Defense of the Faith - Archaeology & the New Testament

Lots to cover, partly because I'm trying to throw in a quick review of what we covered last week and then step into this week. Grab your archaeology in the Old Testament. And at the top of the handout, I want to go over quickly some things. One of the things we said was there are three tests. And we said this last week, there are three tests of a document.

And a similar kind of thing applies to archaeological finds. And particularly, the archaeological finds are often some external, that is the external evidence, the third point, that corroborates or refutes something about a document. And so at any rate, for now we'll look at the external evidence test regarding archaeology. And so the external evidence test, that is things that are outside of a document.

We have a whole bunch of copies of the New Testament documents, right? But there are lots and lots and lots of things outside of those New Testament documents, sometimes in other documents, but also in archaeology that we can use to confirm the Old and New Testaments. Okay, so we have a question of the quantity of evidence, and the quantity of evidence is huge.

To give you a quick figure, probably less than 1% of the potentially available archaeological finds have actually been examined. So an archaeologist is actually just sampling a very small portion of the total amount of available information. So an archaeologist may be an expert in something, he may have spent his whole life on studying archaeology, and a lot of archaeologists are continuing to do that. The reality is that they've just barely sampled, and I would throw out a figure, less than 1% of the total amount of available information.

So that's part one. As an example, this is the last paragraph there below that, as an example of the reliability of the New Testament documents, and by the way we have between Greek and other languages, we have about 25,000 fragments to whole documents of the New Testament. 25,000 copies.

Nothing else even comes close. The names and titles of all the prominent public figures named in the New Testament have been independently confirmed. We'll talk about that in a minute. Considering that there was no systematic way of giving titles in the Roman Empire, and that titles would sometimes change after a few years, this is extraordinary. This is extraordinary. Every single title, every single name is right on. It's all been confirmed historically and or archaeologically. Yeah? Yes?

Titus, do you mean like emperor or ruler or governor? Yeah, one of them that shows up in Acts is chief man of the island. Chief man of the island. Chief man of the island, and that's what Luke writes, and you look at the inscriptions, and that's what they called the guy who was the head of that island, the chief man of the island.

When you go into Ephesus, which is the capital of Asia, and what they called Asia in those days, and the political leaders there were called Asiarchs. Nowhere else do they have that title. Nobody else uses that title. But the political leaders there were Asiarchs, and guess what Luke called them? Asiarchs, right?

So you can go to each individual one and find confirmation. Dr. Luke used a term for wind direction that was for decades claimed to be something he made up. And it turns out that on the floor of the amphitheater of the city closest to where Dr. Luke was when he wrote that, is inscribed that turn for wind direction. There's a wind rose on the floor of the amphitheater and that closest place is the only place that they found it outside of Dr. Luke's. Dr. Luke was astoundingly accurate. Let me give you some examples.

Herod Antipas, he's the guy who was responsible for beheading John. He had a strange position that he was over Perea, which is east of the Dead Sea and the Jordan River, on the south end there, and a separate piece of land, Galilee. He was over those too.

People will talk like, oh the Bible is just full of myths and stories, you know, like all these people are made up or something. Here's a book on Herod Antipas, everything we know about Herod Antipas. Is this made up? No, this is all historical information. Here's a book on everything we know about Pontius Pilate. Do we know something about Pontius Pilate outside of the Bible? Yes. Yes we do. Caiaphas. We know things about Caiaphas. Here's everything we know about Caiaphas.

And by the way, his ossuary box, we'll be talking about that in a minute, his ossuary box has been found and it fits the date. He died 36 AD, fits the date, the bones inside match his age, and it's all fancy carved because he was upper crust, and it has his name inscribed on the side. And by the way, we've also found his granddaughter's ossuary box.

So if someone talks to you and they say, oh, the Bible is just full of myths, and this stuff is all made up, and it's full of mistakes, no. That kind of statement is ignorance. Alright, so now let's continue on here. What we have, last time we gave the Tel Dan inscription as an example of something where, when it was discovered in the 90s, in 1993, and it says on there, the King of Israel and the House of David. When it was discovered, there was a great hue and cry of forgery, ineptitude. People were livid if they didn't believe that there really was a king of Israel in the house of David. Well, after over 20 years has gone by now, it's turned out all the screaming and yelling of forgery and ineptitude, and they called the discoverer Baran, Professor Baran, They called the Discoverer horrible names.

