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OUR FAITH in the
foundation stories in Genesis does not rest on the findings of archaeologists,
but rather in the teachings of Jesus and the apostles. Thus the Lord went back
to the creation of Adam and the Divine institution of marriage in
Eden
when the Pharisees posed to him a question on divorce (Mt. 19:3-8). In his
teaching about the Second Coming Jesus referred to Noah and the Flood, and to
the destruction of
Sodom
and the example of
Lot’s
wife (Lk.
17:26-32).
When Paul was expounding the doctrine of the atonement he presented a series of
contrasts between Jesus and Adam, the two federal heads of mankind (Rom.
5:12-19).
In dealing with the apostasy in Corinth Paul goes back to the talking serpent
who deceived Eve with beguiling words (2 Cor. 11:3).
In settling the position of women in the ecclesia, Paul’s doctrines are based on
the miraculous creation of man first, and the formation of woman out of him
second (1 Tim.
2:11-14;
1 Cor. 11:3-12).
Luke, in tracing
Jesus’s ancestry back to Adam, confirms the genealogies of Genesis (3:23-38),
and so does Jude in verse 14 of his epistle.
Abraham is no mythical figure, but one whose life of faith
the disciple must follow as closely as he would that of the Lord himself (Heb.
11:8-19; 12:1,2).
These are just a few examples showing us that Christ’s
disciples cannot be agnostic in their attitude to the early chapters of Genesis,
or choose to believe only the non-miraculous elements in them. As so much
fundamental doctrine rests on these chapters then, with a childlike faith, we
too must accept them as being wholly true and accurate, part of the Word of God
which lives and abides for ever.
Critics proved wrong
When the conclusions of archaeologists
conflict with the Bible the right attitude for us to adopt must surely be that
the Scripture is true and the archaeologists wrong through putting the wrong
interpretation on their findings. We do not have to be arrogant about this, or
to have a head-in-the-sand attitude; rather we should have a quiet conviction
based on our faith in God’s Word.
There are several
examples of erroneous interpretations being made in the past and the Bible being
subsequently proved to be correct. It was said that Moses could not possibly
have written the Pentateuch since writing was not known in his day. This was
based on insufficient information, since forms of writing have since been found
dating from much earlier than Moses,(Footnote
1)
and even slaves in Pharaoh’s day were educated enough to write graffiti on the
walls of the palaces where they worked. It used to be said that
Ur
of the Chaldees was a mythical place as no one was certain of its whereabouts
and the Bible was the principal source of information about it.
But the
excavations of Sir Leonard Woolley at Tell al-Muqayyar confirmed the location of
Ur
and also showed the sophisticated city life that Abram left behind when he
responded to 1 God’s invitation to leave his father’s house for an unknown
country. Critics of the Bible used to say that the events and kings in the
battle recorded in Genesis 14 were unhistorical, but now it is possible to make
plausible identification of these kings from the inscriptions.(Footnotes
2,3)
The findings of archaeologists will never prove the Bible
to be true, but they can help to confirm its historical statements in a few
instances, and give an illuminating background to some of its events. It is in
this sense, therefore, that the following archaeological discoveries relating to
Genesis 1-23 are offered to the reader.
The Creation
 One of the Enuma Elish
tablets giving the Assyrian account of Creation.
British Museum,
Enuma Elish
(meaning ‘when above’) is an Assyrian epic of Creation from the seventh
century B.C. on seven cuneiform tablets now in the British Museum.(Footnotes
4,5)
It begins on the first tablet by saying: “When above the heavens and below the
earth had no name and there was no land . . . “.(Footnote
6)
It goes on to relate how the primeval gods Apsu and Tiamat procreated the other
gods. Eventually war among the gods led to Tiamat being cleaved in two, the
halves forming the heaven above and the earth and underworld below. Clearly
Genesis stands apart from this grotesque account in its simplicity and brevity.
(The Babylonian account occupies twelve A4-size pages of printing; compare this
with the length of Genesis 1-3 in your Bible.) Nevertheless in a perverse way it
confirms that the earth was made supernaturally, and that there was a time when
there was no land on the earth.
Another
Mesopotamian discovery, the Atrahasis Epic (ninth century B.C.), has an account
of the creation of man by the gods, who modelled him from clay mixed with
spittle and the blood of another god.(Footnote
7)
We can see in this epic gross distortions of the Genesis account of man being
formed from the dust of the earth to which he would return. Also man is depicted
as being made by supernatural means; there is no mention of him evolving from
animals.
