Episode 251 – Archeology and the Bible – Part 6 – Names We Know 2
Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God.
Script:
… [in] the fourth month of Zedekiah’s eleventh year, the city wall was broken through. … the officials of the king of Babylon came and took seats in the Middle Gate: Nergal-Sharezer of Samgar, Nebo-Sarsekim a chief officer …and all the other officials … of Babylon. .
Jeremiah, Chapter 39, verses 1 through 3, New International Version

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VK: Hello and welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. I’m Victoria K. This is the 6th episode in our series on archeology and the Bible. At Anchored by Truth we think most people understand that archeology is generally relevant to the study of the Bible - but they have a limited understanding of what the relationship is. But if we take the Bible seriously – which we definitely do at Anchored by Truth - we all need to know a little bit about archeology. That’s because archeological explorations and finds have supplied an abundance of evidence that confirms that the history contained in the Bible is real history. That’s why we decided to do this series. Despite the fact that popular culture has tried to dismiss the long-standing relationship between the Bible and archeology the truth is that archeology as a whole has done much to provide evidence of the Bible’s trustworthiness. To help us continue to explore this topic, in the studio today we have RD Fierro. RD is an author and the founder of Crystal Sea Books RD, throughout this series you have pointed out that despite the skepticism we often hear many scholars, including ones who aren’t Christian, have used the Bible as a source document when planning or conducting archeological explorations. In fact, the Bible’s history has regularly been shown to be accurate even when doubted, right?
RD: Right. And during our most recent episodes of Anchored by Truth we have been covering specific examples of times secular history doubted what the Bible reported but archeology proved that the Bible’s report was right. Today we are going to continue in that same vein and provide another example of an archeological find that shows that the Bible not only gets the “big things” right but is also accurate in details that most people wouldn’t even consider are significant.
VK: Well, perhaps we should start by briefly discussing one of the specific criticisms that is frequently hurled at the Bible – the idea that many of the books of the Bible weren’t actually written by the person whose name is associated with that particular book. This would include books like Daniel and Jeremiah but it extends to the first five books of the Bible which are historically attributed to Moses.
RD: One of lines of evidence that the Bible is the inspired word of God is that the Bible contains a large body of fulfilled prophecy. We have provided a lot of examples of successful prophecies in many of our different series on Anchored by Truth. We have talked about the fact that the prophet Isaiah provided the name of the Persian king who would conquer the Babylonian Empire about 200 years before that happened in history.
VK: For anyone who wants to verify that prophecy for themselves they can go chapters 44 and 45 of the book of Isaiah. For example, Isaiah, chapter 45, verses 1 through 3 say, “This is what the LORD says to Cyrus, his anointed one, whose right hand he will empower. Before him, mighty kings will be paralyzed with fear. Their fortress gates will be opened, never to shut again. This is what the LORD says: “I will go before you, Cyrus, and level the mountains. I will smash down gates of bronze and cut through bars of iron. And I will give you treasures hidden in the darkness—secret riches. I will do this so you may know that I am the LORD, the God of Israel, the one who calls you by name.”
RD: Yes. A simple internet search of the question “who conquered Babylon” will bring up the name “Cyrus” or, as he is often called, “Cyrus the Great.” Isaiah is the first of the so-called “Major Prophets” and prophesied from approximately the years 740 BC to about 700 BC. So, the latest his prophesy about a coming conquering king named Cyrus can be dated is 700 BC. But Babylon didn’t fall to Cyrus until 539 BC. So, Isaiah’s prophecy predates the fulfillment by 170 to 200 years.
VK: And since that we can’t successfully predict who will win the next election, Super Bowl, or World Series, a successful prophesy given 200 years before the event is pretty compelling evidence of supernatural inspiration and insight.
RD: Right. Another example of a successful prophesy given hundreds of years ahead of time is found in the book of Daniel, who is the last of the Major Prophets. In chapters 2, 7, and 8 of his book Daniel prophesied about a series of empires that would control what was, for the ancient Hebrews, the known world – essentially to us eastern Europe, north Africa, the Mideast, and western Asia. Daniel prophesied that a series of 4 empires would dominate that territory. We now know from history that those empires were the Babylonian, the Medo-Persian, the Greeks, and the Romans. Rome conquered Palestine and Jerusalem around 63 BC but Daniel had given his prophecy around 540 BC – almost 500 years earlier.