But he died about seven years ago. But from 1966 up until shortly before he died, he continued to excavate at Tel Dan. So the guy knows the place. And he found, initially in 93, one piece and then in subsequent years, two more pieces to the same inscription. and it fits.

Here, there's the Tel Dan inscription and what's shown there with the white markings in the indentation, that's where it says House of David. House of David. And see the skeptical theory is that there either wasn't a guy named David or he's really just a tribal chief, not really a king. But this talks about the king of Israel and the house of David. And so that's why it set off such a firestorm. It was erected by Hazael, king of Aram. And we have multiple references to Hazael. It reads in a key part, I killed Jehoram, son of Ahab, king of Israel, and I slew the king of the house of David.

Here is the Merneptah Stele, which actually does have in hieroglyphics, actually does have the name Israel in it. It's the first mention of Israel, and I have a footnote. Three German scholars have suggested that there was an earlier listing of Israel than this one. This one has for decades been considered as the earliest listing of Israel outside of the Bible. So these three German scholars have proposed another one that's earlier. We'll see after the dust settles if that ends up taking the place. In the Bible it says that Solomon reinforced the gates at Megiddo. There's the gates. That's the reinforced gates that it said that he put there. Here is what I mentioned last week.

This is the seal of the evil Queen Jezebel. Personal seal. That's it. Right there. We have other seals or seal impressions. This one here, seal of Al-Yah. Sounds like all y'all, right? Al-Yah, servant of King Uzziah. And so there's the direct seal. Here is the signet ring of King Jotham. Here is a seal of impression of King Ahaz, and then here is a seal of impression of King Hezekiah.

I mentioned previously that we have about 140, the latest count that I checked, 140 of those seal of impressions of King Hezekiah. These are real guys, real people, and I found others. There's another I didn't mention, Baruch, who was the personal scribe of Jeremiah. Baruch, two of his seals have been found, one of those with a part of Baruch's fingerprint. The seal impressions, bullae they called it.

Here is something found just on the Mount of Olives, located directly across from the Temple Mount. It reads, here the bones of Uzziah king of Judah were brought, do not open. When we went to Jerusalem, here's kind of a map of some of the places we went, including Jerusalem Old City.

Here is the drawing that Leon Rittmeyer has done looking at New Testament Jerusalem and the location of Golgotha. Golgotha was in a quarry and there was a mound in the middle of the quarry of less quality material, more broken up, And so they left the mound and didn't use it to quarry, and that is Golgotha. And at the edge of that quarry is where you'll find the tombs. So Jesus was taken out of the middle of the quarry, where his body was at Golgotha, to the edge of that same quarry where they carved out a tomb.

It's that simple. And then here shows the arrangement. Here's the Fortress Antonia, which is at the north end. This is north this way. There's the back side of the temple. The arch, Wilson's Arch, which we went under on our trip to Jerusalem. And then Robinson's Arch, which that broke off when the Romans dumped the stuff off. That smashed the arch. And you can see the rubble from it and from the temple when they disassembled it. But it's there. This is the ancient quarry there in the bottom part. Pool of Bethesda that we went to. So it's all there.

And by the way, one of the other points I'd like to make, this field is so vast, We could spend an entire year on New Testament archaeology. So I'm trying to cover a lot in one session. We could spend an entire year on New Testament archaeology and another year on Old Testament archaeology. There's that much to work with. Most archaeologists will pick an area of specialty and they tend to stick with it. So, for example, in Jerusalem right around the Temple Mount, the Temple Mount and the area around it.

Dr. Leon Rittmeyer, the one who made this drawing, has produced a number of books. You can go on his website and he's got a number of these drawings. What he does, he goes through the archaeological information and draws reconstructions, he and his wife Kathleen.

He is a Bible-believing Christian. I don't know that he's the same kind of Christian that we are, but nonetheless, he does see Scripture as God's Word and valid. And so anyway, he just specializes in that. He doesn't, you know, all the other places around Israel, he doesn't focus on that. He's just so specialized.

Dr. Bryant Wood is one who has spoken in this room. a little over a decade ago. He specializes in late Bronze Age Canaanite pottery and dating using that method. You'll find others, for example, another name is Eilat Matzar, who teaches at Hebrew University. Ronnie Reich. Those two specialize in the area around Jerusalem. They don't go other places.

