The 21 Arab states that could easily have absorbed the original 650,000 Palestinian refugees in 1948 refused to do so, even though their combined land mass was 700 times greater than that possessed by Israel. By contrast, the Jewish population of the new state was only 600,000, yet Israel willingly absorbed some 820,000 Jewish refugees from Europe.
Archaeology in general is the recovery and study of the material culture of past civilizations. Biblical archaeology is as an application of the science of archaeology to the field of biblical studies. Through the comparison and integration of Scripture with the evidence of history and culture derived from archaeology, new insights into the biblical context of people and events, and sometimes the interpretation of the text itself, are possible. In this way archaeology serves as a necessary tool for biblical exegesis and for apologetic concerns.
The Bible is an ancient text from an ancient context. We live thousands of miles and thousands of years away from that context, which also represents different cultures. Archaeology is a modern means of revealing both the lost record of the ancient world, and the historical and social world of the Bible. While the purpose of archaeology is not to prove the historicity of the people and events recorded in Scripture, it can help immeasurably to confirm the historical reality and accuracy of the Bible and to demonstrate that faith has a factual foundation.
Archaeology is a science, and like all sciences, has its limitations. For one, archaeological discoveries made in the past centuries have been reappraised and reinterpreted by more recent findings. Some of the older positive claims, as well as most of the negative criticisms of the Bible, have changed, usually for the better. For another, the actual amount of archaeological evidence is quite small. It has been estimated that less than 1% of archaeological sites in the Holy Land have been excavated, and those that have been excavated have only been partially excavated.
