There is an appalling lack of historical evidence backing the Bible's veracity

The emboldened words need to be expanded on because they may or not be true. To begin with, from an historical and archaeological perspective the Tel Dan Stele does NOT verify that David was an historical figure. There are still great controversies over almost everything to do with the Stele, ranging from the extremely unusual action of Biran piecing the 3 fragments together before any other scholars had a chance to examine them, (this is just not the way things are done in archaeology), to problems with translations.You may be unaware that we don’t even know if the fragments are pieced together properly (a fact that Biran and Naveh both agree with), plus the ”bytdwd’ is more than likely a place name rather than a dynasty, and even if it was a dynasty it doesn’t PROVE whether it was an actual historical dynasty or not. We also have the fact that alleged names of Israelite and Judean kings are NOT even on the inscription.You also seem to uncritically accept your sources claims which, if you had looked into deeper, are not as well supported as you perhaps believe.There are different translations of much of the text, not only the ”bytdwd’ but also of ”Ahaziah’ and ”Joram’Kenneth Kitchen writes that opinions differ, and readings of the inscription include ”bayt-dawid’ (House of David), ”House of Dod (deity)’ and ”House of Vessel(s)’ ( A Possible Mention of David in the Late Tenth Century BCE, and Deity Dod as Dead as a Dodo , JSOT 76, page 30, 1997).So this first article suggests that the translation of ”bytdwd’ as ”House of David’ is not universally accepted, and there are other perfectly acceptable translations.Philip Davies argues that ”bytdwd’ might actually refer to a place or a building. Davies says that the study of Knauf, de Pury and Romer suggests that the ”dwd’ should be read as the name of a deity, and that the ”r’l dwd of the Mesha Stele (your other fantasy) fits in well with this ( BYTDWD and SWKT DWYD: A Comparison JSOT 64, page 23, 1994). They argue that the Mesha inscription may refer to a movable object belonging to the cult of the god whose epithet was ”dwd’. Ehud Ben Zvi (On the Reading ”bytdwd’ in the Aramaic Stele from Tel Dan , JSOT 64, 1994,) writes: But one should also take into account that the crucial textual element ”dwd’ for the understanding of ”bytdwd’ in the stele from Tel Dan, namely the term ”dwd’ does appear in the epigraphic corpus of the area. In fact, it occurs in another inscription from roughly the same time of the Aramaic stele of Tel Dan, that is, in the ”Mesha’ inscription (hereafter, MI). Although one is written in Aramaic and the other in Moabite, it is noteworthy that both deal with the (northern) Kingdom of Israel, and both do so from the perspective of its neighbours. Moreover, these two inscriptions share a common theme, that is, the victory of the rulers who ”wrote’ them over the (northern) Israelite King.

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It seems that there are two main, and mutually exclusive, proposals concerning the meaning of this ”dwd’, namely, as a reference to a deity, most likely YHWH, or as a reference to a person bearing the title ”dwd’, most likely an important (northern) Israelite officer.

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Significantly, both approaches to the meaning ”dwd’ in the MI lead to readings of ”bytdwd’ that are contextually plausible, though certainly different. If ”dwd’ is indeed a reference to YHWH in the MI, then it seems possible that ”bytdwd’ in the Aramaic Stele points to the House of YHWH, that is, the temple at Dan. If, alternatively, ”dwd’ is understood as the/a title of an important (northern) Israelite officer, then ”bytdwd’ may certainly point to the officer's house in the city of Dan, that is, a ”provincial’ alternative to the royal palace. Thus, no matter which of these two approaches to the meaning of the term ”dwd’ one chooses, one would develop a grammatically, contextually and historically possible (p.29) reading of ”bytdwd’ for the Aramaic Tel Dan Stele.

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In sum, the only other epigraphic instance of ”dwd’ in the corpus that is temporally and geographically relevant to the discussion occurs in an inscription that shares important traits with the Aramaic inscription of Dan: both point to the Northern Kingdom from an external perspective and both ”describe’ a victory over it, ”dwd’, in this other occurrence, certainly does not mean ”David, the son of Jesse’ ; it may refer either to YHWH or to a high-ranking official in the Northern Kingdom. These two approaches to the meaning of ”dwd’ lead to two different readings of ”bytdwd’, neither of which is contradicted by contextual clues in extant text of the Aramaic inscription, by grammatical evidence, or by historical reconstructions of the period.