There are others, however, who specialize in different things. So the area of archaeology is so huge that you will find archaeologists specializing in some particular area, some particular discipline, some particular technique, and they'll focus on that. And they tend to look at just that because the whole realm of archaeology is so huge, as Pueblo Bethesda.

This is the path, showing the same drawing, this is the path of about where Christ would have gone as he went from the fortress Antonia to be crucified. And then here's looking out the Lions Gate towards the Mount of Olives from that Fortress Antonia. We walked that path and stopped along the way at the prison where Christ was held at Fortress Antonia.

After centuries, it still smells. Yeah? Did you go back to that one slide? Yes, sir. It looks like they either had a bridge or they built a ramp or something. How did they go down? Yeah, what this doesn't show is all little details of gates and doors and all that kind of thing. They would have just gone down the valley and there wasn't a ramp. And then back out onto Bogotá.

Yeah. I don't care, it's just a stick. Yeah, in other words, you look at it and say, wait a minute, what are the details there? Yeah, but this would be approximately the path. The reality is there are some details of what the path was like back then, where the gates were, that kind of thing, that we don't have. Here is Christ's prison. We did go there. Really an astounding thing.

See, in prisons in those days, nobody cleaned them out. And if you didn't have a friend to help you, you know, in any way, you're probably going to die there if you're held there very long. And they were not obligated to provide lighting. So you may just spend hours, maybe even days in the dark. Unless they come and get you.

This is demonstrating how Jesus would have been kept there with his feet there and then shackles underneath. Here's the floor of the Fortress Antonia. Evidence of Roman soldiers playing games. Likely where Christ was beaten and mocked. I'm going to pause there because I want us to go back to our handout. And what I have a large picture of there, this is an example of something that initially was very, very much contested, but over time has gotten increasing confirmation.

And this is what's sometimes called the James Ossuary. This is an ossuary that a fellow by the name of Oded Golan had gotten his hands on. and it was from Silwan, which is a little village just across from Jerusalem and the Pool of Silom. Been there, seen it, and it apparently came from there. This ossuary then surfaced because Golan just kind of kept it a secret. In the mid-70s he first had it and then he surfaced it a little over 10 years ago. And as soon as he came up and surfaced the existence of this thing, shortly thereafter, the Israel Antiquities Authority brought an indictment for forgery.

How could it possibly be, let's look at page two, how could it possibly be that there is a bone box, that's what an ossuary box is, they hold the bones of the person, for James, the son of Joseph, the brother of Jesus. What does that sound like? It sounds like Jesus' half-brother James, right? Well, it turns out that out of hundreds and hundreds and even thousands of these bone boxes, going through them, they've cataloged all the different ones. Out of all these, this is the only one that has James son of Joseph on it. None other has that. And it's the only one that has the brother of Jesus on it. And it is very rare to mention a brother.

Well at first there was a claim, well this must be a forgery, it just can't possibly be the real thing. And they brought charges, they brought about 138 witnesses, over 12,000 pages of testimony, if you can imagine that. This trial drug on for about seven years. And finally the judge put the gavel down and said, acquitted. Numerous guys looking at this, and there was some difference of opinion, but numerous guys looking at this. I mentioned the name Ronnie Reich. Ronnie Reich is a very experienced, well regarded archaeologist.

He's not a Christian. Not a Christian. He looked at this and he says, I find no scientific reason to think that this is not genuine. Gabriel Barkay, again, Jewish guy, not a Christian. Gabriel Barkay, just to let you know, he doesn't believe that Joshua fit the Battle of Jericho. So I'm talking about somebody who's willing to be skeptical. He looked at this and he says, I find no scientific reason to think that this is not genuine.

Yes. Well, they actually are scratched in. They are scratched in. They're pretty well scratched in. Of course, the question was, was that scratched in? Was that scratched in recently? And somebody put something on it to make it look older? Or was that done actually a long time ago?

And the conclusion that a great number of scholars have made is that that's the real thing. It's the genuine article. So is it absolutely 100% to 1000% sure that this is James the half-brother of Jesus? The answer is no. Are we really, really sure? Yes?

I was just wondering, do we have any archaeological evidence of James staying in that area until he died? The main evidence that we have outside of this would be Josephus. Josephus records his death about 62 AD. So this is some decades later. Yeah, he stuck around Jerusalem. He was an elder there in Jerusalem. That's recorded in the Book of Acts. He was an elder there in Jerusalem. He was very outspoken and well-known. And so they finally killed him. They did the final deed because at first they shoved him off the temple and didn't kill him, so they beat him with a club. until he was dead.

