything that you see is really all a part of God, pantheism.

And so the world is not a separate creation from God, but rather a part of God himself. As Banda Dave said, the dream of God. This is what we're living is the dream of God. Life is like, what is the law that says that nothing is created or destroyed, only changed?

So life follows that same process, the fact that it has to be recycled throughout these processes of change, because it's within this realm that we live in. Yeah, Eastern, see, what did Einstein say? He says E equals mc squared, he had an equivalence between energy and matter. What Eastern religion would say is energy and matter has an equivalence to spiritual being. Now, let's move on beyond that, if we can. Ephesians 1, 9, and 10 expand and explain. I'm going to pass on this, but I'll leave that to you, but the point in bringing this out is that God is summing up all things in Christ.

Okay, the principle that we're going to be operating towards is match the right background to the text. We put it last week, be a matchmaker. Match the right background to the text. However, factual, we say, the historical and cultural background information must also fit the text in time, in place, and in culture. Those three. Time, place, culture. Why all three? Why do we need all three to match up? Time, place, culture.

Was the culture here in the United States different 400 years ago? Yeah, certainly in Colorado it was. But even the culture 400 years ago on the East Coast of the United States is different. Culture changes over time, so time does matter, not just place.

So that's time, place, and culture is what we want to match up. in order to illuminate the meaning, have greater understanding of the meaning, not to eliminate it. I have heard people sometimes say, oh that's all cultural, and they dismiss what the Bible says. And so that's why we want to illuminate the meaning, have greater understanding, because we understand the culture and the history, and not to dismiss it. That's the distinction. Matching the background to the text requires we respect the inspiration authority of scripture and take each text in its normal literal sense.

What I mean by that is not that we don't understand figures of speech as figures of speech. There are figures of speech in the Bible. As a matter of fact, I've seen a cataloging of it, a fairly complete cataloging, and it's about that thick. So there are many figures of speech. Let me give you a quick example. Three times that I recall in the book of Acts, Dr. Luke writes, no little or no small to say big, right? So that's a figure of speech. There are other figures of speech. Paul is frequently writing and he will drop out certain words or verbs. It's called ellipsis.

Example, you're probably familiar with Philippians 4.8, whatever is right, whatever is true, whatever is lovely and worthy of, you're familiar with that?

Let your mind dwell on these things, from Philippians 4.8? Well, after the first is, all the rest of the verse, the is, is dropped out. So whatever is right, whatever is true, whatever is lovely, is actually the way it's written.

A figure of speech. One of the things, big picture, Genesis and Revelation are amazing books because as they lay things out, the first three chapters of Genesis will establish something, and the last three chapters of Revelation will set that in contrast or fulfillment. Let me tell you what I mean, and you have this on your handout, I believe, in fairly large scale. Heaven and earth are created in Genesis 1.

Revelation 21.1, new heavens and new earth. The sun is created in Genesis 1, but in Revelation 21, no need of the sun. Why? Why is there no need of the sun in the new heavens and new earth?

God himself is the light. So it's interesting. A very good point that you made, Stan, is a sun is created as the source of light, permanent source of light, for the earth, in Genesis 1, separate from God. God said, let there be light, and made a separate entity called light. Here, no need of it. Why? Because God himself is the light. So there's a contrast there.

The night is established in Genesis 1. No night, says in both 21 and 22 chapters in Revelation. The seas are created, no more seas. A serpent on earth, now the serpent's in the lake of fire. The curse given, no more curse. Death enters history, no more death.

Driven from the tree, restored to the tree. Isn't that interesting? We will be restored to the tree of life. Fascinating. Sorrow and pain begin, no more sorrow and pain. Anyway, those are some interesting contrasts. It's real consistent. First three chapters of Genesis, last three chapters of Revelation, last book of the Bible. Each of those has a fulfillment or in some cases a sharp contrast.

Okay, you should have this chart on page two. This is the lifetimes of the patriarchs in Genesis, beginning with Adam and continuing through Jacob. And what you have there is a bar chart showing age in years and then the age of each one of them in a number on top of the bar, right? And so these are the lifetimes of the patriarchs.

You have key points here, the flood in the time of Noah, in round numbers about two-thirds of the way through his lifetime. But in the time of Noah, and then you have Enoch taken away by the Lord, who is the one exception of those who were born before the flood. Thank you. He's the one exception of those who were born before the flood, and he lived 365 years.

