Joseph in Egypt
Friday, June 12, 2026
Monday, June 8, 2026
Saturday, March 21, 2026
Wednesday, March 11, 2026
Saturday, February 7, 2026
Sunday, October 26, 2025
Saturday, October 18, 2025
Monday, June 16, 2025
Thursday, January 2, 2025
Monday, April 8, 2024
Sunday, July 9, 2023
Friday, July 7, 2023
Wednesday, July 5, 2023
Friday, June 30, 2023
Tuesday, June 27, 2023
Monday, June 26, 2023
Wednesday, June 21, 2023
Wednesday, May 3, 2017
Frederic G. Kenyon
Sir Frederic George Kenyon GBE KCB TD FBA FSA (15 January 1863 – 23 August 1952) was a British paleographer and biblical and classical scholar. Kenyon was a noted scholar of ancient languages, and made a life-long study of the Bible, especially the New Testament as an historical text.
His book Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts (1895) shows one way that Egyptian papyri and other evidence from archaeology can corroborate the narrative of historical events in the Gospels. He was convinced of the historical reality of the events described in the New Testament: “the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed.” He said, "The Christian can take the Bible in his hand and say without fear or hesitation that he holds in it the true Word of God handed down without essential loss from generation to generation throughout the centuries."
The Story Of The Bible A Popular Account of How it Came to Us
The Story Of The Bible A Popular Account of How it Came to Us
- The Bible has a human history as well as a divine inspiration. It is a history full of interest, and it is one which all those who value their Bible should know, at least in outline, if only that they may be able to meet the criticisms of skeptics and the ignorant.
- Chapter I, The Bible And Recent Discoveries, p. 2
- The history of the Bible text is a romance of literature, though it is a romance of which the consequences are of vital import; and thanks to the succession of discoveries which have been made of late years, we know more about it than of the history of any other ancient book in the world.
- Chapter I, The Bible And Recent Discoveries, p. 4
- It is from the graves and ruins and rubbish-heaps of Egypt that writings have been restored to us in great numbers.
- Chapter III, How The Books Of The New Testament Were Written, p. 21
- All we can say is that, as the result of a process which went on from the fourth century to about the eighth, a standard type of text was produced, which is found in the vast majority of the manuscripts that have come down to us. At least ninety-six per cent of the extant manuscripts of the Greek New Testament are later than the eighth century; and of those only a handful preserve traces of the other types of text which were in existence before the adoption of the standard text, and out of which it was created.
- Chapter IV, From manuscript To Print, p. 39
- Seldom can two such epoch-making events have occurred in successive years as happened then. In 1453 the Turks stormed Constantinople and finally destroyed the Greek Empire, driving out Greek scholars, who carried the knowledge of Greek language and literature to the western world; and in 1454 the first document known to us appeared from the printing press at Mainz.
- Chapter IV, From manuscript To Print, p. 41-42
- Throughout, the work of Tyndale formed the foundation, and more than anyone else he established the rhythms and furnished much of the language which is familiar to us in the Authorised Version.
- Chapter V, The English Bible, p. 49
-
- Chapter VII, The Revision Of The Text, p. 86
- The publication of the Revised New Testament by the two University Presses on May 17, 1881, was the most sensational in the annals of publishing.
- Chapter VIII, The Age Of Discoveries, p. 87
- The New Testament was not produced as a single work issued by an authoritative Church for the instruction of its members. The four Gospels were composed in different times and places over perhaps a third of a century, and for a time circulated separately among a number of other narratives of our Lord's life (of which the newly discovered fragment of an unknown gospel may have been one).
- Chapter X, The Position Today, p. 133
- The apostles were scattered, and even the leaders of the Church in Jerusalem had neither the power nor the means to impose uniformity.In these circumstances, we must imagine the literature of Christianity as spreading gradually, irregularly, and in a manner which variations inevitable.
