9 Biblical Events That Actually Happened - Confirmed by Science

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the Bible is the best-selling book of all time, with somewhere between five and seven billion publications to date. You don't have to be religious to be aware of its most popular stories, many of which have woven themselves into broader culture all over the world. Mention Noah's Ark or David and Goliath to just about anybody, and they will likely know what you're talking about. Of course, for many years, a debate has existed over the historical accuracy of the Bible, written as it was over centuries by many authors, often

long after the events described. In recent times, this debate has taken a shocking turn, as scientific research has begun to suggest that many of the Bible's most famous events actually did take place. In this video, we explore nine well-known biblical events which modern science has uncovered evidence for. So, let's get started... Number One: The Great Flood Perhaps the most well-known story in the entirety of the Bible appears in the Book of Genesis, chapters 6-9. There, ten generations after the creation of humanity, God sees that the Earth has become wicked and corrupt, so he decides to

destroy it with a flood. "So the Lord said, 'I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created— and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground— for I regret that I have made them.'" God is able to find only one worth saving, a man named Noah. He instructs Noah to build an ark so that he might survive the flood, and bring upon it his family, along with two of every animal on Earth. Once Noah completes the ark, the flooding starts. "On that day, all

the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights." The results were catastrophic. "Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark." Finally, the flood waters subside, and the story ends with Noah emerging from the ark with his family to set about repopulating the Earth. Though the story

of Noah's Ark is a spectacular one, scholars long insisted that it did not actually take place, that the story was little more than myth. However, this opinion began to change in the year 2000, when two geologists from Columbia University named Walter Pitman and William Ryan began a study of core samples taken from beneath the Black Sea. Shockingly, they discovered that dozens of feet below the current sea floor was a layer of mud typically found in river deltas, and within this layer, shells of mollusks which are found in fresh water. This suggested that at some point

in the past, the Black Sea was not the saltwater body it is today, but a freshwater lake which supported an area of rich farmland. Armed with this information and other geological evidence from the region collected by previous studies, Pitman and Ryan began to construct an incredible theory on what had happened. Sometime in the past, they proclaimed, the Black Sea had been a freshwater lake separated from the saltwater Mediterranean Sea by a strip of land known as the Bosporus Strait. At the end of the last Ice Age, approximately 10,000 years ago, when the ice sheets in

the Northern Hemisphere began to melt and global water levels began to rise, the water level in the Mediterranean Sea rose so much that it broke through the Bosporus Strait, flooding the Black Sea area below. Without warning, water would have begun pouring through the breach with more than 200 times the force of Niagara Falls. In a single day, enough water would have entered the Black Sea basin to cover an area the size of Manhattan to a depth of more than 3,000 feet. Within a year, some 60,000 square miles of land would have disappeared under water. This

staggering theory immediately caught the attention of the world's most famous marine scientist, Robert Ballard. Ballard had been the man to track down the sunken remains of the Titanic in 1985, as well as numerous other lost wrecks around the world. With Pitman and Ryan's research in hand, Ballard traveled to the Black Sea to study the theory further. He and his team began to map the landscape of the sea floor with a sonar scanner mounted to a ship. In short order, they found something which stunned them more than 300 feet below the surface. There, on the sea

floor, were the remains of an ancient building. Exploring further, the team noted the remnants of stone tools and ceramics scattered throughout the surrounding area. What this meant was clear. In the words of Robert Ballard, "What we are looking at is a culture that is definitely thousands of years old […] for us to find a structure in 150 meters of water means that these people were definitely living there before it flooded." But they did not stop there. Going further, they conducted carbon dating on the shells of the freshwater mollusks previously noted by Pitman and Ryan, as

well as the shells of saltwater mollusks found in the layers of the sea floor above. Incredibly, they found that not only were the freshwater mollusks universally older than the saltwater ones, but that all of the freshwater mollusks were the same age, meaning they had died at the same time. For Ballard, this proved that they had died as a result of a sudden flood, since if they had died slowly due to gradually rising water, their ages would have been different. For the first time, definitive proof had emerged of a flood in the Black Sea region, one

which certainly could have formed the foundation of the biblical story of Noah's Ark. However, many scientists insisted that there was one crucial inconsistency – while this evidence showed a regional flood, it did not provide evidence for the global flood described in the Bible, where, as Genesis states, "(The waters) rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered." The thing is, the Bible is not the only place that a global flood story appears. In fact, within cultures all over the world and all across history, a similar story exists –

