People called Hittites are frequently mentioned in the Biblical account of Israelite history. In the past 100 years the archaeologist’s spade has unearthed Hittite civilization- It has proved to be both large and important. Does it accord, however, with what the Bible tells us about the Hittites? One of the best-known references in the Bible […]
Why the Israelites Fleeing Egypt Went South Can modern ecology and ethnology help to establish the route of the Exodus? I believe they can. The Bible clearly identifies by name the stops along the Exodus route (Numbers 33-5–37). The area settled by the Israelites in Egypt is consistently identified as Goshen (Genesis 45-10, 47-1, 4), […]
Twentieth-century Americans find it difficult to comprehend the notion of plagues. Plagues border on the realm of the unreal; they are the stuff of tall tales, myths and legends. But in the Biblical world, plagues were very real, even ever-present. The plagues of pestilence that were visited on Pharaoh and the Egyptians before he agreed […]
For 40 years Claude Schaeffer directed excavations at Ras Shamra in Syria. There he and his colleagues uncovered the remains of the long lost city of Ugarit, a Late Bronze Age metropolis in early Biblical times. And among the ruins of Ugarit, he found the archives of the ancient city The clay tablets discovered in […]
Ramesses IV wrote this papyrus in the name of Ramesses III, describing the important events of his reign. One of the events is the capture and resettlement of “Sea Peoples.” The “strongholds” they were settled in may have been fortified towns in Canaan and these “Sea Peoples” may have been the Philistines. Papyrus Harris I […]