- Chapter X, The Position Today, p. 134
- The Gospels were not thought of as works of literature. People were not concerned with the literary reputation of Matthew or Mark, but with the substance of their records of our Lord's life. They did not have to respect their actual words, as they would if they were transcribing the works of Thucydides or Plato.
- Chapter X, The Position Today, p. 135
- It is indeed a striking proof of the essential soundness of the tradition that with which all these thousands of copies, tracing their ancestry back to so many different parts of the earth and to conditions of such diverse kinds, the variations of text are so entirely questions of detail, not of essential substance.
- Chapter X, The Position Today, p. 136
- The aim of the scholarly editor is not to produce the the easiest text for the reader, but to get as near as he can to the text of the author.
- Chapter X, The Position Today, p. 142
- It is a fascinating story to those who care for their Bible. It is the life-history of the greatest of books, diversified by interesting episodes which appeal to our human sympathies; and we venture to think that the result is reassuring. It may be disturbing to some to part with the conception of a Bible handed down through the ages without alteration and in unchallenged authority; but it is a higher ideal to face the facts, to apply the best powers with which God has endowed us to the solutions of the problems which they present to us; and it reassuring at the end to find that the general result of all these discoveries and all this study is to strengthen the proof of the authenticity of the Scripture, and our conviction that we have in our hands, in substantial integrity, the veritable Word of God.
- Chapter X, The Position Today, p. 144
- It is indeed a striking proof of the essential soundness of the tradition that with which all these thousands of copies, tracing their ancestry back to so many different parts of the earth and to conditions of such diverse kinds, the variations of text are so entirely questions of detail, not of essential substance. Chester Beatty Papyri
Monday, October 17, 2016
No Pooh-Poohing Biblical History: The Lachish Latrine
Archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority, digging in the remains of what was once the biblical city of Tel Lachish, made a startling discovery that confirmed the biblical text in a most startling way: They found an ancient toilet.
To fully appreciate the significance of the find, we need to go back in time to the eighth century before Christ. King Hezekiah, one of only a handful of post-Davidic kings that earns the Bible’s seal of approval, initiated a series of reforms aimed at eradicating syncretism in Judah.
At the heart of these reform efforts was eliminating what the Bible called “high places” or bamot in Hebrew. These were sites containing an altar, usually located, as the English name suggests, on a hill or a ridge.
While ostensibly dedicated to the worship of YHWH, over time the sites, and the worship that occurred at them, became syncretistic: pagan deities were honored alongside YHWH. Thus we are told that asherim, or “Asherah Poles,” objects dedicated to the worship of the Canaanite goddess of fertility, were erected at these sites.
Hezekiah was commended because “He removed the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles.”
And that brings me back to the discovery at Tel Lachish. Archaeologists found a “large room that appears to have been a shrine. The room contained two four-horned altars, whose horns had been intentionally damaged.” Excavation leader Sa’ar Ganor “believes that the destroyed altars corroborate biblical references to King Hezekiah’s reforms: his efforts to centralize worship in Jerusalem and abolish it elsewhere.”
As if this weren’t exciting enough, Ganor and his team found something else in the room: a “seat carved of stone with a hole in the center.” In other words, a toilet.
Ganor believes that this “was unquestionably a form of desecration of this shrine room,” and he has ample biblical reason to do so. In 2 Kings 10, we’re informed that following the fall of King Ahab, Jehu and his followers “demolished the pillar of Baal, and destroyed the temple of Baal, and made it a latrine to this day.”
Apparently, desecration by bathroom renovation was practiced in both kingdoms.
This latest discovery comes on the heels of other discoveries confirming a great deal of what the scriptures tell us about Hezekiah and his reign. And to think that only a few decades ago, many, if not most, scholars doubted that Hezekiah, along with ancestors David and Solomon, ever actually existed. And now they seem to be popping up everywhere.
That should not come as a surprise. The Bible is the best-attested book of antiquity. Nothing else is within the same solar system. All of this is another reminder that the biblical faith is firmly rooted in actual human history and not in some mythological “once upon a time.”