from the civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome, to the ancient Aztecs, Mayans, and Incans of Central and South America, to India and China, Native American tribes, and Australian Aboriginals. What is most astonishing is that not only do all of these cultures have a flood story, but in nearly every one, the story tells of a singular figure, like Noah and his family surviving the flood, almost always on a boat. Interestingly, in the years since Ballard, Pitman, and Ryan showed that a cataclysmic flood had taken place in the Black Sea region, similar evidence has started to

emerge from locales around the world, in places where these similar global flood myths have long existed. In 2016, researchers in China discovered evidence of a catastrophic flood that raised water levels some 800 feet in the Yellow River Valley many thousands of years ago, seeming to "confirm the historical basis" of China's flood myth with its own Noah-like figure, Emperor Yu. In 2020, evidence emerged of a massive flood in the Central Andean Plateau in South America, where the Incas once spoke of a family who survived a global flood sometime deep in the past. In 2023, researchers in

India announced they had confirmed the ancient Hindu myth in which a figure named Manu survives a global flood, by uncovering evidence of a flood so great that it led to the disappearance of the Saraswati River thousands of years ago. It seems like almost every year, new evidence emerges which seems to confirm the global flood stories of cultures all around the world. Does this mean that the biblical story of Noah's Ark has been proven? We know for sure that a flood took place in the Black Sea region, and the more evidence which emerges, the more it

seems like it really may have been a global flood, as the Bible says. In either case, there is one critical question to consider. How did cultures all across the world, cultures who never met each other, come up with the exact same story, of a global flood survived by a special figure? Is it possible that the story came from an older source? And if so, who? Number Two: Biblical Plagues In the book Exodus, chapters 7-11, the Bible tells the story of ten plagues sent by God to pressure the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II to let Moses and

the enslaved Israelites go free. As each plague hits, Pharaoh is swayed by the horror it brings and agrees to free the Israelites, only to renege on his decision once the plague is lifted, until, as the 10th plague arrives, he finally agrees to let the Israelites leave Egypt. For many years, secular scholars looked upon the story as one which did not actually happen, but rather, one written by the Israelites at a later date to show the power of their god over the gods of others. However, recent evidence has emerged which suggests that the ten biblical plagues

of Moses and Pharaoh Ramses could actually have taken place. In 2010, researchers studying stalagmites in Egyptian caves and using the geological evidence they obtained to rebuild and map weather patterns deep into the past noticed something dramatic had taken place 3,000 years ago, at about the same time as Pharaoh Ramses II was in the midst of his reign. The evidence showed that during that time, a dramatic climate shift had suddenly taken place, resulting in rapidly rising temperatures and severe drought across Egypt, so severe, in fact, that it would have dried up the mighty Nile River and

turned it into what researchers described as "a slow-moving and muddy watercourse." With these groundbreaking findings in hand, researchers from around the world quickly began putting together how this could have directly led to the ten plagues spoken about in the Bible. Following the order of the plagues given in Exodus, we begin with the first plague. "He raised his staff in the presence of Pharaoh and his officials and struck the water of the Nile, and all the water was changed into blood. The fish in the Nile died, and the river smelled so bad that the Egyptians could

not drink its water." As temperatures rose and the Nile dried up into a "slow-moving and muddy watercourse," numerous researchers have pointed out that this would have provided the perfect conditions for the bloom of toxic freshwater algae called Oscillatoria rubescens, also known as Burgundy Blood algae. As the name suggests, Burgundy Blood algae gives water a blood red appearance, often called "red tide." More importantly, it makes the water toxic, leading to the death of aquatic life and giving the water an unpleasant smell, making it the perfect explanation for the biblical account of the Nile turning to blood.

