History/Archaeology
- passages
- 26
- books
- 14
Some passages make claims about events, places, and peoples that history and archaeology can test. Here the text sits beside the material record.
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Genesis 21:32
So they made a covenant at Beersheba. Abimelech rose up with Phicol, the captain of his army, and they returned into the land of the Philistines.
What it means: Archaeological digs show Philistines arrived around 1200 BCE, but the text places them there 800 years earlier. It's like a story about the American…
Showing 1–24 of 26
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The Philistines lived in Canaan around 2000 BCE.
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Domesticated camels were used for transportation around 2000 BCE.
Genesis 12:16 · Genesis 24:10-64 · Genesis 30:43 · Genesis 31:17 · Genesis 32:7 · Genesis 32:15 · Genesis 37:25
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A 250-mile journey took 40 years to complete.
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An ancient city was so large it took three days to walk across it.
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Different languages exist because humans built a tower too tall.
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At one time, the whole earth was of one language.
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Many human languages were created instantaneously.
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A person was chased to a city centuries before that city existed.
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A famous leader's origin story — set adrift in a sealed basket, rescued, raised by another — is unique and original.
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A city declared a permanent heap of ruins can never be inhabited again.
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A tribal nation in 1000 BCE mustered 1.3 million fighting men for a military census.
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A tribal kingdom in 1000 BCE fielded a combined army of 1.57 million soldiers.
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A king collected coins named after a ruler who wouldn't exist for another 500 years.
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Half a million soldiers were killed in a single battle in the ancient Near East around 900 BCE.
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One million enemy soldiers were killed in a single battle in ancient Africa around 900 BCE.
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One ruler in the 6th century BCE controlled every single kingdom on the entire planet.
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An official decree was searched for in one empire's capital but found in a completely different empire's capital.
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An ancient text dates a foreign king's invasion to a year when that king wasn't even on the throne yet.
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An ancient author identified the wrong person as the last king of Babylon, got his father wrong, and skipped several rulers in the succession.
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An ancient text names a ruler who historians believe never existed — likely confusing him with a different person who lived 17 years later.
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A government census required citizens to travel to an ancestor's hometown from 1,000 years earlier.
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A king ordered the execution of every male child under two in a town near his capital.
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A Roman census required everyone to travel to their ancestral hometown to be counted.
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A single person's message reached every person across an entire continent within just two years, in an era before telecommunications.