As recently as 1992, some scholars were confidently asserting, “There are no literary criteria for believing David to be more historical than Joshua Joshua more historical than Abraham, and Abraham more historical than Adam”. Just one year later, archaeologists digging in upper Galilee discovered a 9th Century BC inscription about the “house of David”. Jeffery Shiler, an award-winning journalist wrote, “The fragmentary reference to David was a historical bombshell. Never before had the familiar name Judah’s ancient warrior king…been found in the records of antiquity outside the pages of the Bible”.
For years and years, critics viewed the biblical story of David and Goliath as a fanciful tale of religious fiction. Recently “archaeololgists digging at the purported biblical home of Goliath (1 Samuel 17:4) have unearthed a shard of pottery bearing an inscription of the Philistine’s name, a find they claimed lends historical credence to the Bible’s story of David’s battle with the giant”. This is the oldest Philistine inscription ever discovered, dated to 950BC–within 70 years of the biblical narrative. Doubting scholars for years assumed that “there were no Hittites at the time of Abraham, as there were no records of their existence apart from the Old Testament.
However, later “archaeological research…uncovered more than 1200 years of Hittite civilization. In similar fashion, critics assumed that the biblical patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were fictional figures from Hebrew folklore. Yet cuneiform tablets discovered in the royal archives of the palace of Mari in northern Syria dating from the start of the second milleniumBC (the approximate time of the patriarchs) mention “such names as Abam-ram (Abraham), Jacob-el and Benjaminites. All these discoveries support the biblical record and refute the charges of critics.
An inscription near Jerusalem refers to “Joseph, son of Caiaphas” (Caiaphas was the high priest in Jerusalem at the time of Christ’s crucifixion (Matthew 26:57). An inscribed stome from first century Caesareans reads, “Pontius Pilate, the Perfect of Judea” (Pilate was the governor at the time of Jesus” crucifixion (Matthew 27:2). Such evidence, carved in stone, supports the conclusion that the Bible writers were recording facts and not fiction.
The manner in which archaeology has verified the historical accuracy of the Bible has been nothing short of remarkable. Scores of archaeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or exact detail historical statements in the Bible”. William F. Albright, who stated, “There can be no doubt that archaeology has confirmed the substantial historicity of the Old Testament tradition…The excessive skepticism shown toward the Bible by important historical schools of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries…has been progressively discredited. The evidence of history and archaeology defies the critics, and supports Scripture.
There have been two major recognized modern translations of the Bible from the original Hebrew language in which it was written. The first of these translations was undertaken by the Church of England in 1604, under the decree of King James I. This was done in response to the perceived inaccuracies in earlier translations. Thus the King James Version of the Bible was written, and is still hailed as the most accurate of the translations ever performed.
With the sheer breadth of concepts and ideas within the Bible, it can be difficult to understand what everything means. Whether it’s a reference to another passage, or a word you simply don’t understand, having a resource to identify all things that don’t quite make sense to you can make your Bible experience much more valuable. Tools like a Bible dictionary or 
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