Tag: Paris

The British Museum, the Louvre, & the Bible

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The British Museum in London is one of the greatest museums in the world. It includes the Roseta Stone, which broke the code to reading Egyptian Hieroglyphics, as well as Easter Island statues, and many things of biblical significance. It’s also completely free to the public!

My daughter Hope in front of one of the winged bulls of Assyria at the British Museum

There are so many things of biblical significance in the British Museum that there are entire books dedicated to the subject, such as:

The British Museum: Depiction of the Capture of Lachish from Sennacharib’s Palace in Nineveh

In 2 Kings 18, the Bible tells the story of how Sennacharib, King of Assyria attacked Hezekiah, King of Judah, and that at this time, Sennacharib captured the city of Lachish (2 Kings 18:13) and made it his base of operations in Judah (2 Kings 18:14).

Sennacharib, 2 Kings 19 tells us, tried to intimidate Hezekiah into submission and sent him a threatening letter. The Prophet Isaiah encouraged Hezekiah to defy Sennacharib, and he prophesied Sennacharib’s fall.

In the British Museum, you can see sculptures and base reliefs from Sennacharib’s palace in Nineveh (the capital of Assyria, the same place where Jonah went and against which Nahum prophesied), which depict the Assyrian capture of Lachish.

Interestingly, another item which is held in the British Museum is the annals of Sennacharib, which describe his conquest of much of Judah. These annals mention how he made Jerusalem pay tribute to him (recorded in 2 Kings 18), but while they chronicle the many cities he succeeded in conquering, Jerusalem is left out of the list – which is exactly what the Bible says in 2 Kings 18-19.

The importance of these artifacts, in other words, is that the corroborate the fact that the Bible is historically accurate.

Here are the sermons I preached on 2 Kings 18 & 19 in our “Desiring the Kingdom” series:

The Louvre: The Moabite Stone

In a previous post I showed some of the famous paintings in the Louvre Museum in Paris which wrongly depict Bible stories: Bible Stories Gone Wrong in the Louvre

But the Louvre is more than just an art museum, it is also an archaeology museum, including items of incredible significance, such as Hammurabi’s Code and Tutankhamen’s sarcophagus.

There are also items in the Louvre of biblical relevance, such as the “Moab Stone,” which bears one of the oldest written references to the Kingdom of Israel. It mentions specifically a victory which Moab had in a battle against the Israel, whom it refers to as the House of Omri.

This parallels a story found in 2 Kings 3.

Omri was the sixth king of Israel, and the most famous king to come from the House of Omri was Ahab, who famously tried to convert Israel into a pagan nation, with Baal worship as its official religion. Elijah confronted the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18, in which God sent fire from heaven upon a sacrifice as a sign that He alone is God.

Another important element of the Moabite Stone is that it refers to Yahweh as the God of Israel.

These and other items in these museums help us to see that the Bible is trustworthy and accurate, and as archaeologists make more discoveries, those discovers validate, rather than contradict, the historicity of the Biblical accounts.

Bible Stories Gone Wrong in the Louvre

Published on by nickcady1 Comment

After our recent trip to London for my masters graduation, we took the train to Paris, and during our time in Paris we spent a day at the Louvre museum, which (along with the British Museum in London) is full of items of biblical relevance.

However, in the extensive Italian painters section, I came across several famous paintings which depict biblical scenes, albeit incorrectly.

The Wedding at Cana

This famous painting by Paolo Veronese is one of the highlights of the Louvre, and is held in the same room as the Mona Lisa. It depicts the famous scene from John 2 in which Jesus performed his first miracle at a wedding in the town of Cana.

The only problem with this painting is that it is set not in a small Jewish village in Galilee, but in a large Greco-Roman city reminiscent of Athens. Cana was a small town, a village even, right north of the border between Samaria and the region of Galilee.

I like this painting though, especially how there’s a ton of interesting stuff going on in it, and Jesus is just chillin’ in the midst of it.

The Pilgrims at Emmaus

This is one of my favorite stories in the Gospels, and a key passage in understanding Christ-Centered hermeneutics, as Jesus opened the minds of his disciples to understand the Scriptures, showing them how all of the things written in the Books of Moses, the Psalms, and the Prophets (i.e. the entire Old Testament) was about him (see Luke 24:13-49)

However, you might notice the beautiful Alps in the background of this painting – which would make sense if Jesus had been in northern Italy rather than in Jerusalem. Apparently, although Titian was a great painter, he had never been to Israel, because then he would have known that there are no snow-capped mountains visible from the Judean desert near Jerusalem.

This is of course not to mention the anachronism of the servant’s clothes, which were not in style until at least 1000 years after the events recorded in Luke 24.

Saint Stephen Preaching in Jerusalem

This painting by the Italian master Carpaccio, is one of my favorites, because it shows that it’s possible to be good at painting, but bad at history.

It depicts the story found in Acts 7, in which Stephen, a deacon in the early church, preached to a crowd in Jerusalem right before they stoned him to death for his faith in Jesus, making him the first martyr of the Christian faith.

However, you might notice that Carpaccio’s depiction of Jerusalem has it filled with minarets: towers attached to mosques from which the Muslim call to prayer is heralded. Furthermore, notice the many people in turbans, the traditional dress of Muslim men in the Middle East.

At the time of Carpaccio, Jerusalem was indeed full of mosques and muslims. However, Islam wasn’t invented until over 600 years after the events which took place in Acts 7! In the 1st Century A.D. there were no muslims and no mosques in Jerusalem!

Sometimes people criticize Christian pop music and movies as being subpar, but these paintings show us that it is possible to make great art that is quite inaccurate from a biblical perspective.