Tabla de contenidos para Bible - History and Myth en Inside History Collection

Although the Bible’s message is aimed at believers, historians have also painstakingly delved into the Old and New Testaments, using the scriptures as a source to chart the period when the world’s first civilisations were established. The Bible’s stories may be impossible to verify from a historical perspective, but they could have their origins in real events. So, geologists hunt for the truth about the Great Flood and Noah’s Ark, meteorologists and biologists try to explain what could have caused the Ten Plagues that struck Egypt, while scientists and scholars search for evidence of disasters that could have wiped out the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. This issue delves into the Bible’s greatest enigmas, providing not only interesting reading but also prompting thought-provoking questions about how far apart science and…

Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, where the pharaoh had been holding them captive, the Bible tells us. As the multitude approached Canaan, the land God had promised them, Moses sent 12 scouts – one from each of the Israelite tribes – ahead to find out what conditions were like. After 40 days, they returned. They brought with them a vine so big that two men had to carry it between them on a pole. Canaan was all the Israelites could wish for, Moses’s envoys said. “We entered the land you sent us to explore, and it is indeed a bountiful country – a land flowing with milk and honey. Here is the kind of fruit it produces,” they reported, according to Numbers, the fourth book of the Bible.…

Every year, as winter darkness settles over the northern hemisphere, Jewish families and communities around the world come together to celebrate Hanukkah. Rabbis and family leaders carefully light the large nine-branched candlestick called the menorah (Hebrew for lamp stand). The ritual follows a strict procedure: the candles are always lit from left to right, and the act is accompanied by two ritual prayers. The candle in the centre of the pole is lit first, followed on subsequent days by the candles in the eight arms that spread out to each side. Each candle – one on each evening throughout the eight days of the holiday – is lit with fire from the flame in the centre, so that all nine candles are shining on the last day of the feast.…

The Ten Commandments You shall have no other gods before me You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy Honour your father and your mother You shall not murder You shall not commit adultery You shall not steal You shall not give false testimony against your neighbour You shall not covet your neighbour’s house You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour In the 1860s, a young British researcher named George Smith made an unexpected discovery. On some 4,000-year-old Babylonian clay tablets, hidden in the storerooms of the British Museum, he found inscriptions with the names of Israelite kings that he knew from…

The Mount of Olives is a peaceful place. The view from the top over the walls and towers of Jerusalem is breathtaking, and in the evening the air is cool, clean and filled with aromatic scents. But Jesus was unaware of the beauty of the night and the scents around him. A dark, cold sense of dread gripped his heart and frightened him. The terror grew as he walked the winding, stony paths through the night. Although he was accompanied by three of his closest friends, loneliness crept up on him. “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me,” he insisted urgently. The Romans, who controlled Palestine, were wary of any sign of unrest and were keeping a close eye…

Danish history and relics were all the rage when archaeologist Jacob Kornerup carefully removed layers of lime from the walls of several Danish churches in the mid-nineteenth century. Kornerup knew that underneath lay countless frescoes – murals painted upon wet lime plaster – from the Middle Ages. The church congregations watched on eagerly, but the results were not quite what they expected. The lime hid not only beautiful depictions of Christ and his angelic host. Hidden among the pious biblical depictions were scenes that most nineteenth-century folk would not dare describe in words, for the frescoes contained transgressive sights that few associated with the medieval fear of God and horror of sin. On one church wall, grinning devils grabbed a half-naked woman, while elsewhere a jester urinated directly at the…

The cobbled streets of Jerusalem echoed with the crackling of flames, clash of swords and screams of death. The stench of rotting corpses lay heavily over the hot summer city on this August day in the year AD 70. After an exhausting siege, over 20,000 Roman legionaries had broken through the Jews’ last defences and were now fighting their way into the Holy Temple – the very heart of the Jewish nation. The defenders had been convinced that the armies of heaven would come to their aid and liberate the land that God had promised his chosen people. But there was no divine intervention and all hope seemed extinguished. Destruction was inevitable. The Roman commander Titus, who had grown up with a host of deities, like most of his compatriots,…

During the winter of 1947, 16-year-old Bedouin Muhammed Ahmed al-Hamed and his two older cousins were herding sheep and goats through the ruined city of Qumran near the north-western shore of the Dead Sea. Suddenly, one of the goats ran up a steep hillside and disappeared into a cave. Irritated, Muhammed followed the animal and, to scare it back out, threw a stone into the cave. The sound that followed piqued Muhammed’s curiosity. Instead of the smash of stone against stone, he heard a clatter, like pottery breaking. Muhammed entered the cave to investigate. The sight stopped him in his tracks. Hidden in the semi-darkness were as many as ten ancient, sealed clay pots and a collection of shards. Upon closer inspection, one pot turned out to contain three yellowed…