Historical
-
Bible Trivia: Egypt and the Bible
Twelve questions on the state that ruled Canaan for centuries and left the earliest surviving mention of Israel — and on what its records never say.
-
Bible Trivia: Babylon and the Exile
Twelve questions on the empire that took Jerusalem, the deportations, and the return — including the parts where the biblical numbers disagree with each other.
-
Bible Trivia: Assyria and the Bible
Twelve questions on the empire that ended the northern kingdom and besieged the southern one — with every answer worked through against the Assyrian records themselves.
-
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.
-
Ahab at Qarqar, 853 BCE
An Assyrian monument names Ahab the Israelite in a coalition at a battle the Bible never mentions. It is the earliest external record of any king of Israel — and the two accounts are silent about each other’s main events.
-
Bible Trivia: Miracles in the Bible
Twelve questions on the miracle accounts, at three levels — including the honest one about why a campaign leaves tablets and ruins while an event outside ordinary causation leaves neither.