I will be doing a series on this also....People kept saying they wanted proof of the Bible....so proof you shall have.


Mesha Stele (Moabite Stone)
In the Bible it says that Mesha the king of Moab was paying tribute to Israel and that they suddenly stopped: "Mesha, king of Moab rebelled against the king of Israel..." (2 Kings 3:5). Well, Mesha made his own record of this rebellion, and the record has been found. It is known today as "The Mesha Stele" or the more popular designation "The Moabite Stone." It was found in 1868 at Dibon, in Moab. Dibon is located 20 miles east of the Dead Sea. Amazingly enough it was discovered by chance by F.A. Klein, a German missionary who had heard rumors of this stone while visiting the area. It was a bluish basalt stone, about 4 feet high and 2 feet wide, and 14 inches thick, with an inscription from king Mesha. When it was found the Berlin Museum negotiated for it while the French Consulate at Jerusalem offered more money.

The next year some local Arabs, realizing all that was at stake, laboriously hoisted it out of the earth and lit a fire around it, and after pouring cold water on it they chipped away several large pieces which they distributed among a few of them. Later the French re-assembled 669 of the estimated 1100 consonants from the pieces and preserved the inscription. It now remains in the Louvre Museum in Paris.

Size and Description
Language: Moabite (a West Semitic Language)
Medium: basalt (black-bluish) stone stele
Size: 1.15 meters high 60-68 centimeters wide
Length: 39 lines of writing
Honoree: Mesha, king of Moab (late 9th century BCE)
Approximate Date: 830 BCE
Place of Discovery: Dhiban [in modern Jordan]
Date of Discovery: 1868
Current Location: Louvre Museum (Paris, France)
Inventory number: AO 5066

"The most extensive inscription ever recovered from ancient Palestine..."

What is Written on the Stone?

1. "I am Mesha, son of Chemosh[-yatti], the king of Moab, the Dibonite.
2. My father (had) reigned over Moab for thirty years, and I reigned
3. after my father. And I made this high-place for Chemosh in Qarcho . . .
4. because he has delivered me from all kings, and because he has made me triumph over all my enemies. As for Omri
5. the king of Israel, and he humbled Moab for many years (days), for Chemosh was angry with his land.
6. And his son reigned in his place; and he also said, "I will oppress Moab!" In my days he said so.
7. But I ltriumphed over him and over his house, and Israel has perished; it has perished forever! And Omri took possession of the whole land of Medeba,
8. and he lived there in his days and half the days of his son (Ahab): forty years.
9. But Chemosh restored it in my days. And I built Baal Meon, and I built a water reservoir in it. And I built
10. Qiryaten. And the men of Gad lived in the land of Atarot from ancient times; and the king of Israel
11. built Atarot for himself, and I fought against the city and captured it. And I killed all the people of
12. the city as a sacrifice for Chemosh and for Moab. And I brought back the fire-hearth of his uncle from there; and I brought it
13. before the face of Chemosh in Qerioit, and I made the men of Sharon live there, as well as the men of Maharit.
14. And Chemosh said to me, "Go, take Nebo from Israel."
15. And I went in the night and fought against it from the daybreak until midday, and I took it
16. and I killed the whole population: seven thousand male subjects and aliens, and female subjects, aliens, and servant girls.
17. For I had devoted them to destruction for (the god) Ashtar Chemosh. And from there I took the
18. vessels of Yahweh, and I presented them before the face of Chemosh. And the king of Israel had built
19. Yahaz, and he stayed there throughout his campaign against me; and Chemosh drove him away before my face. And
20. I took two hundred men of Moab, all first class (warriors), and I led it up to Yahaz. And I have taken it
21. in order to add it to Dibon. I have built Qarcho, the wall of the woods and the wall of
22. the citadel; and I have built its gates; and I have built its towers; and
23. I have built the house of the king; and I have made the double reservoir for the spring in the innermost part of the city.
24. Now the innermost part of the city had no cistern, in Qarcho, and I said to all the people, "Each one of you shall make
25. a cistern in his house." And I cut the moat for Qarcho by using Israelite captives.
26. I have built Aroer, and I constructed the military road in Arnon (valley).
27. I have built Beth-Bamot, for it had been destroyed. I have built Bezer, for it lay
28. in ruins. And the men of Dibon stood in battle formation, for all Dibon were in subjection. And I am the king
29. over the hundreds in the towns which I have added to the land. And I have built
30. Beth-Medeba and Beth-Diblaten and Beth-Baal-Meon, and I brought there . . .
31. flocks of the the land. And the House of [Da]vid dwelt in Hauranen, . . .
32. Chemosh said to me, "Go down, fight against Hauranen!" I went down . . . and Chemosh restored it in my days . . ."

