Category Archives: Archaeology

Coins found with Joseph’s name and image on them

Well, for those of you who wonder about the historicity of the Biblical story, more evidence seems to have been discovered in Egypt this past month. The Jerusalem Post has reports that “Joseph-Era” coins have been found by archaeologists:

“According to the report, the significance of the find is that archeologists have found scientific evidence countering the claim held by some historians that coins were not used for trade in ancient Egypt, and that this was done through barter instead. The period in which Joseph was regarded to have lived in Egypt matches the minting of the coins in the cache, researchers said.”

Read the whole article here.

CPX interview with Don Hagner

Lee Irons said:

John Dickson of the Centre for Public Christianity (CPX) interviewed my friend and mentor, Donald Hagner, on various issues related to New Testament history. The interview has been chopped up into smaller bits each around 4 to 8 minutes long.

The interviewer was well prepared and asked excellent questions. He interacted with Don’s areas of expertise (the rabbinic model of oral tradition, the Gospel of Matthew, the apostolic fathers) and proposed questions that gave him an opportunity to answer common skeptical objections to the historicity of Jesus and the Gospels.

It will be evident, as you watch the interview, that Don does not subscribe to a doctrine of inerrancy such as that enshrined in the Chicago Statement. And yet he adopts a believing posture toward the New Testament as historically reliable and apostolic in origin.

Here are the video links below:

The apostle Paul: redneck or revolutionary?
How should we view the apostle Paul?

Doubts about Jesus and the New Testament
Is the existence of Jesus in doubt?

History and faith
How does the Christian historian avoid
being a Christian apologist?

Sources behind the gospels
Does the use of sources by the gospel
writers make their texts suspicious? 

Gospel of Matthew exposed. Part 1
A brief guide to Matthew’s gospel.

Gospel of Matthew exposed. Part 2
How do scholars explain difficult passages
in Matthew

Gospel of Matthew exposed. Part 3
What are the major themes of Matthew’s gospel?

How was the New Testament put together?
How did the ancient church choose which
books to include in the New Testament?

Second Century Literature
Who were the key Christian writers in the
second century?

The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah

Genesis 19:23-29: “The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar. Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven. And he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. But Lot’s wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.

And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord. And he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the valley, and he looked and, behold, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace.

So it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had lived.

Well, isn’t it amazing when we discover records from the past. Read the news article here. Below is an excerpt:

A clay tablet that has baffled scientists for 150 years has been identified as a witness’s account of the asteroid suspected of being behind the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Researchers who cracked the cuneiform symbols on the Planisphere tablet believe that it recorded an asteroid thought to have been more than half a mile across.

The tablet, found by Henry Layard in the remains of the library in the royal place at Nineveh in the mid-19th century, is thought to be a 700BC copy of notes made by a Sumerian astronomer watching the night sky.

He referred to the asteroid as “white stone bowl approaching” and recorded it as it “vigorously swept along”.

Using computers to recreate the night sky thousands of years ago, scientists have pinpointed his sighting to shortly before dawn on June 29 in the year 3123BC.