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Criticality
In the not far distant future, western civilization may face a critical period in which traditional Christian religion will have experienced a collapse.
The reason? Traditional Christianity will be unable to escape the consequences of events now occurring in Israel--the recognition that the Old Testament stories about Moses, Egypt and its seven plagues, the escape of the enslaved Israelites, the Red Sea parting, their 40 years of wandering in the Sinai deserts, the conquest of a new homeland across the Jordan, the crashing down of the walls of Jericho, the sun standing still, the fabulous kingdom of David and his heroic deeds, the wealth of Solomon and his temple, all these and much, much more in biblical history were all purely mythical.
A surprisingly large proportion of the Christian community clings to the belief that although the creation story of Genesis may be mythical or symbolic, the remainder of the Bible is "the word of God," and is historically accurate.
The shock of having to absorb these quite radical changes, and then to subscribe to a new and different belief system, will surely be too much for many who will simply relapse into total disbelief and perhaps complete despair.
As more and more Israelis themselves accept the evidence of their own archaeological investigations, so the traditional Christian belief system will become less and less tenable.
But not only will Christianity be forced to adjust to the new history of Israel, it will need to absorb and adjust to the effect this new history will have on traditional theology, particularly that relevant to Jesus' incarnation.
Jesus himself made no recorded comments or claims about his genealogy. However tradition takes heed of the necessity for him to be of the House of David, even to be born in Bethlehem, the City of David, so as to fulfill biblical prophecy (Micah 5:2, repeated in Matthew 2:5 and John 7:42). The purpose of this was to present Jesus as the Messiah--and the fulfillment of biblical prediction.
Strangely enough, the motivation for the archaeological work that brought about such a critical reversal originally had quite the opposite intention. It was meant to verify biblical history.
The victorious 1967 war that consolidated and extended the State of Israel brought with it a need in the minds of many to seek justification for the occupation of the newly conquered territory.
One group put their faith in God's guarantee of a promised land to belong to the Israelites forever. Another sought their justification through scientific verification of the Biblical Exodus story.
And so, after 1967, a large and enthusiastic body of young, well trained, Israeli archaeologists embarked on their task with the purpose of verifying Israel's biblical history.
Prior to this new venture, nearly all the archaeology carried out in the Palestine region (with forays into Egypt), had the purpose of confirming the veracity of both the Bible and Christianity. And much of the work was conducted by people who were first, men of religion, and only secondly, archaeologists. But few were well-trained professionals. The confirmation of biblical history was the playground for enthusiastic amateurs.
In contrast, the new group of archaeologists were professional, highly trained, technically competent, and prepared to use all the methods available to modern archaeology.
Whereas almost the sole evidence used for the task of biblical history verification had been excavated finds, the new explorers added the methods of social sciences and anthropology. So alongside excavated artifacts, architecture, settlement patterns, animal bones, seeds, soil analysis, and anthropological models from many world cultures provided additional tools that contributed to the emerging story.
How could animal bones have provided archaeological knowledge? The biblical story of Joseph of the coat of many colors being sold into slavery by his brothers tells how, after casting him into a pit, the brothers saw "a company of Ishmaelites from Gilead with their camels bearing spices and balm and myrrh going down to Egypt." So instead of killing Joseph, his brothers sold him into slavery.
This event would have been around 2000 BCE, according to Bible history.
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