Current Affairs Review Essay
Current Affairs Review Essay
The article that I chose to review is “Recent Archaeological Discoveries that Lend Credence to the Historicity of the Scriptures” by Michael A. Grisanti. It was published in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society in 2013. Michael Grisanti is professor of Old Testament at The Masters Seminary.
The main content of this article is whether archaeology that have focused on whether the Old Testament is at all a dependable guide to what actually happened, and whether archaeology can indeed tell us if the stories in the Bible actually happened. It states that “the archaeological evidence ….never provides certifiable proof
that a given individual lived or that a certain event took place”. (1) Although, there is no certifiable proof that what is in the Bible is real, we believe that it is real because it is in the Bible. Just because we cannot prove that people and events in the Bible are real we should not rule them out.
The article is interesting in that the author presents his views in a good way. He narrowed his focus on two chronological periods: the conquest of Canaan and the United Monarchy. These two time periods cover a huge portion of the Old Testament from approximately 1250 to 922 B.C. It is interesting that De Vries wrote that “Jericho could be called the big disappointment of biblical archaeology because excavations at the site have failed to produce the kind of evidence described in the biblical account of the conquest of Jericho in Joshua 6”. (2) But other archaeologists agree on several important issues such as the fact that at some point of time, the city of Jericho did have two walls made of stone and that the city was destroyed because a massive destruction layer which indicated widespread burning. The archaeologists disagree about when the city of Jericho was destroyed. Most scholars feel that it fell in the mid-16th century BC. An important excavation was conducted by Kathleen Kenyon (1952-58). She concluded that the destruction occurred in 1550 BC. According to her view, when the Israelites showed up that there was no walled city at Jericho. (3) But what really happened to the city of Jericho. All we can do is believe what is written in the Bible.
The view that the United Monarchy did exist is supported by many discoveries that were found at Jerusalem such as the Stepping Stone and Large Stone Structure which support some kind of substantial royal