Scripture & RecordScripture & Record

Bible prophecy checked against the historical record

A prophecy is only notable if the text can be dated before the event.

Scripture & Record takes one biblical passage at a time, establishes when it can be dated and on whose authority, sets the external record beside it, argues both sides properly, and publishes a verdict — favourable or not.

There is a great deal of writing about biblical prophecy, and almost all of it starts from the answer. Apologetics starts from yes; debunking starts from no. Both skip the part that decides everything, which is the date of the document. This site starts there, every time — and it publishes the cases that go badly for the traditional reading with the same care as the cases that go well.

Every source here carries a permanent identifier — a museum registration number, a CDLI number, a DOI, an ISBN. A page cannot be published while any of its identifiers is missing or unresolved, and the status of each one is printed at the foot of the page, generated from the database rather than typed in. Nothing here asks what you believe.

How the method works · How this site is written

Latest dossiers

  • What Romans wrote about Christians

    Two Roman officials, writing sixty years apart, mention Christians in passing while explaining something else. Neither is sympathetic and neither is trying to prove anything — which is exactly what makes the two passages worth more than their length.

  • The earliest mention of Israel

    An Egyptian victory monument from around 1208 BCE lists the peoples of Canaan that Pharaoh claims to have crushed. One of them is Israel. It is the oldest surviving occurrence of the name — and it is used to prove…

  • The Lachish letters and the last days of Judah

    Judaean soldiers wrote to each other on broken pottery while the Babylonian army closed in. One of them reports that he can no longer see the signals from Azekah. Jeremiah names Azekah and Lachish as the last two cities holding…

  • Who took Samaria

    Two Assyrian kings are credited with ending the kingdom of Israel, and one of them credited himself. The Bible sides with the other. This is a case where the external record disagrees with itself and the biblical text is a…

  • Mesha of Moab and 2 Kings 3

    A Moabite king had his side of the story carved in stone. The Bible has the other. They agree that Israel dominated Moab and that Moab broke free — and each ends the story where it looks best.

  • Jehu on the Black Obelisk

    The most reproduced image in biblical archaeology is captioned as a portrait of a king of Israel bowing to Assyria. The epigraph above it does name Jehu. The figure below it may not be him at all.

Method notes