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Did I walk past one of the most important archeological discoveries of all time? I may have. In June of 2011, my wife and I toured Israel. One stop was wading through a dark tunnel carved to divert Gihon spring water into the Siloam pool located in the ancient city of Jerusalem. The knee-deep water chilled our feet. We waded single file, using flashlights, our tennis shoes dangling by their strings draped over our necks. I cracked my head on the ceiling once. The tunnel was one of my favorite parts of the trip. It is an engineering marvel commissioned by Hezekiah over 2,700 years ago.
Although it is an archeological wonder, it is the inscriptions from the tunnel that Dr. Gershon Galil, a pro fessor at the University of Haifa, called “one of the most important archaeological discoveries in Israel of all time.”
The inscriptions echo the wording of several verses in 2 Kings summarizing Hezekiah’s accomplishments. This makes the inscriptions the earliest text of the Old Testament, hundreds of years older than the Dead Sea Scrolls. A section of the inscription were chiseled out and removed in 1880. Recently, additional lines of the inscription have been discovered on the tunnel walls.* I waded past them!
The correlation between the inscriptions and the verses in 2 Kings show the Bible reflects history, not fanciful stories. Archaeology has again given us evidence to believe the Bible.
*Judy Siegel-Itzkovich, “Was proof of biblical kings of Israel, Judah deciphered on Jerusalem rock inscriptions?” The Jerusalem Post, December 16, 2022, quoted on MSN, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/was-proof-of-biblical-kings-of-israel-judah-deciphered-on-jerusalem-rock-inscriptions/ar-AA15lzYT
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Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.