09-01-2024
Archeology and the Bible – Part 2 - The Resurrection of Nineveh
Episode 246 – Archeology and the Bible – Part 2 – The Resurrection of Nineveh
Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God.
Script:
One day the LORD told Jonah, the son of Amittai, to go to the great city of Nineveh and say to the people, “The LORD has seen your terrible sins. You are doomed!”
Jonah, Chapter 1, verses 1 and 2, Contemporary English Version
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VK: Hello and welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. I’m Victoria K. All of us at Anchored by Truth are excited to be with you at the start of a New Year and a new series. As we often talk, the Christian faith in America has been subjected to more challenges in the last couple of decades than it was in the first 225 years of the country’s existence. One comment that we hear frequently in the popular media – that is completely false – is that the Bible is a book filled with “myth and fairy tales.” Nothing could be further from the truth and this is a claim that is easily refuted. And one way it can be refuted is by knowing that the Bible contains a large body of reliable history. And one way to demonstrate that the history the Bible contains is reliable is by pointing to archeological discoveries. So, RD has entitled this series “Archeology and the Bible” and we have RD, who is an author and the founder of Crystal Sea Books, in the studio today. RD, in our first episode in this series you pointed out that archeological finds can be a valuable source of support for the accuracy of the history that the Bible reports. Despite the fact that popular culture has tried to dismiss the connection the truth is the relationship between the Bible and archeology has been mutually supportive. Many scholars, including ones who weren’t Christian, have used the Bible as a source document when planning or conducting their excavations. The Bible was and is widely regarded as an important source of information about ancient peoples and cultures. The trend to dismiss the Bible’s accuracy in matters of dates and places in the Mideast has become popular among skeptics but it is completely out of sync with how the Bible was viewed among professionals. In fact, the Bible’s history has been shown to be accurate even when doubted and you said that’s something you wanted to illustrate today, right?
RD: Absolutely. But before we get into that I would also like to welcome the listeners to our show. Anchored by Truth’s sole purpose is to equip believers to be able to answer the question “how can we be sure the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God.” And one way to do that is to use confirmed archeological discoveries to show that the Bible’s historical reports are accurate even when they have been doubted by secular scholars. Today I want to revisit one of the most famous examples of the Bible getting history right even when skeptics for centuries dismissed the Bible’s report.
VK: So, since our opening scripture was from the book of Jonah I’m guessing that today you want to talk about the discovery of the city of Nineveh in the 19th century. Nineveh was the capital of Assyrian empire and was one of the most prominent cities in the ancient world. You wouldn’t think that a city as important as Nineveh could get lost in history but it did. An article on the United Church of God’s website says this: “Nineveh, the capital city, fell to the Babylonians in 612 B.C. About 50 years after its peak, [the Assyrian Empire had] collapsed and virtually vanished from history. By the time of Jesus Christ and the apostles, no physical evidence of Nineveh could be seen. Lucian of Samosata ([who lived from] A.D. 120-180), a Greek writer, lamented: "Nineveh has perished. No trace of it remains. No one can say where once it existed" ... Such a lack of visible remains led some scholars of the 19th century to express skepticism that Nineveh or any part of the Assyrian Empire even existed, much less dominated a significant part of the world.”
RD: Yes. From around 900 BC to 600 BC the Assyrian Empire was the dominant military power in the Mideast. Some scholars believe that during this time period it was the most formidable military power in the world. But as you just quoted, in the waning years of the 7th century BC, Assyria began to weaken and it ultimately fell to the Babylonians under King Nabopolassar. The fall of the Assyrian Empire isn’t all that remarkable because if we learn anything from history it’s that all empires, regardless of their power during their peak years, always weaken and ultimately fall. The Assyrians fell to the Babylonians, the Babylonians to the Persians, the Persians to the Greeks, and the Greeks to the Romans. And even the mighty Roman Empire which lasted even longer than the Assyrians or any of its predecessors ultimately collapsed under the weight of social decay and external pressures. What is somewhat remarkable is that the Assyrians disappeared so completely that secular history completely lost sight of them.
VK: But, let’s be clear, in addition to the Bible recording the existence and greatness of the Assyrian Empire the Bible also had prophesied the destruction and disappearance of the Assyrian Empire. The Bible prophesied that God would use the Assyrians to punish His people because of their drift into idolatry. But at the same time God also told the Assyrians they would be punished in turn because of their arrogance. For instance, Isaiah, chapter 10, verses 15 through 19 record God saying to the Assyrians, “But can the ax boast greater power than the person who uses it? Is the saw greater than the person who saws? Can a rod strike unless a hand moves it? Can a wooden cane walk by itself? Therefore, the Lord, the LORD of Heaven’s Armies, will send a plague among Assyria’s proud troops, and a flaming fire will consume its glory. The LORD, the Light of Israel, will be a fire; the Holy One will be a flame. He will devour the thorns and briers with fire, burning up the enemy in a single night. The LORD will consume Assyria’s glory like a fire consumes a forest in a fruitful land; it will waste away like sick people in a plague. Of all that glorious forest, only a few trees will survive — so few that a child could count them!” That’s from the New Living Translation.
