question about something that seems strange to me

[ronen]

the events of the old testament are happening between roughly 1300 bc and 300 bc
how is it in your opinion that relatively not important things that happened around the time of christ (like the history of rome or the greek history) are written about extensively by many sources and are known for facts. while much more important things that happened only a few centuries before (like god's opening of the red sea and the jordan river and the rest of god's direct doings) are almost myths. barely any way to corroborate them (at least relatively to greek and roman history).

egyptians could write and so could persians and babylonians and assyrians
so where is all the data?

[Adopted Son]

Awesome question! The simple but profound answer can be found in one word. FAITH

God dealt with the children of Issac as a race and gave them them most amazing testaments to His presence as has ever been given. In the world, the Hebrews were a very small number in relation to the rest of the planet. The balance of peoples were ignorant and not connected to God and His chosen people. We generally have writings of those intimately involved.

Once God told Paul to "embrace the unclean" or goyim, God chose to open His grace to all men. Word and resistance to it's meaning spread quickly. At the same time, travel was opening up around the world, thereby increasing the Word among all people. God's plan is so fantastically perfect.

[RonJohnSilver]

I also suspect that the people of that time tended to focus on events concerning themselves rather than others, so secular history would thereby reflect events in the secular world, not that much concerning the Jews.
Also, I suspect that where events did concern other cultures, if something portrayed a particular kingdom or king or country in a bad light (ex...Egypt and the Red Sea), it was probably not widely disseminated.
And then, finally, remember that even among the Jews, many of the miracles that God did were not passed on and so, in the space of a generation or two, those things either weren't remembered or were not recognized as Gods doing.

[readytogo]

the events of the old testament are happening between roughly 1300 bc and 300 bc
how is it in your opinion that relatively not important things that happened around the time of christ (like the history of rome or the greek history) are written about extensively by many sources and are known for facts. while much more important things that happened only a few centuries before (like god's opening of the red sea and the jordan river and the rest of god's direct doings) are almost myths. barely any way to corroborate them (at least relatively to greek and roman history).

egyptians could write and so could persians and babylonians and assyrians
so where is all the data?

Really good question! It's not one for which I have a dogmatic answer, but you asked for our opinions, so...

Each of the civilizations that you mentioned (Egyptian, Persian, Babylonian, and Assyrians) were capable of writing and recording history. However, they were overtaken and subjugated by the Greek and/or Roman Empires. The "documents" of the empires that they overtook would not have seemed important to them because except for Rome vis a vis Greece, they felt that their civilization was superior. The Old Testament does speak occasionally of peoples that the Israelites encountered that knew of what God had done to Egypt and the Red Sea, but for the most part, human governments and people groups are ego-centric. Since most people at the time were polytheistic, why would they "advertise" for a God from another land that seemed to be more powerful than their own?

Finally, there may be documents that still exist that haven't been found yet. If they are meant to be discovered, they will be. Amongst the Hebrews, they were faithful in recording their history because it was commanded by God. He also saw to it that those documents survived.

[mattfivefour]

Good answers everybody! An interesting sidebar to this entire discussion is the nature of ancient Israeli history. The great ancient civilizations faithfully recorded their victories, often overstating them in the process and celebrated their great leaders and kings, glorifying their perfections. Israeli history not only records the nation's victories and its great deeds, but also records its defeats, its weaknesses, and the flaws of it s great men. This is what gives Hebrew history as recorded in the Old Testament its credibility. The others by and large picked and chose only the best and painted only glorified pictures. The Hebrews painted what really happened ... sin and all!

[readytogo]

Good answers everybody! An interesting sidebar to this entire discussion is the nature of ancient Israeli history. The great ancient civilizations faithfully recorded their victories, often overstating them in the process and celebrated their great leaders and kings, glorifying their perfections. Israeli history not only records the nation's victories and its great deeds, but also records its defeats, its weaknesses, and the flaws of it s great men. This is what gives Hebrew history as recorded in the Old Testament its credibility. The others by and large picked and chose only the best and painted only glorified pictures. The Hebrews painted what really happened ... sin and all!

Oooh! Good point!

[MikeD]

"The great (ancient) civilizations faithfully recorded their victories, often overstating them in the process and celebrated their great leaders and kings, glorifying their perfections."

Mattfivefour, sounds like you're describing modern day times with the MSM and Prez Obama! Sorry, couldn't help but notice that. But, then again, history does have a means of repeating itself, right?

