Bible Gets A Reality Check

In From Eden to Exile: Unraveling Mysteries of the Bible, Eric Cline blends the stuff of summer — sun, sand and stories — with archaeology to come up with some surprisingly intriguing beach reading. Who doesn't love a good mystery, especially one thousands of years old?

The Garden of Eden, the Tower of Babel, the Ark of the Covenant and the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel are all biblical mysteries that resonate today. "These mysteries are not ancient history," writes Cline in his book's introduction. "They are still very much around today, showing up every few weeks in newspaper headlines.


Cline employs a friendly but skeptical voice to march through the Old Testament's mysteries, ranging from Eden's location to the where and how of Joshua's military campaigns. He wields the scholarly record as a scale for judging the evidence for each theory, never completely dismissing anything, and leaving questions of theology or scriptural interpretation to the experts in those fields.

Readers may be surprised to learn how many other civilizations were writing their own records, preserved in tablets and inscriptions, both during and before the time of the ancient Israelites. The Sumerians had a flood myth older than the Old Testament. The hero was originally named Ziusudra, then Atrahasis and Utnapishtim, Cline notes, before anyone ever heard of Noah. Other stories of warfare or tribute from the ancient empires of Hittites, Babylonians and Egyptians sometimes mirror the biblical accounts, with one big difference: "Although there are obvious similarities, the most significant changes are the moralistic or ethical endings or twists that were added to the original story" in the Bible, Cline finds.

Where the archaeology is clear, Cline finds convincing evidence that the biblical conquests around the 12th century B.C. weren't the work of Joshua and his horn but an invading army that overthrew the Hittites and severely checked the ancient Egyptians, leaving the Israelites behind to take over ancient Israel. Similarly, the best evidence suggests the Ark of the Covenant was not buried under Temple Mount, but captured and melted down by Nebuchadnezzar's invading army in 586 B.C.

Near Eastern archaeologists working in the conflict-ridden Middle East (Cline is an associate director for the excavation outside Jerusalem of Megiddo, source of the word "Armageddon") know well the evidence of ancient warfare they uncover resonates in today's world. In the last, and best-researched, chapter of the book, Cline tackles the fate of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, a question some have answered with theories of migrations ranging from India to Africa to America. Fortunately, records remain from the Neo-Assyrian invaders, the folks responsible for dispersing the tribes, and Babylonian contemporaries.

The best evidence suggests the invaders deported thousands of Israelites, but the vast majority simply remained there, either living among the invaders or fleeing to the south, both phenomena detailed in ancient buildings. One of the many tragedies of the current situation in Israel is that conflict with Palestinians essentially is a battle between cousins, Cline suggests.

"People need stories, not just data, to make sense of their lives," he concludes, adding a note of caution for readers about the next time they hear of a biblical mystery finally solved.

Please visit the link provided for the complete story.