VK: Again, none of us know what the price of gas will be next month much less next year. We don’t know what level the stock market will be at in a year and we can’t even be sure what the weather will be like two days from now. So, for a human, unaided by God, to successfully predict a major military and political event 500 years in the future is simply impossible. But what is impossible for people is possible for God. But it is possible only for God. That’s one of the big reasons we can be sure the Bible was inspired by God. God inspired His writers to record things hundreds of years before they would happen. And that then becomes strong evidence that while a human hand pushed a pen or stylus the information was coming straight from a divine Being.
RD: Yes. These are just two examples of the hundreds that could be cited to illustrate that the Bible writers were given supernatural inspiration by God Almighty. And this evidence is so compelling that the critics of the Bible must find a way to discount the evidence. The most common way they do that is to assert that the books weren’t written when they were. To discredit the prophecy the critics must turn the prophecy into history. So, the critics will claim that the book of Daniel was not written in the 6th century BC but rather the 1st or 2nd century BC. And they claim that while portions of the book of Isaiah were written in the 8th century BC they claim that other parts were written much later such as the 5th or even 4th century BC. By doing so, they claim that rather than the books containing successfully fulfilled prophesies all the books were doing was presenting historical events as prophecy.
VK: That calls to mind the medieval notion that it was possible to turn iron into gold. It was called alchemy. But, in this case, the critics want to turn the golden evidence of fulfilled prophecy into the common element of recent history – a sort of reverse alchemy. The critics can plainly see the implications of a book that contains prophecies given hundreds of years before the events prophesied. Human beings can’t do that. Only God could. So, to get rid of the evidence they turn the evidence into something else. Re-date the book and “poof” – prophesy becomes history.
RD: Yes. So, that’s one of the most common forms of criticism that’s hurled against the Bible. The books of the Bible weren’t written when claimed. It’s a pernicious form of criticism because the critic doesn’t deny the content of the book – just claims the book doesn’t mean what we thing because it’s been “misdated.”
VK: But one of the ways the Bible defends itself against such criticism is that it frequently contains language or details that wouldn’t have been used or known to a later writer. And that detail or language has now been confirmed by archeology. For instance, with respect to the false assertion that the book of Daniel was written in the 1st or 2nd century BC Biblical Scholar Dr. Gleason Archer in his Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties has written this: “… it seems that a second century date for the Hebrew chapters of Daniel is no longer tenable on linguistic grounds. In view of the markedly later development in the areas of syntax, word-order, morphology, vocabulary, spelling, and word-usage, there is absolutely no possibility of regarding Daniel as contemporary [with the sectarian documents][of the second century BC…] The complete absence of Greek loan-words apart from musical instruments … point unmistakably to a time of composition prior to the Alexandrian conquest.”
RD: What Dr. Archer is saying is that, just as today, language changes through time. We know longer use phrases like “Daddy-O” or “23 skidoo” …
VK: “23 skidoo” … really?
RD: Really. “23 skidoo” was an American slang phrase that appeared early in the 20th century. It was often used to mean “I’m leaving quickly.” According to the Wikipedia entry “23 skidoo” was actually the conjoining of two earlier expressions, “‘twenty-three’ (1899) and ‘skidoo’ (1901), both of which, independently and separately, referred to leaving, being kicked out, or the end of something.” The point is that language changes through time. “23 skidoo” is slang from over 100 years ago. If someone sees it in a document we can have high confidence about roughly when that document might have been prepared. The same thing is true about ancient languages. They changed through time. In the case of the language used in the book of Daniel it does not resemble the language used by the Jews in the 1st or 2nd century BC. And we can have high confidence about that in large measure because of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
VK: The point is that the language of the book of Daniel defeats the critics’ attempts to date it at a time when its prophecy would have become history. And today we are going to cite an example where a name in the text of the book of Jeremiah defeats the critics’ attempt to turn its successful prophecies into history. Remember, our opening scripture came from the book of Jeremiah.
RD: Exactly. So, let’s set the stage so we know what is going on – both in scripture and in history.
VK: Jeremiah is the 2nd of the Major Prophets. Jeremiah wrote during a period starting in 626 BC and lasting until about 586 BC. He is sometimes called the “weeping prophet” because he had the sad task of warning the people in Judah and Jerusalem that they were going to be destroyed by the Babylonians because of their idolatry. Jeremiah did not want to see them destroyed but he faithfully reported that because the people would not give up their idolatry they were going to suffer. He made a number of famous prophecies. He not only prophesied that Jerusalem was going to be destroyed but he also prophesied that the captivity of the exiled Jews was going to last 70 years.