RD: And Isaiah was not the only Old Testament prophet to warn Assyria of their coming destruction. Why don’t you read Nahum, chapter 2, verses 11 through 13?
VK: Those verses say, “Where now is that great Nineveh, that den filled with young lions? It was a place where people—like lions and their cubs— walked freely and without fear. The lion tore up meat for his cubs and strangled prey for his mate. He filled his den with prey, his caverns with his plunder. ‘I am your enemy!’ says the LORD of Heaven’s Armies. ‘Your chariots will soon go up in smoke. Your young men will be killed in battle. Never again will you plunder conquered nations. The voices of your proud messengers will be heard no more.”
RD: Listen to the last portion of what you read from Isaiah. God told the Assyrians that their “glorious forest” would be reduced to so few trees that a child could count them. Then in Nahum God said, “the voices of your proud messengers will be heard no more.” These are essentially poetic ways of God telling the Assyrians they would be utterly destroyed and they were. But what we want to focus on today is that after those prophesies were fulfilled, and Nineveh was destroyed by the Babylonians, it wasn’t just reduced to a vassal state – as often happened. Nineveh and the Assyrians were so devastated that they disappeared. This huge city that was located in modern day Iraq literally disappeared into the sands. As the Greek writer you quoted said, “Nineveh has perished. No trace of it remains. No one can say where once it existed." Lucian lived in the 2nd century AD – almost 1,900 years ago. At least at that time secular history remembered Nineveh. But by the 19th century AD even that memory had disappeared – or at least it was greatly doubted. The one source, though, that unequivocally preserved the memory of the Assyrians and Nineveh was the Bible.
VK: Well, one reason some secular historians may have begun to doubt the existence of an actual Nineveh was because one Bible book in which Nineveh plays a prominent role is the book of Jonah. Jonah may be the most famous of the Minor Prophets because his book contains one of the best known stories in the Bible – a man is saved from drowning by being swallowed by an extremely large sea creature and then tossed up on land. That same man later preaches to a pagan city and in 3 days converts the whole city including the king. That story sound mythical. So, maybe historians reasoned that the whole book of Jonah was mythical including the existence of Nineveh and the Assyrian empire?
RD: And that’s certainly possible even though Nineveh and the Assyrian Empire are also mentioned in several other books of the Bible. But one thing the skeptics could take comfort from was that until the mid-19th century there was no physical evidence of Nineveh’s existence. Physically, Nineveh had just vanished. And archeology, as we know it today, was just beginning to emerge in the 19th century. And for the opening decades of the 19th century Nineveh still remained undiscovered. But then all that changed. The online Encyclopedia Britannica has this to say about the discovery of Nineveh. “The first person to survey and map Nineveh was the archaeologist Claudius J. Rich in 1820, a work later completed by Felix Jones and published by him in 1854. Excavations have been undertaken intermittently since that period by many persons. … Sir Henry Layard during 1845–51 discovered the palace of Sennacherib and took back to England an unrivalled collection of stone bas-reliefs together with thousands of tablets inscribed in cuneiform from the great library of Ashurbanipal.”
VK: So, at least one of the names you just read should be familiar to any student of the Bible, right?
RD: Right. Sennacherib was one of the most famous of the kings of Assyria and is mentioned in several places of the Bible.
VK: Such as in the historical books of Kings and Chronicles.
RD: Yes. Sennacherib is well known to Bible readers because at one point he invaded the kingdom of Judah with the intent to make it part of the Assyrian Empire.
VK: Let’s remind listeners that during the time that David and his son, Solomon, were the kings of Israel the nation was unified. But when Solomon’s son took over the kingdom split in two. After that the northern kingdom was called Israel and the southern kingdom was called Judah. The northern kingdom was ruled by a series of idolatrous kings and was eventually conquered by the Assyrians in 722 B.C. The Assyrians deported the Israelites and resettled some other people into that territory. Judah remained an independent kingdom although it paid annual tributes to the Assyrians. But around 701 BC the Assyrians invaded Judah. 2 Chronicles, chapter 32, verse 1 says that the Assyrian king “laid siege to the fortified cities, thinking to conquer them for himself.”
RD: Right. The Assyrian king who laid siege to the cities of Judah was Sennacherib which the Bible tells us. But until the middle of the 19th century secular historians weren’t even sure that Sennacherib was a historical figure. But as the entry from the Encyclopedia Britannica told us once Sir Henry Layard discovered the great library of Assurbanipal all that changed. That library contained thousands of clay cuneiform tablets, including tablets that described Sennacherib’s invasion of Judah. And those tablets provided clear confirmation of the accuracy of the Bible’s text.
