Unearthing the Bible with Dr. Titus Kennedy

[00:00:00] thanks for tuning in today this is kevin conover you’re listening to educate for life radio we’re broadcasting down here in southern california

[00:00:06] i’m in san diego we’re on k praise 12 10 a.m every saturday at noon and uh we’ve got all kinds of fantastic

[00:00:12] shows you know uh one of my favorite subjects to talk about is archaeology and the bible i find it

[00:00:18] really really interesting i’ve had quite a few different archaeologists on the show

[00:00:24] including dr scott stripling dr doug petrovich dr bryant wood and today we’ve got um

[00:00:30] with us dr titus kennedy and uh he’s recently come out with a fantastic book unearthing the bible

[00:00:37] if you want to check it out you can you can it’s all over the the web you can get it on amazon you can get it on

[00:00:42] his page and uh just a little bit of background uh on dr kennedy uh he is a research

[00:00:49] fellow at the discovery institute he’s an adjunct professor at biola university and shepherd semini seminary and

[00:00:55] he’s done archaeological documentaries and curricula including drive through history and the bible on earth

[00:01:01] and uh just recently uh dr kennedy you are just finishing up a new text excavating

[00:01:08] the evidence for jesus a new book you’re coming out with and um how’s that been going so far how

[00:01:14] are you feeling about that when should we expect to be able to see that uh it’s going well the manuscript

[00:01:19] is completed now it’s just final edits and formatting i believe they’re going to

[00:01:27] put it on pre-order on amazon sometime around september and so look for it a few months after that

[00:01:33] as it’s released that’s great now uh you know you you wrote unearthing the

[00:01:39] bible which um i think is an incredibly useful book um which did you enjoy more

[00:01:44] writing unearthing the bible or excavating the evidence for jesus i probably enjoyed the writing of

[00:01:52] unearthing the bible more but i i enjoyed the the research for excavating evidence for

[00:01:58] jesus more because i got to really dig into details there and grapple

[00:02:04] with some debates and some contentious issues about

[00:02:10] chronologies and site locations and which artifacts should we consider

[00:02:16] as useful or even legitimate yeah yeah you know that’s really

[00:02:21] interesting to me because um you know as you’re exploring archaeology and i want to ask you this about

[00:02:27] you know how you got into archaeology and what what motivated you um to begin studying this but you know

[00:02:33] for a lot of people when you’re digging digging up this these facts you’re looking at this stuff metaphorically

[00:02:38] digging up right the the evidence for the truth of the bible sometimes people wonder well am i going

[00:02:43] to find something that’s actually going to disprove the bible it’s actually going to cast doubt on the bible and we see this

[00:02:49] pop up every every once in a while on pop culture and pop media um somebody says uh you know they they

[00:02:55] they found something that gives us evidence that jesus actually um you know did die or they

[00:03:01] or and never rose from the dead or whatever it was how has that been for you as you’ve been

[00:03:06] exploring you know all this evidence i mean you’re doing real archaeology over in in uh israel and other places and um

[00:03:15] have you ever gotten to a point where you’re like whoa i feel like this might you know cast doubt on the

[00:03:21] bible have you ever experienced something like that there’s certainly cases you come across

[00:03:26] where there’s there’s data that could be interpreted a number of ways or maybe

[00:03:32] there’s a book or a journal article out that is making a claim about

[00:03:38] some contradiction and oftentimes you need to look into those and and

[00:03:44] grapple with them and see what’s the explanation or go back to the data and see if their conclusions

[00:03:50] were warranted based on that data for me personally i haven’t gotten to a place

[00:03:56] where i’m looking at archaeological material and i’m saying oh no i there’s no way that this reconciles

[00:04:03] with the bible still being reliable but you know some some people they have that line of thinking

[00:04:11] in their writing and they continue to go with it and that’s kind of the world view that they’re they’re

[00:04:17] coming from but i’m i’m looking at it as the bible has a

[00:04:22] this excellent track record as a historical work and so i’m not looking at it from

[00:04:28] the perspective of guilty until proven innocent with a huge amount of evidence i’m looking at it

[00:04:35] as it’s it’s been shown to be reliable so when we haven’t found things about

[00:04:40] certain sections i’m expecting we probably will find something or we don’t have a reason to

[00:04:45] discount that just because of the current absence of evidence gotcha okay yeah and that that uh is a

[00:04:53] great segue into another question i have which is do you see that the um

[00:04:58] do you see the study of archaeology and specifically biblical archaeology