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One has to conclude, therefore, that although it is certainly possible that ”bytdwd’ in the Aramaic stele of Tel Dan points to ”the House of David’ and hence refers to the kingdom of Judah, categorical affirmations of such a reading are questionable and should be avoided. Alternative interpretations of ”bytdwd’ do exist, cannot be ruled out, and should be kept in mind. It is to be hoped that additional fragments of the stele will be discovered; perhaps they will shed more light on the meaning of the term ”bytdwd’ in this specific case. (pp27-29.)K L Noll (The God Who is Among the Danites JSOT 80, page 9, 1998) agrees that the inscription says ”House of David’, but he has reservations over the two royal names on Fragment B2. He is concerned because Biran and Naveh interpret ”” ram Bar’ and ”iah Bar’ in Fragment B2 as ”[Jeho]ram Bar [Ahab]’ and ”[ahaz]iah Bar [Jeroham]. Noll agrees that these readings are ”possible’ but by no means ”unequivocal’. He says in footnote 19 ” The astounding term ”unequivocal’ is employed by Biran and Naveh.He gives a good alternative example for the ”ram Bar’ broken text. He says it could just as easily read ”[Hi]ram Bar [X, King of Tyre]. He then says that the ”iah Bar’ does not need to be Ahaziah Bar Ahab. The ”iah Bar’ is only one possibility as there is little doubt that non-Israelite Syro Palestinians sometimes bore Yahwistic names. He believes that this does refer to an Israelite name, but that the ” text is too fragmentary to permit conjecture ”. There is another problem with the translation of Biran and Naveh. Lemche and Thompson ( Did Biran Kill David’ JSOT 64, 1994, p12) inform us that line 8 and 9 translated as”[Ahaz]iahu son of [Jeroham Kin] g of the House of David’is problematic because as Knauf, de Pury and Romer pointed out, ”that a compound concept such as ”the King of the House of..’ has never been seen in any middle Eastern inscription, nor is it to be found in the Old Testament with the meaning ”king of the dynasty of X. They translate lines 8 and 9 as follows: [I] ”The King of Israel. I have Killed’ I poured libation offerings on/in the House of Dwd, I erected (the object that carries the inscription). [I] They suggest that the final ”k’ in 1.9 could belong to an Aramaic verb such as ”nsk’, ”to pour out a libation. pp12-13)The single surviving ”k’ before ”bytdwd’ is translated by Biran and Naveh as ”mlk’ (melek) meaning king.
There are many other problems with the inscription, some people believe that the joint has been ”forced’, some people are shocked that the fragments were joined by Biran and Naveh before anyone else had a chance to examine them, some people are shocked that no one else was consulted before Biran and Naveh released their translation (it is proper practice to allow viewing by other scholars before releasing a reconstructed text), some people are surprised that the inscription in IEJ 43 was not shown in situ . It has also been dated to the 8th century BCE. You should really give references when you quote other websites, and bibliographical details would be appreciated too as these details are very important.This quote from Andre Lemaire is from Biblical Archaeology Review May/June 1994! I take it that whatever he was ”preparing’ has been finished no, since its over 14 years since he claimed this, so what is Lemaire’s current opinion on the Tel Dan inscription?But, regarding the Mesha Stele, it is highly unlikely that it refers to David, Ehud Ben Zvi explains (referenced article above): While there is no general agreement about what the word ”dwd’ in line 12 of the MI (or more precisely dwdh, i.e., with an attached pronominal suffix actually means, there is widespread consensus that it does not mean David, the son of Jesse.

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From a grammatical point of view, since a pronominal suffix is attached to the noun, the latter is not to be considered a proper noun (or at the very least, is not so to be considered unless overwhelming evidence for such a reading is presented, and this is not the case). In addition, one should notice that from historical and contextual perspectives, the reading of ”dwdh’ as ”his David, (son of Jesse)’ in the MI is highly problematic. The bottom line is, over 15 years later, Lemaire still hasn’t shown that his reading of ”dwdh’ should be translated as ”David’.Regarding Cavediver’s topic, your post actually supports what Cavediver is claiming. These two very debatable inscriptions, that are still not widely accepted as reliable, is indeed a good example of how appalling the evidence is for the Bible’s veracity.A huge kingdom that the Bible allocates to David and all the fundies can come up with are two ambiguous inscriptions.Well done, you seem to have supported Cavediver point.