Another item in
the
British
Museum
is the Temptation Seal (twenty-third century B.C.). It was first published by
George Smith in 1875, who wrote: “One striking and important specimen ... has
two figures sitting one on each side of a date-palm tree, holding out their
hands to the fruit, while at the back of one is a serpent ... it is evident that
a form of the story of the Fall, similar to that in Genesis, was known in early
times in Babylon”.(Footnote
8)
Although the figures are fully clothed, and some treat the seal as having only a
fertility significance, the connection with Adam’s and Eve’s disobedience to the
Divine command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is very
striking.
The Flood
Legends of the
Flood are apparently very numerous,(Footnote
9)
and one such from
Babylon
is known as the Gilgamesh Epic (seventh century B.C.).(Footnote
10)
The main theme of this epic (on eleven cuneiform tablets) is the search by the
hero Gilgamesh for immortality. The eleventh tablet is in the form of a story
told to Gilgamesh by Utnapishtim, who had already gained immortality. He
narrates how the gods became angry at the nuisance (noise, apparently!) caused
on the earth by men, and decided to destroy them with a flood. The god Ea
favoured Utnapishtim and warned him to build a ship and to bring into it all his
family, his treasures, and living creatures of every kind. He did this and so
escaped a prodigious storm, leading to a flood, which destroyed all the rest of
mankind. The storm ended on the seventh day, and on the twelfth day land emerged
from the waters. The boat came to rest on Mount Nisir (in Khurdistan), and
Utnapishtim sent out in turn a dove, a swallow, and a raven, only the raven not
returning. Finally Utnapishtim emerged from the boat and offered a sacrifice to
the gods.
We can see in this
account points of comparison with the true account in Genesis 6- 9. The major
points of difference are the names, the chronology and the birds sent out.
However, Dr Kitchen(Footnote
11)
points out nine points of difference, and from our standpoint the eleventh
tablet of the Gilgamesh Epic is a corruption of Genesis. The Atrahasis Epic,
mentioned previously in connection with the creation of man, also has a briefer
account of the Flood, with fewer details than the Gilgamesh Epic.
One of the tablets
of the Gilgamesh Epic.
British
Museum.
Chronologies in
Genesis 5 and 11 have frequently been criticised, even by some Christadelphians,
as being unreliable, and the life spans impossible. However, The Sumerian King
List(Footnote
12)
is a manuscript giving the genealogy of the Sumerian kings before and after the
Flood, just as the Bible traces the genealogy and life spans of the seed of the
woman from Seth to Noah, and then after the Flood from Noah to Abram. The years
of the reigns seem rather far fetched (one supposedly reigning for 28,000
years), but there has been independent confirmation from other sources of the
existence of at least one of these kings,(Footnote
13)
Enmebaragisi king of Kish, who was alleged to have reigned for 900 years. This
is similar to the life spans of several of the antediluvians in Seth’s line in
Genesis 5.
Origin of the nations
The origin of the
nations in Genesis 10 is indirectly supported by archaeological findings as well
as by our modern maps. As an example, take
Canaan’s
descendants (vv. 15-19). His first son,
Sidon,
is preserved in the name of a coastal city in
Lebanon.
The name Arkite (v.17) is still preserved in the location Tell ’Arqua, which is
also mentioned in the Tel el-Amarna letters and on the Assyrian inscriptions of
Shalmaneser and Tiglath-pileser. The Sinite name is to be seen in the place
names Nahr as-Sinn and Sinn ad-dar, both in
Lebanon.
Zemarite has
changed to Sumra (on the north coast of
Tripoli),
and this also is mentioned in Assyrian texts. Hamath, a city on the
Orontes,
has become
Hamah
on modern maps.
The
tower
of
Babel
has not been discovered, although the site of a ziggurat at
Babylon
has been identified as a water-and-reed-filled hole in the ground, the baked
bricks from which it was built having been taken for use elsewhere.(Footnote
14)
One of the best-preserved ziggurats (temple-towers)
was found in
Ur
of the Chaldees by Sir Leonard Woolley. In his book Tells, Tombs and
Treasures R. T. Boyd wrote: “A clay tablet was unearthed which gave the
following account of a ziggurat: ‘the erection of this tower highly offended all
the gods. In a night they [threw down] what man had built
and impeded their progress. They were scattered abroad and their speech
was strange’”. There are similarities in this account with Genesis 11:8: “So the
LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they
left off to build the city”. In the library of
Ebla
a tablet was found which was a dictionary of forty-two
languages. These tablets are dated around 2300 B.C.,(Footnote
15)
before the time of Abraham, and give confirmation of the Bible record of the
confusion of tongues in Genesis 11:7.
Abraham
The time of
Abraham and
Ur
of the Chaldees has received much attention in archaeology books.(Footnote
16)
Works of art, jewels and gold, comfortable two-storey houses, town drains—all
were part of everyday life at
Ur.
