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Tablet enhanced showing the tower and Nebuchadnezzar II (Screenshot from the Smithsonian Channel)
After thousands of years of scrutiny, the Bible has stood the divine test of time as historic, archaeological, philosophical and spiritual perfection.
There is no doubt about it. Every time the Bible makes an historic claim, archaeology proves the accuracy of the Bible. Here is yet another article on the amazing evidence that the Bible is the Word of God and can be trusted.
Why is the Bible different from all other books that have ever been written? Aside from the primary reason of eternal salvation in Christ or the amazing logic and wisdom of the Scriptures, no other book in history comes close to offering as much precise historic and archaeological data about human civilization. The Bible also provides the blueprint for the future of mankind. As a civilization, the Bible teaches us that the best way to know our future, is to obtain an accurate representation and understanding of our past.
To many skeptics, the Bible is often judged as an irrelevant book of myths used by the political and religious elite to mislead the ignorant. Yet over the years, when I've had the opportunity to encounter those who doubt Scripture, I have always discovered one thing… They should have investigated the Bible further.
“The first gulp from the glass of natural science will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”– Werner Heisenberg, Nobel Prize winner
For those who do in-depth research, they end up having a profound change of heart. For the more one researches the Scriptures and reflects on science and history, they will discover that the Bible is miraculously accurate. Unfortunately, for many critics, they never take the time and effort to reach the threshold where they discover the logic and evidence, they claimed to need.
Roman Occupation of Israel
It is often claimed that there is little evidence that Christ existed because there is no account of Jesus in official Roman and Jewish records. In fact, this should be no surprise since Christ’s life and ministry occurred in an era when Israel was under Roman occupation. While many provinces accepted Roman conquest, the threat of a revolt in Israel was always near the surface throughout the first century era and especially true during Jewish holidays like Passover. Because of this, anyone who questioned Roman authority or the Jewish leaders they installed were obviously suppressed or put to death.
The Jewish religious and political leadership at the time of Christ were under the control of their Roman superiors and often motivated by their own status or financial gain as the Temple had turned into a religious marketplace. Several of the Jewish religious leaders in the Sanhedrin saw Jesus as a threat who exposed their greed and hunger for power. While there were members of the Sanhedrin (like Joseph of Arimathea) who supported the ministry of Jesus, Caiaphas (the Jewish high priest) plotted to have Jesus killed.
The Jewish revolts (also known as the Jewish-Roman wars) are another reason why the Romans would have censored the life of Christ. These revolts eventually led to the Roman destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in 70AD. So the last thing the Jewish and Roman leadership wanted to do was to legitimize the leader of a local Jewish religious sect by documenting His existence.