The second plague: "I will plague your whole country with frogs. The Nile will teem with frogs. They will come up into your palace and your bedroom and onto your bed, into the houses of your officials and on your people, and into your ovens and kneading troughs." Toxic algae in the Nile River would have meant that frogs were forced to leave their natural habitat in the water, and move onto dry land, covering the country with what must have seemed like a plague of frogs. The third plague: "When Aaron stretched out his hand with the rod and

struck the dust of the ground, lice came upon men and animals. All the dust throughout the land of Egypt became lice." As frogs lost their aquatic habitat and moved onto land, they would have died in large numbers. With the loss of much of the frog population, insects like lice would have lost their natural predators and proliferated, surely making it feel like "all the dust throughout the land" became lice. The fourth plague: "Dense swarms of flies poured into Pharaoh's palace and into the houses of his officials; throughout Egypt the land was ruined by the flies." Similarly,

a "dense swarms of flies" would again make sense in the context of a widespread frog genocide. The fifth plague: "The hand of the Lord will bring a terrible plague on your livestock in the field— on your horses, donkeys and camels and on your cattle, sheep and goats (…) And the next day the Lord did it: All the livestock of the Egyptians died." Insects like lice and flies carry diseases for both humans and animals. Scientists believe that the fifth plague could have been caused by insects spreading either African Horse Sickness or Bluetongue in livestock, leading to

widespread deaths in the animal population. The sixth plague: "Then the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, 'Take handfuls of soot from a furnace and have Moses toss it into the air in the presence of Pharaoh. It will become fine dust over the whole land of Egypt, and festering boils will break out on people and animals throughout the land.'" Similarly, the proliferation of insects could result in an outbreak of boils among humans, either due to fly bites which can cause boils, by the spread of disease through these bites, or through the consumption of tainted meat from

diseased animals. The seventh plague: "So the Lord rained hail on the land of Egypt; hail fell and lightning flashed back and forth. It was the worst storm in all the land of Egypt since it had become a nation. Throughout Egypt hail struck everything in the fields— both people and animals; it beat down everything growing in the fields and stripped every tree." Return to the idea that a dramatic climate shift took place at this time, and it would be easy to explain the worst hailstorm of all time as simply an historic climate event. However, some scientists

have a different explanation. Almost 3,500 years ago, one of the largest volcanic eruptions in history took place on the island of Santorini in the Mediterranean, spewing billions of tons of volcanic ash into the atmosphere. Initially, researchers did not connect this eruption to Egypt, which is hundreds of miles away, until they started finding pumice stones made from cooled volcanic ash at sites around the country. Analysis on these stones showed that they did indeed come from the Santorini eruption in the Mediterranean. Perhaps these pumice stones, falling from a thick cloud of volcanic ash, explain the seventh biblical

plague, the largest volcanic eruption in history leading to the worst hailstorm ever. The eighth plague: "The Lord made an east wind blow across the land all that day and all that night. By morning the wind had brought the locusts; they invaded all Egypt and settled down in every area of the country in great numbers (…) They covered all the ground until it was black. They devoured all that was left after the hail— everything growing in the fields and the fruit on the trees. Nothing green remained on tree or plant in all the land of Egypt."

As with lice and other insects, locusts could have emerged in large numbers after the large-scale death of the frog population. However, it has also been pointed out that volcanic eruptions can cause favorable conditions for locusts. In the words of one scientist, "The ash fallout caused weather anomalies, which translates into higher precipitations, higher humidity. And that's exactly what fosters the presence of the locusts." In either case, the widespread prevalence of locusts is easily explained. The ninth plague: "Moses stretched out his hand toward the sky, and total darkness covered all Egypt for three days. No one could

see anyone else or move about for three days." Similarly, billions of tons of volcanic ash spewed into the atmosphere would surely have the power to block out the sun for a few days at a time. At the same time, the extreme drought being experienced at the time could have led to sandstorms with never-before-seen intensity. Like locusts, three days of darkness can be explained by both volcanic eruption and climate shift. The tenth plague: "Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the

female slave, who is at her hand mill." An explanation for the final plague can be found by returning to the first plague, to the toxic algae bloom in the Nile River. Toxic algae releases mycotoxins, a poisonous substance which can contaminate grain. Since firstborn sons would have been both the first sent to work in the fields harvesting grain, and, as future patriarchs, those eating first and eating the most at meals, contaminated grain could have caused disproportionate deaths among them. Put each of these ten plagues together and the implication is clear. A dramatic climate shift in Egypt

