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Chapter IV

The Authenticity of the Old Testament

The Canon of Scripture

Our present Old Testament Scriptures consist of 39 books, and there is little doubt that these were the same books accepted by the Jews of Christ's day as their divinely inspired Scriptures. The writings of Josephus, the Jewish historian, various statements in the Talmud, and numerous references in the New Testament all agree in focusing on these books, and only these, as the recognized Scriptures of the Jews. Likewise, it was these books that were accepted and used by the first Christians.

Whether or not they were all mistaken in this belief may be a matter for further discussion, but at least this was the belief, shared equally both by the early Christians and also by their Jewish opponents. Most importantly, at least to the Christian, this was the Jewish Bible as accepted by Jesus Christ.

The Old Testament was generally divided by the Jews of that day into three parts: (1) the Law of Moses, or the Torah, the five books of the Pentateuch; (2) the books of the Prophets, including the historical books; (3) the so-called Writings, or the "other books," the poetical writings, of which the Book of Psalms was considered most notable. This threefold division was noted by Christ, when He spoke of the prophecies, "which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me" (Luke 24:44).

The exact process by which these 39 books came to be "canonized" is not known, any more than is the process by which the New Testament books were later accepted. The most realistic conclusion, in both cases, is that each book was essentially self-authenticating from the very time it was written. They were acknowledged by the people of God to constitute the Word of God by the witness of the Spirit and the divinely authoritative character of the writings, right from the start. This is the only reasonable way to account for their universal acceptance in the absence of any official political or ecclesiastical determinations of their character.

The question, then, is how the scriptural writings could have ever become so universally accepted as authentic among the Jews if, in fact, they were not authentic. If Moses did not really write the books of Moses, if Isaiah was only one of several men who wrote the Book of Isaiah, if Daniel did not write the Book of Daniel, then how did such opinions ever become established among the people who used them? There is not the slightest answer to these questions among any of the ancient Jewish writings that have come down to us.

Reliability of the Old Testament Text

Although there is little doubt that the Old Testament as we have it today contains the same books that composed the Scriptures used by Christ, the Apostles, and the Jewish scribes of the first century, we still have the question of whether the text had been transmitted to them intact as originally written. It is obvious that, if we possess no "autographs" of the New Testament, we certainly could have none of the Old Testament.

The science that attempts to determine the original text of Scripture is known as textual criticism, or sometimes, the "lower criticism." We have already given reasons for our confidence that we do possess, for all practical purposes, the complete and accurate text of the New Testament.

For the Old Testament text, we are limited mainly to the Masoretic text, the Septuagint version, the Latin Vulgate, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Syriac version, and more recently, the Dead Sea Scrolls. The text of the Old Testament which has been accepted as authoritative by both Christian and Jew is known as the Masoretic text. The Masoretes were a group of Jewish scribes who, sometime around A.D. 500, developed a more or less official text from the systematic sorting and comparison of the various manuscripts that had come down to them. In the margins of this text they were careful to write down all the variant readings which had been accumulated up to that time. These all amounted only to about 1,200 in number, or less than one per page of the Hebrew printed Bible.

As far as the transmission of the Masoretic text is concerned, prior to the printing of the first Hebrew Bible in A.D. 1526, there are about 1,000 manuscripts in existence. The oldest of these is dated at A.D. 916. However, of those that are available, there are scarcely any variations of significance, and support from other sources also warrants confidence that we have the original Masoretic text.

The basic text of the Old Testament originally consisted only of consonants, with vowels assumed to be understood by the reader from the context. However, in the present Hebrew Bible appear so-called "vowel points," indicating which vowels to use with the consonants. These were added by the Jewish scholars in about A.D. 700. Since they do not constitute a part of the original text itself, it is conceivable that these are wrong in some instances, and may need to be corrected if sound textual criticism justifies it.

As a check on the accuracy of the Masoretic text, there are several other channels of transmission of the Old Testament which can be examined. The most important of these is the Septuagint Version, so-called because it was supposedly produced by seventy scribes in about 280 B.C. These men translated the Hebrew Scriptures into the Greek language, for use by the Jews of the Dispersion. It is possible that this Septuagint translation was used by the Apostles and the other first-century Christians.

The Latin Vulgate was translated by Jerome from Hebrew and Greek into Latin in about A.D. 400. The Syriac Version was translated from the Hebrew about A.D. 200. The Samaritan Pentateuch (the Samaritans did not accept the rest of the Old Testament) had been handed down independently of the Jewish transmission line since the time of Nehemiah, about 400 B.C.