What The Bible Says (Compare)
II Ki 3:4-5 "Now Mesha king of Moab was a sheepbreeder, and he regularly paid the king of Israel one hundred thousand lambs and the wool of one hundred thousand rams. But it happened, when Ahab died, that the king of Moab rebelled against the king of Israel."
(NKJ).

Who Were the Moabites?
The existence of the Biblical "Moabites" were in question by most historians until the recent discovery of the Moabite Stone. The Moabites were a West-Semitic people who lived in the mountains east of the Dead Sea, Trans-Jordan (now considered west- central Jordan) and they flourished in the 9th century BC. They are known mainly through the Old Testament and from the inscription on the Moabite Stone. Scholars have dated their culture from about the late 14th century BC to 582 BC, when they were conquered by the Babylonians, according to the Jewish historian Josephus (1st century AD).

According to the Old Testament (e.g., Genesis 19:30-38), the Moabites belonged to the same ethnic stock as the Israelites, having descended from Moab, a son of Lot, who was a nephew of the first Hebrew, Abraham. There are many mentions in the Bible about the Moabites. King Saul in the 11th Cent. B.C. fought against them, David's great grandmother Ruth was from Moab (Ruth 4:17-22), and it was in Moab that David sought refuge from King Saul (1 Samuel 22:3-4). Sanballat, who in Nehemiah's time was associated with Tobiah the Ammonite and Geshem the Arab against the Jews (<Neh. 2:10,19>; etc.), was a Horonite. If this name is derived from Horonaim, Sanballat was a Moabite, as he is quite often regarded.

"Yahweh"
One important note that is often overlooked is the mention of Yahweh in verse 18 of the Mesha inscription. It appears that king Mesha knew about the Israleite God Yahweh and says he took "the vessels of Yahweh and presented them before the face of Chemosh" his god.

"Chemosh"
Chemosh, the national deity of Moab, is mentioned throughout the Mesha Stele inscription. In the Bible Chemosh is mentioned in (Num. 21:29; Judg. 11:24; 1 Kin. 11:7,33; 2 Kin. 23:13; Jer. 48:7,13,46). The great King Solomon was led astray by taking Moabite princesses for his harem (1 Kings 11:1-8) and erecting near Jerusalem a shrine dedicated to Chemosh.

The god whom the Moabites believed protected their nation was Chemosh:

"Chemosh was an ancient West Semitic deity, revered by the Moabites as their supreme god. Little is known about Chemosh; although King Solomon of Israel built a sanctuary to him east of Jerusalem (1 Kings 11:7), the shrine was later abolished by King Josiah (2 Kings 23:13). The goddess Astarte was probably the cult partner of Chemosh."

- Encyclopædia Britannica

"King Omri and His Son"
The Inscription also makes reference to King Omri of Israel (reigned c. 884-c. 872 BC), and his son, who we know as king Ahab. king Omri is mentioned in 1 Kings 16:23-28, and is knwon for reconquering the Moabite lands that had been lost since Solomon's death in 922 BC, when Israel split into two kingdoms.