And then his bones went into this box apparently. This habit of taking a body and putting it in the tomb and then a year or so later then putting it in a bone box started around the time of the birth of Christ and continued until just before 70 AD. So all the bone boxes that they find are from that time period. So for example, that would fit Caiaphas and his bone box that was found. That would fit James and his bone box here that appears to have been found. By the way, another bone box has been found, one that they believe, not absolutely certain, but it is the son of Simon of Cyrene. The son of Simon of Cyrene.

So here is an instance where after 116 different hearing sessions, 138 witnesses, over 12,000 pages of transcripts, 52 experts, some of them handing over documents and others of them testifying verbally. on the subject, and the preponderance of evidence leans strongly in the favor of being the real article, in spite of the charges that were filed. And this is not the only thing that was claimed to be a forgery. Another one was called the Joahash inscription, and that was claimed to have been a forgery, And now that the trial is over, the Israel Antiquities Authority wants it. Isn't that interesting? Yeah, they think it's the real thing now. Yes.

It was the practice because there's hundreds and hundreds of these things on the Mount of Olives on the south end of the Mount of Olives there's hundreds and hundreds of these bone boxes there the pattern is is the Muslims have their grades for the most part up against the eastern wall of the Temple Mount.

The Christians have theirs at the bottom of the valley, and the Jews have theirs on the Mount of Olives. So they've got their graves there. And that's where they find just hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, of these bone boxes. So Ronnie Reich and others have gone through all of those bone boxes and have tabulated the names that are on those bone boxes. And the tendency was for people to have a family tomb, where they'd put the bone boxes, and you'd put it on the Mount of Olives. Why would you put it on the Mount of Olives?

Because Zechariah 14.4 says that's where the Messiah is going to return, and that's when he's going to perform the resurrection, according to Jewish tradition. And so those who are buried right there will have front row seats to the resurrection. So that's the place to get buried. Even today, even today, Jews that are observant at all want to be buried there. They want to be buried right there.

What they tend to do is to have a kind of an underground cave And so it's not soil contact burial, but you'll have the family kind of crypt or tomb where there'd be long-term storage for a particular family. That's kind of the pattern. They've gone through and the tabulation of the name so that they can look it up.

That's where I can tell you that James, the son of Joseph, this is the only one that's ever been found with James, son of Joseph, and the only one that's ever been found with James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus. So this is a kind of a case in point where the reaction is initially you know, great skepticism, and then when it's all said and done, now this looks like the real thing, and it seems to confirm scripture and the scriptural family and the relationships that the Bible describes. Which is one of the reasons why there was such huge cry and uproar and acclaim, even criminal charges, that this is fake.

Has the Shroud of Turin ever gone through that much scrutiny? No, it hasn't been through that scrutiny. I've read various articles on the Shroud of Turin. I personally am skeptical for one reason, and that is the New Testament describes that the headpiece was a separate piece. That's what the New Testament describes, whereas the Shroud of Turin looks like it's all one piece. So that part makes me skeptical that this is actually the real thing. There are others who come up with different explanations, but that thing keeps me from saying, well, this is the real thing. Let's take a look at page three.

Then once claimed by minimalist scholars such as Richard A. Horsley, I'm at the top of the second paragraph, There were no synagogue buildings in the time of Christ, therefore the multiple references to synagogue buildings in the four Gospels, especially Luke and Acts, were anachronisms. That is, the way it was described was these were not really written by a guy named Luke who lived during that time. This is by some guy later projecting the synagogues that he saw during his time back into the time of Christ. That's the claim. So, all of chapter 6 of Richard Horsley's book, starting page 131 and going on for almost 30 pages. All of chapter 6 is all this, you know, Luke is wrong, there were no synagogues, this is bogus, and now it's all got to be thrown away.

Because, there at Magdala, this has only happened in recent years, Their Magdala was found in a synagogue, and it was dated using coins that were found in the floor, that was absolutely used during the time of Christ, and was almost certainly a synagogue that Jesus spoke in, and probably multiple times. It talks about going to the region of Dalmanutha, and when they went across the Sea of Galilee after feeding, you know, 5,000 people. They went across the Sea of Galilee, went to the region of Dalmanutha, and there is where Magdala is.

