BIBLE ARCHEOLOGY: BUT IT AIN’T NECESSARILY SO

It Ain’t Necessarily So, Investigating the Truth of the Biblical Past, Matthew Sturgis, Headline Books, London, 2001
 
This book cannot be recommended enough. It explores the most up to date archaeological evidence that the Bible contains much that is untrue.
 
The Bible claim that the Israelites were not Canaanites has been disproven (page 8, 111-113).

The conquest of Canaan as spelled out in the Bible where Joshua led the people of Israel to successful war against Canaan is likewise false (page 8).

The shared DNA between Israelites and Palestinians today may point to a common origin in Canaan (page 11). Israel means fighter for El and is a Canaanite word (page 117).  El was top Canaanite god and Israel had been worshipping Yahweh and his wife Asherah in the 8th century BC (page 13, 117).  

The list of Edomite kings in Genesis 36 makes the error of naming kings who lived long after Moses which conflicts with tradition that Moses wrote Genesis (page 22).

Jericho was destroyed 150 years before the coming of Joshua. The story from the Bible that he destroyed it is false (page 62). There is no evidence that the city was even occupied at the time of Joshua (page 64). “Almost everyone” agrees that the Jericho story from the Bible is false (page 64). Worse, Canaan at the time was very likely to be a province of  Egypt at the time (page 69). It even had unwalled cities, so sure were the people that Egypt always be able to protect them. Cuneiform tablets from those times discovered in 1889 give proof that Egypt stepped in to look after Canaan and restore stability (page 69). This refutes the Bible claim that Israel escaped slavery from Egypt by going to Canaan and that it fought the Canaanites in Canaan not the Egyptians. The Israelites after they left Egypt are supposed to have settled for a while at Kadesh but not a shred of evidence for this has been uncovered (page 72).   The story of the Exodus from Egypt and the conquest of Canaan by Joshua is pure myth for most scholars (page 74). Even the Holy City, Jerusalem, its name comes from the Canaanite god, Shalem (page 137).
 
King David was one of the central characters in the Bible and Jesus, according to the New Testament, claimed he was a David and his successor as King and his descendant. Hardly anything indicating that David ever lived has ever been found and items thought to back up the Bible account have been re-ascribed by scholars (page 145). He had a rags to riches existence in the Bible. His grand capital city Jerusalem was merely a small village (page 146). The Bible lies that it was his splendid royal headquarters.  The presence of the Philistines and the poor evidence for David in comparison has led many scholars to doubt the existence of David (page 159).

An inscription speaking of the house of David about 100 years after David’s time is used by some as evidence for the existence of David (page 164). Many scholars think that the inscription is speaking of a placename not the house of David. Another inscription is disputed as well. Scholars by guessing the missing letters have worked out that they think it refers to the house of David as well (page 169).
 
The Bible boasts and brags about the great buildings and super-weatlh and great alliances of King Solomon and yet the evidence for all this so bad that at the present time unless new evidence comes up Solomon must be taken for a myth (page 207).
 
That God failed to preserve archaeological evidence very well for his Bible surely says that it is the word of man not God?