Makes it easier, same number of days in a year, right? And also, he is an Old Testament picture of the rapture. He walked with the Lord, and then what happened? He was taken up, right? Okay. Key people in Genesis are going to be Adam, mentioned not only here in Genesis, but later in the Old Testament and multiple times in the New Testament, especially in the letters of Paul. Next would be Enoch, who was taken away. And then, of course, Noah and his son Shem. Why the son Shem of the three sons of Noah? Why is Shem significant?

That's where the Jews came from. That's right. As a matter of fact, we have this term. It's somewhat misleading. Anti-Semitic means someone who is against the Jews. But in fact, everyone descended from Shem is Semitic, right? So, but it's, yeah, it's the line of Shem that we get Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. who are mentioned here, and of course those are the last ones that we have listed as significant and key people in Genesis. Questions so far? I'm highly questionable, so go ahead.

Now back to our timeline, you've got Adam was created on the sixth day of creation along with his wife. Oh, and by the way, last week we had a supplement that made it out on the the counter here on the lobby, but didn't make it here. So if you're interested in a supplement telling why the days of Genesis are intended to be taken as a literal day, we have a handout here if you'd like to take advantage of that. Thank you. Okay, there we go. Thanks so much. This battery tends to last pretty long, all things considered, but, you know, oh really?

After that came the fall of Adam, Genesis 3, and all mankind with him. Romans chapter 5 talks about that, and that's one of the references to Adam in the New Testament. The next major pivotal event was the flood, which took place in the days of Noah, just after the death of Methuselah.

Some of the Old Testament names are a little hard to figure out what the meaning is. Occasionally you'll have, you know, this name means this or this, and it's because a lot of them are very contracted, and so it can be difficult. One of the proposed meanings for Methuselah is, when he dies, it comes. And it's right after his death that the flood began.

So we have the flood of Noah and then, of course, the end of the flood and they get off the ark. Then the main event after that is the Tower of Babel event. And then the confounding of languages. What's the problem with them building the Tower of Babel?

I mean, we've got something that's almost certainly larger in Dubai right now. When I was going through there a couple of years back, I was amazed. I mean, this is a huge, huge spire, and they've got other very tall buildings. They've even got buildings where every floor rotates separately. Phenomenal structures. What's the problem with the Tower of Babel? Why is that somehow a bad thing?

Here I am. Okay, yeah. One, it was very much self-effort, and you're quite correct about that. Yes. I've heard in commentaries and stuff that it had to do with astrology. Yeah, and that's another thing. This is not one that is spoken of directly in the Bible, but comparing the cultures of the time, that certainly may have been at least one motivation. Rather than a belief in God himself, a belief in other deities, and this would consolidate it at one place. Why else would God confound the languages? Why else was it a problem?

You're saying something? Yeah, what were they told to do? Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Were they doing that? Okay, so problem. So the reality is you've all come up with very good reasons. The reality is they had several problems and all of those were relevant. So God said, okay, I'm going to confound the languages. This will stop this project. and caused them to spread.

This is a picture of a ziggurat, which is kind of a low-type tower structure, from just before the time of Abraham. By the way, once our troops went in at Kuwait, in this last invasion when they came in at Kuwait, they ran to this spot as soon as they got over into Iraq. and established a post there. But nonetheless, this is one built just before the time of Abraham. By the way, that's the same situation with those pyramids in Egypt, the great pyramids, the three that you always see pictures of, before the time of Abraham.

So here is the Tower of Babel and the Confusion of Languages incident. The Tower of Babel was the location from which people spread throughout the earth primarily and initially according to family groups. So the spread of people took place because God confused the languages which had previously been a single language.

You have this as a supplement. It is from Adam and Eve all the way into the early chapters of the time of Exodus. Now, the question is that the print is fairly small. Would people be interested in a larger print version of that? Both hands? Okay, so some interest in that. I'll have that as a supplement available soon then.

The general directions of the migrations of the Sons of Noah, starting from looking in the eastern Mediterranean, here you have Shem heading to the east. there, and then you have Ham heading towards Africa, the Hamites, and then Japheth heading into Europe. So those are the three primary migration patterns. Here, of course, is Israel. This you have on the supplement on the last page, should be on the top half, I believe, of your handout, and this shows the directions not just of each of the sons of Noah, but also their sons and grandsons.