Yes? How did they know this building was a synagogue? If you look at the floor, and I've been there personally, if you look at the floor, all around is some mosaic that was It had various kinds of Jewish symbols in it. It also had a furniture piece I show you on the handout on the lower left. It also had a furniture piece in there of some kind that has a menorah. By the way, this is the oldest menorah relief known to exist. And various kinds of other carvings on the top that were typical Jewish symbols. It also has a configuration of steps along the perimeter that fits the pattern of other synagogues and columns underneath. So everything about it fits the synagogue architecture.

Was this a chest? No, this is one solid piece of rock. In fact, what you see there is actually a replica. They took the original and put it in the Israel Museum. And this one is a replica, it's the one they have there, because potentially somebody could come and haul it off and get about six or eight guys around it. So is that a box made out of stone? No, it's one solid piece of stone.

And what do they do with it? It's an ornament? Yeah, because the typical thing in the synagogue was for the people to sit in steps, as you'll see from the aerial, on steps or on the perimeter, and then to provide some kind of furniture in the middle. So somebody would sit on this? Somebody might sit on it, and most likely this would be very important. You know, people of particular regard might sit on this.

And that means, if that's for real, then denying that that black basalt line that you see at Capernaum, the black basalt with white limestone up above it, denying that that black basalt foundation was there during the time of Christ, no longer has validity. So the Luke records that the Roman centurion, when Jesus healed his slave, that Roman centurion was the one who funded that black basalt synagogue that you see underneath there. And that this white imported stone was built later on the foundation of the one in the black basalt stone. So there's kind of a string of discoveries here now with the discovery of the Magdala synagogue where the claim that the writers of the New Testament were making this up all of a sudden just goes down in flames. Were the coins embedded in the floor or just sitting there? The coins in this case were sitting there right at floor level. Here's a part of what happened.

When the rebellion started against the Romans, it started in Galilee. And so the Romans came in with their soldiers and their catapults and all that, and they attacked other cities, at Gamla for example, which is up on the hill behind Bethsaida. At Gamla, there are just piles and piles of Roman catapult balls. The Romans just catapulted Gamla until the whole place was just pulverized. I mean, they just buried it in catapult balls. And so that's how they defeated it. Gamla is up on a slope, and so attacking it is kind of a difficult thing. So they just said, forget that, we're just going to keep shooting catapult balls, and so that's what the archaeologists found, is just piles of catapult balls.

Gone like Bethsaida was another one, you know, that they went and attacked. In the era of Galilee, when the Romans came in 66 and 67 AD, when Romans came in, Magdala was the last holdout. All the other places it fell. Magdala was the last holdout and the Romans just couldn't break them easily anyway.

And so they finally did and when they did they went and slaughtered everybody and busted up the synagogue. It's not known for certain but it's possible that the Jesus boat that was found just north of there sunk. It was sunk as a part of the Roman attack. Josephus records there are 230 boats on the Sea of Galilee, so this is just one of them that we happen to have, and it's just north of Magdala, and may have been part of the Jews' opposition to the Romans, which is why the Romans would have sunk it, if that's the case. Now, it was the Israel Antiquities Authority, the ones who charged forgery on the James Ossuary, and they were the ones who conducted the Magdala Synagogue, and oddly enough, there were no claims of forgery. So, then let's take a look at page 4.

With the New Testament, we have a different situation with regards to the archaeological evidence. The events of the New Testament all take place, instead of the Old Testament where they happen over a thousand year period of time and more, if you go before the time of Moses, In the New Testament, they all happened between 5 B.C. and 95 A.D., and most of the Gospels and Acts happened between 29 A.D., when John the Baptist began his ministry, to about 61 A.D., when Paul ended up in Rome. And most of the events of the Gospels and Acts centers about 29 A.D. to about 61 A.D., so a little over three decades' time. So rather than these centuries and centuries of time, you have a fairly short period of time.

In addition, we also have lots of pretty good records of things that happened. Here are the records of what happened during the time of Caesar Augustus. Here's what happened at the time of Caesar Tiberius, and so on and so forth. emperors in a row who were made emperors by the adoption of sons process. And all that's recorded, and many of their acts are recorded.

When Caesar Augustus died, he died leaving a large funerary inscription claiming all his greatest accomplishments. There's something like almost 40 listings of greatest accomplishments. And you know how Dr. Luke records that Caesar Augustus called for a census, and on Caesar Augustus' funerary inscription is, what is one of the things he brags about? His census.