[Chris]

Good answers everybody! An interesting sidebar to this entire discussion is the nature of ancient Israeli history. The great ancient civilizations faithfully recorded their victories, often overstating them in the process and celebrated their great leaders and kings, glorifying their perfections. Israeli history not only records the nation's victories and its great deeds, but also records its defeats, its weaknesses, and the flaws of it s great men. This is what gives Hebrew history as recorded in the Old Testament its credibility. The others by and large picked and chose only the best and painted only glorified pictures. The Hebrews painted what really happened ... sin and all!

Very good explanation. That was exactly what I was going to say as well.

[Robert]

the events of the old testament are happening between roughly 1300 bc and 300 bc
how is it in your opinion that relatively not important things that happened around the time of christ (like the history of rome or the greek history) are written about extensively by many sources and are known for facts. while much more important things that happened only a few centuries before (like god's opening of the red sea and the jordan river and the rest of god's direct doings) are almost myths. barely any way to corroborate them (at least relatively to greek and roman history).

egyptians could write and so could persians and babylonians and assyrians
so where is all the data?

The documents from these civilizations are not the ONLY records available to us. The EARTH ITSELF bears record!! For example, in 1924, Dr. M.G. Kyle discovered the remains of a great fortified enclosure near the Dead Sea, dating to between 2500 and 2000 BC. It had been a densely populated area...evidence indicates that the population ceased abruptly. Also, Dr. Kyle pointed out that under Mt. Usdom there was a salt stratum 150 feet thick; above it was another stratum of marl mixed with free sulfur. Gases exploded and literally rained fire and brimstone down on Sodom.

(info from Explorations at Sodom by Kyle, I.S.B.E )

Another instance is that for the longest time, the scientific community thought the city of Nineveh (in the books of Jonah and Nahum) was a myth. But in 1847, Austen Layard made two discoveries: the city of Nimrud and the long-lost city of Nineveh. He found the palace of King Sennacherib (the same one described in the book of Isaiah), who ruled Assyria from 704 to 681 BC.

Yet ANOTHER record in scripture in in Isaiah, which predicts that the city of Tyrus (Tyre) would be scraped down to the bare rock. When Alexander the Great laid siege to the city in 332 BC, the mainland city had been abandoned, and the residents took shelter in the island city just off the coast. Alexander ordered his men to use whatever they could find to build an artificial causeway to the city. They literally scraped the city down to bare rock in the endeavor. Archaeological studies and digs done at the mainland and island sites, along with satellite images of the waters around the island city's site confirm that a causeway had been built from debris.

These are just a few archaeological examples that back up what the Bible tells us. Scrolls and tablets do not bear testimony by alone; the very earth itself contains data that corroborates the events.

[Dave]

This might not be a very good answer but I remember reading about how Thomas doubted Jesus' resurrection and said he would not believe unless he seen him and put his fingers through the holes in his hands. Then Jesus did appear and told Thomas to put his fingers through the holes in his hands. Then he said it is better for people to believe that never seen me. Which like someone else said FAITH. I may not have told that accurately but you get the picture. God wants us to believe without seeing.

[waitingforhim]

Also more of the archaeologists have bibles with them so a lot of ancient biblical history is identified and therefore proven fact.

[Carl]

Part of the problem is the dating of world events and epochs of history of a country/civilization. Take Egypt as an example. Archeology is finally getting a handle on which dynasty followed which in history. Also the Hebrews were just migratory people with no roots to be attributed to them. So they were looked down upon and not worth recording in history. Also each civilization had a different name for the same peoples. That has to be sorted out before histories from the various civilizations can be tied together into one smooth event. There are thousands of pieces evidence dug up, but it takes lots of time to tie those pieces together into a coherent history. Also victors write the history not the vanquished. But the Bible is being proved one little dig, and one little step at a time.

[mikitta]

There is something else to be considered. There was a library in Alexandreta the likes of which has not been seen again until the modern age. In it were housed documents and writings collected and collated from around the known world. God, however, allowed the destruction of this library until almost nothing of it is left to our posterity, in four advances.

1. Julius Caesar's Fire in The Alexandrian War, in 48 BC
2. The attack of Aurelian in the third century AD;
3. The decree of Theophilus in AD 391;
4. The Muslim conquest in AD 642 or thereafter.

By the time the Muslims overran Alexandreta, they weren't interested in preserving any remaining writings at all.

So to answer your question - a great deal may well have been written about everything that has occurred since proto-writing first appeared around 8000 years ago, and since actual writing came to be around 6000 years ago - but we will never have those documents because they were destroyed by violent men intent on their own ends.

I do believe that God allowed this destruction of information in order that we would have to take much of the Bible by faith alone.

God Bless,
mik

[susanstewart]

[I have read that the Romans did not write much about their defeats, they only wrote about their achievements and successes. Also there was recently some archeologists that were trying to get permission to go into the Red Sea because they found some evidence of the chariots that were lost st that time.