And so you have the locations of those out there. And what's interesting is archaeology confirms this pattern. You'll find this distribution to be the case. Here, for example, is Elam, and there was an ancient city of Elam on the east there. and the people who lived there were called Elamites. You have Asher, which became Assyria. So a lot of the names are even carried forward. Here you have the Canaanites from the sons of Canaan.

So anyway, that's the general distribution pattern from the Table of Nations here. Initial paths of population on the earth, I got this from Arthur Custance, he actually went home to be with the Lord a few decades ago, but this is a generalized, simplified pattern of distribution, not from the Bible, but worldwide, just from archaeology.

I would not be surprised to find some exceptions to this, you know, at certain places, and especially since this was produced about 30 years ago. At any rate, I think he did a good job in simply presenting it. You can look it up yourself. There's the link given there. I don't agree with everything that Dr. Custance did, but he was a Christian anthropologist and produced some good material. I think it's a good general resource.

What you find here is here is Ararat, where the ark landed, and right here and the area of Iraq would be the plain of Shinar. This is where the Tower of Babel would be located. The Associates for Biblical Research, which is an East Coast outfit, has identified what they believe is the Tower of Babel. So, real interesting. They've got pictures of it and an article on it.

So here's the pattern of Japheth and Shem and Ham. in that picture. And of course you have distribution to other places outside of the Middle East from there. We showed last week this geography of the Bible. You don't have it in your handout, but this shows you where Abraham started at Ur and then migrated to the north in the area of Haran and then eventually went down into Egypt and then back into Canaan.

God's covenant with Abraham began in Genesis 12. It's the basis for the outworking of his purposes in all of human history. How could I say such a thing? You know, one of the reasons why God has not ended things is because he's not done fulfilling his promises to Abraham. Yeah. Is the land of Israel still relevant? Yes, it is. There was a promise to Abraham, and it included the land.

As a matter of fact, Genesis 12, when Abraham was not there yet, he says, the land that I will show you. And then it refers to the Jews, he who blesses you I will bless, and he who curses you I will curse. That is talking about his descendants. And then he talks about blessings outside of that, and you and I are blessed. out of this covenant with Abraham. So amazing, and Paul refers to this in the book of Galatians.

Do you want to state? On the previous slide, migration? Back one more. This one. During this migration, so to speak, of the population of the earth, was the land at that time closer together so that Because isn't one of the names like Peleg or something like that mean they are divided or whatever? And so the land may have been actually kind of almost one unit, right? And then it was separated after that. Yeah.

Peleg, who was one of the descendants there, you'll find on that chart if you can read it. Peleg, his name means divided. So the question is, does that division refer to the division by the confusion of tongues, or some have proposed that it was actually the time when the continents were divided? And I don't know that we'll be able to answer that question with certainty.

It's always amazing to me how if you look at those, if you look at that picture, you can just push those right together. Yes, you're talking about essentially what's called continental drift theory, the idea of continents were together, Pangea. The timing of the continents going apart, according to the secular old age theory, is basically tens of millions of years ago. The Earth started moving away, and that's the theory under which they operate. Dr. Baumgardner, who has spoken in this room here several times, and actually spoken here one Sunday morning a few years back, He was given by the federal government a million dollar grant to model the earth using dynamic finite element analysis.

And what he ended up generating is a division during the flood, and he modeled it in great detail, checking the physics and everything out with a number of scientists. And his model says that the continents divided over a period of about three weeks during the flood, which would have been before Peleg. So that would mean Peleg under that model. Peleg was the division not of the continents, but rather of the languages and the people.

So, at any rate. Yes, that's right. And that would mean the migration after it's split. What is interesting is that there is evidence of the migration. For example, if there was, for instance, from here going across over to Alaska, if there was ice, an ice bridge across there, they would go across the ice bridge. So the continental theory wouldn't have to be post-flood.

So there's some questions there we can't take time to go into. And in fact, we probably won't resolve with absolute certainty anyway, but interesting things to take a look at. Okay. And here, with the time of Abraham, we begin to see more general correspondence between secular and biblical accounts of human history. That does not mean that the secular people are going to agree with, you know, Moses' part of the sea and, you know, the day... was somehow changed at the time of Joshua, things like that. They're not going to agree with that. But in general, you're going to find more agreement between secular history and the biblical accounts.