[00:05:04] do you see this as an increasing um like like we’re growing in the amount of

[00:05:09] findings we’re we’re finding or is this something that’s on the decrease that we’re we’re actually finding less and less

[00:05:15] stuff um is this a field that is growing or is it a field that is shrinking

[00:05:21] well the field itself is it goes it ebbs and flows in terms of

[00:05:27] its growth uh but there’s always more being found and i would say that

[00:05:35] probably at least once a year there’s something new that’s discovered that it connects

[00:05:41] to the bible it may be really small sometimes it’s big but there is a continual increase of

[00:05:48] information in the field of biblical archaeology specifically archaeology itself is probably

[00:05:57] suffering a bit right now the humanities in general have become less popular especially

[00:06:04] in north america and archaeology struggles financially too because of the

[00:06:11] way that the the laws are set up and how museums function now

[00:06:18] and excavations are funded and so forth uh so it’s it’s not in its heyday

[00:06:25] but there are still a lot of excavations going on and they’re they’re digging up new

[00:06:30] material okay um so so from your perspective you

[00:06:35] know um your book subtitled is a 101

[00:06:41] findings uh 101 archaeological discoveries that bring the bible to life um what motivated you to decide to

[00:06:49] you know write this specifically and uh you know how did you get interested in biblical archaeology well that book

[00:06:56] specifically i wanted to write because i i have an acute

[00:07:02] interest in the artifacts that connect to the bible both directly and indirectly

[00:07:07] and one thing i really like about them is that you can see these artifacts

[00:07:13] yourself in a museum or collection or at least you can look at photographs of them

[00:07:19] and so one of my objectives over the years have been assembling a big archive of photographs of all these

[00:07:25] different artifacts a lot more that are in the book and i wanted to be able to share that

[00:07:31] with people and it’s something a little bit different than just

[00:07:36] having a geography book or even an archaeological site book

[00:07:42] so i had put this idea together and i submitted it to a couple of publishers

[00:07:49] and they decided on sort of the limit of the amount of artifacts i i originally had

[00:07:54] more slotted but it worked out to a nice number and

[00:08:01] there’s pictures of everything so people can see that they actually exist it’s not just words on a page claiming that it’s there

[00:08:08] you know they’ve got to rely on somebody saying it’s real or or that on their description of it even

[00:08:14] you can look at it yourself and i think that’s a very important thing especially in the field of archaeology

[00:08:19] that people can see the evidence there themselves yeah absolutely yeah uh

[00:08:27] and with even with archaeological sites and you know specific buildings that’s important but

[00:08:32] i think objects like this are easier for people to look at and understand because the the

[00:08:40] artifacts are usually in a state of preservation that is higher than a building for example you

[00:08:46] go to an archaeological site you might be looking at some building which in its time might have been

[00:08:52] exquisite but now it just looks like the foundations in a rectangular square of

[00:08:58] some broken stones and if if you’re not used to that then

[00:09:03] you’re kind of like is this just a pile of rocks that i’m yeah yeah but artifacts usually

[00:09:10] they are closer to their their original state you know of course some are

[00:09:15] are broken or worn out but a lot of them you you can really see okay it looked like that in ancient

[00:09:20] times so when you’re um you’re a professor you’re an adjunct professor and you

[00:09:26] you uh teach and you speak and you you do these sorts of things um when people hear uh this sort of

[00:09:31] information um do does that is that really um you know compelling for them do you feel

[00:09:38] like um that from a apologetics perspective obviously i i i teach apologetics i teach 12th grade

[00:09:43] apologetics we cover some of the archaeology of the bible um but for from your experience is that a a

[00:09:50] compelling case for the truth of the bible from a historical standpoint yes i think

[00:09:57] so uh of course you can’t you can’t find a correlation for every

[00:10:03] book or chapter or verse but you can for many of the narratives

[00:10:10] and and some of the specifics and so it shows at least in general that the bible is

[00:10:16] historically reliable and that there is a ever increasing amount

[00:10:21] of evidence that is confirming that or corroborating that and so if we’re just looking at it from

[00:10:28] a historical standpoint then yes absolutely i think so uh archaeology

[00:10:33] you could say that that’s stronger and more compelling than parallel historical sources because

[00:10:40] you can always make critiques about oh this historian writing something had a bias or they made a

[00:10:46] mistake but you can’t really do that with the physical evidence

[00:10:52] that’s a good point that’s a really good point yeah we hear that all the time i mean that’s our culture right now is

