ISRAEL.- Geographically in the heart of biblical Israel, Silo -which today is an archaeological site- was the capital of the country for about 300 years. The reason for its importance to the history of the country is that this is the place where Joshua distributed the Promised Land to the 12 tribes of Israel. And where the Tabernacle remained, so it can be considered “sacred ground.”
Dr. Scott Stripling, the archaeologist leading the archaeological excavations at Shiloh, explains that: “This was the first capital of ancient Israel. It is a holy place because the Mishkan was here, where people came hoping to connect with God. We are dealing with real people, real places, real events,” he continued. “The stories are not mythology. The coins we excavate today are from Herod the Great; Pontius Pilate; Thestos; Felix; Agrippa I and Agrippa II. The Bible talks about these people. We have the image here.”
This “image” referred to includes a fortified wall built by the Canaanites. The team of archaeologists found a veritable treasure trove of artifacts there, including ancient coins and nearly 2,000 pieces of pottery.
“Now, this one was from yesterday,” he said. “Those are the handles of the stone vessels. Do you remember the first miracle of Jesus in Canaan? There were stone jugs filled with water. This was the ritual culture of purity of the first century.
Even an archaeologist like Dr. Stripling believes that digging up biblical sites can change your life. «You can read the Bible, you can walk through the places of the Bible, but the last step is to dig the Bible», he compares himself. “The sand is in our body, our mouth and nose… It becomes almost a part of you. It’s like by digging the ground, we connect with God and with each other, I think, in a very important way.”
Abigail Leavitt, a student at the University of Pikeville (USA), is a volunteer who works at the excavation as an “object registrar”. She testifies: “I read the Bible in a totally different way than I did before I came here. Now that I know the places, I know what’s going on. I understand the Bible more deeply, especially the accounts of places that archaeologists once claimed that archeology disproves. But when we dug here, we found that it all comes together. You read in the Bible, you dig in the dirt and it’s all there.”
As Dr. Stripling recalls, more recent discoveries have changed the historical understanding of various biblical accounts that have been held for many years. Archeology does not set out to prove or disprove the Bible. What we want is to illuminate the biblical text, to give the background of the text, to exhibit the culture of the real world, in what we call verisimilitude », he emphasizes.
He went on to say that ultimately, “if the Bible is true, then the God of the Bible has a moral claim on our lives. When we establish the veracity of the biblical text – I hope everyone thinks about that – we see that God loves us and has a moral claim on our lives.
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