So we have lots of good records. Do we have everything? No, but we have lots of good records to check things against. and lots of inscriptions. The Romans were great about inscriptions. The Romans, by the time the empire was done, made enough hand-built roads, and they were built by the soldiers, hand-built roads, to go around the earth two times. And on those roads they left a bunch of inscriptions, mile markers, this way to this place and this way to this place. Lots of inscriptions. The Romans had funerary inscriptions of different kinds. They had different kinds of announcements that they would leave on inscriptions.

We've got some really good records and a lot of it today has been put into Adobe Acrobat files and PDF files and you can download it for free. We have lots and lots and lots of evidence to work with. So that makes for really good opportunities to cross-check the New Testament.

I mentioned there's five emperors in a row who had the adoption of sons. So therefore, that when Paul says we have the adoption of sons, there have been decades of history of what that meant. And Paul, by the way, only used that in places, well, he used it in the letter to Rome. And why would he use it in the letter to Rome? He says we have the adoption of sons. Why would he use it in the letter to Rome? Because that's where it happened, right? And then he used it with the Galatians, where two of the five cities were Roman colonies. And then he only used it once more, and that's at the letter to Ephesus, where they had a Roman governor and 3,000 Roman soldiers. So it all fits. It all fits. Okay, I have some recommended references here. Some of them duplicate what I had for the Old Testament.

One of them I'd like to draw attention to is Dr. Randall Price. He's the author of several good books on archaeology in the Bible. He has some free articles available at his website there. Randy and I met him. I met him on a few different occasions. His beliefs, by the way, are very close to ours. Very close to what we teach here at Holy Hills.

So anyway, that's highly recommendable. Other good ones. Evidence in Paul's Journeys. This goes through the travels of the Apostle Paul and compares it to archaeological, inscriptional, and documentary evidence. Does a great job. So at any rate, there are lots of good resources out there.

Okay, now let's take a look at your supplements. This two-page supplement. At the back here, this is a chronological table of the Apostolic Age. It was produced by Harold Hohner, who is home with the Lord now, but he was a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary when they had something to teach.

He is a very good author. He researches things very carefully. He's written what I would say is probably the best commentary I've ever seen. on the book of Ephesians. And in fact, I'll say this, it's the best commentary I've ever seen. But he wrote it about Ephesians. Nonetheless, here, what he does, and he documents that in this book, he pins the crucifixion as Friday, April 3rd, 33 AD.

That day. And by the way, that was confirmed again by a team of geologists just two years ago. That's the date. Then he goes through various times. In some cases, there's a range of it could be this year, this year, as you go down the list. In other cases, you know, he'll say, OK, it could be this spring, autumn, etc. And then at other points, there's enough detail that he will give a precise date. So as you go along here, we can actually, sometimes to the exact date, or sometimes to a couple years, and sometimes to a season, we have enough checkpoints with documentation and archaeology to be able to pinpoint the time for a lot of the events of the era of the apostles. If you look at the second page, Here it gives Paul's arrest and trial before Felix. The first day of purification following that is Sunday, May 29th, 57 AD. So some of the dates we can pin it down to the day.

There's that much evidence. Therefore I submit to you that some wild claim about these guys making up these stories and about being myths and legends and all that. I'm not going with that, especially after having been to Israel. I look at it and say, this is the place, this is the time. No, your claim isn't valid. I look at it and I say, no, this is all very well documented. And this is, by the way, a part of his Ph.D. dissertation. So we're getting a summary of what he spent his whole dissertation going through.

Alright, and the last thing to take a look at is you have, similar to what we passed out last week, and we didn't pass out last week, by the way. But similar to what we passed out last week is New Testament 50 proofs for the Bible. One of the things I mentioned last week is I wouldn't prefer to use the word proofs, because I prefer to use like a validation or confirmation, just to be careful in our language. But nonetheless, we have lots of things, finds, that confirm things in the New Testament, similar to the Old.

Lots and lots of things. I will say one other thing, and that is the pictures here, while they're good pictures, are somewhat small. For just about every single one of these, if you go on the internet and search, you can find more pictures that are in high resolution that you can look carefully at.

One of them that I took there at Capernaum, for example, here I was standing back and I saw these columns, and here's Courtney and Ingrid standing by the columns, right, for scale, and click, and I started looking at that, and I said, there's some writing up above their heads there, and I zoomed in, and here's the writing on the pillar, and then I go to the book of Revelation. He talks about the writing, and you shall be a pillar in the temple of my God. And he talks about writing on us names. So here is the custom and the context for the custom.