[00:10:57] incredibly skeptical of history in general and and we hear all the time about historical revisionism and the whole

[00:11:04] thing with um critical race theory and everything that’s come out too is is a lot of people are saying that’s an attempt to

[00:11:10] rewrite history and all these other things so that’s very interesting that you bring that point up um you know your interest in archaeology

[00:11:17] uh is that was that a uh spiritual interest um or how did you get

[00:11:24] interested in this you know growing up uh what caused you to decide um you know this is something i really want

[00:11:29] to focus on i was always interested in history even

[00:11:35] back in elementary school and i was just unaware that archaeology even existed

[00:11:40] until fourth grade when one of my teachers gave me a book to read on the excavation of troy

[00:11:47] i had read the iliad and odyssey and she thought that i would enjoy learning

[00:11:52] about the discovery of that actual place and so i read about this dig

[00:11:58] and heinrich schliemann and others who were trying to find troy and dig it up and then that was my

[00:12:05] introduction to archaeology and i saw that oh they can actually find these

[00:12:10] places buried under the ground and find these objects from ancient times

[00:12:15] and even some some data some material that shows events like the destruction of troy by a

[00:12:23] fire destruction layer over there so then i came to understand

[00:12:28] that historians can get a lot of their historical information

[00:12:34] from archaeological discoveries and as i continue to do more reading about

[00:12:40] that then i found that there’s also a lot of archaeology that connected to the bible

[00:12:46] and and so i started going more in that direction specifically focusing on biblical

[00:12:53] archaeology and decided that i wanted to try studying that in university

[00:12:59] so what are some of the um for you personally what are some of the most uh significant findings

[00:13:06] that for you really are a big deal in regards to the bible and giving

[00:13:12] evidence that the bible’s real history one example that i like to point out

[00:13:19] quite often because it’s it’s fairly recent i mean it was 1993 but in terms of archaeology

[00:13:26] it’s fairly recent and it was a major shift in academia is the tell dan steely which was

[00:13:34] a it was a steely by the arameans so enemies of israel they had set it up as a victory

[00:13:41] commemoration when they defeated the city of dan in the north and they put it up in the ninth century

[00:13:48] bc and on it they talk about how they defeated these various israelite kings and then they said how they’re they

[00:13:54] originate from the house of david so the royal dynasty of david and it demonstrated that david was

[00:14:00] the founding king of the dynasty of israelite and judean kings up until that point

[00:14:07] there had been no archaeological evidence for david that had been found the only

[00:14:13] material we had referencing him really from antiquities was the old testament and of course

[00:14:20] even with the dead sea scrolls you look at the book of samuel for example 2nd

[00:14:26] century bc maybe those copies are so it’s a lot of times separated and and

[00:14:31] archaeologists and ancient historians and even some biblical scholars were going along with the idea that

[00:14:37] david was a mythical king because there’s no evidence that he existed well when this was found many scholars

[00:14:45] had to immediately shift their viewpoint on that some some tried to come up with alternative explanations

[00:14:51] but most then accepted okay david was a real king and then some more evidence

[00:14:57] came out or was re-evaluated so that that is a major piece that i like to use

[00:15:03] at least as an example and this is pretty common though isn’t it it’s pretty common that um

[00:15:09] that you know people will attack the bible they’ll they’ll say hey you know this is

[00:15:15] fictional or this is fictional or this is fictional i’ve heard this about the uh the pool of siloam i’ve heard this

[00:15:20] about the hittites i’ve heard uh that frequently um

[00:15:25] the bible is or even luke you know as a historian people said he wasn’t reliable

[00:15:30] um is this something you see frequently happening where the bible is attacked and then it’s it’s vindicated yeah over the last

[00:15:38] 100 years something like that we could say from from the mid-1800s

[00:15:45] there have been a lot of cases like that where the predominant view in scholarship has become such and

[00:15:53] such book is unhistorical or person or passage and then a discovery is made through

[00:16:00] archaeology that contradicts that assertion and people have to change their views on it

[00:16:08] but it really hasn’t changed the overall perspective on the historical usefulness of the

[00:16:14] bible for a lot of scholars for the ones maybe that were personally or more personally involved in some of

[00:16:20] those discoveries yes like you know you talked about the example of luke

[00:16:25] being regarded as an unreliable historian which that was the opinion of many scholars

[00:16:31] back in the 19th century and then william ramsey

[00:16:37] did all this work he himself was skeptical but what he was finding was