"The House of David"
Line 31 is very significant. In 1993 a stela was discovered at Tel Dan in northern Israel mentioning the "House of David" (Bible and Spade, Autumn 1993: 119-121). This inscription provided the first mention of David in a contemporary text outside the Bible. The existence of kind David has been in question by scholars for centuries. At about the same time the Dan stela was found, French scholar Andre Lemaire was working on the Mesha Inscription and determined that the same phrase appeared there in line 31 (Bible and Spade, Summer 1995: 91-92). Lemaire was able to identify a previously indistinguishable letter as a "d" in the phrase "House of David." This phrase was used commonly in the Old Testament for the Davidic dynasty.

Something Interesting To Note
Many a critic of the Bible have scoffed at the alleged contradiction in the Scriptures where (Deut. 2:29) it would appear at first sight that both Moab and Edom granted the request of Israel to be allowed to pass through their territory, but when you compare (Num. 20:18-21) and (Deut. 23:3-4) it seems to show that both Moab and Edom utterly refused. But careful investigation in context removes the difficulty and gives us a clear idea of the whole situation. Israel's request in (Num. 20:17) was permitted IF they would cross the territory of Edom by the royal highway.

The Moabite Language
The language of Moab was merely a dialect of Hebrew, differing from biblical Hebrew only in some minor details. The Moabite language differed only dialectally from Hebrew, and Moabite religion and culture were very closely related to those of the Israelites.

Unger makes mention that:

"The inscription on this stone in a remarkable degree supplements and corroborates the history of King Mesha recorded in (2 Kin. 3:4-27). It affords evidence of the knowledge of alphabetic writing in the lands of the Jordan."

and Sayce comments:

"The art of writing and reading can have been no new thing. As soon as Mesha has shaken off the yoke of the foreigner, he erects an inscribed monument in commemoration of his victories. . . . It is the first and most natural thing for him to do, and it is taken for granted that the record will have numerous readers. . . . Moreover, the forms of the letters as they appear on the Moabite Stone show that alphabetic writing must have been long practiced in the kingdom of Mesha. They are forms which presuppose a long acquaintance with the art of engraving inscriptions upon stones, and are far removed from the forms out of which they must have developed. Then, again, the language of the inscription is noteworthy. Between it and Hebrew the differences are few and slight. It is a proof that the Moabites were akin to the Israelites in language as well as in race, and that like their kinsfolk they had adopted the ancient 'language of Canaan.' The likeness between the languages of Moab and Israel extends beyond the mere idioms of grammar and syntax. It is a likeness which exists also in thought" (Sayce, Higher Crit. and the Mon., p. 364).

What Happened to the Moabites?
Exactly as the Bible had predicted the Moabites were conquered. Moab had become a tributary of Assyria by the late 8th century BC and was conquered by the Babylonians in 582 BC, upon which the Moabites disappeared from history. Their territory was resettled by the Nabataeans in the 4th-3rd century BC.

Isaiah, in his "burden against Moab" (Isa. 15-16; 25:10), predicts, in poetic lamentation, the fall of Moab reducing it to a small and feeble remnant (16:14).

Isa 15:1-3 "The burden against Moab. Because in the night Ar of Moab is laid waste and destroyed, because in the night Kir of Moab is laid waste and destroyed, He has gone up to the temple and Dibon, to the high places to weep. Moab will wail over Nebo and over Medeba; on all their heads will be baldness, and every beard cut off. In their streets they will clothe themselves with sackcloth; on the tops of their houses and in their streets everyone will wail, weeping bitterly." (NKJ)

Isa 25:10-12 "For on this mountain the hand of the LORD will rest, and Moab shall be trampled down under Him, as straw is trampled down for the refuse heap. And He will spread out His hands in their midst as a swimmer reaches out to swim, and He will bring down their pride together with the trickery of their hands. The fortress of the high fort of your walls he will bring down, lay low, and bring to the ground, down to the dust. (NKJ)

The name Moab became a typical byword for the enemies of God.

'feral',

You must call Mr. Webster right away. You must get the definition of proof 'corrected' right away!!!

This man has singlehandedly mislead generations of men and women, whom have become lawyers, scientist, doctors, engineers, all basing their understanding of proof on the definition provided by Mr. Webster.

I saywe burn all these bad books, which from the wrong definition of proof.

The bible, I say, with feral as our 'bible meister' to get to the only possible source of 'proof' straight, is all we need, the world over.

Move over 'sceptics' and 'fact holders'.

Believe or perish!!!

Sweets I hate to burst your bubble but if your trying to say the Moabite stone does not exist. You need to get a clue. And Sorry again to burst your lil AA but Mr. Webster had nothing to do with it.

"This man has singlehandedly mislead generations of men and women, whom have become lawyers, scientist, doctors, engineers, all basing their understanding of proof on the definition provided by Mr. Webster.


So critical, yet havent we as men mislead generations of men and women? How has God done any of this, hes giving us all the choice to make our choices, and withing our choices gives us the ability to go to heaven or hell, yet he did this? Look up the bible and do some research, im tired of people becoming critical on somthing they have not read.

and voil your not even getting the basic concept of this thread.....I'ts just proof through archaeological discoveries proving the biblical writings.......

I fail to understand what you are offering, Farel.

I don't believe anyone here has suggested that there is no valid historocity contained in Biblical scriptures. In fact, I would consider one hard-pressed to find any half-way educated person, who would dispute that such historocity exists.

This in no way supports the differing and dogmatic belief systems that stem from Biblical teachings.

What is your point?

The point is that if you call the Bible a myth you are disputing it.......

The Bible is not an imaginary or fictitious thing. And you redy are also one of the ones that claim this.

The myth is in the stories that lead one to believe as they do.

The informaton you have provided gives no valid reason for you to believe what you believe.

History is gleened from many different sources. It is meant to give us some connection with the past.

The connection you seek to make with this history will never support or give validation to what you believe and how you act on those beliefs.

That is the nature of a belief system. That is the nature of those who belief that myths can guide their lives.

What The Bible Says (Compare)
II Ki 3:4-5 "Now Mesha king of Moab was a sheepbreeder, and he regularly paid the king of Israel one hundred thousand lambs and the wool of one hundred thousand rams. But it happened, when Ahab died, that the king of Moab rebelled against the king of Israel."
(NKJ).

Read this carefully, it is not a prediction, it was written after the events.

Show me the prophacy and the original scripture that can prove to pre-date the events you think support your reference.

The bible is a compilation of old folk tales. There is usually a thread of truth to those old wives tales so there should be historical verification of some of the stories of old in the greatest story book of all time. No offense intended of course.

ANOTHER FUN FACT FOR ENTERTAINING ONE ANOTHER IN JOY!!!!!

Noah Webster's first English Dictionary as published in 1828 a.d., may be had from the Library of Congress and reprints are available today in publication.

It is quite an interesting read if you entertain Mr. Webster's own words therein declaring the process and illumination for the thourough completion to follow in critique of his work.

He leaned heavily on the use of Biblical scripture to contextualize the meanings given for so many words in the English language as an intentional and conscious act on his part as an expression of his free will in action.

Study of this scholar's credentials and authority have never been questioned or equalled to date.

I find it disengenuous to depict him as a lunatic or intellectually compromised in his ability to display sound judgement and thourough use of his faculties, none of which display to me he being found void of logic or reason, but rather are a demonstration of the lack thereof present in the minds and deseminations of contemporary peers in the intellectual community.

Such as I am predisposed to do, I have stirred another pot.

But not as a finger-pointing gesture ; merely an observation of the truth of Mr. Webster's life work.

