Atheists should learn to close their mouths and stop embarrassing themselves. Especially the ignorant unlearned ones who like to spit false claims that they have nothing to back them up with.
"There have been plenty of claims that things contradict the biblical account, but the Bible has a habit of being proved right after all. I well remember one of the world's leading archaeologists at Gezer rebuking a younger archaeologist who was "rubbishing" the Bible. he just quietly said, "Well, if I were you, I wouldn't rubbish the Bible." When the younger archaeologist asked "Why?" he replied, "Well, it just has a habit of proving to be right after all." And that's where I stand. Professor Nelson Glueck, who I suppose would be recognized as one of the top five of the 'greats' in biblical archaeology, gave a marvelous lecture to 120 American students who were interacting with the Arabs. He said, "I have excavated for 30 years with a Bible in one hand and a trowel in the other, and in matters of historical perspective, I have never yet found the Bible to be in error." Professor G. Ernest Wright, Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Studies at Harvard University, gave a lecture at the same dig. He made the point that (because of the researches associated with the Hittites and the findings of Professor George Mendenhall concerning what are called the Suzerainty Covenant Treaties between the Hittite kings and their vassals) it had become clear that the records of Moses, when dealing with covenants, must be dated back to the middle of the second millennium BC. That's about 1500 BC. Also, that those writings should be recognized as a unity. In other words, they go back to one man. That one man could only be Moses. I went to Professor Wright later and said, "Sir, this is very different from what you've been putting out in your own writings." He looked at me and said, "Clifford, for 30 years I've been teaching students coming to Harvard to train for the Christian ministry; I've been telling them they could forget Moses in the Pentateuch, but at least in these significant areas of the covenant documents that are there in the Pentateuch, I've had to admit that I was wrong." They were two scholastic giants. One says, "I've excavated for 30 years and I've never found the Bible to be in error"—basically that's what he was saying. The other says, "For 30 years I've been wrong."" (Clifford Wilson)
"The conclusion of [archaeological] evidence was summed up by Nelson Glueck that "no archaelogical discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference. Scores of archaeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or exact detail historical statements in the Bible." Millar Burroughs notes that "more than one archaeologist has found his respect for the Bible increased by the experience of excavation in Palestine [sic]." (Norman L. Geisler)
"Modern archaeology has challenged the world of education to admit that the Bible is factual. Solid, documented evidence outside the Bible record confirms events and persons that were at one time considered to be suspect or plain false. . .
One of the most ridiculous claims of the critics has been that the Babylonian captivity did not take place. This is on a par with those who believe the Holocaust of World War II did not happen. The Bible gives specific details about the captivity of Judah by the armies of Babylon early in the 6th century B.C. (II Kings 24-25). Scholars have said it's all just another Jewish myth. However, between 1935 and 1938, important discoveries were made 30 miles southwest of Jerusalem at a site thought to be ancient Lachish. Lachish was one of the cities recorded in the Bible as being besieged by the king of Babylon at the same time as the siege of Jerusalem (Jeremiah 34:7).
Twentyone pottery fragments inscribed in the ancient Hebrew script were unearthed in the latest pre-exilic levels of the site. Called the Lachish Ostraca, they were written during the very time of the Babylonian siege. Some of them are exchanges between the city's military commanded and an outlying observation post, vividly picturing the final days of Judah's desperate struggle against Babylon! Since the 1930s, there has been more unearthing of Babylonian historical texts describing the conquest of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. The historical fact of the Babylonian captivity is firmly established." (Dennis Leap)"It had been fashionable in some circles for many years to ridicule Isaiah 20:1 for its allusion to "Sargon king of Assyria." Excavations of Nineveh had seemingly revealed all the kings of Assyria, but there was no Sargon. The Bible must have gotten it wrong. However, in 1843, Paul Emile Botta found a virgin site northeast of Nineveh, later excavated by the University of Chicago with details published in the 1930s. Sargon had built his own capital there in 717 B.C. His son, however, moved the capital back to Nineveh, so the site was lost as was Sargon's name. Now Sargon is one of the best known Assyrian monarchs...
Discoveries of other biblical names have confirmed biblical reliability, including King Jehoiachin's presence in Babylon, Sanballat as governor of Samaria along with some of Nehemiah's adversaries such as Tobiah the Ammonite, and Geshem the Arab (Nehemia 2:19). Other discoveries confirm well-known biblical individuals such as Balaam, David, Ahab, Jehu, Hezekiah, Menahem, and others.
Until Hugo Winckler discovered the Hittite Empire in 1906, many unbeleivers doubted the Bible's insistence that the Hittites were part of the land of Canaan (Genesis 10:15; Joshua 1:4). Now they are so well documented that scores of volumes has been necessary to build a Hittite dictionary based on the tablets left in their civilization...
Another example is the disputed list of sites along the route of exodus in Numbers 33. But Charles Krahmalkov noted three ancient Egyptian maps of the road from Arabah to the Plains of Moab, with the earliest of these maps inscribed on the walls of Karnak in the reign of Thutmosis III (c. 1504-1450 B.C.). According to this list, the route from south to north follows precisely the way the Israelites listed in Numbers 33 with four stations especially noted: Iyyim, Dibon, Abel, and Jordan.
Discovered by Grenfeld in Egypt in 1920, the "John Rylands Papyrus" yielded the oldest known fragment of a NT manuscript. This small scrap from John's Gospel (Jn 18:31-33, 37-38) was dated by payprologists to 125 A.D., but since it was so far south into Egypt, it successfully put an end to the then-popular attempt to late-date John's Gospel to the second century rather than to the traditional first century date of A.D. 85-90.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, found in 1948 in caves at Qumran, near the northwest end of the Dead Sea, gave us some 800 manuscripts of every book (in part or the whole) of the OT except for Esther. Prior to that, the earliest Hebrew texts dated to around A.D. 1000, but the scrolls at Qumran are generally more than one thousand years older! These Hebrew texts illustrate that a thousand years of copying had provided us with an amazingly pure text, with one of the best examples being the book of Isaiah where only three words had slight modifications . . .
Space precludes discussion of the many archaeological corroborations, such as the Pontius Pilate Inscription, the Pool of Siloam excavated in 2004, and the amazing Ketef Hinnom Amulets discovered in 1979 (with inscriptions of Nm. 6:24-26 and Dt. 7:9 perfectly matching the biblical Hebrew text—amazing since these seventh to sixth century B.C. amulets contain OT texts skeptics argued could not have been written until the 400s B.C.)." (Walter C. Kaiser Jr.)
Archaeology continues to verify the veracity of the Bible. Now compare that with the false religion of the Mormons. Not one single piece of the fiction that is written in the Book of Mormon has ever been verified by archaeology!