[00:16:42] that luke was getting all these things right and so that that changed his perspective on the reliability of luke

[00:16:49] axe and you know other examples you gave like uh the hittites did they even exist or another one that

[00:16:57] that is often talked about as belshazzar from daniel oh interesting and and uh i i haven’t

[00:17:03] heard much about belshazzar what what is the situation there is that has he been vindicated or is that still an

[00:17:09] ongoing uh yes yes you know and and quite a while ago but but that was another example of

[00:17:17] many scholars especially those skeptical of the reliability of the old

[00:17:22] testament were saying the author of daniel had no idea what he was talking about this is historical fiction there’s no

[00:17:29] belshazzar in any babylonian records you know naboonitis would have been the last king and then

[00:17:36] some babylonian texts were discovered which told us that belshazzar was the

[00:17:42] firstborn son of nabanitus and nabanitus left him in charge as regen in babylon when

[00:17:48] navinitis went off and to do some other things he wasn’t interested in ruling

[00:17:54] and that’s why belshazzar was the king of babylon and that’s why daniel could only be offered the third

[00:17:59] place in the kingdom oh wow that’s really interesting um

[00:18:05] and then um what about today are there ongoing disputes uh today what are the current things

[00:18:10] that are kind of raging back and forth as far as uh skeptics are saying at the bible got it wrong here but yet

[00:18:16] you know biblical archaeologists like yourself are saying no i think they got it right what’s happening there probably

[00:18:24] the biggest debate within academic archaeology is is over the chronology connected to

[00:18:32] david solomon and the early divided kingdom so there’s one group that wants to move

[00:18:38] everything about a hundred years later and there’s one group that’s keeping it in the sort of traditional uh

[00:18:45] biblical chronology and and thinks that it’s the bible’s account is more historically

[00:18:50] reflective of what happened so that’s that’s a big division point

[00:18:56] but then you have other other situations like there’s still a lot of talk going around

[00:19:03] about the new testament and various views on that and on jesus and

[00:19:08] different iterations of the historical jesus idea um you know there are things that are

[00:19:14] just they’re all over the place really uh so you say they’re all over the place

[00:19:21] yeah i’m referring to you know some people are saying like we have a historical core in the gospels

[00:19:28] and then others are saying that it’s it’s almost purely myth uh although the scholars

[00:19:35] professional scholars accept the existence of jesus but then you do have a pretty significant contingent of

[00:19:42] people who are outside of the professional disciplines of ancient history archaeology who are

[00:19:48] still claiming jesus never even existed and that we have no evidence for that and and so there’s like this continuous

[00:19:55] battle and there’s various degrees of it and there’s you know talk about

[00:20:01] authorship of these these books of course and you know what is mythology and what is

[00:20:06] history so the new testament it’s a different situation especially the gospels

[00:20:12] than the old testament but it’s got its battles too so um along those lines what you’re what

[00:20:18] you’re talking about there you know um when you say people outside of the field of archaeology and and the

[00:20:24] study of ancient manuscripts and these sorts of things uh are you referring to people like you know like new atheist kind of people

[00:20:30] um is that who you’re referring to some some of them might make that claim

[00:20:37] yes uh another i guess the name has gotten grouped as sort of the jesus

[00:20:43] mythicist oh yeah seems to have a very loud voice some places and

[00:20:49] this is even though they’re not experts on the subject matter they’re their voice is so loud that it’s off the books published

[00:20:55] documentaries made from that perspective yeah and so they’re they’re getting their viewpoint out there so the general public

[00:21:02] i think can be very confused and and not be aware at all that if you were go to go to basically

[00:21:08] any university department and talk to a history professor or an archaeology

[00:21:15] professor and ask them was jesus an historical person you know they would say of course

[00:21:20] but from what they’re ingesting from media and uh you know even many books

[00:21:28] they might think oh actually a lot of professionals believe that there’s no evidence jesus

[00:21:34] even existed and even the secularists even the secular archaeologists and so forth

[00:21:39] are saying yeah i’ve heard this about bar airmen i mean there’s no dispute over whether jesus

[00:21:44] existed or not or or jesus died or not there are other things that he disputes but he doesn’t dispute that yeah that’s very

[00:21:52] interesting huh and then um you know one of the things that you know has been popularized by tim

[00:21:59] mahoney is the with the patterns of evidence and he’s come out with several new movies and he’s arguing is you know there’s a like you

[00:22:07] said a contingent of people that are saying that the exodus never happened for example like or you know the red sea crossing