VK: That same article from the United Church of God’s website says this. “Assyrian records of these events quote the King … of Assyria boasting of his devastating invasion of Judah: ‘Forty-six of [Hezekiah's] strong walled towns and innumerable smaller villages...I besieged and conquered...As for Hezekiah, the awful splendor of my lordship overwhelmed him’ … [the Assyrian records] noted that [the king] had made Hezekiah ‘a prisoner in Jerusalem, his royal residence, like a bird in a cage.’”
RD: Right. The article goes on to say, “The biblical record agrees with Sennacherib's account of the Assyrian invasion and notes the desperation of the kingdom of Judah as the Assyrians laid siege to Jerusalem, their last surviving stronghold. However, the Bible continues the story where the Assyrian records are silent. With Jerusalem facing imminent destruction, the people of Judah, led by King Hezekiah, prayed fervently to God (Isaiah 37:15-20) and were miraculously delivered against overwhelming odds.” In both the books of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles the Bible tells us that Hezekiah and the people’s prayers brought deliverance.
VK: 2 Kings, chapter 19, verses 32 through 37 say this. “Therefore this is what the Lord says concerning the king of Assyria: ‘He will not enter this city or shoot an arrow here. He will not come before it with shield or build a siege ramp against it. By the way that he came he will return; he will not enter this city, declares the Lord. I will defend this city and save it, for my sake and for the sake of David my servant.’ That night the angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning—there were all the dead bodies! So [the] king of Assyria broke camp and withdrew. He returned to Nineveh and stayed there. One day, while he was worshiping in the temple of his god … his sons … killed him with the sword, and they escaped to the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son succeeded him as king.” [EH-SAHR-HEH-DOHN]
RD: And the records that were brought back from the great library confirmed this account. Sennacherib carefully recorded a list of the cities he captured and destroyed, but one city is conspicuously absent—Jerusalem. Sennacherib talks about besieging Hezekiah in the city—not of taking it or Hezekiah, Judah's king. So, after almost 1,900 years of silence that prompted the secular world to doubt the authenticity of the Bible the Bible’s record was again proven to be true. The cuneiform tablets unearthed from Assurbanipal’s great library confirmed the Bible’s record of Sennacherib’s interactions with Judah exactly as described.
VK: So, this reinforces one of the big points that we made in our first episode on “Archeology and the Bible.” One very important role archeology plays with respect to the Bible is to help affirm the reliability of the Bible’s historical reports. That’s what happened when archeologists began excavating at the site of the ancient city of Nineveh. At first they just found the ruins of the city. But when Henry Layard found the library the tablets in the library confirmed many of the details contained in the Bible’s historical records. These included the names of kings from both countries, the fact that Assyria invaded Judah and conquered many Judean cities, and that the Assyrians never conquered Jerusalem. The Assyrian records also confirmed that the invading king was murdered by two of his own sons and that a 3rd son inherited the empire.
RD: Yes. Even though secular history lost sight of Nineveh for almost 2 millennia the Bible never did. But, let’s get back to the book of Jonah. We started out noting that one of the books of the Bible in which Nineveh features prominently is Jonah but some of the other elements of Jonah are so unusual that it made the book seem more fiction. But let’s show that even one of the historical details contained in book of Jonah was shown to be accurate. In Jonah, chapter 3, verse 3, Jonah gives us a detail about the city that seems unlikely.
VK: Jonah, chapter 3, verse 3 says, in part, “This time Jonah obeyed the LORD’s command and went to Nineveh, a city so large that it took three days to see it all.” That’s from the New Living Translation. The New International Version says, “Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go through it.” What you’re saying is that that seems like a very large city if it takes 3 days for a person to walk across it. There aren’t that many modern cities that you couldn’t walk across in a day or two. So, a city that takes 3 days to cross seems improbable.
RD: But, as improbable as it may seem, archeology has shown that even this detail from the book of Jonah is correct. Genesis, chapter 10, verses 11 and 12 tell us about the founding of Nineveh. It says, “From that land Nimrod went to Assyria, and built Nineveh, and Rehoboth-Ir, and Calah, 12and [Nimrod built] Resen, which is between Nineveh and Calah; all these [combined to form] the great city [Nineveh].” That’s from the Amplified Bible. A Wikipedia article on the city of Nineveh notes that “The ruins of Kuyunjiq, Nimrud, Karamlesh, and Khorsabad for the four corners of an irregular quadrilateral. . The ruins of the ‘great city’ Nineveh, … [is] included within the parallelogram [formed] by lines drawn from the one to the other, [the Biblical reference in Jonah is] generally regarded as consisting of these four sites.” Furthermore, excavations have revealed that, as was common in ancient times, there were defensive fortifications in the area that lay well outside the walls of the Nineveh proper. These defensive fortifications were probably like outposts that could be used both to slow the advance of an oncoming army as well as give early warning to the main city. In walking from the outposts on one side of the region to the other archeologists found that it did indeed take a few days to cross from one outer ring of fortifications to the one on the opposite side.