One thing I have found out about history/archaeology is that nothing is straightforward, there’s normally a whole range of possibilities that can be concluded from one artefact. Everything an archaeologist uncovers is mute, the only ”voice’ an artefact has is the one that the archaeologist/historian gives it. Artefacts do not come complete with a context and meaning, context and leaning are given to the artefact by the archaeologist/historian who has to justify the context and meaning that they give an artefact. This is where all the controversy and discussion comes in, it is all to do with interpretation of an artefact, and the interpretation will always be affected by the viewpoint of the person doing the interpreting.This is why I think that people really need to be familiar with a particular subject and the main players who are involved because knowing the scholars’ viewpoints allows you to be aware that what you are about to read will be interpreted from that scholars particular stance. For example, if I picked up an article by William Dever, especially his older papers, I will know that the article will be quite favourable to the Hebrew Bible, whereas an article by Phillip Davies will not lean quite so much in favour of the biblical accounts.The Tel Dan inscriptions are a great example of the different scholarly approaches to ”biblical’ artefacts. I am guilty of posting similar things, and in my defence I word it that way to initiate debate, it motivates people into looking into a subject and replying. Perhaps CD takes the same approach. I don’t think anyone involved in the debate over the historical origins of Ancient Israel believes that the early books are entirely false; at the same time no scholar thinks that they are entirely accurate either. The truth is probably somewhere in between. There may well have been an historical David whose victories and kingdom were nothing like those described in the Bible, there may well have been an Exodus too, just not the same as the one described in the Bible. To me this isn’t a big deal, all ancient peoples that I know about greatly exaggerated their records, why should the authors of the Bible be any different? If I could be devils advocate for a moment I would say that the authors of these gospels already knew that the Messiah would have to come from the bloodline of David, the people they were trying to sell Jesus expected the Messiah to be descended from David so His genealogy HAD to include David didn’t it? Plus we have the problem of the conflict between the two genealogies. Any objective historian would see it that way though mate. It is back to circular reasoning, the only evidence that Jesus was descended form David is to be found in the very same source. But Jews allowed Christians to preach in their synagogues. But Jesus’ parentage was indeed questioned in very early sources. There was a rumour that Jesus was fathered by a Roman centurion called Pantera. So where is this tomb now? Without external evidence, we are back to circular reasoning. There are many Jewish scholars involved in the debate, they have to accept the same rules of historical enquiry that everyone else has to deal with.The famous Rabbi Nelson Glueck, the guy who is quoted on thousands of website as saying that nothing has ever been found that has contradicted the biblical accounts reinterpreted the Bible to fit the evidence, but the fundy websites leave this particular fact out when quoting him. Plus, worshipping someone doesn’t make that person real. Hundreds of millions of Hindus worship Krsna in his various incarnations, does that make Krsna or any of the incarnations real? Why were they in a much better position? But who seriously thinks David wrote any of the Psalms? Hey, that’s fine, I am happy for you.But the problem is when you would like others to accept what you believe to be true and they have a different opinion about what historical evidence is.

I think we need to be realistic about what we expect to find outside of the Bible that would support the internal claims.Certainly private conversations and discussions with God cannot be within the realms of historical investigation.However, there are many many epic events that should have left some evidence, and this is where Cavediver is correct. The evidence to support these epic events is simply appalling.Abraham was, relatively speaking, a nobody in the ancient near east, so we shouldnt really expect to find any evidence of his life. But the huge events such as the enslavement, Exodus, and Conquest of Canaan are completely invisible in the historical and archaeological record, there is nothing there at all. The best that can be done is for the Bible to be reinterpreted to fit the evidence, and when this is done we are left with something that barely resembles the original biblical account, but somehow we suddenly have evidence to support the Bible!From King Omri onwards, the Bible gets a little more accurate and reliable, but evidence is still quite weak.If similar 'historical' events as those written about in the Bible were found in non-biblical texts, they would be very quickly placed on the fiction shelf. But because these fairy tales are included in holy scripture, some people suddenly drop their critical evaluation skills, and accept any garbage that they *think* supports their little book.Cavediver's proposal is utterly sound in regard to the early books of the Hebrew Bible, the evidence is appalling.But from Omri onwards the Bible does improve some.

