August 16, 2025
A Quiz on the History Between the Old and New Testaments
1. Approximately how many years transpired between the end of the Old Testament (Malachi) and the beginning of the New Testament (Matthew)?
2. What nation ruled the land of Israel at the end of the Old Testament period?
3. What man conquered the Persians in 333 B.C.?
4. What empire ruled the land of Israel from 333-167 B.C.?
5. During this period the predominant language of the Jews in the land of Israel changed from what language to what language?
6. Following the sudden death of this empire’s leader in 323 B.C., the empire was divided between four of his generals who founded four dynasties with what dynasty controlling Egypt and what dynasty controlling Syria?
7. During this time the land of Israel was sometimes controlled by the one dynasty and sometimes controlled by the other until an ultimately successful 26-year struggle for Jewish independence began in 167 B.C. and was led by what family?
8. Descendants of this family began to rule as Jewish priest-kings over the land of Israel from 141-63 B.C. and are commonly known by what dynastic name?
9. In 63 B.C. what Roman general conquered the land of Israel, ending Jewish sovereignty?
10. In 31 B.C. Caesar Augustus defeated General Mark Antony, transforming the Roman Republic into the more autocratic Roman Empire, and then Augustus installed what family of Idumean descent to govern much of the land of Israel?
(Answers to the quiz found below)
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“Jesus spoiled every funeral that He went to.” (Dwight L. Moody)
“Jesus is the life-giving antagonist of death.” (Alexander Maclaren)
“With this deed, Jesus made good on a claim given in Jerusalem not long before.” (William Schlegel)
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Trivia
Which one of these does not belong?
A. The Dead Sea
B. The Salt Sea
C. The Sea of Galilee
D. The Sea of the Arabah
(Answer to the trivia question is below)
Book Review:
The Holy Land, by Jerome Murphy O’Conner
Yes, it’s dated, given its original release in 1980, but to be fair, like new cars driven off the lot, every guidebook is dated the day after it’s published, for the field of archaeology changes constantly. However, if you enjoy archaeology (and I’m on a quest to convince everyone that archaeology is less like eating your vegetables and more like the surprising taste of pineapple on pizza), then the latest edition of this book, its fifth, still deserves a place on your shelf.
Two features that I find particularly helpful are the author’s historical outline of the Holy Land (though admittedly I squirm at his dating of the “Stone Age”) and his section on the “Walls and Gates” of Jerusalem, but the heart of the book is broken into two sections, “Part 1: The City of Jerusalem” and “Part 2: A-Z Guide to the Land,” which together cover approximately 250 sites.
The author, an Irish Dominican priest, taught New Testament at the École Biblique in Jerusalem from 1967 until his death in 2013 at the age of 78. Having lived in Jerusalem for almost fifty years, his knowledge of the Holy Land is considered elite.
My original copy of the book is now so battered from use that I recently purchased a second copy. Admittedly a Jerusalem fanatic, I credit this 550-page book with first igniting my now decades-long fascination with both the Temple Mount and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
–Daniel McCabe
Scripture Study: King Hezekiah, part 3
Isaiah 37:30 records God’s words of hope to Hezekiah when he faced the terrifying threat of an Assyria army, “And this shall be the sign for you”—this sign is for Israel. “This year you shall eat what grows of itself, and the second year, what springs from that. Then in the third year, sow and reap and plant vineyards and eat their fruit, and the surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward and bear fruit upward.”
This really is an amazing prophecy because Assyria had taken over the whole land. They now ruled the roost. They owned everything. The Israelites cannot go out and plant vineyards and eat their fruit because the Assyrians are there, and nobody can dislodge them because they’re too powerful. But God promised that the Israelites would farm their own land and that they were gonna be just fine.
V. 32, “For out of Jerusalem shall go a remnant and out of Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this. Therefore, thus says the LORD concerning the king of Assyria, ‘He shall not come into this city or shoot an arrow there, or come before it with a shield or cast up a siege mount against it. By the way that he came, by the same he shall return, and he shall not come into the city,’ declares the LORD. ‘For I will defend the city to save it for My own sake and for the sake of My servant David.’” Essentially he says that the Assyrian king is going back the way he came. He won’t be able to conquer Jerusalem and then simply move on as he had done with previous cities.
