Scientists in Israel have found a new dating technique to accurately date military conquests in the Old Testament and verify its historical accuracy.
According to a recently published study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists have found an “approach that applies archaeomagnetic investigation to the remains of ancient towns that were destroyed by fire.”
The research, conducted by Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University, has properly dated 21 destruction layers at 17 archaeological sites across Israel by reconstructing the geomagnetic fields.
As a result, researchers were able to verify the Old Testament military campaigns of the Egyptians, Arameans, Assyrians, and Babylonians against the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. The findings also pointed out that the army of Hazael, King of Aram-Damascus, was responsible for destroying multiple cities, including Tel Rehov, Tel Zayit, Horvat Tevet and the Philistine city of Gath.
Additional geomagnetic findings found that the Edomites destroyed several sites in Southern Judah following the destruction of Jerusalem and Judah by the Babylonians, The Christian Postreports.
“Based on the similarity or difference in intensity and direction of the magnetic field, we can either corroborate or disprove hypotheses claiming that specific sites were burned during the same military campaign,” Yoav Vaknin of the Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University said in a statement.
“Moreover, we have constructed a variation curve of field intensity over time which can serve as a scientific dating tool, similar to the radiocarbon dating method.”
Another noteworthy finding surrounds the final days of the Judean kingdom.
“Some researchers, relying on archaeological evidence, argue that Judah was not completely destroyed by the Babylonians,” Prof. Erez Ben Yosef, the project’s supervising professor, explained.
“While Jerusalem and frontier cities in the Judean foothills ceased to exist, other towns in the Negev, the southern Judean Mountains and the southern Judean foothills remained almost unaffected.”
“Several decades after they had destroyed Jerusalem and the First Temple, sites in the Negev, which had survived the Babylonian campaign, were destroyed — probably by the Edomites who took advantage of the fall of Jerusalem,” the professor argued.
“This betrayal and participation in the destruction of the surviving cities may explain why the Hebrew Bible expresses so much hatred for the Edomites — for example, in the prophecy of Obadiah,” he added.