You still swallowing Wyatt's crap? And we have moved from The Red Sea to The Dead Sea now have we Every time you bring this up Buz everything about it is shown to you to be untrue, yet you still cling to this. It is embarrassing that an adult ignores how often Wyatt's claims have been exposed as lies, yet you keep clinging to it, you must have such a weak faith.A chariot wheel in the Red Sea, which the Bible doesn't even claim that the Israelites crossed, suddenly in your mind means that everything in the biblical account in regard to the Exodus is true, this is a conclusion that a 5 year old would make.No wonder so much money is fleeced from fundies.I wish I wasn't an atheist, I could make a fortune out of dopey fundies. But being an atheist means that I have a very high sense of morality and justice, so I couldn't bring myself to deliberately mislead, or lie to people.If I could just be born again, I'd be on easy street in a couple of years.

You do have to be quite ignorant of ancient near eastern history and the huge amount of archaeological evidence though to conclude that it was written in 1513 BCE!You also have to be quite ignorant of the internal evidence.Let’s have a wee look at a fraction of the evidence from the Book of Genesis that suggests a later date than the 16th century BCE.Let’s start with the old patriarch Joseph.The entire Joseph tale fits a period of Egyptian history much later than the time proposed by the biblical texts.For example, if you look at some of the names in the Joseph narratives they do not belong to the bible time frame for Joseph.For a start, Joseph apparently talks to a pharaoh around 1850 BCE, but 'pharaoh' as a title did not exist until the time of Thutmosis III (1490), who is the first pharaoh to be called 'pharaoh'. (McCarter, P. K. The Patriarchal Age in Shanks (Ed) Ancient Israel: A Short History from Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple, Prentice Hall: Biblical Archaeological Society, Englewood Cliffs; Washington DC. p 27)Also, although some of the personal names in the story are Egyptian, they belong to a later date. Joseph’s wife is called Asenath (Genesis 41:45), a name with parallels beginning in the middle of the 20th Dynasty (about 1184-1070 BCE). The name of Asenath’s father is Potiphera (Genesis 41:45), and this name has been found on an Egyptian stele dating to the 21st Dynasty (about 1070-945) or later. The name of Joseph’s Egyptian master Potiphar (Genesis 37:36) is probably a shorter version of the name Potiphera. Joseph’s own Egyptian name, Zaphenath-paneah (Genesis 41:45) has no exact parallel in extant Egyptian records, but names with a similar structure are attested to from the 21st Dynasty (about 1070-945 BCE) and later. (McCarter, 27)So, already your claim is undermined. The names of ”historical’ characters in the Book of Genesis who were supposedly born before Moses have been shown to belong to a time period well after Moses died.What about the city names Per-Ramesse and Pithom in Exodus 1:11?
Now if Moses left The City of Rameses then he left it long after 1513 BCE!The building of the ”Estate of Rameses’ cannot have been before 1304 BCE, as no pharaoh before that was ever called Rameses. The date of Rameses II’s reign in the High Chronology is 1304-1238 BCE, Middle 1290-1224 and the Low 1279-1213. (Baruch Halpern The Rise of Ancient Israel Biblical Archaeology Society, Washington 1992 p.90)There seems to have been some confusion at this site over that dating and naming of the ”Estate of Rameses’. There is no doubt that the ”Estate of Rameses’ was named after Pharaoh Rameses II, the inscriptions found at the site itself are evidence of this.
The site of the city of Rameses was built on the location of the Hyksos capital of Avaris, which was rebuilt and made the capital again by Sethos I and Rameses II, and called by the latter the ”House of Rameses. The authenticity of the tradition is confirmed by the fact that the capital was referred to as ”House of Rameses’ only until the 11th century BCE, after which it was called Tanis. (John Bright, A History of Israel SCM Press, London 1972 edition p.119)It has been suggested that the references to Pithom and Rameses in Exodus 1:11 could be anachronistic, well it definitely is anachronistic. Even if the reference to Rameses is accurate then the mention of Pithom is still anachronistic. According to Exodus 1:11, Pithom should be seen as a city comparable to Rameses. This is historically impossible, as Pithom was only used as the name of a city in the Saite period, i.e. the 7th century BCE onwards. Pithom means ”the house of Atum (the god)’ and although this was known prior to the Saite period as the name of temples and temple estates belonging to this god, the name was never connected with cities (Niels Peter Lemche, Is It Still Possible to Write a History of Ancient Israel? in V Phillips Long, Israel?s Past in Present Research Eisenbrauns, Indiana, 1999, p.398).Besides this, archaeologists working at Tell el-Maskhuta in north-eastern Egypt have found good evidence that this was the ancient city of Pithom and that it was founded by Pharaoh Necho II between 609-606 BCE, a good survey of this can be found in J.S. Holladay’s The Wadi Tunrilat Project. The Excavations of Tell el-Maskhuta. Malibu CA 1982.The archaeological evidence cannot support the two cities in Exodus 1:11 as ever being occupied, or even existing, at the same time. One part of the reference seems to belong to the 2nd millennium BCE and another to the 1st Millenium BCE. (J Maxwell Millar and John J Hayes, A History of Ancient Israel and Judah SCM Press, London 1986, page 69)Paul has already pointed out that fact that the Philistines were unknown until the 12th century BCE, and we have a host of other anachronisms to consider.What I would like to know is a little of the evidence that would lead us to conclude that Genesis was written in 1513 BCE. One of which was Himself Seriously though, Jesus only had one human parent, the other was supposed to be God. Which is great, but pretty shitty for being the Messiah, since the Messiah was to come from the bloodline of Solomon then Nathan’s descendants are no good, so this genealogy is no good. Matthew proposing that Jesus is linked by blood through Joseph to Solomon is equally negative for Jesus’ messianic claims. Joseph simply wasn’t Jesus father, hence Joseph’s genealogy is redundant, and so this genealogy is no good either. Well, it is hardly evident, and certainly was never claimed by early Christians. This particular apologetic didn’t raise its head until the 16th century, so it could hardly have been evident. What does ”legally Jesus’ father’ mean?An adopted child does not share the father’s bloodlineThe Virgin Birth negates the possibility that Jesus was the messiah, the lineage of Mary is of no consequence at all, even the Bible tells us that . . . So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. Luke 2:4There you have it in black and white.Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem because JOSEPH belonged to the line of David and NOT Mary, and with Joseph not being Jesus’ father, then Jesus has no line to David, therefore Jesus was not the Messiah.