[00:22:12] never happened or you you can’t have two million people uh in that desert there that wouldn’t the amount of people wouldn’t fit you

[00:22:18] wouldn’t be able to do that you you hear these sorts of things that the the exodus is a purely mythical event um

[00:22:25] do you come down on the on the side that all the historical events recorded in the bible are actual history

[00:22:31] um or do you think that some of the stories in the bible are are uh have become myth or are they

[00:22:38] what’s your view on that uh i would take all the historical narrative sections as

[00:22:46] history so i mean i think there are a few sections in the bible where they’re they’re clearly not

[00:22:54] trying they’re not recording history and of course we would be looking at things like parables or maybe

[00:23:00] some uh poetic comparisons or or something that that’s teaching

[00:23:06] theology but there’s a lot of history in there so with something like the exodus for

[00:23:11] example you know i think it’s history it’s recording history it’s not mythology it’s not trying to be

[00:23:18] mythology is there a real uh is there evidence um i was speaking to a fellow up in

[00:23:24] la when i was up there a while ago um who said he had studied this pretty extensively he was an archaeologist

[00:23:31] and he said that a lot of people don’t know it but there’s actual evidence of um

[00:23:36] of the plagues in egypt and all this stuff recorded in in the tombs of of certain pharaohs

[00:23:43] um have you heard about this are you aware of this yeah i’ve heard about this yeah what’s your view on that is there

[00:23:49] actual archaeological evidence for this sort of thing uh no i i don’t put any stock in that

[00:23:56] hypothesis i’ve i’ve looked at that so i i think i know

[00:24:03] exactly what what this is you’re you’re discussing you’re talking about and as far as i can recall there’s one one

[00:24:10] guy who is pushing this idea and i don’t think any others have grasped onto it in

[00:24:18] the same same way as he has now um do you think that evidence will be

[00:24:24] forthcoming um that there was that there really were these plagues that the the exodus really

[00:24:30] did take place do you think that there will be over time that archaeology will discover evidence of this

[00:24:36] with all that they’re doing over in egypt and so forth well i think we have some evidence of

[00:24:42] the period of the exodus and the exodus plagues it’s just

[00:24:48] that that particular hypothesis that you were talking about as far as it being recorded on the

[00:24:53] tombs of the pharaoh or certain pharaohs i don’t think is correct but there’s there’s indirect and

[00:24:59] circumstantial evidence that i think we could connect to the exodus

[00:25:04] events as a whole and to some of the plagues and then there’s also a papyrus sometimes it’s called the

[00:25:13] or referred to as the ipower papyrus but the admonitions of ipo were and it’s a poem

[00:25:20] and it’s writing about this time in egypt when there’s chaos and death and destruction and

[00:25:27] there are several passages in there that parallel very well with

[00:25:32] events in the the plagues narratives of exodus and i think that’s possibly

[00:25:39] an egyptian poetic version of you know recounting that time and there

[00:25:45] are there’s discussions about the date of composition of that and actually have an article on

[00:25:51] that papyrus coming out pretty soon where i get into the details of

[00:25:56] the evidence for the composition date of the papyrus and then the specifics of passages

[00:26:02] in that poem versus passages in the exodus plague narratives and

[00:26:07] you know that it’s suggestive that it is actually an egyptian non-official account the account of a

[00:26:14] bard if you will a poet uh who who was either

[00:26:20] around at that time or he’s getting material from that time and then

[00:26:25] writing and writing a song or a poem about it that’s interesting huh um where if

[00:26:31] somebody wanted to to check out your article on that and that sounds very interesting where would they be able to get a hold

[00:26:36] of something like that it’s going to be published in bible and spade okay great awesome and then um

[00:26:45] you know what what is your focus going to be going forward here i mean you you’ve you’ve uh written unearthing

[00:26:51] the bible you’ve you’ve written the book on uh christ and the archaeological evidence supporting the life of christ and the

[00:26:57] times around him what do you see going forward what are you excited to continue doing research on so i’m

[00:27:04] writing another book on locations of the bible and it’s going to

[00:27:09] be a little bit different than a lot of them out there you know there’s quite a few

[00:27:15] historical atlases of the bible and things like that or ones that focus on sites in in

[00:27:21] israel but mine is going to be on all different geographic areas that are

[00:27:27] in the bible so there’ll be a section on mesopotamia and persia and anatolia and

[00:27:34] egypt and greece and rome and the whole levant not not just israel

[00:27:41] so it’ll be a little different in regards to that uh hopefully you know more pictures than

