Apparently, a researcher may have discovered the site of the wedding in Cana, where Jesus performed his first miracle by turning water into wine. (See John 2:1-12 for the full account.) According to a piece on Fox News, historian Tom McCollough, who taught religion and history at Centre College, contends that Cana was located at the Israeli settlement of Khirbet Qana, rather than Kafr Kanna, which is the site favored by many scholars. Fox reported:
"We have uncovered a large Christian veneration cave complex that was used by Christian pilgrims who came to venerate the water-to-wine miracle," McCollough said.
"This complex was used beginning in the late fifth or early sixth century and continued to be used by pilgrims into the 12th-century Crusader period."
During his excavation, McCollough also uncovered an altar and a shelf with a stone vessel.
He noted that there was space for five additional jars, consistent with the biblical account of six stone jars.
On the walls of the complex, his team of excavators also uncovered references to Kyrie Iesou, a Koine Greek phrase meaning Lord Jesus.
"The pilgrim texts we have from this period that describe what pilgrims did and saw when they came to Cana of Galilee match very closely what we have exposed as the veneration complex," he said.
McCollough also cited references from Josephus to back up his assertion.
That's all well and good, but finding a collection of amphorae (that is the fancy egghead term for the stone jars that held wine, water, oil. etc.) with a bit of supporting evidence does not necessarily prove biblical inerrance. Archaeologists in the Holy Land have repeatedly discovered amphorae and potsherds.
That said, archeology continues to affirm the historical value of the Bible.
For years, people claimed that King David was a myth. That is, until a stele was uncovered recounting a magnificent military victory over the House of David. Whether or not Goliath was a Nephilim, as some claim, Philistine postsherds have been found bearing the name "Goliath." So that was a popular name in Philistine culture.
It has been said that the writers of the Bible were illiterate sheepherders. Evidence suggests that Abraham, or Abram, if you prefer, was not a random camel rider, but a wealthy and powerful warlord, one of many in the region at the time.
Nehemiah, who rebuilt Jerusalem in the wake of the exile, was a food taster for the Persian king Artaxerxes I. In that position, Nehemiah would have had the king's trust. Jerusalem was considered a strategically important location, given its position in the Ancient Near East. It makes sense that when Artaxerxes was approached by Nehemiah, who wanted to return home and rebuild, the king would have realized that he needed a man he could rely on to oversee that part of his empire.
The disciples were not bumpkins. Peter was a fisherman and a businessman, and as such, he had to buy, sell, and pay taxes. That means that he and whoever you believe wrote the Gospels needed to be conversant in Greek, since that was the language of commerce and government. Peter, the disciples, and even Jesus were able to read, write, and speak Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, and probably a smattering of Latin since that was the language of the occupying force. Yes, I am aware that, due to his divine nature, Jesus could speak any language; however, I am approaching this from a historical perspective. There are scholars who contend that John's family was well-connected politically, which may have given him access to Jesus' conversations with the Jewish clergy and even insight into the conversation between Jesus and Pilate. When it comes to language, the Bible is full of poetry, satire, allegory, and metaphors. Those things have never been confined to the 17th to 21st centuries. To assume that the writers of the Bible were simpletons is, if nothing else, shoddy scholarship.
For a while, it was fashionable around Easter to trot out the story that someone had found a tomb with the name "Jesus" or "Yeshua" on it, thereby supposedly disproving the Resurrection. The problem with that assertion is that Yeshua was a fairly popular name in the region. So finding a grave with the name Yeshua is a bit like finding a headstone with the name "Mike" on it. It disproves nothing. And there is no shortage of contemporary accounts of the life of Christ, and not all of them are complimentary. Whether you believe that the man was divine or not, one can hardly consider his existence a myth.
Ironically, my last class in grad school was a survey of Genesis. For some reason, I saved that class for the end. We had a wide variety of subjects to choose from when it came to the term paper, including archeology. One of my professors suggested I study the research of Dr. Steven Collins. Collins wrote "Discovering the City of Sodom." In the book, he recounts discovering a city at what is known as the Tall el-Hamman site, east of the Jordan River. Collins maintains that the ruins bear significant evidence of scorch marks and that he has found trinitite. Trinite is also called "Alamogordo Glass," which was produced during the Trinity atomic bomb tests when the sand in the area was exposed to the insanely intense heat of the blasts. Assuming Collins' research is on the up-and-up, what he has found is evidence of a city that was subjected to a very powerful thermal event that not only destroyed the city but also altered the environment around it for centuries. If Collins' work bears out, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah may well be based on a historical event, even if one does not believe that the hand of God caused the destruction.
Yet, for all of the research and all of the proof, without faith, we have nothing. We can rail all we want about a seven-day creation. For that matter, we can point toward the boat-shaped rock formation in Turkey, which keeps coming up in the news, and ignore the story of Utnapishtim. If we are not changed, informed, and inspired by the stories in Genesis, Judges, First and Second Kings, the Gospels, or the Epistles, if all these books do is convince us that we are right and everyone else is wrong, if we are not convicted and moved, than all the evidence in the world is useless. If we forsake the spirit of the Word for the letter, then we have missed the point entirely.
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