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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria University College, Wellington N.Z. Vol. 21, No. 7. June 11, 1958

Revelation in the Light of Reason — A Short Essay in Six Parts

Revelation in the Light of Reason

A Short Essay in Six Parts

Being a study of the Historical and Archaeological evidence in support of the claims of the Christian Religion.

T. J. Kelliher

Many regard the tales from the Old Testament as myths to be looked upon in the same manner as the tales about King Arthur or even Brick Bradford. Yet it is interesting to find that even the most fanciful of them are being proved historically true by the modern science of archaeology.

Take, for example, the story of the Flood and Noah's Ark. In 1929, while excavating on the site of Ur of the Chaldees in the Middle East, Sir Leonard Woolley discovered an eight-to-ten foot layer of water-laid clay. The many tens of feet above the clay contained numerous pieces of jars and bowls made from a potter's wheel. This was evidence of a high standard of civilisation. Below the clay were rough handmade pottery and flint implements. The clay, then, represented some stupendous flood that followed on the Stone Age and was followed in turn by a completely new culture. Further excavations showed that the flood had extended over the whole of the then-known world, the kingdom of Sumeria. A distance all told of 400 miles by 100 miles.

Among the ruins of the library of Nineveh archaeologists have discovered twelve ancient clay tablets which have given us the text of what is known as the Epic of Gilgamesh. This epic confirms for us the story of Noah's Ark. Its similarity to the account in Genesis is striking. In both, the Flood is a judgment for wickedness. The waters, in both, were derived from "the foundations of the deep" as well as from rain. Each account relates that the ark floated in a northerly direction and that animals were taken into the ark to preserve their lives. Each describes how a dove and a raven were sent out when the flood was subsiding. The year when all this happened? About 4000 B.C., the scientists estimate.

Throughout history nothing has gripped man's imagination as much as the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. There is no doubt that it happened. The pottery fragments found round the Dead Sea show that the region was inhabited during the Canaanite period, around the time of Abraham, but not again until Roman times. It seems that the precise site of the two cities, known as the Vale of Siddim, lies under the southern part of the Dead Sea. This part, to the left of the peninsula of elLisan, is only 50 or 60 feet deep. If the sun is shining in the right direction an observer can clearly make out the out-lines of underwater forests preserved by the extraordinary high salt content of the Dead Sea. The rest of the Dead Sea is quite different. To the right of the peninsula the ground slopes sharply down to a depth of 1,200 feet. It is important to realise that this whole area is the scene of intense volcanic activity. The sea itself gives off poisonous odours of petroleum and sulphur and oily patches of asphalt float on the waves. Everything points to a gigantic volcanic eruption causing the Vale of Siddim, with its evil cities, to sink beneath the waters of the Dead Sea. As for Lot's wife being turned into a pillar of salt, this was no case of transubstantiation. Quite obviously she was overwhelmed and covered by salt flung into the air.

The story of the infant Moses in the bulrushes has received striking archaeological support in the Sargond-Legend. This story on cuneiform tablets goes: ". . . My mother conceived me and bore me in secret. She put me in a little box made of reeds, sealing its lids with pitch. She put me in the river . . . etc." The Bible account goes: "And when she could no longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch and put the child therein, and she laid it in the flags by the river's brink." You can see the resemblance for yourselves.

Even the story of the fall of manna in the desert is not as farfetched as it seemed. The London "Times" of July 19th, 1932, records an interesting parallel in Southern Algeria. There were falls of a whitish, odourless matter of a farinaceous kind, which covered tents and vegetation each morning. As a matter of fact, manna probably has a purely natural explanation. Botanists have proved that it is nothing more than a honey-like secretion exuded by Tamarisk trees and bushes when they are pierced by a certain type of plant-louse which is found in Sinai, etc. In botany the tamarisk tree is even known as "Tamarix Mannifera", or Mannabearing tamarisk tree.

—T. J. Kelliher.