Bible History
Bible History
Choose a Category

Biblical Archaeology

The Value of Studying Biblical Archaeology

The value of the study of Bible archaeology. Numerous critics of the Bible who have boasted of using so-called scientific methods have challenged the accuracy and the historicity of many statements in the Scriptures. The early narratives of the Bible have been declared to be legendary or mythical. A late date has been suggested for certain book...

Read More

The Discovery of the Rosetta Stone

The discovery of the stone. For many centuries travelers to Egypt saw on the ruins of ancient temples, palaces, or tombs, or on the walls, pillars, or ceilings of old buildings, many inscriptions which were in the old hieroglyphic or pictorial language of old Egypt, which no scholar knew how to read. When Napoleon invaded the land of Egypt in 1...

Read More

Buried Cities, Mounds, and Tells

How cities have become buried, and why they are in the form of a mound (or tell). When the ancients would build a new city, they often chose a hill located near a spring. They would build a wall around the city to protect it against an enemy. The city thus built might be occupied for several centuries and then be destroyed by an enemy, or by ea...

Read More

Deciphering the Rosetta Stone

Deciphering of the stone. A young Frenchman by the name of Champollion, using the method of comparing the known (Greek) with the unknown (Egyptian), succeeded in the year 1818 in deciphering the Egyptian languages. The middle writing on the stone was a cursive type, and was the vernacular of the common people. The top language was the picture w...

Read More

Excavations and Documentation

The science of uncovering a buried city. The early pioneers in archaeology had not developed the scientific methods that have been used by the twentieth- century excavators. Now it is customary for each occupational level of earth to be removed and everything found in it recorded before the next deepest level is uncovered. Everything found is alw...

Read More

Discovery of the Behistun Rock

The discovery and copying of the inscription. Shortly before the middle of the nineteenth century, when archaeologists were beginning to uncover ancient Assyrian palaces and many inscriptions were made available to scholars in the old cuneiform language of Babylonia and Assyria, it was providential that an important discovery led to the deciphe...

Read More

Chart of the Kings of Israel and Judah

Assyrian annals mention contacts with some nine Hebrew kings: Omri, Ahab, Jehu, Menahem, Pekah, Uzziah, Ahaz, Hezekiah, and Manasseh. During the reign of Hoshea, king of Israel, Shalmaneser V, king of Assyria, invaded Israel (2 Kings 17:3,5) the kingdom that remained. His successor Sargon II finally took Samaria in 722 BC, carrying away 27,290 ...

Read More

Map of Ancient Assyria

Geography of Ancient Assyria. Ancient Assyria was generally the northern half of Mesopotamia, while the southern half was generally referred to as Babylonia. The word "Mesopotamia" comes to us from ancient Greece and means the land "between the rivers", referring to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The region around ancient Assyria was filled with ...

Read More

Map of Modern Iraq

Geography of Modern Iraq LOCATION & GEOGRAPHY: Iraq is located in the Middle East. It is bound by Iran to the east, Turkey to the north, Syria to the northwest, Jordan to the west, Saudi Arabia to the southwest and south as well as Kuwait and the Persian Gulf to the southeast. The country can be divided into four main topographical regions. ...

Read More

Assyrian History

(1) Background. Shalmaneser III came to the throne of Assyria in 859 BC. To understand the time period we need to go back several hundred years. During the time of Abraham, Babylonia was the dominant power in the East. The great Hammurabi ruled Babylon around 1700 BC. A few hundred years later, around the time of the Hebrew Exodus from Egypt, Ass...

Read More

61 Bible Translations

Popular Articles

Explore the Bible Like Never Before!

Bible History Online

Bible Study Tools

Top Tags