[00:27:48] some of the older books at least and and the maps and then uh it’s i’m going to be focusing again for more

[00:27:55] from an archaeological perspective on that so i’m going to talk about each of these sites as you go through

[00:28:02] history chronologically and how it connects to the bible so i think about 80 or 90

[00:28:08] locations most of them are cities or towns but i am going to address a few other locations like mount ararat

[00:28:16] different ideas with mount sinai different ideas with the reed c crossing uh kadesh barneas some of some

[00:28:24] stuff like that too because i know there’s interest in them even if there isn’t consensus on

[00:28:29] some of those locations yeah that’s that’s very interesting

[00:28:34] and then you know for your you know when you’re talking to somebody um you know i don’t know how often i mean

[00:28:40] this is what you do for a living so i’m sure every once in a while it comes up in conversation you’re talking to somebody and they ask you on an airplane

[00:28:45] or whatever hey what do you do for a living right um you know when you’re when you’re talking to somebody about

[00:28:50] you know your belief in god and how much does this impact your your belief in god as far as you know um

[00:29:00] there’s a lot of different apologetic arguments for i mean you’re a fellow at the discovery institute and uh stephen meyer wrote the the

[00:29:06] forward to your book which is pretty impressive that’s pretty cool um and he’s coming from the intelligent design

[00:29:11] perspective and and the you know uh signature in the cell and these sorts of things

[00:29:17] um he’s arguing for you um what is what kind of weight do you put

[00:29:23] on the truth of the bible because of all the archaeology that seems to confirm the bible is that

[00:29:29] a huge component for you or do you look more at does the moral argument affect you does the you know intelligent design argument

[00:29:36] how does that affect somebody’s belief in the bible and you’re you personally

[00:29:42] i think the the historical archaeological component is powerful and it’s one of the

[00:29:50] main components that people should consider but of course there are other facets too

[00:29:56] uh i couldn’t demonstrate conclusively to anybody that the bible is ultimately reliable

[00:30:04] based on history and archaeology alone right i mean i could i could say that it’s a reliable history book right but

[00:30:11] you can’t really tell somebody except theology or supernatural

[00:30:17] teachings because of a historical record so i think it’s part of it and i

[00:30:22] actually think it’s part that’s ignored a lot and and too much but uh

[00:30:28] of course you have other things like science for example if you’re talking about intelligent design

[00:30:35] that makes a number of powerful arguments regarding uh design and fine-tuning

[00:30:42] and things that demonstrate how near darwinianism just doesn’t work

[00:30:49] scientifically and you know all this stuff in id that connects well to how things are

[00:30:55] explained in the bible and then you also have other components like fulfilled prophecy which i think

[00:31:02] something like that is pointing more in the direction of the divine than say just recording the

[00:31:10] history correctly right because a lot of people they they might say all right you wrote a book

[00:31:15] about the archaeology and history of jesus and that’s fine i can accept these arguments and this evidence

[00:31:22] that he existed and these places were real and these people are real and these events happen

[00:31:28] but i have a problem with the miracles or with the prophecy and so

[00:31:33] you have to look at other types of evidence in order to demonstrate to people that

[00:31:39] well you can rely on those components in the bible too because look at for example the

[00:31:44] fulfilled prophecies from isaiah just as you know one one little snapshot of things that we could use

[00:31:52] yeah yeah i had an atheist actually say that to me one time i was giving him all these historical facts about the bible

[00:31:58] and he said well just because you have some history that’s true in the bible doesn’t mean that the red sea crossing actually

[00:32:03] happened and you know you get to that point you go well that’s true you know you can’t automatically conclude that um

[00:32:10] my response was well you should be at least giving the bible the benefit of the doubt i mean uh you know innocent until proven guilty

[00:32:17] and the fact of the matter is is we keep finding all these historical evidences that confirm the bible so um you need to

[00:32:23] at least you know crack the door of your heart here and and in your mind and and consider that whoa maybe this is true

[00:32:30] right and part of the problem is that the mainstream viewpoint

[00:32:37] of western culture is scientific materialism whether whether people realize that or

[00:32:44] not they automatically discount the supernatural and miraculous and that’s not the case

[00:32:52] all over the world and that’s not the case if you go back to ancient times and that’s one of the really interesting

[00:32:59] things that i found when i was researching the different viewpoints of jesus and his

[00:33:05] miracles in antiquity is that they basically all said yeah he performed miracles they just had

