Can the Old Testament Be Trusted?
By A. T. Jones
THE next point in the book of Second Kings is on the invasion of Samaria, by Shalmaneser (chap. 18 : 9, 10): "Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, came up against Samaria, and besieged it. And at the end of three years they took it; even in the sixth year of Hezekiah, that is the ninth year of Hoshea, king of Israel, Samaria was taken." The Bible chronology places this event "about 723 B. C." And the tablets of Shalmaneser, from the ruins of Nineveh, assert that his reign was B. C. 727-722, and that the "chief event of his reign was the campaign against Samaria. The capture of that city, however, was reserved for his successor, Sargon, in 720." This corresponds with the Scripture date exactly, as the attack was made about 723, and the siege continued three years, which gives the very date of the tablets of Shalmaneser. Besides extending this article to an immoderate length, it would be too tedious a task to give in full all the accounts confirming the Scripture record; in fact it would be only to rewrite that record. Therefore we shall mention the names, and give references to the passages of Scripture with which they correspond. The inscriptions declare that, in 710 B. C., Sargon, king of Assyria, overran Judea, and razed Ashdod to the ground (Isa. 20 : 1); that a year after the Judean war by Sennacherib, Merodach-Baladan was in command at Babylon (Isa. 39 : 1; 2 Kings 20 : 12); that in 740 B. C., Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria, overthrew the ancient kingdom of Damascus (2 Kings 16 : 9), and in his "inscriptions Ahaz of Judah appears among the names of those who acknowledged his sovereignty and paid tribute" (2 Kings 16 : 7-18; Enc. Brit., art. Ahaz; Rawlinson, Third Monarchy, chap. 9, par. 129); that in 730 B. C. he placed his vassal Hoshea on the throne of Samaria in the room of Pekah (2 Kings 15 : 30; 17 : 1); that Ben-hadad reigned in Damascus, while Ahab reigned in Israel, and that Hazael succeeded Ben-hadad (2 Kings 8 : 7-15). No less accurate and circumstantial is the testimony of the "Moabite Stone," discovered in August, 1868, and now familiar to many, which reads as follows:— "I am Mesha, king of Moab [2 Kings 3 : 4]; the Dibonite, my father, reigned over Moab thirty years, and I reigned after my father. Omri was king of Israel [1 Kings 16 : 16]; and he afflicted Moab many days, because Chemosh [1 Kings 11 : 7; Jer. 48 : 7, 13, 46] was angry with his land, and his son succeeded him [1 Kings 16 : 28]; and he also said, I will afflict Moab. In my days he spake thus: And I looked on him and on his house. [2 Kings 1 : 1; 3 : 4, 5.] And Israel kept constantly perishing. And Omri held possession of the land of Medeba, and there dwelt in it Omri and his son and his grandson, forty years. [1 Kings 16 : 23, 29; 2 Kings 3 : 1.] But Chemosh restored it in my days. And the king of Israel built for him Kiriathaim, and I fought against the city and took it, and brought from thence the altar of Jehovah, and put it before Chemosh in Kerioth. And Chemosh said to me, 'Go and take Nebo from Israel.' And I went in the night, and fought against it from the overspreading of the dawn till noon, and took it, and I utterly destroyed it, and I slew all of it, seven thousand, for to Ashtor-Chemosh had I devoted them. And I took from thence the vessels of Jehovah, and I presented them before Chemosh. And the king of Israel built Jahaz, and dwelt in it while he was fighting against me, and Chemosh drove him from before me; and I took from Moab two hundred men, all told, and I attacked Jahaz and took it, joining it to Dibon. Chemosh said to me, 'Go fight against Horonaim.'" Here, then, are the facts, strictly in accordance with the Scripture account of Omri, his son Ahab, and his grandson Jehoram; and of Mesha, king of Moab, and his father's servitude, and his own rebellion. Now it is utterly inconceivable how these statements of the Scripture could have been gathered from any other source than the actual events themselves. For there is absolutely no history of the Moabites, from which they could have been taken in later times. Therefore the perfect agreement between the occurrences as recorded in the Bible, and as recorded by Mesha, king of Moab, upon the enduring stone, proves, to a demonstration, that the records were made at the same time. This, then, carries us back 929 years B. C., as the date of this portion of the sacred word. However, we are not obliged to stop at this date for want of proofs of any earlier, for the decipherment of the inscriptions on the Egyptian monuments and tombs fully corroborates the record in the Pentateuch concerning Joseph and the exodus; so much so, in fact, that it is now considered as a most valuable auxiliary to the full understanding of the Egyptian history, and "Brugsch and Lepsius and Chabas and Mariette treat the Pentateuch as of prime historical importance." "It seemed, a few years ago, an almost incredible story told in Genesis of the campaign of the four kings of Elam and Babylonia—Chedorlaomer, Arioch, Amraphel, and Tidal—against the five kings of Sodom and the plain. The monuments confirm the story wonderfully. They tell us that at just this time [about 1900 or 2000 B. C.] there