Don Stewart
Has the Bible Ever Proved the Critics Wrong?

Archaeological testimony has been able to cause some startling reversals of Old Testament criticism. They include the following examples.

Until the twentieth century, it was believed that Moses could not have written the first five books of the Old Testament because writing was said to be virtually unknown or, at least, not commonly used at his time.

Modern archaeological discoveries, however, show that writing was in common use prior to the time of Moses, and that Moses had the capacity to write the first five books of the Old Testament.

An ancient people, known as the Hittites, are mentioned some fifty times in the Old Testament. For a long time they were considered to be fabricated by the Bible because the only evidence of their existence came from the Old Testament. Liberal scholars assumed the biblical references to the Hittites were historically worthless.

Archaeologist A. H. Sayce was the first scholar to identify the Hittite people from a non-biblical source. In 1876 he released his information from his study of the ancient monuments and revolutionized critical theories concerning the Hittites.

In the twentieth century, much more information about the Hittites came to light confirming the historical accuracy of the Old Testament. The fact of their existence is beyond all doubt.

The fifth chapter of the Book of Daniel mentions a ruler named Belshazzar. For a long time this reference was assumed to be a made-up name by the author of Daniel who supposedly wrote hundreds of years after the alleged events took place. This, of course, would make the author of Daniel not the biblical Daniel but rather some forger.

However discoveries in Babylon have shown that Belshazzar did indeed exist as ruler in the fifth century B.C. Therefore the author was historically accurate. Consequently it gives us no reason to doubt that he was exactly whom he claimed to be - Daniel the prophet.

These examples can be multiplied. What it teaches us is that when something is recorded in Scripture it should be taken seriously and not rejected because of lack of confirmation in secular historical sources.

On a number of occasions the Bible has proved the critics wrong. For example, there was a common opinion that writing did not exist during the time of Moses. We now know that writing went back to the time of Abraham.

There is also the example of the Hittites. Their existence is recorded over fifty times in the Old Testament but until the middle of the nineteenth century they were unknown apart from the Bible. This led many to question their existence. However we now know that the Hittites were a great empire in the ancient world. Again the Bible is proved to be correct and the critics wrong.

The existence of Belshazzar as a ruler in Babylon was denied even though we have the clear testimony of Daniel 5. Today no one doubts that this man lived an ruled in Babylon - just as the Bible says.

These, along with other example show that the Bible should not be disregarded when it mentions something that has not yet been confirmed by non-biblical sources.