[00:33:12] different viewpoints on it and explanations for the source of where that happened but

[00:33:18] it’s it’s not like 2021 usa where most people are going to say oh no

[00:33:25] that didn’t happen that part can’t be real because it’s impossible for that to occur it’s well it’s because

[00:33:32] that’s their viewpoint interesting that is really interesting so if somebody said to you

[00:33:38] um you know your elevator pitch and somebody said to you hey you know give me the the most

[00:33:44] compelling archaeological find that you think confirms the truth of the bible and uh

[00:33:51] you know what would that be in your mind um is is the one for me one of the ones that i love that i just

[00:33:59] am astonished by how much it validates the bible is um

[00:34:04] hezekiah’s tunnel that goes along with asylum tunnel inscription and then you’ve got uh the senecara

[00:34:10] prism um to me i look at all those and i’m like are you kidding me how could you ever deny that this

[00:34:17] actually happened this is a real historical event um on the same on the same vein what do you

[00:34:23] uh what do you see as like whoa this is just overwhelmingly clear this is this is real history

[00:34:29] yeah i mean one of the ones i would point to is are the prisms of sennacherib because you have that assyrian account

[00:34:37] that parallels so many passages in the biblical account and of course like you mentioned you

[00:34:43] have a number of other finds that connect to that the broad wall we throw that in there too

[00:34:49] what’s the broad wall so that was the wall that hezekiah had built when the assyrians were coming to

[00:34:55] besiege the city so like you know construction projects that he did

[00:35:00] the major ones were the tunnel and then the wall and those are both talked about

[00:35:07] in the bible and you can go visit both of them yeah yeah yeah are there any other findings

[00:35:14] like that where you have it being confirmed from multiple angles and multiple historical records or whatever the case

[00:35:23] yeah yeah uh another good example sort of close to that time period is the

[00:35:30] moabite stone or sometimes the meshes steely is what it’s called and that’s basically the moabite version

[00:35:37] of what’s recorded in second kings three

[00:35:42] so you have this this long biblical account about it and then you have the moabite

[00:35:47] perspective and it talks about so many of the same things and the same people

[00:35:53] and it’s it’s pretty astonishing and what what uh uh tell us what is that story

[00:36:00] again what are they recording uh that is when mesha king of moab

[00:36:05] rebels against israel who had taken them over for about 40 years

[00:36:13] and he he reasserts moabite in the independence and there’s a battle

[00:36:19] between the moabites and they win the moabites win that

[00:36:25] um and he mentions in his account like omri for example and some of the

[00:36:31] other kings that that he interacted with so it’s a it’s a loss you know in the

[00:36:38] bible for for israelites but it’s a win on the meshes steely but it’s the same things happening in

[00:36:44] the same characters that are involved interesting that’s amazing and um we’re

[00:36:51] slowly running out of time here but i i have another question for you that pertains more to kind of the future of um you know with

[00:36:59] with everything there’s all the talk of pr you were mentioned in prophecy fulfilled prophecy and these sorts of things and

[00:37:04] uh there’s a search for you know where the

[00:37:09] uh where the solomon’s temple was originally built and the the conflict with the dome of the rock and where the

[00:37:16] temples that sort of thing and as far as i understand it there are actual radar scans being done

[00:37:22] uh to try to identify where things used to be built and stuff like that um do you have any

[00:37:27] thoughts on that as far as um uh prophetically you know the rebuilding of the temple and these sorts of things

[00:37:34] is and and the role that archaeology is playing in in in where that would happen if it would happen you

[00:37:39] what are your thoughts there uh i don’t know if archaeology is gonna

[00:37:45] have too much of a role in that i mean most people accept that the temple was originally located

[00:37:54] right about where the dome of the rock is some put it slightly off of there but up there

[00:38:01] somewhere and you know it they can’t it can’t be rebuilt if those buildings are there and it’s

[00:38:08] trying to be built on the same spot yeah you know archaeologists some are working

[00:38:13] on what are the remains from solomon’s temple and from herod’s temple and and looking

[00:38:21] at the side you know where things were pushed off um you know there was there’s been some

[00:38:27] exploration in the tunnels but not any real archaeological projects just because there’s there’s not

[00:38:33] permission to be granted for that right now yeah but uh there’s there is a lot of work

[00:38:40] being done archaeologically at some other sites

[00:38:46] that uh actually a lot of old testament ones right now too um new testament

[00:38:53] some yeah like baitsaida but old testament sites like shiloh i mean you talked to scott i’m

