A Recent Discovery

I know this is a bit different from my normal types of posting but I just had to share this information with you. When Christians are asked to “prove” that the Bible was written when it claim's it was or to verify that it hasn’t been changed through the years, one usually refers to the Dead Sea Scrolls; up until recently that is. The Dead Sea Scrolls were single largest piece of evidence we had that proved the Bible had not only been written when it said it was, but that it had not been changed over the centuries. The Dead Sea Scrolls are recognized to be from 125 B.C. Well move over Dead Sea Scrolls because you’ve got a new big brother.

In 1979 Dr. Gabriel Barkay discovered two small silver scrolls inside a burial cave in the Old City of Jerusalem. Dr. Barkay documented the evidence but the technology was not available to make it clearly understood what it was he had found. Over the past 25 years, technology has vastly improved. These two small silver scrolls have now been tested by numerous independent, non-biased sources (such as NASA’s JPL and University of Southern California) and found to contain the writing of the book of Numbers 6:24-26 (these verses contain a blessing administered by Priests). In addition, these scrolls are found to date to 2600 years ago which makes them 400 years older than the Dead Sea Scrolls. This discovery helps substantiate the fact that the Pentateuch (which is a Hebrew word that refers to the first five books of the Bible [Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy]) existed before King Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the Temple. (Even though the finding is from the book of Numbers only, most Scholars accept the Pentateuch as an entire collection). Although I won’t go into detail here, this has important implications for supporting Biblical accuracy when it comes to creating a historical timeline.

Once again, the Bible can be found to be accurate. Findings such as these validate the claim that the Bible has NOT been changed through the centuries as many will claim. Christians can rest assured that if we can trust the Bible with the small details (such as the wording of a prayer) we can know for certain that when it speaks of monumental events, such as the fact Jesus was God and that he was raised from the dead, it speaks with precision accuracy.

On a side note, I do find it interesting that these findings (which were published in Sept. 2004) haven’t received much attention in the news. Perhaps it was due to non-stop coverage of the election. Regardless of which I have included two resources here for you to get more information on this discovery. Please note that these are not obscure Christian journals but are the liberal CNN and NY Times. Click HERE for the shorter CNN article and Click HERE for the much more detailed NY Times article.