at the time of Pharaoh Ramses II, alongside an historic volcanic eruption in the Mediterranean at around the same time, means that the plagues described in the Bible were likely real events, perhaps recorded by the Israelites after the fact, massaged into a story showing the greatness of their god. Number Three: Parting the Red Sea The story of the Israelites and their escape from captivity in Egypt continues in Exodus chapter 14, after the tenth plague finally convinces the Pharaoh to let them leave. Shortly after they do, Pharaoh changes his mind, summoning his 600 best chariots and marching

his army in pursuit. In short order, Pharaoh's army corners the Israelites at Pi-hahiroth, trapping them between mountains on one side and the Red Sea on the other. In this dire situation, God speaks to Moses, telling him, "Lift up your rod, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it. And the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea." After he does, a strong east wind blows all night, parting the waters. "So the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea on the dry ground, and the

waters were a wall to them on their right hand and on their left." Realizing that the Israelites were escaping, the Egyptian army sets off in pursuit. But when the Israelites reach the other side, God commands Moses to reach out his hand again. "Then the waters returned and covered the chariots, the horsemen, and all the army of Pharaoh that came into the sea after them. Not so much as one of them remained." While the story of the parting of the Red Sea is certainly one of the Bible's most dramatic tales, it was long considered one of

its most impossible. That is, until 2010, when a scientist from the National Center for Atmospheric Research at the University of Colorado named Carl Drews began using computer modeling to explore the potential for a phenomenon called "wind setdown" to have taken place in ancient Egypt. Wind setdown is a phenomenon in which strong winds blow the water in a lake or sea to one side, effectively parting the waters and leaving dry land in its place for a short time. As Drews described, "The parting of the waters can be understood through fluid dynamics. The wind moves the water

in a way that's in accordance with physical laws, creating a safe passage with water on two sides and then abruptly allowing the water to rush back in." Drews believed that wind setdown could have taken place in ancient Egypt, creating a pathway of dry land which the Israelites could have crossed during their exodus, before the water suddenly rushed back in and closed their path. In order to explore his theory, Drews studied ancient geography to construct likely locations, then used computer simulations to recreate the conditions which may have resulted in wind setdown. Nearly the first thing he

did was rule out the Red Sea as a potential location, both because it runs from north to south, which doesn't fit with the biblical description of wind from the east sweeping water to one side, and because at 190 miles wide and an average of 1,640 feet deep, that's a lot of water to move and a long way for the Israelites to go if it had. However, Drews' computer simulation did find a location in the area where wind setdown could have taken place at around 1250 BCE, when the story of Exodus was said to have happened,

a body of water known in modern times as Lake Tanis. There, Drews found that steady 63 mph winds from the east would have pushed the waters of Lake Tanis back to its western shores and created a land bridge which would remain dry for hours. Amazing as the finding was, one might wonder what it had to do with the biblical story of Exodus, in which Moses and the Israelites were said to have crossed the Red Sea, not Lake Tanis. Well, according to scholars, it was not actually the Red Sea which Moses and the Israelites crossed. In

the original Hebrew text, the body of water which is crossed is not called the Red Sea, but the "Sea of Reeds." A mistranslation happened when the text was first translated into Greek in the 3rd century BCE, with the "Sea of Reeds" becoming the "Red Sea" in Greek and all future translations. For Drews, this was the key which brought together all the pieces of the puzzle. In 1250 BCE, Lake Tanis was, according to Drews, "a shallow brackish lagoon" which provided the perfect habitat for the growth of papyrus reeds. Once again, it seemed that an astonishing biblical

event could be explained by a natural phenomenon. Perhaps wind setdown did truly, randomly, take place as the Israelites were fleeing Egypt, allowing them to cross the Sea of Reeds to safety. But either way, there is no doubt it could have happened... Number Four: Sun Stands Still In the Book of Joshua chapter 10, an incredible battle is described between the armies of the Israelite leader Joshua and the combined forces of the five kings of the Amorites. On the day of the battle, Joshua speaks to God, imploring him to make the sun and moon "stand still" over

the battlefield, in order to give his forces an advantage over their enemies. As the Bible describes, "So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself on its enemies." While once again, this could merely have been a story written at a later date designed to show the power of the Israelite god, in 2017, physicist Colin Humphreys and astrophysicist Graeme Washington came forward with an assertion that the story may have been more than mere hyperbole. As they put it, "If these words are describing a real observation, then a major astronomical event was

