That’s the question that some historians have been asking themselves since the 1960s, when the Austrian archaeologist Manfred Bietak identified the location of the ancient city of Pi-Ramesses at the site of the modern town of Qantir in Egypt’s Nile Delta.

Nowhere is this theme more evident than in Exodus, the dramatic second book of the Old Testament, which chronicles the Israelites’ escape from captivity in Egypt to the promised land.īut has archaeology unearthed one of the sites of the Israelites’ captivity? The murderous history of Bible translationsįor centuries, the Old Testament has been widely interpreted as a story of disaster and rescue – of the Israelites falling from grace before picking themselves up, dusting themselves down and finding redemption.Perhaps the best place to start the story is in Sun-baked northern Egypt, for it was here that the Bible and archaeology may, just may, first collide. These findings may be incomplete and they may be highly contested, but they have helped historians paint a picture of how the Bible came to life. (Photo by Werner Forman/Universal Images Group/Getty Images) Where does the Bible originate?Īrchaeology and the study of written sources have shed light on the history of both halves of the Bible: the Old Testament, the story of the Jews’ highs and lows in the millennium or so before the birth of Jesus and the New Testament, which documents the life and teachings of Jesus.

An illumination from a Byzantine manuscript depicting Jesus Christ.

Who wrote the book of james?