Suppose you found an ancient text, describing an ancient city. Critics are divided over whether it is historical or fictional. How would you go about determining whether it was real?
Well, some experts ignored the text itself, preferring to kick around various theories. Another guy ignored all those experts, and studied the text itself for clues to the location. Once he had narrowed it down, he picked up his shovel and started digging.
Two lessons here: The first is that even the most “sage advice” of well-respected experts is fallible, no matter how many agree with it.
The second is that this particular ancient text was sufficiently free of corruption, error and distortion that details inconsequential to the story — like what a man and his nephew could see from a specific vantage point — were clear enough to lead archeologists to their goal. This is even more impressive when you consider that the experts placed it quite a long way from there, and the skeptics considered it merely fictional.
The text, of course, is the Bible. Watch this video to see what they found:
