Answers to Questions - The Bible and Archaeology

What archaeological finds support the first 5 books of the Bible (from Creation to about 1800 BC)?

• Over 200 accounts from cultures in all continents exhibit a remarkably consistent story of a worldwide flood in their dim pasts which tell the same story of a family surviving and repopulating the world.
   

• Examples of the Tower of Babel are still seen in the Ziggurats of Mesopotamia, especially at Ur, Mari and others.
   

• Ur, which has been identified as the birthplace of Abraham, has been extensively excavated and shows a thriving city from 2300-18—BC. Studies revealed a peripheral population of nomadic peoples as Abraham would have been. Wall paintings in Egypt from the 19th century BC show Semitic peoples arriving in caravans to trade with Pharaoh as cited in Genesis.
   

• Scholars have even (possibly) identified the sites of ancient Sodom and Gomorrah along the Dead Sea in modern Jordan. These sites had massive cemeteries and single destruction layers all of the same period.
   

• The Hittite Empire, thought by skeptics to be mythological, has been discovered as a major power of the Mideast as its cities are slowly being uncovered in central Turkey.
   

• The Tomb of the Patriarchs is an ancient site in the Central Israel city of Hebron. The few times anyone has ever been able to examine the site have revealed that ancient shaft tombs (the type used during the time of Abraham) are indeed under the ancient structure there built by Herod the Great.

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