yes indeed that is the one.Tell me Buz, How is Moller doing with the 'research' he stole from Wyatt?How many academic journals has Moller had 'his research' research published in?It has been a few years now since you brought this up, funny how its never made any academic journals isn't it?

We really do need to put this ”Hittites’ and the Bible myth to bed once and for all, it is ridiculous that people keep claiming that there was no evidence that there were Hittites except in the Bible, and that the find at Boghazkoy confirmed the Bible. This is untrue, a lie that is kept going by ignorant fundies to try to make the Bible look amazing. I perhaps shouldn’t use the word ”lie’ as no doubt some of these ignoramuses probably just uncritically accept what they read on other websites, but some people who promote this myth must know it is untrue.People need to be aware that the Anatolian Hittites have nothing whatsoever to do with the biblical ones; there is no relationship at all between the biblical Hittites and the huge find in modern day Turkey.Here is some information about the Hittites:From ’The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol. 3 D. N. Freedman (ed) Doubleday, New York, London, 1992.Entry ”Hittites’ page 233: In the biblical references to the Hittites two different groups may be discerned. One is a local people of Palestine, settled in the area around Hebron before Abraham’s arrival, the descendants of Canaan through the eponymous ancestors of Heth. They lived in the heart of the land promised to the Israelites, so that God had to expressly command the Israelites to destroy them. That they were not eradicated but continued to inhabit southern Palestine, including the area around Jerusalem, may be seen in the references to Hittites in the Hebrew army, as forced labour conscripts, or as possible wives for the Hebrews, all the way through to the return from the Babylonian exile. Almost all the references of Hittites in the Old Testament fit into this picture of a local Canaanite people never quite eradicated in the Hebrew conquest of Canaan.

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There are five references to Hittites which do not fit with this picture. The reference in Joshua 1:4 to the area around the Euphrates as the Hittite country cannot be the Hittites of Hebron, but rather, depending on the dating of the conquest, either the Hittite Empire’s territories in North Syria or the successor Neo-Hittite Kingdoms in that region.

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The reference in Judges 1:26 to the man who after betraying Bethel goes to the ”land of the Hittites’, the only other occurrence of this phrase besides the Joshua 1:4 passage, it is quite possible that the Neo-Hittite area is meant.

