Biblical Archaeology: Discoveries that Challenged and Supported Religious Texts - Prof. Ma, Study notes of Religious Studies

Download Biblical Archaeology: Discoveries that Challenged and Supported Religious Texts - Prof. Ma and more Study notes Religious Studies in PDF only on Docsity! Rel. and Science Naturalism M. Behe -Intelligent Design -Irreducible complexity -irreducible complexity has to come through an intelligent agent- God -biblical archaeology -the past is dead and gone and inaccessible except what has been written down -archaelogist actually do realize in the 19th century that you can find a lot of information -starts making some discoveries of finding out things about the past -how do we know most of what we know of what is written in the old testament -line of history that goes dead -the egyptions and the babaloynians -only source of information that we have for the old testament is the old testament -biblical archaeology- can we find alternative sources of information to support the old testament -Johann Jahn- 1805 Biblisch Archaeologie -doesn’t actually do archaeology -why didn’t people know where most of the biblical sites were? -taken over by muslims-not accessible for Europeans up to the end of the automan empire -not until the 19th century that Europeans can get to Palestine iraq Egypt -part of the start of biblical archaeology more people are becoming interested in the text and the geography? Can we learn something outside what the old testament says -one of the first persons going to the holy land to locate biblical sites was Edward Robinson (1794-1863) -travels to Palestine -what Robinson wanted to do was locate some of the lost biblical cities and sites -1841 publishes Biblical Researches in Palestine (1841) -explores Jerueselem goes outside trying to find Jericho -lays the foundation of the next generation of researchers -most spectacular was the research of Austen Henry Layard (1817-1894) -one of the cities referred to over and over again was Babylon -lasted thousands of years -no one knew precisely where the city was -basic material of architecture in ancient Iraq-rock -most of Babylon was built from mud -mud brick was the basic building material -odd hills are found in the middle east and they are the remains of the city -tell is Arabic for hill -Henry Layard discovers the site of Babylon -and discovers Nineveh -Layard discovered spectacular art and clay tablets -also discovered structures that looked like palaces -researchers were able to disipher some writings and they discovered a palace of a character that is referred to in Kings -discovered the palace of Sennacherib -Layard discovers Sennacherib’s palace in Nineveh -first time that there was an old testament event for which there had been any externals source other than the old testament itself -Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon (1853) -showing Europeans objects from a culture that was 4000 years old and almost completely unknown -Palestine Exploration Fund -Jericho, Megiddo, and Samaria -reason why these sites were lost -at some point these sites became abandoned -pottery style changes every few years -institutions established for Palestine during the second world war -Palestine Department of Antiquities -first established in 1819 -used as a museum and research center until the second world war -a lot of interest among Isrealies on conducting archaeology -one of the most interesting/discussed/controversial has been the explanations of Jericho -Jericho discovered before 1900 -number of old testament events a lot of interest in escabating Jericho and trying to prove the famous battle of Jericho actually happened -very first attempt was conducted by a British engineer- Charles Warnan -but the first escabation was by two Germans- Carl Watzinger and Ernest Sellin -wanted to find evidence for the battle of Jericho -estimate of when it took place- 1400 B.C. -evidence of two things- battle of Jericho coming to an end by the walls coming down -had to have a walled city and evidence that that wall had been destroyed -find the right walled city -Jericho appeared not to have a wall when the famous battle happened -concluded that the battle of Jericho is not supported by the archaeological evidence -next excabations were done in the 1930s by John Garstang -Garstang came to the conlusion of identifying a different layer as the right time and at that layer there was a wall -and not only that there were many wall cities and this particular wall appeared to be torn down by violence -argues that they came to the wrong conclusion -however a lot of scientists considered Garstang a sloppy archaeologist and his evidence could not be taken at face value -evidence was not strong enough -so it fell to Kathleen Kenyan and her escabations are taken as the best escabations (hers were done in the 50s) -had a much more metholical way -came up with it being inhabbitted rebuilt and destroyed at least 17 times -most of the instances went with an earthquake crumbling the city -she comes to the conclusion that the famous battle did not happen when the old testament said it did