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The stones and the Scriptures

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Edwin Yamauchi (born 1937) is Professor Emeritus of History at Miami University, where he taught from 1969 until 2005.

He states in the Introduction, "It is not to be denied, however, that interest in the relevance of archaeology for the Bible was a primary initiating factor and is still one of the chief motivating elements in the support for excavations today. Indeed, a popular notion exists that 'Archaeology has proved the Bible.' There is truth to this aphoprism... but it needs to be understood properly. If by 'proof' is meant irrefutable evidence that everything in the Bible happened 'just so,' this 'proof' cannot be provided by archaeology."

"(T)he designation of Abraham's city of Ur in lower Mesopotamia as 'Ur of the Chaldees' is readily explained as a gloss by a later editor as the Chaldeans are nowhere mentioned in non-biblical texts until the eleventh century B.C."

He points out that John Garstang's early identification of the "walls of Jericho" in Joshua's time were disproved by the later excavations of Kathleen Kenyon, which "have shown that Garstang's walls are in fact remains from the Early Bronze Age, a thousand years before Joshua's time."

Concerning the Book of Daniel, he writes, "The single argument which remains for a late date for Daniel is the striking correspondence with the events of the Maccabean period. If one rejects beforehand the possibility of prophecy, this is an irrefutable argument.... But whether any given ancient prophecy was made after the event must be proved by other criteria, and not initially assumed. We believe that other criteria indicate that the book of Daniel was the work of a true prophet, and not the product of a Maccabean ghost writer."

Concerning the census of Quirinius in Luke 2:1-7, Yamauchi quotes Jack Finegan, who states, "That Quirinius actually took this census is still only concretely affirmed by Luke 2:2; under the circumstances, as we have reconstructed them, the affirmation is not unlikely."

Yamauchi argues that the "Gordon's Calvary" site proposed for the site of Jesus' crucifixion is wrong, as "the two 'eye-sockets' of Gordon's Calvary had not yet been formed at that time." Similarly, the Garden Tomb (proposed as Jesus' tomb) "has no claim to authenticity."

Though now an "old" work, Yamauchi's work is still of interest to those interested in biblical archaeology.

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