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The references to the ”Kings of the Hittites’ in 1 Kings 10:29 and 2 Chronicles 1:17, where they are importing horses and chariots from Solomon, and 2 Kings 7:6, in which their very name causes the Syrian army to flee, again inply a powerful and wealthy group of Kings, not a local Canaanite people who had been reduced by the conquest and enslaved by Solomon. Again the Neo-Hittite Kingdoms fit perfectly, the chronology is right, they were in the same area as the Syrians and the plural ”kings’ fits very well with the nature of these states, which were not unified into a polity, but consisted of a number of small kingdoms. Also, just a word on the ”Neo-Hittites’, these are not the Hittites of Anatolia either, ”yet the language and the religion of these ”Neo-Hittites’ inscriptions are not those of the Hittites of Hattusas, nor are they those of the common people who inhabited Syria under the Hittite Empire (for they were Hurrians). (O R Gurney, The Hittites, page 40. Penguin Books Ltd, Middlesex 1952)*Note that Hattusas is BoghazkoyGurney’s book was written over 50 years ago, so there really is no excuse for keeping this Hittite myth going, no scholar worth his salt ever links the Hittites of Palestine with the Anatolian ones. Gurney has an interesting chapter entitled ”The Hittites in Palestine’ in which he states: We have to deal with the paradoxical fact that, whereas the Hittites appear in the Old Testament as a Palestinian tribe, increasing knowledge of the history of the ancient people of Hatti has led us even farther away from Palestine, until their homeland has been discovered in the heart of the Anatolian plateau’. That the Syrian vassals states of the Hittite Empire were confined to the area north of Kadesh on the Orontes, and that although Hittite armies reached Damascus, they never entered Palestine itself (Gurney. P59).So we can see from the biblical texts that there are two distinctive groups that are referred to as Hittite, neither is the Hittites of Boghazkoy, it is incorrect to identify them as such. The Hittites that are attested to at Boghazkoy were never anywhere near Palestine: In the consideration of the Hittite history two main periods can be distinguished, the period before 1200 BCE and the period after that date. In the first period the Hittite Empire centred in inner Anatolia, extended southward toward the northern reaches of Syria, but never as far south as Palestine. In the second period, small Hittite kingdoms and principalities covered vast areas in Anatolia and Syria, none of them extending south of the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon. (’Hittites in the Old Testament’ in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, G A Buttrick (ed) Abingdon Press New York 1962)Here is another extract; this is from the Oxford Companion to the Bible:Among the people of Israel found in Canaan were the ”Sons of Heth’ members of a Canaanite family (Gen 10:15). Esau married two of their women (Gen 26:34) and later Ezekiel decried Israel’s religious faithlessness by calling her a descendant of a Canaanite and a Hittite, Ephron the Hittite sold his field and cave near Hebron to Abraham. The names given for these Hittites are all Semitic and it is likely that they all were members of a local Canaanite tribe. The Hittites of Anatolia, (modern Turkey) were another people, forgotten until excavations at Boghazkoy were begun in 1906. (Entry ’Hittites’ page 285, Bruce Metzger and Michael D Coogan (eds) Oxford University Press, New York 1993)An excellent book on the Hittites is the fairly recent book by Trevor Bryce entitled ’The Kingdom of the Hittites’, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1998, in which he claims that archaeologists have an embarrassment of riches at Boghazkoy, is this good news for the Bible though, apparently not:
Bryce does tell us the origin of the apparent problem the term Hittite: How did the term ”Hittite’ come about’ It arose out of a few scattered biblical references to a Canaanite people after the end of the Bronze Age. The term was subsequently adopted by scholars to refer to the Late bronze Age kingdom in Anatolia. As far as we know, the Late Bronze Age Hittites never used any ethnic of political term to designate themselves, certainly not one which reflected an Indo-European origin. They simply called themselves ”people of the land of Hatti (pp. 18-19).So you can see that the Anatolian ”Hittites’ never referred to themselves as Hittites in the biblical term, it appears that we had a problem in the bible with a people there was no evidence for, then we had the discovery of a people at Bogzhakoy and for no real reason they were lumped together, and lo and behold the Bible is proven once again! It really is scandalous that this deliberate misleading of the general public is being maintained, and what is worse, it is being maintained by people who allegedly follow a god who insists that his followers tell the truth.A final word on the Hittites from Bryce: The Bible contains a number of references to Hittites and Hittite kings. What connections, if any, do these ”Biblical Hittites’ have with the kingdom which dominated Anatolia and parts of Syria in the Late Bronze Age, and its successors in the centuries which followed’