had been an Elamite (or Median) conquest of Babylonia; they tell us that Laomer was the name of an Elamite god, and that Chedorlaomer means worshiper of Laomer; and we find an account of this very Arioch mentioned on the monuments as king of Elassar, and we learn that his father's name was Chedormabug, and his grandfather's name was Simtissilhak; and we further learn that even earlier than this there had been Babylonian expeditions to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Every difficulty is completely removed, and confirmation supplied." "Abraham, we are told, came from Ur of the Chaldees. Such a town had become utterly lost, except in this Biblical mention of it, and in a pious tradition that had put it in an impossible place. The present generation has rediscovered it, and read its record on the monuments. We find it was the second capital of Babylonia, and was distinguished for its worship of the moon-god. The names could be mentioned of half a dozen of its kings, one of whom was Chedormabug, father of the Arioch of the Bible. Two seals, worn by gentlemen of Ur before the time of Abraham, and bearing the names of the first two kings, are in the British Museum. The Bible geography is proved no fiction."—Wm. Hayes Ward, D. D., in Sunday School Times, vol. 25, no. 42, article, "The Bible and the Monuments." We shall add no more. These evidences, wholly from outside of the Bible, prove beyond any possibility of reasonable doubt, that the Scriptures are authentic records of the things of which they treat, and all the researches in archaeology only serve to heap evidence upon evidence of their absolute truthfulness. It is a law of evidence that—
"Probable proofs, by being added, not only increase the evidence but multiply it."—Butler's Analogy, Part 2, chap. 7, par. 41. "When two independent writers witness to the same event, the probability of that event is increased, not in an arithmetical, but in a geometrical ratio," i. e., "Let it be ten to one that a certain fact is true upon the testimony of one witness, and likewise ten to one that the same fact is true upon the evidence of another, then it is not twenty to one, but one hundred and thirty to one, that the fact is true on the evidence of both. And the evidence to the same point, of a third independent witness of equal credibility with the others, would raise the probability [of its truth] to one thousand three hundred and thirty to one. 'By the mouth of two or three witnesses,' the word, to which such witness is borne, is 'established.'" "And the agreement is the more valuable, if it be (so to speak) incidental and casual—if the two writers are contemporary, and their writings not known to one another; if one only alludes to what the other narrates; if one appears to have been an actor, and the other merely a looker-on; if one gives events, and the other the feelings which naturally arise out of them: in these cases the conviction which springs up in every candid and unprejudiced mind, is absolute; the element of doubt which hangs about all matters of mere belief being reduced to such infinitesimal proportions as to be inappreciable, and so, practically speaking, to disappear altogether."—Rawlinson's Historical Evidences, lecture 1, par. 22, note 52. It is upon precisely such evidence as this that the Bible rests. Therefore, even though it be looked upon as merely a history of the times in which it was written, these evidences prove that the Bible is worthy of all acceptance as a faithful record of absolute facts as they actually occurred. So that it is verily true that he who, in these days, presumes to cast doubt upon the Scripture record, only thereby exposes his ignorance or his willfulness. But this is not all. In the Bible are recorded not only the things that had occurred in the times when its respective books were written, but also things which should occur for ages to follow, even to the end of the world. And when we read that which was written in these books away in ancient times, concerning what should come in ages to follow; and then take up the history of these ages and find events occurring exactly as written hundreds and even thousands of years before; this again, not only confirms the absolute faithfulness of the Scripture but carries it beyond the human for the spring of the knowledge of the facts, the record of which is therein given. Nor yet is this all—nay, it is merely the beginning. For there is a "scheme of doctrine bound up with these facts"—absolutely dependent upon them, inseparably connected with them, and "null and void without them"—which stands fully established, just as soon as the record of the facts is shown to be worthy of acceptance; that doctrine is the doctrine of Jesus Christ the Son of God. Therefore it stands proven to a demonstration that, "All Scripture," whether doctrinal, prophetical, or historical, "IS GIVEN BY INSPIRATION OF GOD." Having by these evidences, which might be greatly multiplied, demonstrated the absolute trustworthiness of the Bible record, we now propose to take our stand upon this "sure foundation," and from it, as our point of observation, to trace, by the outline therein given, the course of the history of this world from the Babylonian ascendancy to our own day. A. T. J.