Although there are minor variations in all these versions, none are significant enough to change any doctrine or event recorded in the Old Testament. In almost all cases, the variations are trivial.

Furthermore, there are numerous ancient writings in which extensive quotations from the Old Testament were made, including the Book of Jubilees, the Book of Ecclesiastes, the Talmud, the writings of Josephus and Philo, the Zadokite Fragments, the Targums, and other early literature, as well as numerous quotations of the Old Testament in the New Testament. All unite in showing that the Old Testament text has always been essentially as we have it today, as far back as any direct evidence can take us.

This fact has been further confirmed by the discovery of the famous Dead Sea Scrolls, beginning in 1946 and continuing on to the present. These manuscripts actually date from the time of Christ or earlier and are the oldest actual manuscripts of any parts of Scripture found to date.

Many scrolls have been found, and these include, in one scroll or another, practically the entire text of the Old Testament. The agreement of all these with the received Masoretic text is remarkable, such variations as exist being insignificant.

There is thus no reasonable doubt that our present Old Testament, based on the Masoretic text, is practically identical extending back to the time when the last books of the Old Testament were originally written. That being true, there is no reason to doubt that all of the books have come down to us substantially as written. The scribes who copied the manuscripts are known to have taken extreme pains to insure accuracy of copying. Many numerical devices were used counting letters and gematria (numerical equivalents of the letters) in the various books as cross-checking devices.

Finally, it is significant that no other ancient writings of age comparable to the Old Testament have been so accurately transmitted or based on such an abundance of textual evidence. If we can rely on the accurate transmission of any ancient document at all, that document is the Old Testament.

The Strange World of Higher Criticism

The textual critic, working in the field of "lower criticism," performs a vital service as he seeks by scientific analysis of the manuscript evidence to determine as closely as possible the original text of the biblical writings. But there is another field of study, euphemistically called "higher criticism," the motivations for which are suspect, to say the least, and the results of which have been devastatingly corrosive to biblical faith.

This type of study (or, better, speculation) presumes to be able to reconstruct an accretion process by which ancient writings, especially the Bible, came to be assembled out of a miscellaneous assortment of fragments and forgeries, and then foisted on the people as divinely inspired writings of the fathers and prophets.

The "higher critics" profess to be scientific in this endeavor, but actually they are completely subjective, seeking by all means to find a naturalistic, evolutionary explanation for the Bible and the history of Israel and the Christian Church. Invariably they attempt to explain away all miracles and fulfilled prophecies, and almost always to attribute the authorship of the books to writers of much more recent date than claimed in the books themselves.

The Bible, to the higher critics, is thus a purely natural book, full of errors and contradictions and outright lies. It certainly cannot long retain any religious authority or moral value if this is its character, and yet this higher criticism has been taught as certain fact for a century or more, not only in secular universities but even in most of the theological schools of the western world.

One would think that, with an abundance of manuscript evidence confirming the textual accuracy of the Old Testament back to the very time of its completion, combined with its universal acceptance as authentic and divinely inspired, by both Jews and Christians, in the centuries closest to its writing and compilation, it would be taken at face value by those who use it, at least until some clear evidence of fraud or forgery comes to light.

But this is not the case. The higher critics insist that practically none of the Old Testament books were written by the traditional authors — all were written much later, by writers who had no direct knowledge at all of what they were writing. Claims of authorship were deliberately misrepresented to give the writings a spurious authority and, especially, to make their records of current events look like fulfilled prophecies.

This peculiar field of study began, as do most attacks on the Bible, with an attack on the two creation chapters of Genesis. Jean Astruc, an infidel French physician, in 1753 wrote that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 were from two different and conflicting sources, since the name used for God was, in the first case, Elohim, and in the second, Jehovah Elohim. He was followed by the German rationalist Eichorn, who in 1779 noted differences of style also. DeWette in 1806 professed to distinguish four main writers of the "Hexateuch," writers now known as J, E, P, and D (referring, respectively, to the supposed "Jehovist," "Elohist," "Priestly," and "Deuteronomist" writers and editors). Various writers suggested still other documentary divisions, authors and "redactors." The Graf–Wellhausen "Hypothesis" (developed in 1866–78) worked out a very complex division of the first six books of the Bible, all supposedly written and edited in the period 900–600 B.C., whereas Moses died about 1450 B.C. Other prominent higher critics of the 19th century included Kuenen, Driver, Cheyne, Ewald, Coonhill, and others. All such men were, of course, evolutionists (though some antedated Darwin) and naturalists (though some professed Christianity and held professorships in theological schools).

