Philip Dr. Johnson C. - Archeology And The Christian (Biblical Archeology)

Biblical Archeology, Volume 1
Archeology And The Christian

Dr. Johnson C. Philip
Dr. Saneesh Cherian

Editor: JW Thompson

th Revised Edition

Contents

Bible and its message are completely dependent upon history. Events like temptation and fall in Eden, promise of a virgin-born savior, and the suffering, crucifixion, and resurrection of the savior are foundational to the Christian faith.

Almost all other faiths, isms, and religions can survive without an accurate literal history to support them, but not the Christian faith. Once the historical foundation is distorted, its theological claims and foundations automatically come to a naughty. This fact was recognized by the atheists and radicals much more than the Christians because as a group they were always looking for loopholes, whereas the average Christian does not (and should not) try to dismantle his own faith.

As a consequence, it is the anti Jew and the anti Christian thinkers and writers who initially did their best to study and attack the historical foundations of the Bible. Even at the time of Lord Jesus Christ there were the Sadducees who questioned in the Old Testament, and this tendency only increased from 200 AD onwards. Three centuries after Pentecost the opposition became strong and somewhat systematized as much as 15 valiums of books to attack the Bible. The attacks kept growing with the growth and expansion of the Christian faith, becoming most intense from around 1700s onwards.

Europe, which was the center of Christianity, was oppressed and ruled by an iron, hand the tyrannical and exploitative Roman Catholic Church. Consequently, rebellion and resentment was developing deep in the hearts of many intellectuals like over-heated lava, ready to come out and level everything within site as soon as it found as opening.

It was this milieu in which the Protestant Reformation came as a liberating force. People began enjoying religious freedom and liberty in Europe after a span of over one millennium. This liberty was a blessing for millions of common people, but it also gave liberty to the thinkers whose resentment against the church was simmering deep within for centuries. And it burst forth like a volcano, throwing out the baby with the water. Not only did they openly reject the church; they also immediately rejected the Bible and Christian faith.

The modern western rationalism and theological radicalism is thus the illegitimate offspring of the millennium-long Roman Catholic oppression of thinkers.

With the rise of modern western dissent (properly speaking, resentment against the Christian faith, an increasing number of them started hunting for ways to dismantle the Bible. And historical sciences came in handy because at that time it was relatively easy to argue against the Bible in the name of history. Better yet for them, both scholar as well as the lay skeptic could easily use history, particularly the ancient history related to the Bible lands, to argue against the Christian faith.

Historical science were not as developed before 1700s as they are, ancient manuscripts and inscriptions were nit as plentiful as they are. Worse, nobody could as read what was available (say from ancient Egypt). So the history at that time rested upon plenty of false in knowledge, and it was easy both for the scholar as well as the layman to claim that this or that event, place, or people-group mentioned in the Bible was not known from the available historical reference. This was then carried to the next claim that since nothing was known of many things mentioned in the Bible, those things were false, the imagination of many pious writers.

While it is true that at the end of 1600s and in the beginning of 1700s there were many people, places, and events recorded in the Bible that were not known from any other sources, it was an illogical conclusion that therefore the Biblical record was false. This is similar to the conclusion of the person with a dislike for mathematics that since he is unable to solve a certain mathematical problem therefore the problem is unsolvable. Untold amount of scientific progresses been hindered retarded by this attitude, but the rationalists and theological radicals were not hindered in their anti-biblical agenda by such objective considerations.

By the beginning of 1700s, physical science progressed much, and a technological evolution was visible to everyone. And the radicals simply assured everyone (falsely, of course) that the historical sciences were also by now equally developed. They started speaking of the assured results of modern researches in historical sciences, and these assured results in historical sciences coming mostly from voids and gaps in historical knowledge were used confidently by them to attack the historical portion of the Bible.

The most notables among these radicals were Germans, and these developments had more to do with a historical development of ancient historical science in Biblical lands. As the Protestant movement spread, the Germans began to finance their theological seminaries (most of which were departments of secular universal) through government money. In other words, the German theological seminaries were more Government-controlled bureaucracies. This brought in an unbelievable amount of money to theological departments without any kind of spiritual responsibility since the departments were controlled by the government, personal salvation, intimacy with the lord, or spiritual commitment were not at all important for appointment in these seminaries.

The government bureaucracy that controlled these German Universities (directly or by proxy) knew only one thing: these people are appointed for thus they need to be academically qualified for the jobs. Things like spiritual commitment had no place in the vocabulary (or rulebook) of the government. The situation was ripe for a large number of men to get into this government funded jobs without having to bother about inconvenience like faith and commitment.

Thus eventually the German (and many other) government-funded (and there for bureaucracy-controlled) seminaries became populated with men who considered Bible and Christianity to be things to be done away with. Thus using the liberal amounts of funds available (for this was the time these countries flourished much) from the Government these men published a large number of multi-volume works and journals that had the singular aim of destroying the Christian faith. And this had worldwide repercussions, because these books went worldwide and brainwashed the Christian community that was yet to realize what the hidden aged of this theological radical was.

It is claimed by many that the frog has a peculiar way to behave that can be used to kill it. According to it, if one drops a healthy frog in a pot of boiling water, it would react so fast to the danger that it would be out and totally safe within a fraction of a second. But put the same frog in a pot of cold water and warm it gradually and it would not react. The gradual change in temperature makes this cold-blooded animal to adjust to the temperature, desensitizing and cheating its otherwise powerful defense system. By the time the helpless frog decides to jump out (that is, if it is any longer able to decide) it is already cooked to death. Scientifically true or not, this story has a true social, theological, and spiritual counterpart. Large sections of human society have repeatedly been brainwashed and manipulated in this manner to abandon things of lasting value in favor of trivial and trinkets. Others have even been led to social or spiritual death, and the case of German theologians falls into that category. German had made a mark for themselves in almost every field of knowledge in 1700s and 1800s with the likes of the 40-volume Sacred Literature of The Ancient East. So very few Christians expected German Christian scholars to misguide or cheat their readers. However this is exactly what they did in every field of Bible and theology, and by the time the Christian world realized what was happening, the damage was already done.