Tag: Artifact

Few archaeological discoveries have illuminated the biblical world quite like the Mesha Stele, also known as the Moabite Stone. The stele stands as a vivid first-person account from King Mesha of Moab, a nation often at odds with ancient Israel. Written in Moabite, a dialect closely related to biblical Hebrew, the 34-line inscription dates to…

For much of the 20th century, critics of the Bible argued that King David was little more than a literary invention. He was often portrayed as a mythic ruler created by later Hebrew writers to provide Israel’s monarchy with a noble origin. In the absence of corroborating evidence outside Scripture, David was frequently compared to…

The earliest physical evidence for the New Testament comes from papyrus fragments that preserve portions of the Gospels and other New Testament writings. These ancient manuscripts such as Papyrus 52 (P52), Papyrus 66 (P66), Papyrus 75 (P75), and Papyrus 46 (P46 ) offer a window into the transmission of Christian Scripture in the 1st and…

The Muratorian Fragment is the earliest known list of New Testament writings, providing insight into how early Christians recognized and circulated authoritative texts.1 Discovered in the 18th century in Milan and dating to approximately c. 170–200 AD, the fragment is written in Latin, though it preserves a translation from an original Greek source. 🧭 Introduction…

The Masoretic Text (MT) is the traditional Hebrew version of the Old Testament, carefully copied and standardized by Jewish scribes known as the Masoretes between the 6th and 10th centuries AD. While the Masoretic manuscripts themselves are relatively late, the text they preserve reflects Hebrew Scriptures written roughly between the 12th and 2nd centuries BC.…