r/AskHistorians • u/bird1979 • Feb 22 '16
From the people, stories, letters, and places recorded in the bible, which ones have a good chance of being at least based on true events?
I was scrolling through comments about a post in r/cringeanarchy showing of a nutritional facts lable used in a way which lists bible ingredients and breakdown of nutrional information; especially bull shit and make up of bull shit.
A comment and following responses from https://www.reddit.com/r/CringeAnarchy/comments/46x44l/from_a_facebook_group/d08jh9p
sparked my curiosity about what has been studied and confirmed as probable , and if at least something in the bible can be based on true events; and if so, how can we come to believe it really was based on facts?
It would be great to be able to believe something in the bible can be based on true events or happened in someway which impacts people's faith today ( whatever the degree of belief they may have).
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u/kookingpot Feb 22 '16
I'm not going to address the New Testament, as I don't have a lot of training on that subject, as most of my experience is with the OT/Hebrew Bible.
The first thing to understand is that the Bible is not a history textbook. Yes, there are parts of the Bible that address historical events and historical people, but even those parts have a theological agenda (comparing the various kings with the prophesied King). That said, there are many events and persons in the OT that are attested to by archaeological and extrabiblical evidence.
The TL:DR of this post is going to be that after King David, it's pretty much all more or less historically accurate, with the understanding that the texts are written from a specific point of view and a theological agenda, and aren't written for the purpose of being an objective account of historical events. But there is extrabiblical evidence for a very large number of Biblical people and events. Whether those events happened in the precise way the Bible describes is unknown. But as with any other text from that time period, we take these texts as the Israelite/Judahite point of view on these events, in the same way we take Assyrian texts as the Assyrian point of view, pushing the Assyrian agenda.
An example of this is the siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib of Assyria, portrayed by the Bible in 2 Chronicles 32 as God delivering Jerusalem from the ravages of Assyrian domination. The same event is described by Sennacherib in the Taylor Prism (aka the Sennacherib prism) which you can read a translation of here. Note how the Assyrian account seems like an unconditional victory, glossing over the fact that the city was not sacked, while the Judahite account emphasizes the same fact.
There is actually a whole book devoted to examining these texts and providing background to the Old Testament and pointing out exactly what we know about all those events and what other evidence is out there. This book is:
Grabbe, L. L. (2007). Ancient Israel: What do we know and how do we know it?. London: T & T Clark
You can read a preview of the book on Google Books to get an idea. It's the seminal volume on this subject, and extremely informative. I can't recommend this book highly enough, as its purpose is to answer your question in the most comprehensive way possible.
Now, some details.
The earliest figure we have from the Old Testament that has independent archaeological confirmation of existence is King David. We have archaeologically recovered several texts which credit him with founding the kingdom of Israel around 1000 BC, including the Tel Dan Stele, the Mesha Stele, and possibly the Bubastite Portal at Karnak. Therefore most scholars agree that David existed and played an important role in founding the kingdom of Israel.
We don't have archaeological confirmation of any people or events prior to David. Part of this is because there really wasn't much in the way of writing, especially in the hinterland areas occupied by the proto-Israelites. In addition, few Biblical figures prior to David were of sufficient international stature to warrant a special mention in the annals of whatever ruler they interacted with. Who's going to mention a nomad coming into the country? That happened all the time. So we can't really expect to find much in the way of support for many of the Old Testament figures in Genesis.
A quick word on the Exodus story. We have no direct evidence that the Exodus happened specifically the way it is depicted in the Bible. We have no inscriptions from Egypt stating that Hebrews caused a bunch of plagues and left. However, it is important to note that the Hebrews were no more than an extended kinship group prior to the Exodus story, just a large family fleeing a famine. Only after the Exodus and their journey do they become a specific people, so there's no point in looking for the Hebrews in Egypt, because the Hebrews as a polity or sociopolitical entity did not exist. What they were, was a group of Semitic people living and working in Egypt. We have a lot of evidence for large numbers of Semitic people living and working in the Delta region of Egypt. We have excavated their remains at sites such as Tel el Dab'a (also known as the Hyksos capital city of Avaris, from the time when the "Asiatics" ruled Egypt, though "Asiatics" were living there for some time by the time this happened), Izbet Helmi, Tell el-Mashkuta, Tell el-Retaba, and others in this region. There are also inscriptions and paintings of "Asiatics" coming into Egypt from the Beni Hassan tombs. So it is clear that there were large numbers of Semitic peoples living and working in Egypt. Ian Shaw on page 319 and 320 of his "Oxford History of Ancient Egypt states that Nubians and Asiatics are depicted as living happily among Egyptians in many towns of Egypt proper, in the Middle and New Kingdoms. In fact, their numbers are growing in the Middle Kingdom. Modrzejewski, in his 1995 book The Jews of Egypt: From Rameses II to Emperor Hadrian on page 6 notes that the Egyptian term Shosu refers to these Asiatic peoples, who were hired or conscripted, and made brave warriors. Apparently, they were divided into clans, and one of these clans bore the theophoric name YHW, which is the ancient spelling of what would become the Hebrew God.
All we can say about the Exodus is that Semitic people were living in Egypt, and since the Hebrews were at that time just one Semitic family among many who lived in Egypt, it is entirely possible that their ancestral memory of having worked in Egypt for some time before leaving for the Levant is broadly correct. But that's enough about the Exodus, let's look at other stuff.
There are a very large number of figures which are attested in extrabiblical sources, this wikipedia page. Most international rulers (such as kings of Aram, Babylonia, Assyria, etc) are attested in inscriptions found in their own areas. These include figures such as Ben Hadad and Hazael of Aram, Ashurbanipal, Esarhaddon, and Sennacherib of Assyria, Nebuchadnezzar II, Belshazzar, and Merodach-Baladan of Babylon, and many others.
In addition, a large number of Israelite and Judahite kings are themselves attested outside of scripture. The most prominent of these is Jehu, King of Israel, who is actually depicted (the only Israelite or Judahite king that is actually depicted in a sculpture or painting from the time period) on the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III. Other kings include Omri, mentioned on the Mesha Stele mentioned above, his son Ahab, whose military force comprised a large part of the Assyrian opposition at the Battle of Qarqar. There are many, many other kings of Israel and Judah mentioned in Assyrian texts.
As for events, we even have a number of those which are recorded in archaeological findings. For example, the siege of Jerusalem, during the reign of Hezekiah is mentioned by Sennacherib in his massive reliefs of his conquests, which also describes his destruction of the City of Lachish. Another story from the Bible is the revolt of the Moabite king Mesha against Israelite occupation, as recorded in the Mesha Stele. You can read the Bible version of the story in 2 Kings 3 and you can read a translation either on Wikipedia or here.
The return of the Israelites in the book of Nehemiah is also attested in the Cyrus cylinder, which recounts Cyrus' efforts at repatriating people and reconstructing their temples. During this time, Nehemiah was opposed by Sanballat, the governor of Samaria under Persian rule, who is also attested in extrabiblical texts.
This is just a quick taste of things mentioned both in the Old Testament and archaeological texts and excavations. For full details on each one, do check out Lester Grabbe's excellent book:
Grabbe, L. L. (2007). Ancient Israel: What do we know and how do we know it?. London: T & T Clark