GYC SE 2008: ReGeneration

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

GYC Southeast

Michael Hasel: Archaeology, Science, the Bible--Crisis or Confidence

Michael Hasel

Moses, Egypt, and the Lie of the Serpent

Isaiah and the Assyrian Terrorist Threat

Gods and Goddesses in Ancient Israel

Heavenly Father, what a privilege it is to worship and to fellowship this afternoon as we enjoy this Sabbath together here in Collegedale.

May your word speak to us and may we also be able to see that your word is reliable today.

We thank you for your love for us and for bringing us together to this place.

I've got 3 topics that I'm sharing, and you guys are free.

I know you're going to move probably to different places and different venues.

And always the problem being a presenter is you'd wish you could hear some of your colleagues giving presentations elsewhere.

But we're going to deal here with the issue of archaeology.

And does someone have a program for the exact title?

Yeah, this is, of course, that's the topic there.

But the name of the series is Archaeology, Science, and the Bible.

Many people, when they find out I'm a Christian, say, wait a minute, didn't you say you were an archaeologist?

And there's a lot of challenges out there today in the field of biblical studies, in the field of archaeology, as people on all different levels are questioning the historical sources and wondering whether those historical sources are valid.

Today we're going to go to ancient Egypt.

I've been there many, many times, and a country filled with ancient temples, A country filled with the fascinating pyramids.

Structures that were built, we don't know by whom or how long it took.

Some estimate perhaps it took 120, 000 slaves 20 years to build 1 pyramid.

But we certainly are confronted with these huge buildings that Moses would have already seen, that Abraham saw before Moses, long before, and that have been existing in that country for many years.

And you may not realize this, but until the Eiffel Tower was built in France in the 1800s, the Great Pyramid was the tallest building in the world.

So, you think about the tallest buildings today, and you think about the monumental architecture of Egypt.

These were sophisticated, educated people who were building these structures many years ago.

I mean, how long would the Sears Tower last?

How long would some of the other tall buildings in the world?

I recently was reading some of the new skyscrapers that are being planned in places like Beijing and Dubai and different parts of the world.

And thousands, millions of tourists come to Egypt every year to see these places.

The Hittites are mentioned in the Bible and mentioned in Egyptian texts over 28 times.

And the question for many years was, by Bible scholars and by historians, the Hittites are mentioned in the Bible, But we don't have any record of them anywhere outside the biblical record.

It wasn't until 1906 that the Turks were working near the site of Hattusha.

And there, they uncovered the capital city of this ancient civilization.

Not only the city, but an entire library was uncovered of cuneiform tablets.

It's a site that sprawls over many, many different places, or I should say hills.

You have to take a bus to get from 1 end to the other, okay?

I mean, not like some of the other cities in the ancient Near East.

This was a vast capital city of an empire that rivaled Egypt during the time of Moses and during the New Kingdom period.

So you can see here are some of the temples, multiple temples.

Later on this afternoon, we're going to talk about the gods and goddesses of ancient Israel and the pantheon and how religion in Israel was affected by the surrounding worship.

But again, it wasn't until that discovery was made and then recently, as Egyptology has taken off, we now know that the Hittites were a major people that were confronted by the Egyptians as well.

Last year, I was invited to London, England, to interview for a National Geographic special on the Hittites.

And by 8 o'clock, I was interviewed for 3 hours in a studio there, and then spent the weekend and then flew back home.

What do the Egyptians say about the Hittites?

Well, they depict them fighting against the Egyptians.

And today we know that these people not only existed, but that they were a major adversary and a major empire.

So sometimes when we don't have evidence, it doesn't mean that the evidence doesn't exist or that the people don't exist.

Sometimes silence in the archaeological record, in historical sources, does not mean that those nations, those cities did not exist.

Archaeologists every year are working in the field and uncovering monuments from the past, and new discoveries are made every single year.

How do we know that they're the Hittites?

And how do we know that this is the city of Kadesh?

It's the city of Kadesh located on the Orantis River in Syria.

Okay, the Egyptian is of course a pictographic as well as a phonetic language.

And here we have the Hittites depicted defending this particular city.

So again, these nations that the Bible talks about are real nations with real kings.

We have a whole dynasty of kings ruling over the Hittite Empire.

And today we can know a lot more about them thanks to the science of archeology.

But what about the ancient Egyptian scribes?

Here we see some female scribes copying on papyrus various manuscripts.

What do they have to say about other events in the Bible?

1 of the most critical events today that is questioned by more people probably than any other event in history is the period of the Israelite sojourn in Egypt, their slavery in Egypt, the Exodus and the Conquest.

Most scholars have written that entire episode out of history.

Well, don't the Egyptians mention the Israelites in their texts?

If this was such a monumental event that we read about in several books of the Bible from Exodus all the way through Deuteronomy, and Moses was the 1 who wrote those first 5 books of the Bible, shouldn't we have more evidence in the archeological world, particularly in Egypt, concerning this?

First of all, the evidence may exist, and we just haven't found it yet.

Because we only have excavated a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of what could be excavated in these countries.

I've worked at several sites in the Middle East.

Some sites have been excavated for 25 years by 200 volunteers and archeologists working there every single year, but less than 1% or 2% of the site is actually excavated at the end of that quarter of a century.

So there's a lot of work that needs to be done.

Back to Menu

Series

Michael Hasel: Archaeology, Science, the Bible--Crisis or Confidence

Moses, Egypt, and the Lie of the Serpent

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

The Mock Trial

1h

InVerse, 4th Quarter 2022: Beyond Death

10 The Spirits of Just Men

28m

InVerse, 4th Quarter 2022: Beyond Death

05 Paul’s Burning Desire

28m

Bible Answers Live 2022

In Him Was Life

58m

Reasons for Hope: The Case for Faith in a Secular Age

Reasons for Hope: The Case for Faith in a Secular Age - Part 3

1h 15m

InVerse 1st Quarter 2025: Renewing the Mind

11 Healing from Grief

29m

Subodh Pandit: Come Search with Me, Let's Look for God

Comparing the Five Great World Religions, Part 2

57m

Mock Trial

59m

InVerse, 4th Quarter 2022: Beyond Death

09 The Dead Who Stand Before God

28m

Sound Doctrine