The higher criticism does not, of course, stop with the books of Moses and Joshua, though these were the first to be attacked. Because of their fulfilled prophecies, Isaiah and Daniel have been particularly fought, but actually no book of the Old Testament has escaped these destructive critics.

Although these critical writings are full of high-sounding technical discussions about vocabulary and style, the real underlying presuppositions of such writers are as follows:

1 Moses could not have written the Pentateuch, because writing was unknown in his day (and, if Moses' books had to be moved to a late date, the others, that accepted Moses' authorship, had to be moved to still later dates).

2 The evolutionary theory of man's cultural developments precluded attainment of high civilizations and literary abilities as early in Israel's history as the Bible indicated.

3 The miracle stories of Genesis, Exodus, Kings, Jonah, etc., were derived from ancient mythologies. This must be so, since miracles are impossible scientifically.

4 Fulfilled prophecy is also a miracle, and therefore impossible.

But all these presuppositions are false! In recent decades, many archaeological discoveries have confirmed that writing was very common, even among tradesmen and housewives, before even the time of Abraham. The boyhood home of the latter, Ur of the Chaldees, for example, has yielded thousands of stone volumes from its excavated library. Similarly, a great collection of business documents was unearthed at Nuzi, a city of the Horites, from the time of Abraham. The Ras Shamra tablets are examples of alphabetic cuneiform writing in the days of Moses. The Tel-el-Amarna letters have also shown widespread use of cuneiform writing at that time.

What is true of writing is also true of civilizations and literature. Even if evolution had been proved true (and exactly the opposite is the case), it certainly had attained a high state of culture long before Moses. More evidence comes in almost daily of an advanced state of technology in very ancient times, not only in Bible lands, but even in western Europe, America, the far East, and other areas.

As far as miracles and fulfilled prophecies are concerned, a bias against miracles and prophecy is, of course, a bias against God. To say miracles are impossible is atheism. The idea that the biblical miracles were derived from similar tales in other nations is pure assumption. Many such similarities (e.g., legends of the great Flood, the long day, etc.) are best accounted for as dim recollections of real events, the records of which are preserved accurately only in the Bible. Every one of the more local Bible miracles is very credible, in terms of both testimony and divine purpose, and there is no reason to reject any of them.

The higher critics deal at great length with details of grammar, vocabulary, and style, but none of these speculations can offset the universal testimony of the Jews and the Early Church, and especially that of Christ himself, that the writings are authentic. As far as style is concerned, it is pure presumption to think that one can distinguish different authors merely by their styles. The style and vocabulary of a single writer may and do vary widely from one book to another, depending on the subject being discussed and the purpose of writing. The style and vocabulary of the present writer's engineering publications, for example, are very different from those of this book, but they both have the same author!

With respect to the Book of Genesis, however, it is probable that differences in style and vocabulary actually are partly attributable to different writers. These are not the mysterious J, E, P, and D, however, but Adam, Noah, Shem, and the other patriarchs. The divisions of Genesis are marked off by the phrase "these are the generations of (author)." It is quite possible that these sections were thus originally written on tablets of stone by the patriarchal eyewitnesses themselves, handed down, and then finally compiled and edited by Moses.

Discussions of details of grammar and vocabulary are beyond the scope of our present purpose. It should be noted, however, that all such critical speculations have been thoroughly answered and refuted by conservative Bible scholars. The fact that these refutations have been completely ignored by liberals means only that such critics are either too lazy or too arrogant to read them, for they are unanswerable.

One such scholar was Dr. Robert Dick Wilson, long-time professor of Semitic philology at Princeton Seminary. Dr. Wilson was proficient in some 45 languages and dialects, and was probably more intimately familiar with the Hebrew Old Testament than any man of his generation. He died in 1930 after 50 years of continuous scholarly contributions to the study of the Old Testament. His devastating critiques of the higher criticism in all its details have never been answered.