It's prior to that time where the accounts diverged substantially. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the last ones on your chart there with the lifetimes of the patriarchs, constitute a series of patriarchs who had similarities of culture, a number of points of general confirmation in the historical data, and proceeded from the covenant with Abraham, Genesis 12, to the founding of the nation of Israel, Genesis 50. From Genesis 12, where the covenant is made with Abraham, to the end of the book of Genesis, that's Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all those related to them.

They had similarities of culture. Let me tell you where the culture came from. Let me go back here. Right in this area around Haran was a culture where it was considered valuable to have a sister wife. It was considered normal to have more than one wife. And if a wife was not able to bear children, it was considered the standard thing to do to offer up your slave, the wife's slave. And so what we find is all the things that are in those chapters from 12 to 50 fit the culture. The culture not of Canaan, but of right in here where the family came from, right? All right, now let's get back here.

So how did the people and events which took place from creation to about 1400 BC get into the Old Testament? Here's Moses, right? Remember we said Moses writes about here, right? How did all this, up to the time of Moses, centuries, millennia before Moses was born, how did that get into the Old Testament in the form of the book of Genesis, all the way up even to the early chapters of Exodus? How did that get in there if Moses wasn't around?

Gossip? Some would say oral tradition. I would say maybe not. And here's why. The earliest written records we have are of the clay tablet type. In round numbers, about a half million clay tablets have been found in the Middle East. Most of them have never been translated, as you can well imagine why. A great many of the clay tablets are records of things like, I bought two goats and six cheap from this guy.

And here's the receipt. So, imagine trying to translate that for hours and hours and days and days and weeks and weeks. No. So what they have is about a half million of these tablets, most of which, they have no idea what's on them, other than that generalize a lot of it's just typical business transactions.

Now, What they would do, we have scrolls and other animal skin and papyrus documents and marked pottery. We'll talk about that. Those are called ostraca or singular ostracon. From later periods in Bible history and occasionally a few other things like wax tablets, things written on metal. Yeah, we have actually wax tablet verse certificates.

But here's the Great Isaiah Scroll from the Dead Sea Scrolls, and you read about that in your Dead Sea Scroll pamphlet that we handed out here. Here's a shot of the Great Isaiah Scroll. Unlike many of the Dead Sea Scrolls, this one is exceptionally well-preserved. So, here's a portion of the oldest copy of the Gospel of Luke that we have. It's from about the year 200. Now, here's an interesting one.

You may wonder if, you know, here, remember the account with Joseph? He's in prison, and he's in prison with, one of the guys is a chief baker. And you wonder, well, was there such a thing as a chief baker? Yes, there was. Here is, for instance, from Genesis 40, verse 2, Pharaoh was furious with his two officials, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker. The chief baker is mentioned several times here in the latter part of Genesis, chapters 40 and 41.

Here is an ostracon, that is a pottery sherd with writing, and pottery sherds, that is pieces of broken pottery, were commonly used in old days, in biblical times, commonly used for writing things, not long large documents, but brief things. And this is an example. So here is one, and we put it in large scale. Here is one where the chief baker signs off on a delivery of wheat. Have you ever heard of the Temple of Amun at Shebes? I think they use that for some of the movies of ancient Egypt. Because it's still there and still in reasonably good condition. So this is signed by the chief baker. signed off, and he says, I so signed that I got the shipment of wheat, and here's the details on it, right?

A likely explanation of the source of the Book of Genesis is called the Tablet Theory. It was first proposed by P.J. Wiseman, and then his son, who was a professor of seriology, this is the revised, or this is the son's revision of his dad's book, so anyway, I have that. And then Roland K. Harrison, R.K. Harrison, Introduction to the Old Testament, he also wrote about it, so at any rate. And then Rethinking Genesis is another one, among many others. So at any rate, it's been written about numerous times, and what Wiseman and Wiseman noticed is on the edge of these tablets, what do you see?

Writing. And what would they do? is the writing would be, this is the account of, and then they would say what it's the account of on the side. Just like we have whole books and we put them on the shelf and we look at the edge to see what's in it, right? So we don't have a whole bunch of books and they're all blank. So we look on the edge and we say this is what's in it. Well, they would say this is the account of, and then you'd write what the account is, and then what's on the face and the back of that tablet would be the content. So it would be just like ours, and what's really sad is that they had clay bookshelves.

