Modern Archeology and the Bible

For millions of years, man has had a desire to know what happened before him. He desired to know from where he originated, how did people live or survive during the time before him and what led to change between generations. Our present task is to show how this idea of archeology is related to the Bible and biblical studies. First of all, archeology is defined as the systematic study of past human life and culture by the recovery and examination of remaining material evidence, such as graves, buildings, tools, and pottery. For years, humans have sought to prove the existence of certain events and places that are found in the Bible using archeology. Archeologists have constructed countless archeological digs in areas that they think biblical occurrences happened in an attempt to prove or disprove the accuracy of the text . In order to do this, they used two methods, horizontal and vertical stratigraphy. Stratigraphy is defined as the study of rock, especially the distribution, deposition and age of sedimentary rocks. There has been some controversy surrounding the types of stratigraphy as to which is more effective and accurate. From what I have read, vertical stratigraphy refers to the layering of deposits and analyzing findings based on where they are located, with the belief that the bottom holds the older findings and the top has the latter. With horizontal stratigraphy, it refers to the spatial segregation of deposits. Archeology dates back to time where the Byzantine and Crusader Pilgrims sought artifacts from the Holyland and the Renaissance (1400-1700) where they were infatuated with classical antiquity. Some of the famous early explorers included Belzoni, who Indiana Jones is loosely based on, Wooley who discovered the Tomb of Queen PU-ABI, and Schliemann who discovered the fallen city of Troy. Personally, if given the opportunity, I would welcome the chance to participate in an archeological excavation of a biblical site because it would require traveling to an unfamiliar area, and give me a first hand opportunity to learn about history.
Archeology is also connected to another element in the Bible and that is creation myths. All of the creation myths that I have read thus far, have one thing in common and that is their goal to attempt to explain the reason for things being as they are. For example, in Genesis, it is explained that women will have pain in childbirth because of the fall of man. Right now, my favorite creation myth is the one about Gilgamesh and the Serpent. In summary, the Babylonians had a popular epic hero called Gilgamesh. In one story, Gilgamesh heard about a plant that held the secret to immortality. By much effort, he pulled it up from the bottom of the sea. On the way to taking it back to his people, he set the plant aside at a spring where he stopped to take a bath. Suddenly a serpent came up from the water and snatched the plant. As it returned to the water, it shed its skin. Thus the serpent robbed humans of the potential for rejuvenation and acquired an ability to renew itself by shedding its skin. This creation story held my interest because it holds a direct connection to the way people are so caught up in appearance and rejuvenation and are still looking for a miracle plant to “turn back the hands of time”.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 28th, 2006 at 6:49 pm and is filed under Class Comments, Week 03: Your Project. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.