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OUR FAITH in the foundation stories in Genesis does not rest on the findings of archaeologists, but rather in the teachings of Jesus and the apostles. Thus the Lord went back to the creation of Adam and the Divine institution of marriage in Eden when the Pharisees posed to him a question on divorce (Mt. 19:3-8). In his teaching about the Second Coming Jesus referred to Noah and the Flood, and to the destruction of Sodom and the example of Lot’s wife (Lk. 17:26-32). When Paul was expounding the doctrine of the atonement he presented a series of contrasts between Jesus and Adam, the two federal heads of mankind (Rom. 5:12-19). In dealing with the apostasy in Corinth Paul goes back to the talking serpent who deceived Eve with beguiling words (2 Cor. 11:3). In settling the position of women in the ecclesia, Paul’s doctrines are based on the miraculous creation of man first, and the formation of woman out of him second (1 Tim. 2:11-14; 1 Cor. 11:3-12).

Luke, in tracing Jesus’s ancestry back to Adam, confirms the genealogies of Genesis (3:23-38), and so does Jude in verse 14 of his epistle.

Abraham is no mythical figure, but one whose life of faith the disciple must follow as closely as he would that of the Lord himself (Heb. 11:8-19; 12:1,2).

These are just a few examples showing us that Christ’s disciples cannot be agnostic in their attitude to the early chapters of Genesis, or choose to believe only the non-miraculous elements in them. As so much fundamental doctrine rests on these chapters then, with a childlike faith, we too must accept them as being wholly true and accurate, part of the Word of God which lives and abides for ever.

Critics proved wrong

When the conclusions of archaeologists conflict with the Bible the right attitude for us to adopt must surely be that the Scripture is true and the archaeologists wrong through putting the wrong interpretation on their findings. We do not have to be arrogant about this, or to have a head-in-the-sand attitude; rather we should have a quiet conviction based on our faith in God’s Word.

There are several examples of erroneous interpretations being made in the past and the Bible being subsequently proved to be correct. It was said that Moses could not possibly have written the Pentateuch since writing was not known in his day. This was based on insufficient information, since forms of writing have since been found dating from much earlier than Moses,(Footnote 1) and even slaves in Pharaoh’s day were educated enough to write graffiti on the walls of the palaces where they worked. It used to be said that Ur of the Chaldees was a mythical place as no one was certain of its whereabouts and the Bible was the principal source of information about it.

But the excavations of Sir Leonard Woolley at Tell al-Muqayyar confirmed the location of Ur and also showed the sophisticated city life that Abram left behind when he responded to 1 God’s invitation to leave his father’s house for an unknown country. Critics of the Bible used to say that the events and kings in the battle recorded in Genesis 14 were unhistorical, but now it is possible to make plausible identification of these kings from the inscriptions.(Footnotes 2,3)

The findings of archaeologists will never prove the Bible to be true, but they can help to confirm its historical statements in a few instances, and give an illuminating background to some of its events. It is in this sense, therefore, that the following archaeological discoveries relating to Genesis 1-23 are offered to the reader.

The Creation

One of the Enuma Elish tablets giving the Assyrian account of Creation. British Museum,

Enuma Elish (meaning ‘when above’) is an Assyrian epic of Creation from the seventh century B.C. on seven cuneiform tablets now in the British Museum.(Footnotes 4,5) It begins on the first tablet by saying: “When above the heavens and below the earth had no name and there was no land . . . “.(Footnote 6) It goes on to relate how the primeval gods Apsu and Tiamat procreated the other gods. Eventually war among the gods led to Tiamat being cleaved in two, the halves forming the heaven above and the earth and underworld below. Clearly Genesis stands apart from this grotesque account in its simplicity and brevity. (The Babylonian account occupies twelve A4-size pages of printing; compare this with the length of Genesis 1-3 in your Bible.) Nevertheless in a perverse way it confirms that the earth was made supernaturally, and that there was a time when there was no land on the earth.

Another Mesopotamian discovery, the Atrahasis Epic (ninth century B.C.), has an account of the creation of man by the gods, who modelled him from clay mixed with spittle and the blood of another god.(Footnote 7) We can see in this epic gross distortions of the Genesis account of man being formed from the dust of the earth to which he would return. Also man is depicted as being made by supernatural means; there is no mention of him evolving from animals.

