The things that you’re liable to read in the Bible. It ain’t necessarily FAKE!

Why Israel has the historic right to exist as the State and homeland of the Jewish people.

Archeologists have been systematically digging hundreds of ancient Biblical sites in Israel for about the last 150 years.

What have they been discovering?

Are all those miracles taught about in Sunday School true?

Many archeologists are sceptics. When it comes to miracles, many remain a question of faith. Yet archeological findings verify large swathes of the Bible narrative. The Bible is not just a religious tract. A great deal of it is historical.

The Old Testament is the history of the Jewish people stretching back to when they first evolved as the Hebrews, or Israelites. 

The period when Abraham arrive in the Land of Israel from Mesopotamia, around 1800 BCE is vague but once you get to the Exodus, around 1200 BCE then the historical background becomes firmer. 

By about a 1000 years B.C.E archeological evidence begins to proliferate and findings in other countries cross-reference and corroborate accounts in the Bible.

Ancient steps at Hazor, one of the Bible Cities: from the time of King Ahab 7th King of Israel c. 885 to 874 BC 

From the time of the Children of Israel returning to the Promised Land to the time of Jesus is a period of a thousand years! 

Jesus who, let us remember, was an observant Jew, worshipped at the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, remains of which can be seen to this day.The New Testament of course tells of Jesus' life in Israel. *

So I think we can safely say the Jews established the inalienable right to their one and only homeland. 

For the last two thousand years there has always been a Jewish presence in our homeland, though others were in control. 

Let us not forget that so much that is integral to Judaism came from the Land of Israel in this period. The redaction of the Mishna, the Mishna itself, the Tosefet, the Mechita, the Sifra – all tenets of the Jewish faith - developed in Palestine. And then there was the Golden Age of Sfat! Prayers, teachings, expansion of the Kabbala (Madonna would never forgive us if we didn’t mention the Kabbala) 

It was in Sfat that Rabbi Joseph Caro 1488-1575 compiled the Shulchan Aroch, laws of Jewish life which guide Jews throughout the world in their daily lives.

The increasing return of Jews to reclaim their homeland that began in the early 1800s added to the efforts of those who had never left!

*Mohammed won’t appear in the history books for another 600 years, and then only in what today is Saudi Arabia. He never visited Israel  (under its Roman-given name Palestine) in his life-time and Jerusalem is not mentioned even once in the Koran. 

The Dome of the Rock sits on the site of the Jewish 1st and 2nd Temples. 

Built in the 7th century CE during the Umayyad occupation of Israel and clung on to ever since.