Plate 7
Note cuneiform writing and sculpture on stone weapon
Then another company of people looking for a permanent dwelling place would chance upon this hill. Finding it suited to their requirements they would immediately start building upon the surface. With no knowledge whatever that a previous group of people had made this hill their habitation, the new dwellings and walls would rise high upon the covered ruins of the earlier period. Within a comparatively short time they also would be the victims of some wandering conqueror, and once again the wrecked habitations of men would be repossessed by the drifting sands of the desert. It is not uncommon that in the course of a thousand years such an experience would be repeated from three or four to a dozen times upon the same site.
When the archeologist finds such a mound or hill, he has a treasure indeed. By excavating this deposit one stratum at a time, he builds up a stratographical record which is highly important in reconstructing a consecutive history of this region. The date factors of the various strata are generally established by the contents of each horizon of dwelling, in turn. If the archeologist depends upon facts instead of his imagination, a credible chronology for the entire region can thus be constructed.
In such a recovery the common life of the people of antiquity is revealed in amazing detail. We learn their customs of living, something of their arts and crafts and their manner of labor. Their knowledge of architecture is clearly portrayed through such ruins as remain, and the general picture of the incidental events that made up their living is clearly developed as the work proceeds.
Since the destruction of such a city was usually catastrophic, the record suddenly breaks off at the point of the tragedy. The abruptness wherewith the life and activity ceased, leaves all of the valuable material undisturbed in situ. This circumstance, though unfortunate for the ancients, is a happy one for the archeologist who thus is enabled to rebuild their times and lives.
These sites yield many types of material. In establishing chronology, the most important of all of these is probably the pottery. There is no age of men so ancient that it does not yield proof of human ability in the ceramic art. Without aluminum cooking utensils or iron skillets, the folk of antiquity depended upon clay for the vessels of their habitation. Dishes, pots, jars, and utensils of a thousand usages were all made of this common substance. Before the invention of paper, clay was also the common material for preserving written records. As each race of people had its own peculiarities in the use of clay, the pottery that is found on a given site is one of the finest indications of a date factor that the site can contain.
Even after the invention of papyrus or parchment, these types of writing material were too costly for the average person to use. Requiring some cheap, common, readily accessible material upon which to write, the poor of antiquity laid hold upon the one source of supply that was never wanting. This consisted of shards of pottery. By the side of every dwelling in ancient times might be found a small heap of broken utensils of clay. The ingenuity of man suggested a method of writing on these fragments. In every home there was a pen made of a reed and a pot of homemade ink. With these crude tools, the common people corresponded and made notes on pieces of clay vessels. When a fragment of pottery was thus inscribed, it was called an ostracon.
These ostraca are among the most priceless discoveries of antiquity. They were written in the vernacular and dealt with the common daily affairs that made up the lives of the humble. They shed a flood of light upon the customs and beliefs of the mass of the people. Some of the wall inscriptions of great conquerors, if taken by themselves, would give an impression of grandeur and splendor to their entire era, if we believed such record implicitly. But for every king or conqueror there were multiplied thousands of poor. These were the folks who made up the mass of humanity and whose customs and lives paint the true picture of ancient times. Therefore, these ostraca, being derived from the common people, are the greatest aid in the reconstruction of the life and times wherewith the Bible deals.
Another source of evidence is found in tools and artifacts which show the culture of any given time and region. Knowing how the people worked and what they wrought, has been of priceless value to the Biblical archeologist. Since the critics made so great a case out of the alleged culture of the people in every age, it is eminently fitting that the refutation of their error should come from the people themselves.
Still another source of archeological material is to be found in the art of antiquity. It seems that from the time of Adam to the present hour the desire to express our feelings and emotions in the permanent form of illustration has been common to man. The sites of antiquity testify to this fact in unmistakable terms.
In the art of the days of long ago many subjects were covered. Much of the painting and sculpture had to do with the religion of the time. Thus we can reconstruct the Pantheon of Egypt very largely from the illustrations that come to us from monuments and papyri.
Another large section of ancient art dealt with the history of the time in which the artists lived and wrought. Since the work of such artists was generally intended to flatter and please the reigning monarch, most of this illustrated history is military in nature. Thus we are able to confirm much of the Old Testament history through the recovery of ancient art.