So anyway, talk about heavy. But here's the significance of You look in the Bible in Genesis, and what do you see repeatedly that you don't find very often in the rest of the Bible? This is the account of. This is the account of. These are called Toledoth pegs, and this is the account of. This edge writing is called a colophon. When you write on the edge, it's a colophon. So you have this, and it's a chart there on page 3. So you have this as the accounting. So you will see in 11, 24, 51, 69, and on down the list as listed there, this is the account of. Yes?

So when these tablets were being first used, were they, they were a soft clay? Yeah, notice the idea is they were a soft clay, and as a matter of fact, if you had something that you only needed to make short notice of, you could take the clay and erase your markings, right? As a matter of fact, that's what they would do with students. They'd send the student with a lump of hand-sized clay, and that's one of the things that a lot of these tablets I told you about would be round, so they'd fit in the hand, and smaller, so kids could handle them. And so when they're teaching them, then they would have soft clay, and they'd make all their markings and do all their work, and then when they're done, they'd go and just smear it all flat and then do it again.

So you could practice that way. But what they found is a lot of these 500,000 or half a million tablets are these small practice ones. Then came the Etch-A-Sketch. Yeah, then came the Etch-A-Sketch. Yeah, it was an early primitive Etch-A-Sketch, yes. Do any of these tablets predate the Flood? Do they have survived? You know, here is the thing. You won't find a secular scientist saying that these predate the Flood.

But the reality is, they very could well have. Think about it. Here's Adam, right? This is the account of. You know, I have up here revealed Adam, question mark? Might be. And if you look at how long Adam lived, he could well, within that time, if they had developed writing, he could well have written this stuff down and then passed it along and handed it off to those who were in the Ark. All of the tablets, look at the tablets that you see there, all the tablets, roughly a dozen, would easily have gone on the Ark.

So that could well be, yes. Well, in the first lesson you mentioned that King lists from Earth. Some predated the Flood, some came after. So would there have been records that the ones that predated, that King lists that predated the Flood would be something that Noah would have had with him? Otherwise, how would you...

Yeah, in other words, what you have is, you've got all the genealogies. When it says, here's the record of, or here's the account of, Some of those predate, yeah, and the idea would be you've got these lists, they could well have been taken with NOAA on the ark, and there would be no difficulty with that. The amount of information that said this is the account of, that wouldn't be any real difficulty at all. It wouldn't even take up that much space.

Yes? So was there kind of a market where people were making these clay tablets, you know, like people today make paper? Yeah. Was there another part of the economy where they were making tablets? And then how would they preserve them to the point in time where they actually use it so they stayed solid? Yeah, in other words, they would talk about, okay, here's a good source for the clay, right? Because not everything is good. So they go to places where we have the source of the clay.

And as a matter of fact, what we're able to do is to take the tablets and then go back to the locations and test and say, what are the mineral compositions of this tablet and these sources and say where they got the clay. It's possible to do that. So we can identify where they got the material. That is also done with regards to pottery in biblical times. In other words, some of the pottery would say, where did this clay come in order to make the pottery that we found at this site? And what we find is sometimes the pottery came from quite a distance, but not typically.

So anyway, this would explain. Now, I have a question for you. This is, I call it a theory. Is it ever possible to prove this and how would you do so? It fits the evidence that we have, but how would you prove it, that that's what happened? Well, yes, in other words, we believe it by faith. However, to prove it, let's just say you would have to find the tablets that Moses used. Good luck.

The reality is, and people don't realize this, they'll say, well, there's no evidence for this, no evidence for that. We have discovered and excavated and cataloged less than 1% of all the possible archaeological data. What are the chances that what we have is complete? Yeah, it's very unlikely. So the reality is when someone says, well, there's no evidence for this, there's no evidence for that, hey, wait a minute, we've barely scratched the surface. We have less than 1% of all possible archaeological data.

We're just sampling in small amounts what is potentially out there. Yeah, Greg? Yes, it is significant. We shouldn't set it aside. But the claim that there's no evidence for this, there's no evidence for that, is not a real good one because we've basically not uncovered more than 99% of what potentially could be there. For example, the Iliad and the Odyssey? Yes. Can you explain that?