Wilson was not alone. Numerous other conservative Old Testament authorities — men such as W.H. Green, A.H. Finn, James Orr, Oswald Allis, Melvin G. Kyle, Edward J. Young, and many others — have thoroughly answered and demolished every claim of the higher critics, if the critics would only read their writings! Dr. Wilson summarizes the situation as follows:

In conclusion, we claim that the assaults upon the integrity and trustworthiness of the Old Testament along the line of language have utterly failed. The critics have not succeeded in a single line of attack in showing that the diction and style of any part of the Old Testament are not in harmony with the ideas and aims of writers who lived at, or near, the time when the events occurred that are recorded in the various documents…. We boldly challenge these Goliaths of ex-cathedra theories to come down into the field of ordinary concordances, dictionaries, and literature, and fight a fight to the finish on the level ground of the facts and the evidence.[6]

The Geographical and Historical Accuracy of the Old Testament

There is no reason at all to question on a linguistic basis that Moses could have written the Pentateuch, that Daniel could have written the book that bears his name, or that any of the books of the Old Testament could have been written by their traditional authors at the time and places claimed. This contention is still further strengthened by the amazing historical accuracy of the Bible narratives, wherever they can be checked.

Critics, of course, are far more eager to cast doubt on the accuracy of the Bible than on that of any other ancient book, and they have systematically refused to accept its historicity at any point unless there is a large amount of external supporting evidence. Instead of assuming it to be true until proved false, almost invariably they assume it to be false until the incoming evidence compels them to change their minds.

The 19th century higher critics, for example, used to deny the historicity of the Hittites, the Horites, the Edomites, and various other peoples, nations, and cities mentioned in the Bible, for the expressed reason that other ancient historians did not mention them. This "argument from silence," however, has long since been silenced itself by the archaeologist's spade, and few critics any longer dare to question the geographical and ethnological reliability of the Bible.

The same is true of the histories of kings and empires. The Davidic-Solomonic empire, the histories of the kings of Israel and Judah, the Babylonian captivity, and the return from exile are all now considered to be historical, whereas once they were questioned or denied.

It is significant that the names of over 40 different kings of various countries, mentioned at various times in the Old Testament, have also been found in contemporary documents and inscriptions outside of the Old Testament, always consistently with the times and places associated with them in the Bible. By comparison with gross errors in such matters known to exist in other ancient histories, it becomes obvious that the writers of the Bible narratives not only were contemporaries of the people and events so named, but that they were extremely careful in what they wrote, and furthermore, all those who later copied and transmitted their writings were also extremely careful. Nothing at all exists in ancient literature which has been even remotely as well-confirmed in accuracy as has the Bible. Even those names which once were doubted by the critics (e.g., Belshazzar, Darius, etc.) have now long since been confirmed.

One of the earliest biblical events of sufficient geographical extent to be of possible interest to non-biblical historians is the record of the confederation of kings from the East who invaded Canaan and were defeated by Abraham, as recorded in Genesis 14. This story was long denied by the critics.

However, Dr. Nelson Glueck, once widely recognized as the dean of Palestinian archaeologists, president of the Hebrew Union College and the Jewish Institute of Religion, found abundant evidence of this invasion. He said, describing these events:

Centuries earlier, another civilization of high achievement had flourished between the 21st and 19th centuries B.C., till it was savagely liquidated by the kings of the East. According to the biblical statements, which have been borne out by the archaeological evidence, they gutted every city and village at the end of that period from Ashtaroth-Karnaim, in southern Syria through all of Trans-Jordan and the Negev to Kadesh-Barnea in Sinai (Gen. 14:1-7).[7]

Dr. Glueck, though not himself a believer in biblical inerrancy, systematically explored the land of Israel for archaeological records, and found the Bible to be amazingly reliable at all points. Often he used it successfully to lead him to new discoveries, sometimes of significant economic value to the developing Israeli nation. All of this experience finally led him to make the following sweeping generalization:

As a matter of fact, however, it may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference. Scores of archaeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or in exact detail historical statements in the Bible. And, by the same token, proper evaluation of biblical descriptions has often led to amazing discoveries. They form tesserae in the vast mosaic of the Bible's almost incredibly correct historical memory.[8]

The Testimony of Christ

We have seen in the previous chapter that the New Testament records are historically authentic, and that they represent Jesus Christ to be the perfect and infallible Son of God. He was also the perfect Son of Man, sinless and without defect, as well as perfect in knowledge and power, all that the writers claim Him to be and that He himself claimed to be, or else the gospel records are inexplicable.