[Meg]

Good answers everybody! An interesting sidebar to this entire discussion is the nature of ancient Israeli history. The great ancient civilizations faithfully recorded their victories, often overstating them in the process and celebrated their great leaders and kings, glorifying their perfections. Israeli history not only records the nation's victories and its great deeds, but also records its defeats, its weaknesses, and the flaws of it s great men. This is what gives Hebrew history as recorded in the Old Testament its credibility. The others by and large picked and chose only the best and painted only glorified pictures. The Hebrews painted what really happened ... sin and all!

I agree with Adrian and by extension, Chris (this forum doesn't have multi-quote). The key to the reason anyone kept records of some things and not others is going to be found in the context of what was reality for these people. For example, it is known that the Egyptians used papyrus, which in practice was a heavy, rather stiff form of paper. Although papyrus can survive in an archaeological context, roughly 2000 years is about the longest even the Egyptian climate so famous for keeping very old things intact, is going to be enough to preserve fragile objects.

So what we do have in the way of actual records from 3000 to 4000 years ago is clay tablets and stone carvings. So, with Babylonian culture being the more advanced example of what was actually written records of the time, we have clay tablets with whole "pages" in writing that looks like this:



So any kind of record keeping is going to be, by default, clumsy. Furthermore, any kind of record keeping is also going to be brief. They did get things done though. Here is how they devised the world'as first signature:



The object on the left is a Cylinder Seal in spectacular condition. In the days of Abraham and Ur, that was how merchants, priests and kings signed anything official. The object on the right in the picture, then, is a sample of a signature made with the seal in the photo. So what they were able to do, to some degree defined what they were willing to do, or rather maybe, what they actually did. What they did do was quite an achievement, as they wrote things down for the very first time, developed organized agriculture, mathematics, medicine and trade for the very first time. It was Mesopotamia and Egypt doing much the same sort of thing at much the same time in history, each in their own way. What is interesting is that they got about that far in cultural development only to stop coming up with new ideas or improvements.

So along about 700-600 BC, or thereabouts, the people along the Mediterranean coast, the Greeks of the island communities known as city states, start this unprecedented explosion of creativity. This wasn't a new architectural creativity, people had long been really good at building things, this, rather was an intellectual explosion of stunning proportions. For the very first time in recorded history, human beings considered the idea that natural events such as earthquakes, storms, baby birds hatching out of eggs, snakes shedding their skins, may have explanations based more on natural causes than supernatural ones. What is truly stunning is the fact that some of the ideas the Greeks were coming up with have been proven correct by the test of scientific investigation, and other ideas they came up with parallel the Genesis account of creation. I noticed the Genesis parallel in early 2009, when I was doing some research in an effort to answer a question about the Greeks and the early church.

The whole Greek intellectual achievement and cultural mindset has to do with the things they kept records of (to drag myself back on track here). The factors that decide what people record or don't are connected to abilities, resources and how they think. So if an extension of the OP question would be how does the Bible differ from other very old histories and cultural writings, that might be a cool topic to explore. But I'm going to stop adding to this post before I drift any further from anything resembling a clear point...

[GlennO]

Hi Meg!

Here is my

1. Seems to me museums and universities are chock-a-block full of the evidence of ancient activities.

2. When civilizations are overtaken by a greater one the victor revises history because they can.

3. Lastly, concerning the history and prophesy recorded in the Bible, the Holy Spirit guided the authors to tell the story of the Father's plan to resolve the sin problem through His Son our Redeemer, King Jesus! It's all about Jesus, which is why how many sons and daughters Adam and Eve actually raised etc. is not recorded. It's all about Jesus!

YBIC
Glenn

[gulliver]

Finally, there may be documents that still exist that haven't been found yet. If they are meant to be discovered, they will be. Amongst the Hebrews, they were faithful in recording their history because it was commanded by God. He also saw to it that those documents survived.

I believe that is the exact answer. Consider the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered only in 1947/48. They were found when God wanted them to be discovered, and although this seems like a simplistic answer, it seems to be the most probable possibility. In the Holy Land itself, and I would include Turkey as well, as Turkey is often referenced as the other, or second, Holy Land because of the vast archaeological artifacts there and the Biblical references/evidences to the Seven Churches, archaeological digs could occur for the next few hundred years and still all the ancient and Biblical history would not likely be uncovered. And time itself has obviously destroyed some relics that can never be recovered. New technologies that might appear in coming years will probably provide faster and more efficient recovery of documentation/relics of Biblical and ancient history that allude to or prove the stories referenced in the op.