After almost universal acceptance among the faithful since ancient times, the accuracy of the Bible as history has been questioned for over 300 years. The spirited running debates of archaeologists and literary analysts continue to rage as contested discoveries seem merely to add fuel to the fires of controversy.
Ironically, the debates focus more on the Hebrew Bible, known popularly in the Judeo-Christian world as the Old Testament, than the New Testament. It is true that a recent claim about a stone box purportedly containing the bones of Jesus and his family revived questions about the historical Christ. Also, over the past 60 years, students of the Dead Sea Scrolls have sketched varying theories on the relationship between those documents and the teachings of Jesus. But attempts to find historical evidence to the latter in Roman or Middle Eastern documents beyond brief references in Josephus and Tacitus seem to have been long since exhausted.
Contrast that with the ample corroboration of Judean or Israelite history in Persian, Babylonian, and Assyrian artifacts. Persian writings about King Cyrus's conquest of Babylon are consistent with a return to Zion of a contingent of Judeans from Babylonian captivity as reported in the Biblical books of Ezra and Chronicles. That captivity is also recorded in the annals of Babylon's Nebuchadnezzar and his dynasty.
The Assyrian siege of Jerusalem in approximately 701 B.C.E. is described by King Senacherib as well as, quite differently, by the authors of Kings and Isaiah. Even the much reviled Israelite King Ahab is mentioned in an Assyrian notation on a great 9th century battle in which he joined the opposition. And perhaps the most intriguing, if fragmentary, extra-Biblical artifact was discovered only in the 1990's. A Syrian king of that same era appears to be bragging about killing a Judean king "of the House of David," suggesting that a victory over that dynasty was worth crowing about.
On a more day-to-day level, seals and inscriptions placed in the 9th to 6th centuries bear the names of Biblical kings or court officials. And perhaps most significantly, the mention of the Hebrew name for God in conjunction with those of pagan deities bears out the vivid picture painted by the prophets of an Israelite people hedging their bets by alternately worshipping their One God along with other possible sources of blessing.
King David, whose existence is doubted by the scholars known as "minimalists," would have lived well into the 10th century according to their adversaries. As yet, archaeology and extra-Biblical literature other than the above-mentioned fragment have not yielded evidence of him or any of the preceding "Old Testament" personalities. But a Temple attributed to David's son Solomon was there for the Babylonians to destroy in the 6th century, and the Biblical record for the intervening period seems to have substantial support in the archaeological record. So is the Bible history only when something else corroborates it? Stay tuned.
