Researchers have discovered an ancient military base that may prove the biblical story involving God’s angels defending Jerusalem from an Assyrian invasion, the Daily Mail reported.
The story, as told in the Bible, tells how God sent an angel to stop the Assyrian army from conquering the Holy Land about 2,700 years ago. The angel of the Lord is said to have descended on the advancing army, killing 185,000 soldiers in one night.
To this day, there is no archaeological evidence to prove this event or even the battle itself. However, archaeologist Stephen Compton, using modern mapping techniques, claims to have found strong evidence that this epic confrontation actually took place.
According to the press release:
A peer-reviewed paper in a prestigious journal Archeology of the Near East reported the first discovery of an ancient Assyrian military camp. Created around 700 BC during the military conquest of the Middle East, they marked the expansion of the Assyrian Empire, which became the prototype for the subsequent Persian, Greek, and Roman empires.
The first discovery came from a scene carved into the stone walls of the Assyrian King Sennacherib’s palace to commemorate the conquest of Lachish, a city south of Jerusalem. Matching the landscape in this image to the actual landscape features (using early aerial photographs of Lachish before modern development) creates a virtual map to Sennacherib’s camp site. This leads to ruins of the same size and shape as the camp in the relief of Sennacherib.
An archaeological survey of the site found no evidence of human habitation for 2,600 years, followed by pottery shards from the exact time when Sennacherib attacked Lachish, and was then abandoned again for centuries. Also, the ancient Arabic name for the ruins Khirbet al Mudawwara“The ruins of the invading Lord’s Camp.”
Assyria, an ancient civilization from Mesopotamia, formed a formidable empire in the Near East, according to Britannica. The Assyrians are often depicted as fierce and ruthless conquerors lived in what is now northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey. Sennacherib was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 705 BC until his death in 681 BC.
Three Bible stories, Isaiah 37:36-38, 2 Kings 19:35, and 2 Chronicles 32:21, describe how the Assyrian soldiers were killed in the night they attacked Jerusalem.
Isaiah 37:36-38 (New International Version)
The angel of the Lord appeared and killed one hundred and eighty-five thousand people in the Assyrian camp. When people woke up in the morning, there were all the dead bodies! King Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, then left and retreated. He returned to Nineveh and lived there.
One day, when they were worshiping in the temple of Nisrok, their god, the sons of Adramelekh and Sarezer were killed with the sword, and then they escaped to the land of Ararat. Esarhaddon, his son, succeeded him as king.
Below is a picture of the paper he reviewed, Traces of Sennacherib’s Siege Campby Stephen C. Compton.
