Real People

Revisionism is active on many fronts. While excavations in Israel have done much to confirm the historicity of the Bible, a number of revisionist archaeologists have arisen to challenge that same historicity. A great many arguments hinge on the “argument from silence.” In other words, because there is a scarcity of particular artifacts from these distant periods of time, this “silence” is used to discredit the Bible. As Professor of History Paul Maier points out, however:

“One is struck by the sudden silence of the revisionist critics concerning the record from the time of King Hezekiah on. At that point, evidently, the Old Testament instantly becomes ‘more historical’ for them. This concession, of course, if forced on them because of the overwhelming number of correlations from archaeology, records of surrouding nations, and ancient history in general that fully corroborate the biblical evidence. The Assyrians did not conquer mythical northern Israelites in 722 BC, nor did Nebuchadnezzar deport into the Babylonian captivity a lgendary, folkloric band of Jews who never existed. We leave it to the critics to explain how fact suddenly emerges out of supposed fantasy in the Old Testament” (Maier, “Archaeology: Biblical Ally or Adversary?”, “Christian Research Journal,” 27:02, 2004).