I see what your saying redy.......But what makes me want to prove Biblical scripture is just like another poster said. That the Bible is folklore with a lil bit of truth......That to me is bogus. Now I understand what your saying about prophecy and in this particular thread I can not prove as prophecy because it's history....But there is accounts of Jesus coming long before he came....and other prophecy that I will recite on a need basis. But I also understand where you coming from with wanting proof....but also that proof can be other then prophecy such as historical, etc.

Wouldee,

Your post proves that we are ever learning new things. There is no Enclopedia that could maintain it's integrity for long. Not when science is constantly being evaluated and updated.

Even Einstein's theories have not all stood the test of time.

But there will be no learning, and no acceptance of new advances that serve to enlighten society, for those who believe that the only truth and the only knowledge is packed into a single source, the Bible.

This does not have to be a bad thing. One does not have to prove from whence their beliefs stem, as long as those beliefs do not hinder those who seek to find other knowledge.

There would never be arguments between believers of one thing and believers of another, if each would keep their faith unto themselves. Since they do not, since they strive to 'change' to demand conformity, then they will get a fight.

People, yourself, Wouldee have mentioned all the time and money that is thrown away on war, instead of feeding the hungry. How much time, effort and money is poured into Christian 'research'? How much is poured into religion for the purpose of absolution?

The only defence required by those who have faith, is to defend themselves when their attacks of others brings a resounding backlash.

Proof is not required by me for ones beliefs, unless those beliefs interfere with my life, or with the progression of humanity as a whole.

I have never said not to look at all aspects of what life is...thats a given......But again your saying that the Bible is just a lil tiny piece...its not....Its the answers to all the questions in the universe.....The problem is no one bothers to read or study or take it apart....well I am and I do....And I could live to be 1,000 and still not even touch a milasecond of what it has to offer.

Redy,

I can only point to the culmination of Jesus Christ's teachings ,as being the availability of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit ,thus being central and discriminate among Christians and the Christian stance with regard to man being an evolutionary attribution or a unique creation by God as intended and upon which has been partaken of by Himself as an act of acknowledgement that man is peculiarly embraced by God intimately and passionately.

In the historically latest reminder in scripture of this relationship and fellowship of man and God I will reference the words of Peter, who walked with the LORD, as being succinct.

1 Peter 2 : 6-10.

Wherefore also it is contained in the scripture, Behold, I lay in Sion a chief cornerstone, elect, precious : and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded.

Unto you therefore which believe he is precious : but unto them which be disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner,

And a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, even to them which stumble at the word, being disobedient : whereunto also they were appointed.

But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people ; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light :

Which in times past were not a people, but are now the people of God : which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.




That being said, I shall now calm my trembling fingers and wait upon Him.

It's these sort of 'Stop thinking Here' dogmatic statements that kept the world in the Dark Ages for so long.

If the Bible truly contained so many answers, why couldn't theologians use its "answers" to cure the Black Plague that swept Europe in medieval times?

This sort of wishful thinking borders on the dangerous. It damns freethinkers as heretical enemies of Religion, and is the surest indicator that a civilization given to such suppression of Reason and Freethinking will never see its Visigoths coming over the hill to sack it.


-Kerry O.

Kerry o.....of course it doesn't give answers to things like the cure for the black plaque......think about why we had plague at all? Think about why we have aids? Maybe your can answer this one yourself.

Have you even looked at a bible?


And if so.....did you understand it?

If only ..., if only ...!

You specifically said:



Extraordinary statements require extraordinary proof. I'll take this post as a retraction of your grandiose claim of omnipresent Biblical omniscience and inerrancy.

As to the rest of your answer, it's futile to debate someone who believes the above. It's like trying to herd cats. Feel free to declare yourself the victor if you haven't already. People keep on dying, but at least there are people who ignore superstition and dogma to forge ahead looking for the answers to questions the ancients who wrote the Bible didn't even know enough to ask. Hopefully, humanity won't continue to make the same mistakes.


-Kerry O.