being reported." And if a major astronomical event was being reported, then surely, thought Humphreys and Washington, it must have been an eclipse. Of course, they were not the first to come up with this idea. 100 years earlier, a linguist named Robert Wilson had proposed the same thing, and for a century, scientists had tried and failed to find evidence of an eclipse during the time of Joshua. According to Humphreys and Washington, the mistake that other researchers had made was focusing their search entirely on full eclipses, without thinking to look for annular eclipses, where the moon passes

directly in front of the sun, but is too far away to completely cover it. With this in mind, Humphreys and Washington created a computer simulation to look for annular eclipses in the area between 1500-1050 BCE, a time period covering the centuries leading up to and passing the time of Joshua, which is known to have been around 1200 BCE. What they found was that only one annular eclipse had taken place during that time period, on October 30, 1207 BCE. This was a groundbreaking find, with implications for numerous scientific and historical fields. But most simply, it showed

definitively that the day the sun stopped described in the book of Joshua was a real historical day. Number Five: The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah According to Genesis chapter 19, Sodom and Gomorrah were two ancient cities destroyed by God for their wickedness and sin. In the story, God sends two angels to destroy the cities, choosing only to save a righteous man named Lot and his family. As Lot and his family flee to safety, the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah is hellacious. "Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah— from the Lord out

of the heavens. Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities— and also the vegetation in the land. But Lot's wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt." Like the story of the Great Flood, the Bible's account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was long seen not as an historical record, but as a religious teaching about God's anger provoked by human sin. In 2006, this opinion would begin to change, thanks to incredible findings at the ancient city of Tall el-Hammam. During the Bronze Age, Tall el-Hammam

was the largest city in the Jordan Valley region, at its peak, some ten times larger than Jerusalem. Given its historical importance, archaeologists in modern times have long been interested in the site. But it was not until 2006 that an archaeologist named Steven Collins would uncover something truly astonishing, something which would change the perception of the site forever. That year, Collins and his team began excavating deep into the earth, all the way to a geographic layer corresponding to a time period around 1650 BCE. There, they would find a five-foot deep layer of soot, which shockingly contained

burned fragments of human bones, melted mudbrick and other building materials, as well as, most inexplicably, pottery shards melted into a glass with a curious green glaze. When Collins sent this strange green glass to a lab for analysis, the results showed that the pottery had been melted by some sort of super intense heat which had lasted a short period of time. But what, Collins wondered, could have generated this heat? It went far beyond anything technology at the time could produce. As research continued, Collins and his team found something else which baffled them. Beneath the layer of

soot and melted material, there was evidence for human habitation at the site stretching back for thousands of years, but above it, evidence showed that the site had been abandoned by humans for some 700 years. Why? These questions led to a monumental research project which brought together 21 different scientists and took over 15 years to complete. In 2021, these scientists finally published the results of their research in the prestigious Nature Scientific Reports journal. When they did, their conclusions stunned the scientific and biblical world. First, they determined that the cause of the melted mudbricks, burned bone fragments,

and glazed green glass could not have been warfare, fire, or volcanic eruption, which would not have generated enough heat to create these effects. This led researchers to believe that the cause must have been an asteroid or comet. And yet, there was no crater at the site indicating the impact of such a space rock. This left only one shocking conclusion. According to researchers, the event must have been caused by something called a cosmic airburst, which takes place when an asteroid or comet traveling through the atmosphere at high speeds explodes above the Earth. They looked to an

event which had taken place in Tunguska, Siberia in 1908 as a reference point. That year, an asteroid 180 feet in diameter entered the Earth's atmosphere, traveling at 34,000 mph and exploded above the remote Tunguska landscape. The results were off the charts, an explosion equivalent to 1,000 nuclear bombs which flattened nearly 1,000 square miles of forest. As dramatic as the Tunguska event was, researchers believed that what had happened in Tall el-Hammam had been even more powerful. Over 15 years of study, they had not only further examined the incredible effects Collins noted in his initial excavation, but

had discovered other astonishing characteristics. First, they had found shocked quartz, where tiny sand grains contain cracks indicating a high-pressure event. According to researchers, "that means there were incredible pressures involved to shock the quartz crystals — quartz is one of the hardest minerals; it's very hard to shock." In other words, it was not just intense heat at Tall el-Hammam, but "incredible pressures" as well. More bizarrely, they found unusually high concentrations of salt in the same layer of earth where the destruction was found, at least 4% and up to 25% in places. Researchers believed this could have

