Date: July 2007

Hopefully you realised this was a spoof heading, yet often the newspapers delight to carry some equally ludicrous headline “debunking” the truth of the Gospel accounts of Jesus or some other aspect of the Bible. Inevitably the kind of debunkings based eg on late second century or later Gnostic writings like the much fêted “Judas gospel”, or on claims that Jesus is “really” buried in France carry no scientific credibility – in spite of the headlines.

Interesting, then, to find tucked away on p.18 of the Times on July 11^th 2007, an article saying:

The British Museum yesterday hailed a discovery within a modest clay tablet in its collection as a breakthrough for biblical archaeology – dramatic proof of the accuracy of the Old Testament. The cuniform inscription in the tablet dating from 595BC has been deciphered for the first time – revealing a reference to an official at the court of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, that proves the historical existence of a figure mentioned in the book of Jeremiah.

The guy’s name was “Nebo-Sarsekin, and the reference was found by Assyriologist Michael Jursa an associate professor at the University of Vienna. He is one of few who can read the cuniform script. Jeremiah 39:3 makes reference to a Nebo-Sareskin as just such an official. This confirms the date biblical scholars have taken for the book of Jeremiah as between 630-580 BC.

So who cares? Does it matter if Jeremiah got it right or not? In itself, of course, it is unimportant. If you asked even the most pious Christians on the street to name even a single non-Jewish high official of Nebuchadnezzar, only one is million would have a clue. Yet it is important because it is part of a pattern in archaeology over the last hundred years that has confirmed the fundamental historical accuracy of many parts of the Bible that claim to be historical. Parts of what it says are, of course, intended to be symbolic. But other parts are clearly intended to be historical – and it is important that in these cases we find the Bible trustworthy as a record.