That being true, His own evaluation of the accuracy and reliability of the Old Testament Scriptures is of supreme determinative importance, especially to those who profess to believe in Christ. It is therefore significant, and there is no question at all about the fact, that Jesus Christ accepted the Old Testament Scriptures throughout as both historically authentic and divinely inspired. The same is true of all the writers of the New Testament.

There are at least 320 direct quotations from the Old Testament in the New, always cited as of absolute authority, in addition to hundreds of other allusions.

The Lord Jesus Christ said, among other things: "The Scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35), and "It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail" (Luke 16:17). He accepted Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (Luke 24:27; John 5:46-47), Isaiah as the author of both major "divisions" of the Book of Isaiah (Matt. 13:14 citing Isa. 6:9-10, and John 12:38 citing Isa. 53:1), and Daniel as the author of the Book of Daniel (Matt. 24:15).

Christ accepted the historicity of Adam and Eve (Matt. 19:4-5), of Abel (Matt. 23:35), of Noah (Luke 17:26), of Abraham (John 8:56-58), and Lot (Luke 17:28). Likewise, He believed that the Genesis records of creation (Mark 10:6-9) and the Flood (Matt. 24:37-39) were historically true. He even believed in the recency of creation (Mark 10:6).

Neither did Christ have any problem in believing the Old Testament miracles, as do the modern critics. He believed in the supernatural destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Luke 17:29) and the calamity of Lot's wife (Luke 17:32). He accepted the miracle of the manna (John 6:32), the healing of the serpents' bites (John 3:14), the miracles of Elijah and Elisha (Luke 4:25-27) and the deliverance of Jonah from the whale (Matt. 12:39-40).

It is no light burden which modern liberal preachers and theologians assume, when they presume to know more about such matters than did the One whom they profess as their Master. To Christ and the Apostles, the Old Testament was absolutely reliable, authentic, and verbally inspired of God, and that should settle the matter for all who claim to be Christians.

The Continuing Witness of the Passover

We have noted in an earlier chapter that the ordinances of baptism and the Lord's Supper provided a continuing witness to the early Christians concerning the genuineness of the New Testament Scriptures. These ordinances were established by Christ himself and were enjoined upon the members of each local church as soon as they were won to Christ and organized into churches by the Apostles and evangelists traveling out from Jerusalem.

Had it not been so, the New Testament Scriptures, which describe the establishment and transmission of these ordinances, could never have been received as genuine and authentic when they first began to be circulated among the early churches. They would have been rejected immediately as spurious, describing as they did these ordinances as having been ordained by Christ and taught by the Apostles, if in fact they knew that no such ordinances were in effect at all.

In somewhat the same way, the observance of the Passover supper afforded a continuing testimony to the genuineness of the books of Moses which described it. The higher critics attribute these books to a number of priests or others who wrote them hundreds of years after Moses — if, indeed, Moses ever existed at all!

But the Book of Exodus describes in much detail God's instructions to the people through Moses concerning the Passover inauguration, along with His commands for its perpetual annual observance. It describes the first Passover and then the miraculous deliverance from Egypt, which the children of Israel were commanded to recall each year through the Passover observance.

Now, suppose that none of this had really happened. Then, suppose also that sometime around 700 B.C. a group of scribes and priests decided to formalize a system of worship which they had developed, and thus, to solidify their own control over the people. They therefore developed a body of religious literature, using various sources, in particular establishing on a formal basis their own priestly offices and powers, finally imparting to all of it an aura of sacred authority by attributing it to the great legendary founder and lawgiver of the nation, Moses.

But they soon would have realized they had slipped up, by including this unfortunate story of the founding and continuing observance of the Passover feast. When the people came to read this, they would immediately have rejected the writings because they had, in fact, not been observing any such thing at all, and neither had their ancestors, and they knew it.

Then, perhaps, the fabricators of the hoax may have attempted to persuade the people that the documents had somehow been lost for many years and thus their instructions forgotten until they were recently rediscovered. Although some may have been persuaded in this manner, surely many of the more skeptical and hardheaded Israelites, naturally reluctant to accept the expensive and demanding priestly rule and restrictions commanded in these spurious documents, would have demanded firm proof that they were genuine works of Moses before they would have even accepted them. The kings and rulers especially would have resisted them, since they described a theocracy, rather than a monarchy, as the governmental structure of the nation.

