Excerpts from the booklet Archeology Proves the Bible.

The Bible is the textbook of Christianity. Christ quoted the Old Testament Scriptures as the Word of God; he was guided in his ministries by their instructions and comforted by their promises. Jesus’ apostles shared his confidence in the truthfulness of the Old Testament Scriptures; and in addition to the teachings and example of Jesus, they, like him, based their teachings on the Old Testament. The New Testament is in reality an explanatory supplement to the Old Testament, so that for Christians the Old and New Testaments together are an infallible revelation of the plans and purposes of the Creator with respect to his human creatures.

This understanding and acceptance of the Bible as the Word of God was quite general by all professed Christians until the nineteenth century, when, in the minds of many, inroads of doubt began to be made by the assertions of higher critics and the theory of human evolution. To the higher critics most of the historical records of the Old Testament have no basis in fact, but are merely allegories, myths, and fables. According to the theory of human evolution God did not create Adam and Eve, and there never was a Garden of Eden; but instead, man is said to have evolved from lower forms of animals.

Thus seen, higher criticism and the theory of human evolution have been frontal attacks on the validity of the Holy Scriptures. However, in the minds of honest and thinking people this trend toward unbelief in the infallibility of the Bible is gradually being reversed. This is being brought about by the spade and pick of the archeologist. Archeologists began their work of exploring the lands of the Bible about the middle of the nineteenth century, some even before this. J. E. Taylor, Paul Botta, A. H. Layard, and Henry Rawlinson were among the pioneers in excavating the ruins of cities mentioned in the Bible.

This work continued with varying degrees of enthusiasm until it was halted almost entirely by the outbreak of World War I. Following the war, it was resumed and, while slowed down considerably by World War II, archeologists continue to find outstanding proofs of the validity of one after another of the historical accounts of the Old Testament. For example, the Bible speaks of Abraham’s living in a city by the name of Ur. It was claimed by doubters that no such city ever existed, but archeologists have proven that this conclusion was wrong, for they have discovered the ancient city of Ur, and in the locality where the Bible places it. The city of Nineveh, where the people repented as a result of the message the Prophet Jonah presented to them from the Lord, has also been discovered.

One of the claims made by the higher critics was that Moses could not have written the first five books of the Old Testament, for the art of writing was not known at the time the Bible indicates that Moses lived. Now we know that writing was in vogue even before the days of Moses. We quote from New Discoveries in Babylonia, p.38: “Nearly a thousand years before Abraham was born and a millennium and a half before the birth of Moses, Lugalzaggisi, King of Erech, began his inscriptions with words which do not differ greatly from those used by the last king of Babylon, 2,200 years later.”

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