Israeli study introduces new method of dating Biblical military battles

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – A study conducted by Israel’s Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University has introduced a method of archaeomagnetic investigation that may help scientists properly date military battles referred to in the Bible and thus potentially provide physical evidence of Scriptural authenticity, the Christian Post (CP) reports.

Published last Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study was led by Yoav Vaknin of Tel Aviv University’s Institute of Archaeology and included 20 researchers from diverse countries and disciplines, CP said.

The researchers introduce an “approach that applies archaeomagnetic investigation to the remains of ancient towns that were destroyed by fire,” CP reports. Accordingly, the study purports to show that research accurately dated 21 destruction layers at 17 archaeological sites in Israel.

One notable finding concerns the Kingdom of Judah and its end, CP reports. In a statement, one of the project’s supervising professors, Erez Ben Yosef, said: “While Jerusalem and frontier cities in the Judean foothills ceased to exist, other towns in the Negev, the southern Judean Mountains, and the southern Judean foothills remained almost unaffected.”

The study’s magnetic results appear to support the idea that the Kingdom of Judah was not brought to an end by the Babylonians alone.

“Several decades after they had destroyed Jerusalem and the First Temple, sites in the Negev, which had survived the Babylonian campaign, were destroyed — probably by the Edomites who took advantage of the fall of Jerusalem,” Yosef said. “This betrayal and participation in the destruction of the surviving cities may explain why the Hebrew Bible expresses so much hatred for the Edomites — for example, in the prophecy of Obadiah.”

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