Another item in the British Museum is the Temptation Seal (twenty-third century B.C.). It was first published by George Smith in 1875, who wrote: “One striking and important specimen ... has two figures sitting one on each side of a date-palm tree, holding out their hands to the fruit, while at the back of one is a serpent ... it is evident that a form of the story of the Fall, similar to that in Genesis, was known in early times in Babylon”.(Footnote 8) Although the figures are fully clothed, and some treat the seal as having only a fertility significance, the connection with Adam’s and Eve’s disobedience to the Divine command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is very striking.

The Flood

Legends of the Flood are apparently very numerous,(Footnote 9) and one such from Babylon is known as the Gilgamesh Epic (seventh century B.C.).(Footnote 10) The main theme of this epic (on eleven cuneiform tablets) is the search by the hero Gilgamesh for immortality. The eleventh tablet is in the form of a story told to Gilgamesh by Utnapishtim, who had already gained immortality. He narrates how the gods became angry at the nuisance (noise, apparently!) caused on the earth by men, and decided to destroy them with a flood. The god Ea favoured Utnapishtim and warned him to build a ship and to bring into it all his family, his treasures, and living creatures of every kind. He did this and so escaped a prodigious storm, leading to a flood, which destroyed all the rest of mankind. The storm ended on the seventh day, and on the twelfth day land emerged from the waters. The boat came to rest on Mount Nisir (in Khurdistan), and Utnapishtim sent out in turn a dove, a swallow, and a raven, only the raven not returning. Finally Utnapishtim emerged from the boat and offered a sacrifice to the gods.

We can see in this account points of comparison with the true account in Genesis 6- 9. The major points of difference are the names, the chronology and the birds sent out. However, Dr Kitchen(Footnote 11) points out nine points of difference, and from our standpoint the eleventh tablet of the Gilgamesh Epic is a corruption of Genesis. The Atrahasis Epic, mentioned previously in connection with the creation of man, also has a briefer account of the Flood, with fewer details than the Gilgamesh Epic.

One of the tablets of the Gilgamesh Epic.

British Museum.

Chronologies in Genesis 5 and 11 have frequently been criticised, even by some Christadelphians, as being unreliable, and the life spans impossible. However, The Sumerian King List(Footnote 12) is a manuscript giving the genealogy of the Sumerian kings before and after the Flood, just as the Bible traces the genealogy and life spans of the seed of the woman from Seth to Noah, and then after the Flood from Noah to Abram. The years of the reigns seem rather far fetched (one supposedly reigning for 28,000 years), but there has been independent confirmation from other sources of the existence of at least one of these kings,(Footnote 13) Enmebaragisi king of Kish, who was alleged to have reigned for 900 years. This is similar to the life spans of several of the antediluvians in Seth’s line in Genesis 5.

Origin of the nations

The origin of the nations in Genesis 10 is indirectly supported by archaeological findings as well as by our modern maps. As an example, take Canaan’s descendants (vv. 15-19). His first son, Sidon, is preserved in the name of a coastal city in Lebanon. The name Arkite (v.17) is still preserved in the location Tell ’Arqua, which is also mentioned in the Tel el-Amarna letters and on the Assyrian inscriptions of Shalmaneser and Tiglath-pileser. The Sinite name is to be seen in the place names Nahr as-Sinn and Sinn ad-dar, both in Lebanon.

Zemarite has changed to Sumra (on the north coast of Tripoli), and this also is mentioned in Assyrian texts. Hamath, a city on the Orontes, has become Hamah on modern maps.

The tower of Babel has not been discovered, although the site of a ziggurat at Babylon has been identified as a water-and-reed-filled hole in the ground, the baked bricks from which it was built having been taken for use elsewhere.(Footnote 14) One of the best-preserved ziggurats (temple-towers) was found in Ur of the Chaldees by Sir Leonard Woolley. In his book Tells, Tombs and Treasures R. T. Boyd wrote: “A clay tablet was unearthed which gave the following account of a ziggurat: ‘the erection of this tower highly offended all the gods. In a night they [threw down] what man had built and impeded their progress. They were scattered abroad and their speech was strange’”. There are similarities in this account with Genesis 11:8: “So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city”. In the library of Ebla a tablet was found which was a dictionary of forty-two languages. These tablets are dated around 2300 B.C.,(Footnote 15) before the time of Abraham, and give confirmation of the Bible record of the confusion of tongues in Genesis 11:7.