[00:39:00] sure about that and i i direct an excavation at tell which is traditionally accepted as i

[00:39:08] and then we’ve got some stuff going on in jordan and

[00:39:15] you know people are trying to bring up more of this information uh you know gaff has been a lot ongoing for

[00:39:22] a long time bait shamish and so forth and so archaeology still got a role

[00:39:28] in terms of how people are seeing the history and then you know that does often get

[00:39:33] applied to to modern day ideas too just with the temple as i said there’s there’s no

[00:39:39] excavations that they can really do at that location right now so everything’s sort of being done

[00:39:45] in the periphery yeah huh interesting um

[00:39:52] okay last question so i i you know i i did have a class on biblical archaeology over at

[00:39:57] biola and um the professor at the time i was talking about this i said i said uh

[00:40:03] so is there a lot of stuff out there a lot of writings a lot of uh ancient uh whatever it might be

[00:40:11] petroglyphs or whatever it might be um ancient writings that are un

[00:40:17] unread and he actually said that there are warehouses full of uh cuneiform and other writings that

[00:40:25] have just gone on red because they don’t have enough people to actually read them he said that there’s not

[00:40:30] enough people that know the languages and so basically they’re stored so it’s a lot of a lot of writings that just are just

[00:40:37] kept and nobody actually reads them uh is that is that uh correct is that a correct

[00:40:44] analysis yeah that is so there are thousands and

[00:40:49] thousands of cuneiform tablets and in some some of the archaeological

[00:40:55] expeditions they have not been able to get people to

[00:41:01] finish that work translating them so somebody if they had the the time and the funding

[00:41:08] they could spend years and years and years and years just going through those different cuneiform

[00:41:14] tablets and you know some of them are tied up because there’s disputes about who has

[00:41:21] rights to things but other situations it’s just the amount of work exceeds the amount of

[00:41:29] funding to get it done or you know available scholars sometimes and we could even apply that to

[00:41:36] archaeological sites i mean there’s so many sites out there that could be dug or more digging could

[00:41:41] be done but there’s not enough manpower or funding to do that and so people are

[00:41:48] having to really target their excavations like okay this is the site that i’m most interested in or

[00:41:54] this issue and this part of the site and we’re going to try to get that done but hopefully somebody else will come

[00:42:01] along later and finish or or supplement that yeah wow well thanks for what you do man i

[00:42:08] think it’s incredible and i think it adds a lot to um our ability to you know communicate

[00:42:14] the truth of god’s word to uh the people around us when when you can say hey it’s real history as opposed

[00:42:19] to you know like the book of mormon or some other book where you know you just don’t have that evidence

[00:42:24] and uh and so um i think that’s incredible what you’re doing so uh

[00:42:30] thanks a lot for sharing that with us and um hopefully your work continues to uh grow and and uh be blessed and

[00:42:37] and increase so thank you man yeah thank you for having me absolutely well uh for those of you who

[00:42:43] got to listen today uh dr titus kennedy um you can check him out um all you have to do is type his name into google and

[00:42:49] it’ll pop up and unearthing the bible very very useful book and just being able to communicate with

[00:42:55] your friends intelligently about uh the truth of the history of the bible uh i i think it’s just so valuable to be

[00:43:02] able to just pull that out i mean and there’s so many people that just don’t know they just don’t know that it’s real history there’s just this

[00:43:08] popular idea that it’s myth and then all of a sudden whoa look at all this history so

[00:43:13] very very powerful tool if you want to be able to witness and share with your friends that the

[00:43:18] bible is is true so uh fantastic and dr kennedy if

[00:43:23] is anybody able to support you is there a way that they can support you or what you’re doing

[00:43:29] how does that happen yeah so that can be done either through

[00:43:35] discovery institute or also i started a

[00:43:40] biblical archaeology institute called our chaos institute but you know discovery’s easy and

[00:43:48] we’ve been working on some some different future future ideas and projects and

[00:43:54] of course trying to finish up this excavation project that i’m currently involved into

[00:44:00] fantastic okay well uh thanks for being here thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you again next week we’ve got

[00:44:07] hundreds of shows up on uh social media and on youtube and on podcast you can check them out all with

[00:44:13] experts from all over the world about all kinds of different issues i’m just talking about how god is impacting them and god is using them to

[00:44:19] bless others so check it out educate4life.org is my website and again unearthing the bible dr titus

[00:44:25] kennedy god bless you we’ll see you next

[00:44:34] week

[00:44:48] you