Isn't there just one copy? Yeah, and we'll actually go through this later on. What you're making reference to is for a lot of the ancient documents we have much better numbers and closeness of time from the original to our copy, earliest copy, much, much better by orders of magnitude.

By that I mean hundreds and thousands of times more than any other ancient document for the things that are in the Bible. Just quick numbers, the Iliad and the Odyssey, what we have is many centuries after the original writing and we have a handful of copies that are fairly early. For the New Testament, we have over 5,000 copies in Greek and 25,000 copies in handwritten copies in other languages plus Greek. Huge, huge numbers, and as we saw there with the Gospel of Luke, fairly close to the original writing for centuries and centuries later.

But we'll go over that in more detail later on. So, as we examine scripture, we'll want to understand the language, history, and culture of each passage which forms the complete context. Have you ever been taken out of context? Yeah, that's frustrating, isn't it? God wants us to read his scripture in context, why? So that we understand what it was originally meant, because out of context is certainly a problem. The languages, histories, and cultures of Genesis varied from beginning to end, and we will go over some of those differences of language and history and culture. It's quite a bit of variation. But we also see that history matters.

There are promises yet to be fulfilled and really big problems yet to be resolved. Round numbers, about 10,000 prophecies in scripture, about 5,000, about half, have been fulfilled. So there's a lot yet to happen. Is there enough confirmation to say, yeah, this is a worthy and faithful record here? Yes. Is everything fulfilled? Not yet. There are still many things to be fulfilled. As a matter of fact, they could begin to be fulfilled starting today. The rest of those things. There are also promises yet to be fulfilled. Where is David's descendant going to reign? From Jerusalem in Israel.

Is he doing that yet? No. So a real biggie, it's yet to be fulfilled. He will make it so that the Gentiles, unlike the current situation, the Gentiles will run to the Jews and say, take me to your Messiah. Has that been fulfilled yet? No. So we have a great many things yet to be fulfilled. About half the things the Bible has prophesied fulfilled, but the other half yet to be fulfilled, and some of them could be fulfilled within this next decade, should the Lord call that timing. A lot of things yet to be fulfilled and problems yet to be resolved. We can easily get all caught up in angst about how's this next election going to turn out later this year.

In the end, God is managing All of history, to the end, everything will be summed up in Christ. And, more than this, things in heaven and things on the earth. That means everything. It's not just us, this is what's going to happen on earth. This includes what's in heaven and what's on the earth. Together, it's going to be summed up in Christ. All of history.

Next we'll go into the Egyptian slavery to the time of David. So we've actually spanned a huge chunk of time with the account of Genesis, and now we're going to scope in and go from about 1500 BC to David about 1000 BC, about 500 years. So we're going to zoom in, telephoto lens, into that period of time, a few centuries, for this next week.

Questions? Consternations? Exasperations? Inspirations? Yes? The entire present heavens and earth will be destroyed. Peter writes that the elements, this is the atoms. I don't know that we have that evidence, although you could be right, but the indications, no sun and no seas. No day and night. So a very different world. Very different world.

Did everyone get the Dead Sea Scrolls handout? I know we had a few people missing it from last week. Okay, everybody covered? Okay. This one's for Nora. Okay. Oh, one more thing. I'm pitching a lot at you. Some people will say give me more and other people say that's too much. What I would say is just take what you can, okay? Don't worry about it. There is no test at the end, you know. So don't worry about it, just take what you can. Whatever you can grab and grasp, that's fine. If you want more, I provided that. Last week, not all of you had a chance to take a look at this 20 foot long timeline. So I put it out here again if you want to take a look at it. Because the views aren't 20 feet long, it's not all there. But you can take a look at what's visible.

A couple of people opted to have me go ahead and order for them, which I'm glad to do. They dropped the price just five bucks in the last couple of weeks, so let me know if you're interested in a copy. Any other questions? Wow, I'm highly questionable, aren't I?

Okay, let's pray. Lord, we thank you as we look at this introduction to the Old Testament history, and we see you have done amazing things, and in spite of all the human wanderings, you have a purpose and direction in it, and we thank you for that. We thank you for everything that you have done, are doing, and intend to do. And as we look at the sweep of things, we ask that you would provide us greater insight into what you've revealed because you love us so very much. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.