VK: Also, even in our day it’s common to refer to a large area by the name of a city that dominates it. If you look at a map we know that the New York City includes Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Staten Island, and so forth. But no one would bat an eye is someone from Florida just told their friends they were travelling to New York even though they might wind up in the Bronx. So, when the Hebrew writer said that Nineveh was a very great city that it took three days to cross the writer was just using the same kind of descriptive language we use today.
RD: Agreed. In fact, the use of that kind of informal descriptive language adds to the authenticity of the book of Jonah. If someone had been contriving a pious fraud about a man being miraculously delivered by a fish from drowning before converting the capital city of his enemies it’s unlikely they would have been cavalier about describing the people who were to be converted. But someone recording a true, though remarkable, tale of conversion, whether the writer was Jonah or someone else, will write using the conversational conventions of their day.
VK: What we’ve been talking about in this episode of Anchored by Truth is summed up well in the article from the United Church of God. The article says, “the only historical source in those days that verified the existence of the empire was the Bible. The Old Testament histories and prophecies spoke about Assyria. Jesus proclaimed the existence of Nineveh as a historical fact (Matthew 12:41). Yet some scholars disputed the testimony of Jesus and the prophets—that is, until ‘one spectacular decade in the middle of the nineteenth century...[when] Austen Henry Layard and Paul Emile Botta rediscovered in northern Iraq the ancient remains of three Assyrian cities [including Nineveh] and evidence of the military panoply that had crushed all resistance from the Tigris to the Nile. The Assyrian empire...in all its awesome power had been resurrected through archaeology.’”
RD: So, the book of Jonah and the other books that mention Assyria and Nineveh provide a clear and easily understandable example of archeology producing evidence that demonstrated the truth of the Bible’s history – even when evidence had disappeared for a long time. Secular historians had concluded that the absence of evidence was evidence of absence. But it wasn’t.
VK: The point you’re making is that is important to not discount the reliability of the Bible just because secular culture or so-called experts would like to do so.
RD: Exactly. The Bible is the Word of God and as such it is trustworthy. But God has not asked us to suspend the use of ordinary human tools such as archeology, science, and logic in our pursuit of understanding the Bible. It is not unreasonable to for an honest skeptic to ask the question, “what evidence is there that the Bible is the Word of God?” That’s not an unreasonable question. What is unreasonable is for us to provide example after example of scientific fact or archeological discoveries supporting the Bible only for the skeptic to contend that the evidence doesn’t exist. There comes a point where a request for evidence dissolves into a simple unwillingness to accept what the evidence is saying.
VK: So, when we encounter a book like Jonah it’s not unreasonable to approach certain parts of it – a man being swallowed and kept alive by a giant fish or whale – with an initial skepticism. Men being swallowed by giant fish isn’t an everyday occurrence for us. But the fact that it is unusual does not mean it’s impossible. And when we begin looking at elements within the book of Jonah that we can test directly we find out that a fair test tells us that the writer of Jonah was writing history not myth.
RD: Right. In our first episode in this series we pointed out that another amazing story contained in the Bible, that of David and Goliath – that might on first blush look legendary – in fact is historically accurate in the details it reports. The book of Jonah reinforces the points we made in our first episode in this series. Archeology can play two very important roles in our study of the Bible and that’s why we’re doing this series. Archeology can help skeptics see that the Bible is not, in fact, a book of “myth and fairy tale.” It is a book firmly set in place and time and its reports of those places and times are trustworthy. Archeology can also help us expand our understanding of the places and times of the Bible and of the people, societies, and cultures that the Bible describes. This helps us understand the Bible’s messages more clearly.
VK: Well, This sounds like a great time to pray. Today let’s listen to a prayer for our friends and neighbors who have not yet come to know Christ as their savior. Just as God converted the people of Nineveh through Jonah’s preaching, we can pray that the Lord will convert the lost of our day through our own preaching. Only God can change the human heart but He most often does it by using human instruments, like us, as part of His great work of redemption.
---- PRAYER FOR THE SPIRITUALLY LOST
VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.”
If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not perfect but our Boss is!”
(Bible Quotes from the Contemporary English Version)
Jonah, Chapter 1, verses 1 and 2, Contemporary English Version
A Staggering Archaelogical Discovery: The Mighty Assyrian Empire Emerges From the Dust | United Church of God (ucg.org)
Nineveh | History, Map, & Significance | Britannica
Topical Bible: Ashurbanipal (biblehub.com)
Nineveh - Wikipedia