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A number of references place the Hittites in a Canaanite context, slearly as a local Canaanite tribe, descendants of the eponymous patriarch Heth, and encountered by Abraham around Hebron. The names of these ”Hittites’ are for the most part of Semitic type; for example Ephron, Judith, Zohar. These were presumably the Hittites who were subject to Solomon and who were elsewhere in conflict with the Israelites. They were a small group living in the hills during the era of the Patriarchs and the later descendants of that group, and clearly to be distinguished from the Hittites of historical records (emphasis mine). The Hittites of the Bible are simply not the same people who are evidenced at Boghazkoy, this is a very well known fact within archaeological circles, so why it is still being hyped?The foundation of this myth can be traced way back to 1882 when Archibald Sayce who, in a lecture to the Society of Biblical Archaeology in London, claimed that far from being a small Canaanite tribe who dwelt in the Palestinian hills, the Hittites were the people of a great empire stretching across the face of the ancient Near East, from the Aegean Sea’s eastern shoreline to the banks of the Euphrates, centuries before the age of the Patriarchs ( Trevor Bryce, Life and Society in the Hittite World , Oxford University Press, Oxford 2002, page 3).He had suspected for some time that Boghazkoy was the capital of the Hittites because some hieroglyphic scripts found at Aleppo and Hamath in Northern Syria were in fact the work of the Hittites (the biblical Hittites) and matched the script on a monument at Boghazkoy.But in 1902, 20 years after Sayce's claim, in the El Amarna tablets there were two tablets identified by J A Knudtzon as containing a new Indo-European language. The cuneiform script was found among the diplomatic correspondence of the Pharaohs Akhenaten and his father Amenhophis III. On one of the tablets, Knudtzon noticed that a king was mentioned who belonged to a country to called Arzawa, so naturally enough he called the new language Arzawan. His claim hardly found any support with contemporary scholars until it became known that a few fragments of clay tablets written in the same language had been found at Boghazkoy and as more tablets were unearthed in 1906, many more ”Arzawan’ scripts were found.Although this was an important discovery for philologists, it presented a few problems for Sayce's theory. Central Anatolia wasn’t the place where you would expect to find early speakers of Indo-European, so two immediate questions had to be answered, first who were these people and second, how had they got there. First one was easy to answer. The tablets clearly showed that Boghazkoy was ancient Hattusas, the capital of the land of Hatti.Here is the rub, obviously the language of the tablets was that used by the people of Hatti, so the language was ”consequently re-christened ”Hittite’, and the name ”Arzawan’ was quietly forgotten.’ ( J G Macqueen ’The Hittites and their contemporaries in Asia Minor’ Thames and Hudson London 1986. page 22)The Arzawa tablets contradict Sayce's naming of the Boghazkoy inhabitants as being Hittite because they were written in cuneiform script and not in hieroglyphics.The ”Hieroglyphic Hittites’ at Boghazkoy is also an Indo-European language and, although it has certain similarities to the cuneiform, it is by no means identical with it (Macqueen page. 24)The modern use of Hittite is clearly artificial when used in the Boghazkoy context, only a person interested in maintaining this biblical perfection myth would cling to the Hittites in the Bible as the Boghazkoy 'Hittites' Therefore our current designation of Hittite should be understood to represent an artificial categorisation of the peoples who lived under the political banner of Hattusa. (Ronald L. Gorny ’Environment, Archaeology, and History in Hittite Anatolia. Biblical Archaeologist, Volume 52, 1989, page 82)The people who occupied central Anatolia were of mixed ethnic origins, Hattians, Hurrians, Luwians and numerous smaller groups, they called themselves by the traditional name of the region in which they lived, the ”people of the Land of Hatti’.Bryce hopefully puts the final nail in the coffin of this myth when he sates that ”Largely for the sake of convenience, and because of their long-assumed biblical connections, we have adopted for them the name ”Hittite’ So yes, the name was given in haste, before the evidence was properly examined, and the term simply stuck, as Bryce said it was for the sake of convenience.Here is another very important point. Apart from one reference to ”the land of Hittites’, which sometimes denotes Syria, all other references to the Hittites in the Old Testament are to a small group living in the hills during the era of the Patriarchs. In Hoffner’s opinion ( ”The Hittites and Hurrians’ in D J Wiseman’s ”Peoples of the Old Testament Times’, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1973, page. 196) this group is neither Hurrian (textual error hty for hry ) nor the group of Kurushtameans which migrated to the ”land of Egypt’.The textual errors referred to actually help to solve the historical enigma of having Hittites in Palestine, as we know from the archives from Boghazkoy, the ”Hittites’ there were never in Palestine. If we replace with ”Horite’ the name ”Hittites’ many, if not most of the historical problems disappear. This only involves changing one consonant, and in Hebrew consonant text, this would be palaeographically admissible (Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible, page 615)It has always appeared strange that the Horites, who played such an important role in the history of Syria and Palestine in the 2nd millennium BCE have received very scant mention in the Old Testament, far out of proportion to their real importance. By replacing ”Hittites’ when the term designates people in Palestine, with ”Hurrians’, we may obtain a picture that is fully compatible with our knowledge of Hurrian history. (IDB. p.615)The people of Boghazkoy only ever referred to themselves as people of 'the Land of Hatti'. Sayce incorrectly identified them as the biblical 'Hittites', scholars adopted the term, and by the time that it was shown that they were not the biblical 'Hittites' the name had become too well associated with them, so for the sake of convenience, it was kept.So, in the name of God, can we stop being overwhelmed by the Hittites and the Bible?