And again, it's because there are lots of people who have posted, oftentimes, much higher resolution images than this. This James ossuary, for example, I had that in very high resolution when I printed it on the front. a page there so you'd have good detail on it. But you can find that for almost everything here.

And furthermore, again, there are people that specialize in particular areas or particular places. Here again is the area around the Temple Mount and Jerusalem, Old City Jerusalem, a number of archaeologists just specialize in that, that there's enough there. It's a huge area of study just in that one small area and they don't do anything else but that.

And so here is Courtney standing in front of these are the stones that Herod the Great had placed and his signature mark on those stones averaging about 50 tons. Signature mark, you'll notice it is this edge around every single one of them. No matter what the size of the stone was, that edge was put on every single stone. as a part of the process, and notice that they fit pretty tight, even after some 20 centuries have gone by. And the largest one, about 570 tons.

We still don't know how they placed it. There is one crane in all of Israel today that could pick up that stone, but it couldn't move it. That is, the mechanism wouldn't allow them to move it. But they did it. And it's still there, and it's still in one piece. The Romans tried to wreck it and gave up. It was that solid and that big. Here's the rubble when they dumped the temple components off the edge.

OK, let's move on to another one I'd like to have us take a look at. Here's Caesarea. Caesarea is one we haven't talked about, and we didn't visit it. Here's an aerial looking to the north. Caesarea was another place that Herod the Not-So-Great developed. And here is a reconstruction of Caesarea as it was built during New Testament times.

And see at the south end here where this amphitheater is located? In there is where they found the Pontius Pilate inscription. 1961, Italian archaeologists were going through the amphitheater and kind of cleaning things up, and they said, hey, look at this. And so it has the last part of Pontius Pilate's first name, and then Pilatus. That's how they did the U's with a V. So I would say W, and it looks like double V. They do the V, so there's Pilatus. there in the last part of Pontius on the inscription. We also have Pontius Pilate coins that we found dating specifically from 2930 and 31 AD, which also happens to match the time when he was ruling, which also happens to match the time when he was the one that interrogated Jesus. Pardon? They're metal. The metal is almost always some degree of corrosion. A lot of these are not silver or gold, but a lot of times they get some copper, bronze, something like that. Here is Caesarea Maritima. This is the location where Paul was held prisoner for about two years. After they took him from Jerusalem with several hundred soldiers, They took him here.

And by the way, the transmittal letter that the commanding officer sent to the governor, Luke quoted it in the book of Acts. Quoted that exact letter. So here's a guy who pays attention to detail and digs things up. Digs up details. So Dr. Luke quoted it. We haven't even talked about all the different places up in Galilee, a number of which we went and visited. They're real places, really there. This isn't made up stuff. And the evidence is increasingly pointing that it's the real thing. It's the genuine article.

So here's, I said feeding of 5,000, the feeding of the 4,000 going across to the region of Dalmanutha, the north end of which is Magdala. Here's another shot of the synagogue, and you're asking about that one piece, there it is, and that again is a replica, because the original is in the Israel Museum. but it has the steps around the perimeter, typical of synagogues, and the mosaic that goes around the outside with lots of artwork and attention to detail there, and the synagogue floor. It was in this floor that they found the coins that dated it to the time of Christ.

But another reason why people specialize, I mentioned earlier, Here's Caesarea. There's a whole book and all the findings of Caesarea. So that's another reason why an archaeologist will specialize is a lot of times it'll take a lifetime to focus even on one area. Professor Buran excavated from 1966 until after the year 2000. on Tel Dan in northern Israel. That's what he focused on. And most of the Tel is still there, because it's big. Most of the Tel is still there. It is a vast field.

We could spend a whole year on New Testament archaeology. We could spend a whole year on Old Testament archaeology, just to scratch the surface. Because in truth, the archaeologists themselves will specialize within those. They'll specialize within New Testament archaeology or within Old Testament archaeology.

Alright, we've got people getting ready to storm the gates here, so let's pray. Lord, we thank you for just what you have brought to light here and the various confirmations that we have that support confidence in your word. And we thank you for that. We thank you that even in our times we have the ability to see that and access it, even if we don't travel to Israel, to a degree never present before. And thank you for that confirmation. We thank you that we have the blessed hope of Christ coming for us. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.