Abraham

The time of Abraham and Ur of the Chaldees has received much attention in archaeology books.(Footnote 16) Works of art, jewels and gold, comfortable two-storey houses, town drains—all were part of everyday life at Ur. Many commercial transactions such as receipts and contracts have been found, showing that Abram’s faith was put to the test when he was asked to leave this sophisticated civilisation to become a nomad travelling to an unknown land.

The Stele of Hammurabi (eighteenth century B.C.) contains the laws of this king of Babylon, whom some have equated with the Amraphel of Genesis 14:1. Some of these laws are reflected in the Genesis narrative of Abraham’s life. For example, the rights of children by more than one wife were safeguarded. If a slave-wife had borne children she was not to be expelled or sold.(Footnote 17) In Genesis 21:10,11 Abraham was unwilling to send Hagar and Ishmael away, not only because he was a just man, but also because it was against the customs prevailing in his day. He needed Divine urging to make him send them away, as we can read in Genesis 21:12-14.

Another set of laws can be found in the Nuzi Tablets, from the ancient city of Nuzi, including one about the childless owner of an estate. Abraham, it will be remembered, made over his estate to Eliezer of Damascus, his faithful servant (Gen. 15:2-4).The practice is described in the Nuzi Tablets(Footnote 18) whereby an adopted son could perpetuate the family estate. But if a natural son was born subsequent to the adoption then the adopted son was disinherited, just as happened in the case of Abraham when the son of his old age, Isaac, was born the heir of promise.

Tablet from Ur of the Chaldees describing crop yields. British Museum.

Harp from Ur of the Chaldees. British Museum.

Finally, the transaction related in Genesis 23, when Abraham sought to buy the cave of Machpelah, is in accordance with Hittite Laws discovered in inscriptions and tablets.(Footnote 19) Abraham only wanted the cave, but Ephron the Hittite wanted him to buy the field and its trees as well. Why? Ephron was being more cunning than generous, for it is now known that by Hittite law the owner of a field had to pay a tax on it. If Abraham bought only the cave Ephron would still have had to pay the tax on the field. We can understand, therefore, his insistence that Abraham bought all.

The foregoing are a few examples of how some archaeology throws light on and confirms the historical setting of the early Genesis narrative. Although there are no inscriptions bearing the names of the patriarchs, the events and places in which they moved are wholly consistent with what archaeology says about the period. May the day come soon when men will not cast doubt on God’s Word, but accept it as it truly is: the Word of God which is true from the beginning and for all time.

(I thank Brother John Collyer for his help and encouragement in writing this article.—J.N.)

FOOTNOTES

1. T. C. Mitchell, The Bible in the British Museum. British Museum Publications, 1988, p. 13.

2. W. H. Boulton, Babylonia “Ancient Lands and the Bible” series. Sampson Low, date unknown, p. 44.

3. K. A. Kitchen, The Bible in its World. Paternoster Press, 1977.

4. J. A. Thompson, The Bible and Archaeology. Paternoster Press, 1982, pp. 13,14.

5. T. C. Mitchell, op. cit., ρ. 69.

6. Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. Edited by J. B. Pritchard. Princetown University Press, 1950, pp. 60-72.

7. T. C. Mitchell, op. cit., pp. 26,27.

8. G. Smith, The Chaldean Account of Genesis. 1875, pp. 90-91.

9. J. Whitcomb and Η. Μ. Morris, The Genesis Flood. Presbyterian Reformed Publishing Co., 1962, p. 48. In this classic work the authors quote Sir James George Frazier, who describes over one hundred flood traditions from Europe, Asia, Australia, the East Indies, Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia, South, Central and North America and East Africa. Whitcomb and Morris also point out the differences between the Genesis account of the Flood and the Gilgamesh Epic (pp. 38-41).

10. T. C. Mitchell, op. cit., p. 70, and J. B. Pritchard, op. cit., pp. 93-7.

11. K. A. Kitchen, op. cit., pp. 29-30.

12. J. B. Pritchard, op. cit., pp. 265-6.

13. K. A. Kitchen, op. cit., pp. 31-4.

14. T. C. Mitchell, op. cit., p. 25.

15. K. A. Kitchen, op. cit., pp. 37-55.

16. W. Keller, The Bible as History. Hodder and Stoughton, 1956. Sir Leonard Woolley, Ur of the Chaldees. Penguin Books, 1950.

17. K. A. Kitchen, op. cit., pp. 69-70.

18. Ibid., p. 70.

19. Ibid., p. 71. J. Finegan, Light from the Ancient Past. Oxford University Press, 1959, p. 146.

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