RD: And he was proven accurate on both counts. Nebuchadnezzar, the most famous of the Babylonians kings, destroyed Jerusalem in 587 BC and sent most of the people into exile around Babylon. Only the poorest were permitted to remain in their homeland. Jeremiah was also right about how long the Jews would remain in exile. The first time Nebuchadnezzar attacked Jerusalem was 597 BC but before that Jerusalem had become a vassal state of Babylon. Many scholars date the start of the 70 years to 605 BC when Judah first swore allegiance to Babylon. Cyrus defeated Babylon in 539 BC but it took a little while before the exiled Jews were able to begin their return to their homeland. So, all told, the exile of the Jews in Babylon lasted about 70 years.
VK: But a skeptic might say that these two prophecies were not really prophetic. Nebuchadnezzar began his control of Judah during Jeremiah’s lifetime and so the prophecy that Nebuchadnezzar would one day destroy Jerusalem might have just been an educated guess. Or a skeptic might assert that the writer of Jeremiah just wrote about the destruction of Jerusalem after it happened. While the book of Jeremiah does contain information about when various prophecies were given it’s not impossible that the writer might have deliberately misdated the material to appear prophetic even if it were not.
RD: But, that would still leave a successful prophecy about the length of the period of exile. Chronologically, the book of Jeremiah ends right after the final destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BC. But Cyrus would not defeat Babylon for almost another 50 years. So, even if the critic asserts that the writer of Jeremiah was writing history when it came to the fall of Jerusalem the writer would have no way of knowing if or when that period of Babylonian captivity would end.
VK: So, to get around that possibility the critic would say that a later editor of the book of Jeremiah just added that detail after the period of the exile ended. That, in fact, is a very common line of criticism with respect to many of the books in the Old Testament. Many critics assert that many books of the Old Testament, including the first 5 books, were not written until after the period of the Babylonian captivity and the Jews had returned to their homeland – sometime in the late 6th century BC or early to mid 5th century. The assertion is that the returned Jews were trying to create a sort of noble history for themselves because the whole nation was in such desperate condition. The critics assert that the returned Jews either just outright fabricated books such as Genesis at that time - or they took earlier works and just added a bunch of details to give them the appearance of supernatural inspiration. And one way they supposedly did that was to put prophecies in the books that were really historical events that had affected the Israelites. The idea is that by doing so the national or religious authorities could fool their population into believing their holy books contained prophecies that had been fulfilled. The general idea is that these pious fictions would have inspired the Jews, who were then in a pretty sad state at that time.
RD: And that’s where today’s opening scripture becomes relevant. Our opening scripture includes the names of two Babylonian officials who were present at the time the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem. “Nergal-Sharezer of Samgar, Nebo-Sarsekim.” Nebo-Sarsekim is described as being “a chief officer.”
VK: Ok. Let’s focus on what’s going on within the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah has been warning the people – probably for decades at this time – that if they don’t give up their idolatry they are going to be punished by being defeated militarily. And Jeremiah even tells them that their defeat will come at the hands of the Babylonians. But the people don’t listen and the defeat comes about. So, Jeremiah is now describing what was happening at the time that the Babylonians broke through the walls of Jerusalem.
RD: Right. Now what is interesting, amazing even, about this passage from Jeremiah is that he has gone to the trouble of recording the names of Babylonian officials who weren’t the king or part of the royal family. Now it would not be unusual for a careful and honest historian to record the names of important people who present at a significant event – like the breaching of the walls of your capital city. But why would someone who was making up or editing a book to somehow give it the air of supernatural inspiration do that?
VK: I suppose someone would say that adding the names of officials would increase the level of credibility to the account they were concocting. Good fiction writers always want to make their fiction believable.
RD: Someone – a critic – trying to cast doubt on the book might say that. But let’s explore that idea for a second. Let’s suppose that a religious authority in Israel is trying to somehow add weight to a book that they are creating. So, to add that weight they start throwing in a bunch of details about a dramatic event. It makes little sense that one of the details they would throw in would be the names of a couple of people from the invading army who sat down in a city gate just after the invaders had breached the wall. But even if they did decide to throw in a couple of names how would a writer writing decades after the actual event know which names to toss in? Remember the idea we’re examining is whether it is reasonable to suppose that the book of Jeremiah was written decades after the events that it records – because that’s what it would take for a later writer to have made it seem like Jeremiah knew the length of the Babylonian captivity.