Hi CD,I am pushed for time until Monday, but I will post a few things then.But the evidence from Genesis through to the end of Judges is very scant and usually comprises of reinterpreting the biblical texts to fit the archaeological evidence.

Dever is a maximalist, who is grealty baised towards the biblical text, but even he has given up on the Bible version of the Exodus and Conquest.Despite more than a century and a half of archaeological excavations in the Near East and Palestine in particular, archaeologists have failed to find a single shred of evidence to support the Exodus or the Military Conquest of Palestine.This has prompted the Syro-Palestinian (his term) archaeologist and biblical scholar William Dever to state that the Exodus is a 'Dead Issue'. (Dever Qom, Khirbet El in The Oxford Encyclopaedia of Archaeology in the Near East, Eric M. Meyers (Editor), American Schools of Oriental Research vol IV (1997) pp 391-2.).There is a single scholar involved in the denate today that takes the biblical account of Israel's origins at face value.

So, let me get this straight, you offer an example of how accurate the Bible is THEN you go and research it?Something wrong about that is there not?

Of course they will be accepted as evidence, however we do need to examine the quality of that evidence. But it is up to us to give our reasons for rejecting your evidence, then you counter our arguments, that’s what a discussion is. If you are not an expert how do you know that the people who you present as experts actually are experts?
You need to research things for yourself as well you know, you could get off your backside and put in the hours in the libraries, seminars, and lecture theatres like some of us have already done, then when you have a solid knowledge of a subject you will know if the ”experts’ are presenting reliable and sound information. But you have already said that you are not an expert, so why should your opinion make any difference to the debate? Yet you haven’t presented a single decent example thus far to back this up.
I will look at your evidence, and give reasons for rejecting or accepting some or all of it. I won’t reject anything just for the sake of it. This isn’t a competition you know, this site is for helping each other to improve our knowledge of the subjects we are interested in.
If there is anything wrong with any of the reasons I give for rejecting anything you post then just point it out to me and I will either explain further or accept your explanation.I make many mistakes in my life mate, and I have no problem with being shown to be wrong about something.

Do you honestly expect me to browse through your links and comment on everything in them?Stop being so lazy and at least put together a post made up from what you believe to be the best arguments against the information I posted.This is a discussion board, take time to construct a post that deals with my points, anyone can post a link and leave the other guy to do all the work.

Well it is up to YOU to present the best arguments to counter the points I made, so I'm very serious. So why are you having problems formulating a response from these sites? You know the funny thing is, it was me who brought these contentions to your notice by flagging up the statement YOU made about the Hittites. YOU mentioned the Hittites/Bible as if they are an undisputed fact, and I pointed out YOUR error!You do need to learn how to debate.Try and address my points the next time if you don't mind.

There is indeed.But none for anything from The Book of Genesis through to the end of the Book of Judges.But we do have a ton of contrary evidence for most of the narratives.

Hi CD,As you have probably guessed, I have been really busy.I remembered a short thread from a while back that partly addresses your question.The thread is here .If you would like to discuss this topic further just let me know and I'll post what I can.I was going to email you but there's no address on your profile, but I can be contacted at bj25 at le.ac.uk if there's anything pressing you would like to know.