been caused by the impact of their cosmic airburst partially hitting the saltwater Dead Sea and throwing salt up into the air, redistributing it across the area. As this salt entered the soil, it would have prevented crops from growing for many years, explaining Collins' finding that the area had been abandoned for 700 years after the event. Altogether, the evidence led researchers to piece together an incredible scenario. In their words, "Air temperatures rapidly rose above 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit. Clothing and wood immediately burst into flames. Swords, spears, mudbricks and pottery began to melt. Almost immediately, the entire city

was on fire. Seconds after the blast, a shockwave ripped through the city at a speed of roughly 740 miles per hour— faster than the worst tornado ever recorded. The city's buildings were reduced to foundations and rubble. None of the 8,000 people or any animals within the city survived. Their bodies were torn apart and their bones blasted into small fragments." Here, it is no great stretch to put the pieces together. Does the entire city bursting into flames and beginning to melt not sound like the 'burning sulfur' which 'rained down' upon Sodom and Gomorrah? Do 'bones blasted

into small fragments' not sound like someone becoming a 'pillar of salt'? Does the salt in the ground which made agriculture impossible not sound like the destruction of 'the vegetation in the land'? In other words, does what happened to Tell el-Hammam not sound like the biblical story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah? Indeed, researchers think so, even going so far as to conclude as much in their paper, presenting the idea in a prestigious journal for all the scientific world to see. Number Six: The Tower of Babel According to the book of Genesis, a few generations

after the Great Flood of Noah, at a time when "the whole world had one language and a common speech," humans began work on an astonishing building project. As Genesis chapter 11 recounts, "They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, 'Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves.'" It was called the Tower of Babel, yet, unfortunately for its builders, the project's audacity angered God, causing him to "confuse their language so they will not understand each other"

and scatter them "over the face of the whole earth," stopping the Tower of Babel building project in its tracks. Within the Bible, the story of the Tower of Babel is used to give an explanation for the different languages of the world. While scientists and linguists assert that this is certainly not how different languages came about, they were long divided on whether the story recounted any sort of real-world building project. For years, many asserted that the Tower of Babel must have been one of the nearly 30 ziggurats discovered in ancient Babylon, which would have been created

around the same time as the biblical story was written. In 2017, this theory was taken to a whole new level when Andrew George, a professor of Babylonia at the University of London, was finally able to examine a baked clay tablet from the ancient city of Babylon which had been discovered 100 years prior, but had previously been kept hidden and unstudied in the ownership of a private collector. When he finally got his eyes on it, George quickly realized that what the tablet showed was incredible. On it was a carving showing a massive ziggurat tower with seven

levels, and beside that, a king, which George identified as the famed King Nebuchadnezzar. Below the carving was a body of text, identifying the building as "Etemananki: Ziggurat Babel," or, "the temple tower of Babylon," and describing its construction. According to George, it was this description which made the tablet "a very strong piece of evidence that the Tower of Babel story was inspired by this real building." Within the description was a quote attributed to Nebuchadnezzar, which read, "I built their structures with bitumen and baked brick throughout. I completed it raising its top to the heaven, making it

gleam bright as the sun." Recall that the Bible describes the Tower of Babel as made of brick, not stone, and reaching to the heavens. Nebuchadnezzar's quote sounds almost the same as the Bible verse. The quote continues, going on to detail those involved with the building of the tower, "From the Upper Sea to the Lower Sea to the Far-Flung Lands and Teeming Peoples of the Habitations I Mobilized In Order to Construct This Ziggurat of Babylon." In other words, the tower was constructed by people from all over the world, likely slaves captured in Babylon's conquests, speaking all

different languages, again, reflecting the preeminence of language in the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. Taken together, what the tablet showed was clear to George and many others. The biblical story of the Tower of Babel must have been influenced by the building of Etemenanki in Babylon, which the Israelites must have come across during their captivity in Babylon, hearing about its construction then massaging the details into their own story of the Tower of Babel. Number Seven: David and Goliath In the First Book of Samuel chapter seventeen, another of the Bible's most well-known stories appears. It

