Mark it on your calendar, Think-Biblically.com is officially declaring 2018 the Year of Bible Proofs. Technically it began in November of last year with the opening of the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC, which we covered here. While it opened in November, it now has all its exhibits up and ready for patrons. Just across the street from the world famous Smithsonian, it is a beacon of light revealing how the Bible has impacted America's history politically, and in civil rights and social justice issues. It does all this through the exhibition of 40,000 artifacts.

The Year of Biblical Proofs continues with the traveling exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls, currently on display until August 3 in Denver, Colorado. While some secular bias intrudes on the descriptions of pottery, seals and, of course, some of the scrolls and parchments themselves, the reliability of the Bible is reinforced to millions.

In the 1940’s the caves along the Dead Sea were carefully excavated by British archaeologists, leading to the discovery of 931 Scrolls and Parchments. These contained portions of every Old Testament book (with the exception of Esther), Community Rules, and other works dating from 300 BC to 40 AD. The fact that the portions of the Old Testament we now have from the Dead Sea Scrolls is the same as the much later manuscripts we had before reveals how much care was taken in transmitting the Word of God over the centuries. But there is another benefit as well in that it reveals a lot about the culture of the later inter-testamental period and the time of Jesus. We will cover this in more detail later, but for now if you live near Denver it's worth the price of admission to see these ancient works.

In addition to this, In February of this year famed Israeli archaeologist Dr. Eilat Mazar discovered a clay seal bearing the names of the Biblical prophet Isaiah and King Hezekiah. This amazing discovery confirms the Bible's timeline and its accuracy in the events it reports. This artifact and nearly three dozen other pieces are currently on loan to the Armstrong International Cultural Foundation and being displayed at the Armstrong Auditorium in Edmond, Oklahoma from June 10 through August 19. A jointly held event between the Hebrew University in Israel and the Armstrong foundation in Oklahoma was held on June 10 via live stream. Admission is free and open to the public.

Even the film "Fragments of Truth" released back in April (and which we reviewed here) went a long way to explaining recently discovered truth regarding Bible manuscripts. The new understanding of the use of particularly New Testament documents is that each manuscript had a life not of twenty to forty years, but of two- to three hundred years. This means that those copies of New Testament writing that were created a couple hundred years after the original date of authorship could be direct copies of the original, closing the historic gap between copies.

It is an exciting year for Biblical studies.