Many commercial transactions such as receipts and contracts have been found,
showing that
Abram’s faith was put to the test when he was asked to leave this sophisticated
civilisation to become a nomad travelling to an unknown land.
The Stele of
Hammurabi (eighteenth century B.C.) contains the laws of this king of
Babylon,
whom some have equated with the Amraphel of Genesis 14:1. Some of these laws are
reflected in the Genesis narrative of Abraham’s life. For example, the rights of
children by more than one wife were safeguarded. If a slave-wife had borne
children she was not to be expelled or sold.(Footnote
17)
In Genesis
21:10,11
Abraham was unwilling to send Hagar and Ishmael away, not only because he was a
just man, but also because it was against the customs prevailing in his day. He
needed Divine urging to make him send them away, as
we can read in Genesis 21:12-14.
Another set of
laws can be found in the Nuzi Tablets, from the ancient city of
Nuzi,
including one about the childless owner of an estate.
Abraham, it will be remembered, made over his estate to Eliezer of
Damascus, his faithful servant (Gen. 15:2-4).The
practice is described in the Nuzi Tablets(Footnote
18)
whereby an adopted son could perpetuate the family estate. But if a natural son
was born subsequent to the adoption then the adopted son was disinherited, just
as happened in the case of Abraham when the son of his old age, Isaac, was born
the heir of promise.
 Tablet from
Ur
of the Chaldees describing crop yields.
British
Museum.
 Harp from
Ur
of the Chaldees.
British
Museum.
Finally, the
transaction related in Genesis 23, when Abraham sought to buy the
cave
of
Machpelah,
is in accordance with Hittite Laws discovered in inscriptions and tablets.(Footnote
19)
Abraham only wanted the cave, but Ephron the Hittite wanted him to buy the field
and its trees as well. Why? Ephron was being more cunning than generous, for it
is now known that by Hittite law the owner of a field had to pay a tax on it.
If Abraham bought only the cave Ephron would still have had
to pay the tax on the field.
We can understand, therefore, his insistence that Abraham bought all.
The foregoing are a few examples of how some archaeology
throws light on and confirms the historical setting of the early Genesis
narrative. Although there are no inscriptions bearing the names of the
patriarchs, the events and places in which they moved are wholly consistent with
what archaeology says about the period. May the day come soon when men will not
cast doubt on God’s Word, but accept it as it truly is: the Word of God which is
true from the beginning and for all time.
(I thank Brother John Collyer for his help and encouragement in
writing this article.—J.N.)
FOOTNOTES
1. T. C. Mitchell,
The Bible in the
British
Museum.
British
Museum
Publications, 1988, p. 13.
2. W. H. Boulton,
Babylonia
“Ancient
Lands
and the Bible” series.
Sampson Low, date unknown, p. 44.
3. K. A. Kitchen, The
Bible in its World. Paternoster Press, 1977.
4. J. A. Thompson, The
Bible and Archaeology. Paternoster Press, 1982, pp. 13,14.
5. T. C. Mitchell, op. cit.,
ρ. 69.
6. Ancient
Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament.
Edited by J. B. Pritchard.
Princetown
University
Press, 1950, pp. 60-72.
7. T. C. Mitchell, op. cit., pp. 26,27.
8. G. Smith, The
Chaldean Account of Genesis. 1875, pp. 90-91.
9. J. Whitcomb and
Η. Μ. Morris, The Genesis Flood.
Presbyterian Reformed Publishing Co., 1962, p. 48. In this classic work the
authors quote Sir James George Frazier, who describes over one hundred flood
traditions from
Europe,
Asia,
Australia,
the
East Indies,
Melanesia,
Micronesia,
Polynesia,
South, Central and
North America
and
East
Africa.
Whitcomb and Morris also point out the differences between the Genesis account
of the Flood and the Gilgamesh Epic (pp. 38-41).
10. T. C. Mitchell, op. cit., p. 70, and J. B.
Pritchard, op. cit., pp. 93-7.
11. K. A. Kitchen, op. cit., pp. 29-30.
12. J. B. Pritchard, op. cit., pp. 265-6.
13. K. A. Kitchen, op. cit., pp. 31-4.
14. T. C. Mitchell, op. cit., p. 25.
15. K. A. Kitchen, op. cit., pp. 37-55.
16. W. Keller,
The Bible as History.
Hodder and
Stoughton,
1956.
Sir Leonard Woolley, Ur of the Chaldees. Penguin
Books, 1950.
17. K. A. Kitchen, op. cit., pp. 69-70.
18. Ibid., p. 70.
19. Ibid.,
p. 71. J. Finegan, Light from the Ancient Past.
Oxford
University
Press, 1959, p. 146.
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