starts with the Israelite and Philistine armies facing off on opposite sides of the Elan Valley. Every day, through 40 days of stalemate, a Philistine warrior named Goliath steps forward and challenges the Israelites to single combat. Nobody takes him up on his challenge because he is enormous. As the Bible describes, "His height was six cubits and a span. He had a bronze helmet on his head and wore a coat of scale armor of bronze weighing five thousand shekels (…) His spear shaft was like a weaver's rod, and its iron point weighed six hundred shekels." Finally, a

shepherd boy named David takes the challenge, and faces off against Goliath without armor or steel, but only his trusty sling. Their fight is one of the most popular accounts anywhere in the Bible. "As Goliath moved closer to attack him, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet him. Reaching into his bag and taking out a stone, he slung it and struck the Philistine on the forehead. The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell face down on the ground. David ran and stood over him. He took hold of Goliath's sword and drew it from

the sheath. After he killed him, he cut off his head with the sword." The story of David and Goliath is not only the introduction of the future King David, who goes on to become one of the key figures in the Bible, but a classic tale of the underdog told to this day by the religious and secular alike. For many years, scholarly opinion asserted that's all that it was, an allegory meant to teach about overcoming the odds, about cleverness and belief conquering brute force, not a real account of an actual event. In recent times, however, evidence

has begun to emerge which is changing this opinion. To begin, despite his importance in the biblical narrative, scholars long doubted that King David ever really existed. Lacking any direct evidence of his existence outside the Bible, they chose to view him as an apocryphal rather than historical figure. That was until 1993, when a broken stone slab dated to the late-9th or early-8th century BCE was discovered in north Israel. The slab was erected by an Aramean king in the mid-8th century BC, and in the inscription, he claims to have defeated the "king of Israel" who was of

the "House of David." While the slab did not provide additional information about King David, it did prove that he existed. It is well established that single combat was commonly employed in the ancient world to determine the outcome of war. Moreover, slings were well-respected and well-used weapons of war, harnessing centrifugal force to launch a projectile, usually a stone, with a force "as deadly as a .44 magnum." The point is, if David did exist, there is no reason his rise to power could not have included a victory in single combat during his youth. He could even have

used a sling to kill a much larger and better armed opponent. His opponent, though, is where things get really interesting. For years, scholars believed that no gigantic figure named Goliath had ever existed, that surely, he was an invented character, a rhetorical tool to make a point about overcoming the odds, or, at best, an embellishment written in later to make a great king look good. In 2005, however, a discovery was made by archaeologists excavating the ancient city of Gath, said by the Bible to be Goliath's home city, which totally changed this perception. Deep within the earth,

a shard of pottery was found dated to the late-10th or early-9th century BCE. On it was an inscription bearing a name, which translated roughly to "Goliath." Some believed that this proved the biblical Goliath had actually existed. But whether it did or didn't, at very least, it caused researchers to revisit an older study with fresh eyes and renewed interest. Back in the 1960s, a farmer plowing his fields in the area of ancient Gath accidentally uncovered a cache of ancient tools and weapons. During excavation around his find, archaeologists uncovered four enormous spear heads, which, they surmised, would

have topped a weapon "measuring probably more than the height of a man." This puzzled archaeologists. It seemed as though the spears would have been far too large for an ordinary man to use. In fact, so oversized were the spear heads that at the time, archaeologists concluded they must not have belonged to spears at all, but rather some sort of tent poles. But when the name Goliath was uncovered in the same area four decades later, many began to wonder if perhaps they had been spear heads, ones not wielded by an ordinary sized man, but by a

giant. Remember how the Bible describes Goliath's weapons: "His spear shaft was like a weaver's rod, and its iron point weighed six hundred shekels." Does this not sound like giant spears which archaeologists called tent poles? In 2015, things would only get more bizarre when researchers began to uncover "super-sized remains of 'enormous' architecture and fortifications" in Gath, dated to the time period which Goliath was said to have lived. Incredibly, buildings and fortifications from the time of Goliath were built with stones more than twice the size, and often four or five times of stones used in any other

era at the site, and stood far larger than anything else seen in the region. Did the city of Gath build giant structures at the time of Goliath to accommodate a giant man? According to the Bible, Goliath's brother and sons were also giants. Perhaps the city of Gath at that time was filled with oversized people who built outsized structures. Either way, the more evidence that comes out, the more that scholars are beginning to think seriously about the historical reality of the story of David and Goliath. Number Eight: Adam and Eve One of the foundational stories of