In fact, the readers would no doubt have responded indignantly by pointing out that, if indeed the documents and practices had been lost for so long, it was the priests and scribes themselves who were guilty, since the very documents they were using said they had been made responsible to maintain the religious institutions of Israel and they had, therefore, failed miserably and were thus hardly to be entrusted again with all this power.

The writings, of course, not only described the Passover, but also the establishment of other institutions, such as the tabernacle, the perpetual offerings, the annual feasts and other observances, and even the Levitical priesthood itself. It is inconceivable that all of these things could now suddenly be inaugurated simply on the basis of a purported "rediscovery" of ancient documents establishing them, without absolutely firm proof that the documents were genuine works of Moses.

Could it have been possible, on the other hand, that all of these institutions had somehow sprung up on their own, with no guidance from Moses, and that now, at this late date, one of them — the priesthood — decided to crystallize all of them by the development of a set of "Scriptures" describing them? Normally, in real life, effects require causes. It is far easier to believe that Moses himself originally set up all these things than to believe that, somehow, they all just happened. All of them are intimately tied to the deliverance from Egypt and wilderness wanderings commemorating them in one way or another. Could all this elaborate history and the corresponding rituals simply have been invented either by priests or anyone else, with no basis in fact? Since all of them are intimate reflections, in one way or another, of the great events associated with the nation's beginning, they must have had their start immediately after that time.

If the histories really took place, however, and if Moses actually was the great leader and lawgiver which the traditions indicated, then the documents describing the establishment of the Passover and other institutions could never have been accepted by the people unless they corresponded fully with what they already knew about the institutions and unless they gave every evidence of being genuine works of Moses.

The only other possibility is that the real writers and editors of the documents were the most unscrupulous and yet the most brilliant forgers and charlatans the world has ever encountered. They somehow contrived a marvelous story of creation and earth history, the moving narratives of the lives of the patriarchs, the thrilling tales of Israel's deliverance from Egypt and wanderings in the wilderness. Most amazing of all, these scheming liars devised the Ten Commandments and the greatest moral and ethical code in all history, and convinced everyone for three thousand years that all of it had come from God through Moses!

Now, however, thanks to the brilliant sleuthing of our modern higher critics, this ancient scheme has finally been exposed! Or perhaps it is only the higher critics themselves who have been exposed. Can men who would reason in such devious ways as this really be honest and intelligent men?

The Old Testament Scriptures still stand. The testimony of the Passover, the unanimous acceptance by the early Christians and their Jewish contemporaries, the careful linguistic studies of dedicated and highly skilled conservative Bible scholars, the penetrating discoveries of archaeology, the impact of the Old Testament on all subsequent world history, and the full confirmation by the Lord Jesus Christ of its historic and divine trustworthiness, all unite in certain assurance that the Book is true.

Selected books for further study:

Aalders, G. Charles. 1948. The Problem of the Book of Jonah. London: Tyndale. 30 p.

Adams, J. McKee. 1946. Ancient Records and the Bible. Nashville, TN: Broadman Press. 397 p.

Allis, Oswald T. 1949. Five Books of Moses. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed. 355 p.

Allis, Oswald T. 1972. The Old Testament: Its Claims and Critics. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed. 509 p.

Allis, Oswald T. The Unity of Isaiah. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed.

Anderson, Sir Robert. Daniel in the Critics' Den. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publishing House. 186 p.

Bruce, F. F. 1988. The Canon of Scripture. Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press. 349 p.

Free, Joseph P., and Howard F. Vos. 1992. Archaeology and Bible History. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House. 314 p.

McDowell, Josh. 1975. More Evidence That Demands a Verdict. San Bernardino, CA: Here's Life Publishers. 365 p.

Morris, Henry M. 1976. The Genesis Record. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House. 716 p.

Thiele, Edwin R. 1977. A Chronology of the Hebrew Kings. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publ. House. 93 p.

Unger, Merrill F. 1954. Archaeology and the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publ. House. 339 p.

Whitcomb, John C. 1959. Darius the Mede. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 84 p.

Wilson, Robert Dick. 1959. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament. Chicago, IL: Moody Press. 194 p.

Wilson, Robert Dick. 1925. Studies in the Book of Daniel, 2 vol. New York, NY: Revell. 850 p.

Wiseman, P.J. 1946. New Discoveries in Babylonia about Genesis. London: Marshall, Morgan and Scott. 143 p.

Young, Edward J.

An Introduction to the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 432 p.