The power of biblical archaeology is it corroborates the historicity of the Bible down to its tiniest details.
Cameo figures from thousands of years ago come “back to life” through artifacts out of the ground.
Excavations in a Babylonian temple produced a small cuneiform tablet, quite mundane, that refers to a small gold offering made by the chief eunuch Nebo-Sarkesim in the 10th year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign.
Who is this Nebo-Sarkesim? Not a figure of any importance in Jewish history. But he is mentioned in the Bible.
Jeremiah 39:3 states, “All the officials of the king of Babylon came and took seats at the Middle Gate: Nergal-Sharezar of Samgar, Nebo-Sarkesim a chief officer, Nergal-Sharezar a high official, and all the other officials of the king of Babylon.”
Jeremiah names the Babylonian officials who were present at the capture and subsequent burning of Jerusalem.
And there he is: Nebo-Sarkesim.
Once again a minor character jumps out of the Bible and into the pages of history via the pathway of archaeology.
@CantStopLans Most of us are successful today because we got inspiration guidance principles and wisdom from the Bible. Principles that translated beyond ethnicity tribe culture race etc. But serving as a beacon for the human success story. God's desire for all people, peace and prosperity!
A passage in 1 Samuel 13:19-22 says that since no blacksmiths existed in Israel, people went to the Philistines to sharpen their tools, and in return they paid a pim.
This word pim appears only once in the Bible. It’s used casually, on the assumption that everyone knew what it meant.
Yet for 2500 years, no one did.
The term pim was used from the 10th to the 8th centuries BC to represent a stone weight equivalent to 7.6 grams or two-thirds of a shekel.
This was the price in weight of silver to sharpen tools around the time of King David.
The weight fell out of use and people soon forgot what the term meant.
Scholars in the 18th and 19th century couldn’t figure it out either since no ancient lexicons translated the meaning of the term.
Only in the early 1900s, when archaeologists found a stone weight inscribed in ancient Hebrew with the word pim, was the mystery solved.
Since then multiple pim weights have been found.
So consider: Bible skeptics have insisted the Bible was written much, much later than the events it purports to describe.
But how would people writing centuries later, say between the 6th and 3rd centuries BC, know about a weight that had long disappeared?
They would not.
How would they know how to use a term whose meaning was not rediscovered until the 20th century?
They would not.