VK: Or is just more reasonable to conclude that the book of Jeremiah was written by an eyewitness of the events recorded in the book. An eyewitness could easily know the names of high ranking officials who took part in the capture of the capital city. But details get lost in as time passes by. So, the likelihood that a later religious figure would know which lesser officials happened to be present when Jerusalem fell starts to strain credulity. Which possibility is more likely really comes down to whether the names recorded in Jeremiah are accurate.
RD: And thanks to archeology we now have solid evidence that the writer of Jeremiah got the names right. A clay tablet that is in the British Museum contains a receipt issued by a high official of Nebuchadnezzar, who was the King of Babylon that conquered Jerusalem. This tablet is a receipt is for gold donated to a temple in Babylon. The full translation reads: “‘(Regarding) 1.5 minas (0.75 kg) of gold, the property of Nabu-sharrussu-ukin, the chief eunuch, which he sent via Arad-Banitu the eunuch to [the temple] Esangila: Arad-Banitu has delivered [it] to Esangila. In the presence of Bel-usat, son of Alpaya, the royal bodyguard, [and of] Nadin, son of Marduk-zer-ibni. Month XI, day 18, year 10 [of] Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.” The tablet is dated to the 10th year of Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon (595 BC) or 8 years before the siege of Jerusalem. Many Biblical scholars have now realized that the name mentioned in the tablet is the same name as contained in Jeremiah, chapter 39.
VK: And that’s pretty remarkable. As we’ve said frequently during this series one test for whether a historical record is accurate is whether the record gets the names and titles right. And it is one thing for a writer to get the big names right. But it is even better when the writer gets the names of lesser officials right. Everyone remembers Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great. But how many people would know who was on their staff. How many would remember the people who were, in essence, just supporting actors.
RD: Yet, over and over again, we find that from the Bible that the Bible writers get even the small details right. In this case the Bible describes Nebo-Sarsekim as being a “chief officer” of the king of Babylon. The tablet from the British museum tells us that Nebo-Sarsekim was the “chief eunuch.” That title doesn’t mean anything in our society but in that day the chief eunuch would have been a very important Babylonian official. It would take too much time today to describe why that was true but we can get some idea of his importance and wealth by noting that the tablet indicates he gave gold to the temple that was worth over $50,000 today.
VK: And how many people today can afford to give away $50,000? It’s little wonder that someone kept a receipt of the donation. And by the grace of God we now have that receipt as additional evidence that the book of Jeremiah wasn’t written hundreds of years or even decades after the events it records. An eyewitness of the events could record details accurately. A writer at a far distant time wouldn’t have reason to include the names of lesser officials. By that time the relevance and value of such people would have faded into the distant past.
RD: Right. The book of Jeremiah contains lessons that would have been important for the people of his day – and for us today. Jeremiah warned his people about the dangers of idolatry. An idol is anything we value more than God and lots of us have things that we value more than our relationship with God. Jeremiah was a genuine prophet of God and we can be sure of that because prophecies he passed along to his people came true. And today we’ve only mentioned a couple of those. There are a great many more that time precludes us from discussing in these brief episodes. At Anchored by Truth our purpose is to help people understand that the Bible is the inspired word of God. Archeological finds like the tablet we’ve talked about point to that fact. The history in the Bible is reliable and the Bible contains a large body of fulfilled prophecies. Human beings can write accurate history but only a supernatural God can provide knowledge to His people of events that won’t occur for decades or centuries.
VK: And that is what we are illustrating in this episode and in this series. Archeological discoveries have repeatedly supported the history contained in the Bible. And that accurate history tells us that the Biblical authors were eyewitnesses to most of the history they record. So, the times indicated by their place in history tells us their prophecies were given far before their fulfillment. This sounds like a great time to pray. Today let’s listen to a prayer that our children who are in school and many of them facing tests. Most of us have put such tests far behind us but it always appropriate for us to help the next generation as they walk the path behind us. It is also appropriate for us to ensure that just as we care about their formal education we also take care to pass along our faith in our Lord Christ Jesus.
---- PRAYER FOR TAKING A TEST (RANNI)
VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.”
If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not perfect but our Boss is!”
(Bible Quote from the New International Version)
Jeremiah, Chapter 39, verses 1 through 3, New International Version

New archaeological find affirms Old Testament historicity (creation.com)