Then we read something astonishing in v. 36. It’s literally said in passing without providing further details, “And the angel of the LORD went out and struck down one hundred and eight-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians, and when people arose early in the morning, behold, there were all dead bodies.”
Think about that! 185,000 people just pop up dead. You wake up as a Jerusalemite one morning and the Assyrian army has been destroyed. I wish we had more details. What was that like? What happened? How did that happen? What was the aftermath of that? How long did it take for the Israelites to carry off all the bodies? This would have required a major effort, taking weeks, months and perhaps even years, yet we don’t read anything about it. Of course, this is not the focus of the passage. Instead, the main point is that the Lord intervened and saved His people against impossible odds.
V. 37, “Then Sennacherib, king of Assyria, departed and returned home and lived at Nineveh.” Sennacherib’s Prism is an archaeological artifact, discovered in 1830 in the ruins of Nineveh. It’s a six-sided prism with cuneiform writing all around it, and it records Sennacherib’s many exploits, including his boast that he shut up Hezekiah like a caged bird in his royal city. That’s quite the boast!
But notice that Sennacherib could not claim to have destroyed Jerusalem or captured Hezekiah, the two primary goals of that military campaign. On the prism Sennacherib does brag about taking Lachish, a significantly fortified city in Judah and one with strategic importance. But his boasting about Lachish was merely a public relations spin, given his failure to take Jerusalem. Even so Sennacherib’s words confirm the historical account in Isaiah 36-37 of God’s intervention to protect Jerusalem.
V. 38 adds, “And as [Sennacherib] was worshipping in the house of Nisroch, his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer, his sons, struck him down with the sword. And after they escaped into the land of Ararat, Esarhaddon, his son, reigned in his place.” This happened in 681 B.C. about twenty years after Sennacherib’s return from Jerusalem, and it fulfilled the prophecy of 37:7, “I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.” God said he’d be struck down, and though it took about twenty years, it still happened. This serves to remind us that although we may want things done quickly in our timing, God has his own timing to work all things together for good. What an amazing deliverance that God gave Hezekiah and his people that day! What a faithful man that he would turn to the Lord against all odds. He prayed, he trusted, and God delivered.
–Adam Keim
From the Archives: Shrine of the Book
August 23, 2022
It’s pretty much what its name suggests. It’s a shine or wing of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem that displays ancient Hebrew manuscripts of the greatest Book ever written, the Bible. In 1947 a Bedouin shepherd hunting his stray goat threw a rock inside the opening of a cave near the Dead Sea and the world has been abuzz ever since. Inside the cave the young shepherd found scroll jars filled with ancient manuscripts, many from the Old Testament, that date between the third century B.C. and the first century A.D.
The Shrine of the Book is dedicated to the preservation and display of these manuscripts found between 1947 and 1956 in eleven different caves. The hallway leading into the collection resembles a cave. The “cave” leads to a large exhibition room, which next creates the illusion that you have been miniaturized and transported inside one of the ancient scroll jars. A walkway around the circumference of the room is filled with display cases for the manuscripts, which are rotated every few months. In the center of the room, designed like a Torah scroll, is a facsimile of what the curator calls “The Mona Lisa” of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the “Great Isaiah Scroll,” a complete copy of the Book of Isaiah, discovered in Cave 1. The architecture is spectacular, but perhaps the greatest takeaway from the exhibit is how God has preserved his Word throughout the centuries.
–Daniel McCabe
Answer to the Trivia
C. The Sea of Galilee
The Dead Sea, the Salt Sea and the Sea of the Arabah are three different names for the same body of water (pictured below).
Answers to the Bible Quiz
1. Four hundred years
2. Persia, reigning until 333 B.C.
3. Alexander the Great
4. The Grecian Empire
5. Hebrew to Greek
6. The Ptolemies in Egypt and the Seleucids in Syria
7. The Maccabees
8. The Hasmoneans
9. Pompey the Great
10. The Herods
–Daniel McCabe