0:00 Gamarahu Ben Shapan. This is his his seal. You can Do you notice anything too about the Hebrew writing? If you know anything about Hebrew, what's the shape of a Hebrew letter today? Okay, they're squared off. And when when the when the Jews came back from Babylon, the way they did their alphabet changed. So, this is evidence that this was pre-Bablonian conquest. It's the tilty really thin uh Hebrew script. And and so this is what we got. Oh, all these guys. I could go on and on, so I won't. All right. So, here's our here's our context. Uh we've got the the the Davidic kingdom and and then Solomon's kingdom expands the Davidic kingdom. Eventually though, the Judahite kingdom and the Israelite kingdom are contracted. They're divided. And in 7:22, the northern kingdom of Israel,
0:47 the people there are taken into captivity. And then a very powerful king comes back. His name is Sinkareb. And Assyria at this time is the greatest empire in the ancient world. It's and and it was a it was an empire known for its abject cruelty. Uh we see some of the murals depicting the way they treated the conquered uh including a practice called impalement which is just horrific. Okay. So when they come back in 701 to this surround this little kingdom it's serious business. And [clears throat] you can see the size of the Assyrian Empire by this time. It was huge. And according to the book of uh 2 kings when [clears throat] they come in first in approximately 732 BC the
1:33 Assyrian Empire invades the northern kingdom of Israel. Then in 7:22 BC Israel is defeated and the last king of Israel, King Hosia uh is taken captive and a great number of these uh Israelites are taken into captivity. Now, I've got a little picture here of the seal, another one of these seals of King Hosia, or actually not of Hosia. He's mentioned on the seal of one of his attendants or administrators, a guy named Abdi. Can you do you notice anything about the seal, the the the the depiction, the dress, the style? What's it look like? >> Egyptian. Okay. Do you remember that the prophets in the Old Testament were a
2:19 braiding They were confronting the the the kings of Israel and later the Judite kings for putting their trust in the Egyptians to save them from these the northern superpowers first Assyria and then Babylon who are coming and they so the the prophets speaking in the name of God saying don't put your trust in the Egyptians put your trust in me notice the dress interesting corroboration of the context that we we read about in the in the in the Old Testament. Okay. So, moving forward now, we get to 701 BC and the Assyrian Empire returns now under a different king under Sinekarb. And the
3:07 Bible's very specific. It gives very specific historical information and evidence. And it says here in the 14th year of king king Hezekiah or Hezeki, Sinekarb, king of Assyria came up against the fortified cities of Judah and seized them. So the first the first bit of historical testimony we get about this is that the Assyrians are conquering all the smaller cities around Jerusalem. And in the Assyrian records, we actually have very specific details about this. It tells us that um and this is the you can see this cuneaoform prism it's called sometimes it's called the sinekarb prism sometimes called the Taylor prism named for the British archaeologists who discovered it and
3:52 this prism records that in 701 BC there were 46 Judeian cities that were conquered by uh by sinekarb so the bible tells us that the Judeian cities were conquered the Assyrian records affirm that and tell us exactly how many and they even tell us how many people were taken into captivity. 2011 or 200,150 and there are other Assyrian documents that also record other campaigns of Sinekareb during this time. Now, if you're interested in this, and this was really fun this summer, we had 48 students from, I think Ela said 11 countries, uh, in our summer course, and we did a whole week on the archaeology of the Near East and of the Bible, and
4:38 we took them after I gave this lecture on a Friday. On the Saturday, we went to the British Museum to see a lot of this evidence, including the Taylor Prism. And this is the Assyrian room. So, if you have ever chance, you're in London, this is well worth doing. So here's here's what we know. This is on this tailor prism. This is a direct quote from King Sekcharb. He says, "As for Hezekiah the Judeian, who did not submit to my yoke, I surrounded and conquered 46 of his strongwalled towns by leveling with battering rams and by bringing up siege engines 200,150 people I brought away from them and counted as spoils." And keep your eye on that idea of a siege because this is part of this is part of what was very grim in the ancient world. If a city was
5:25 conquered, the walls of the protective walls of a city were typically battered down by battering rams and then these things called siege engines which created a ramp up to the top of the walls where the well-armed troops could then come come over the walls and conquer the city. And often times cities were put under siege for extended periods of time. And so this was about the worst thing that could happen to you because pe cities would be deprived of food and water and um very you know people would be would would resort to drinking their own urine. It was it was just awful. Okay. Nobody wanted to be in a city that was under siege still less by one that was being put under siege by the greatest military power on the planet at that time which was the Assyrian Empire. So as this as as Hezekiah the king of
6:13 this small little kingdom of Judah sees this he takes precautionary measures. Now in the Bible we learn that Hezekiah was one of those few reforming kings in the line of King David. Another one that comes later is Josiah. Hezekiah is his great greatgrandfather I think either great or great great-grandfather. All right? and he and and in the book of second kings there's an extensive accounting of all the things he did to rid the land of idolatry to restore the Mosaic approach the mosaic commands about worship. So he's a he's very devoted to his God and um and and he's commended the way the the the book of second Kings writes he's his actions are written in the light in
7:00 he he's commended by the text for the way he approaches this but nevertheless he comes under there's an invasion and and there's a siege and so as he sees the other cities of Jerusalem falling the text tells us that he does two things, very smart things. First, he secures a water supply by redirecting a spring that was outside the city walls of Jerusalem at that time, the Guehon spring, and he redirects the water and creates a tunnel that brings the water into the city underground. Any anyone ever been to Jerusalem? Anyone walked in the Hezekiah's water tunnel? Okay, I'm going show a picture of it in a minute. So, this is something that's attested in in the in the Bible.
7:45 And in the 19th century, the British archaeologists discovered this. And so you can go there today and walk through the tunnel. Now, I have to confess that I have a problem. And that is that I am claustrophobic. I am intentionally interested in archaeology, but this was the one artifact I did not go and see because I thought I'd get halfway in there and go, I'm stuck. So, I didn't do it to my shame. But anyway, there it is. And you can see it. So, um, here's a picture someone else got for me. Um, and, uh, we're told in 2 Kings chapter 20, very explicitly, Hezekiah made the pool and the tunnel by which he brought water into the city. The tunnel was constructed to bring fresh water into secure a water supply so that the people
8:30 under siege would not have to resort to drinking their own, you know. So, it it's this very important military preparation he makes. Then the the text also tells us that he built a defensive wall. Now when we were there in in Jerusalem in ' 89, the same David walking tours of the city of David took us to a place where they had verified that this was actually the archaeologists had verified that this was actually part of the defensive wall that that that Hezekiah built. There's a passage in Isaiah chapter 22 where it talks about how you cut down the houses in a rush to build the wall. And you see this place where the wall has been erected in haste and it's filled in with rubble and it's cut across existing
9:16 remains of of previously existing houses. And so we went right to that spot. the guide read the passage from from the book of Isaiah describing this because Isaiah was the contemporary prophet who was alive during the time of of Hezekiah. So these two things we read in the Bible there one of them fairly with the wall fairly obscure and we've actually found archaeological evidence that Hezekiah did in fact do those exact things. We also have found evidence that he enacted various religious reforms having to do the way altars were constructed. Those have been discovered at a place called Irod. So lots of points of agreement already. You can kind of see where I'm going with this. It's a kind of lecture on convergence. It's a convergence of testimony between the biblical record making certain factual claims and what we have discovered either archaeologically or
10:03 through the documentary history recorded by in this case the Assyrians. And what we're going to see as the lecture concludes is there are multiple points of agreement. We're all receing some.