Other artists, in turn, dealt with the human anatomy, the style of dress and the industries of old. When we gather together all of this illuminating material, it is safe to say that ancient artists have brought to us a source of material which is not the least of the treasures of antiquity.
A final source of material is found upon the walls that made up the actual dwellings of old. This business of scribbling names and dates upon public buildings or objects of interest is not unique to modern men. Deplorable as the custom may be, this ancient vulgarity has, nevertheless, proved a great boon to the archeologist of our day. For instance, many of the scribes and officials of antiquity, traveling about the country upon the business of their lords, would visit one of the tombs of a former age. Prompted by curiosity and interest in the grandeur of antiquity, they came to stare and to learn. Their emotions being aroused they desired some expression. This desire they sometimes satisfied by inscribing upon the wall of a certain tomb or temple their names and the fact that at such a date they visited and saw this wonder. Since they generally dated their visit by the reign of the king under whom they lived and served, a chronology may be builded for antiquity from this source of material alone.
It has been more or less customary in our era for the itinerant gentry to leave valuable information for fellows of their fraternity who come along after them. This custom also is a survival of an ancient day. A man journeying from one region to another would stop by the side of a blank wall and inscribe road directions for any who might follow after him. Sometimes he would add his name and the year of the reign of a given monarch. It was not unusual also for such an amateur historian to make some caustic and pertinent comments upon the country, the officials, or the people. These spontaneous records are priceless. They are the free expression of an honest opinion and are not constructed with the idea of deluding posterity with a false standard of the grandeur of some conquering king.
It is rather amusing now to look back to the long battle that was fought between criticism and orthodoxy in this very field. With a dogmatic certainty which was characteristic of the assumptions of the school of higher criticism, these mistaken authorities assured us that the age of Moses was an age of illiteracy. In fact, the extreme scholars of this school asserted that writing was not invented until five hundred years after the age of Moses. We have ourselves debated that question with living men.
One such occasion occurred recently, when we were delivering a series of lectures at Grand Rapids, Michigan. The subject had to deal with archeology and the Bible, and the men in attendance seemed to appreciate the opening lecture extremely. Therefore, we were the more surprised when a gentleman, clad in clerical garb, came forward and in the most abrupt and disagreeable manner demanded,
“By what authority do you state that Moses wrote the Pentateuch? Your dogmatic assertion is utterly baseless!”
In some surprise we replied, “I am sorry to sound dogmatic, as I try never to dogmatize. All that I mean to imply is that I am absolutely certain that he did write it!”
Our humor, which was intended as oil on troubled waters, turned out to be more like gasoline on raging fires! The exasperated gentleman exclaimed with considerable more heat than he had previously manifested, “You can’t prove that Moses wrote the Pentateuch!”
“I don’t have to,” I replied, “as the boot is on the other foot! May I quote to you a section from Greenleaf on Evidence? Here is the citation: ‘When documents purporting to come from antiquity, and bearing upon their face no evident marks of forgery, are found in the proper repository, the law presumes such documents to be authentic and genuine, and the burden of proof to the contrary devolves upon the objector.’ Now, my dear brother, these documents do come from antiquity. They bear no evidence of forgery, and have thus been accepted and accredited in all of the ages that make up three millenniums of time. You face a problem if you are going to repudiate all the evidence and tradition of their credibility. Just how are you going to prove that Moses did not write these books ascribed to him?”
“That is easy,” the scholarly brother retorted. “Moses could not have written the first five books of the Bible, because writing was not invented until five hundred years after Moses died!”
In great amazement I asked him, “Is it possible that you never heard of the Tel el Armana tablets?”
He never had!
So we took time to tell him of the amazing discovery of this great deposit of written records from the library of Amenhetep the Third, and their bearing upon the great controversy. Then we told him also of the older records of Ur, that go all the way back to the days of the queen Shub Ab, and manifest a vast acquaintance with the art of writing as far back of Abraham as this patriarch in turn preceded the Lord Jesus Christ! He frankly confessed his total ignorance of this entire body of accumulated knowledge, and then closed the debate by stating,