the Bible, the story of Adam and Eve tells the tale of the original human couple, the parents of the entire human race. In the Book of Genesis, God creates Adam, the first man, placing him in the Garden of Eden. Believing "it is not good for the man to be alone," God first creates other animals, and then, realizing that animals are not sufficient company, God takes one of Adam's ribs and uses it to create Eve, the first woman. When Adam and Eve are convinced by a serpent to eat from the forbidden tree of the knowledge of

good and evil, God becomes angered and punishes them, expelling them both from the Garden of Eden, whereupon they go on to found the human race. Of course, modern science has shown that humans did not just miraculously start as two fully formed people, but rather, evolved over countless generations into what they are today. However, scientific evidence is beginning to emerge which suggests that there may be more truth to the story of Adam and Eve than many scientists imagined. It begins with the concept of Mitochondrial Eve. Simply, mitochondrial DNA is the unique genetic code passed down from

female to female. Trace back far enough, and you will reach a woman from whom all humans can trace their mitochondrial DNA – known as Mitochondrial Eve. Similarly, all living men have a Y-Chromosome descended from one man, known as Y-Chromosome Adam. In either case, the name is a bit of a misnomer. Y-Chromosome Adam and Mitochondrial Eve are not the first people ever, like the biblical Adam and Eve, but the two people whose genetic lineage we all share. Just because everyone is descended from them, does not mean there were no people before them, or at the same

time. In 1987, scientists were able to pinpoint the actual Mitochondrial Eve as woman who lived in Africa some 200,000 years ago, while further studies found that the actual Y-Chromosome Adam lived some 100,000 years ago. In other words, not only were Y-Chromosome Adam and Mitochondrial Eve not the first humans ever, like the biblical Adam and Eve, but they had lived many thousands of generations apart, and had certainly never known each other, let alone reproduced together. This stood as the scientific consensus, until 2013, when everything changed. That year, two independent studies were each able to uncover thousands

of previously unknown DNA sequence variations. Astonishingly, using these variations, each study revised the time period in which Y-Chromosome Adam and Mitochondrial Eve would have lived, and independently concluded that not only could they have lived at the same time, but in the same region! This was a groundbreaking discovery. If Y-Chromosome Adam and Mitochondrial Eve had lived at the same time in the same place, could they have known each other? Could they have reproduced together? In 2020, a biologist named Joshua Swamidass took the idea further and proposed that a human couple referred to as Adam and Eve

could actually have procreated together and become universal ancestors to the entire human race, and, moreover, that they may not have lived in the distant past, but as recently as a few thousand years ago. The key, according to Swamidass, was that while universal genetic ancestors are rare, genealogical ancestry is quite common. Think about it like this: you get 50% of your DNA from each of your parents, 25% from each grandparent, 12.5% from each great grandparent, and so on. The further back you go, the lower the percentage, until eventually, the number becomes so small as to be

immeasurable. This means that you will have ancestors who are genetic ghosts, meaning that while they are your ancestors, you haven't inherited any measurable DNA from them. Here, Swamidass pointed to a 2004 study which used a computer simulation to test for the most recent common ancestors for all humans, the point where all family trees converge into one pool. Published in Nature journal, the study found this could have happened as recently as a few thousand years ago. For Swamidass, this had paradigm shifting implications. In his opinion, it meant that both evolution, with humans slowly evolving into what

they are today, and the biblical story of Adam and Eve, with a human couple serving as the parents of all living humans today, could both be true at the same time. This was different than research on Y-Chromosome Adam and Mitochondrial Eve, but in either case, the suggestion was the same. An Adam and Eve couple could have existed at some time in the past and procreated together to become the common ancestors of all humanity. Number Nine: The Creation of the Universe On the very first line of the very first page of its very first book, the

Bible starts, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light." It seems like perhaps the most foundational of religious principles, that God created the universe, but in fact, many in recent times have pointed out how the biblical description overlaps with another theory for the creation of the universe, one currently accepted as truth by essentially the entirety of mainstream science –

the Big Bang. According to the Big Bang theory, the entire universe started as a condensed and infinitesimally small singularity, before an explosion – the titular 'big bang' – began ballooning the universe outwards faster than the speed of light, flooding the universe with the matter which would eventually serve as the building blocks for everything that exists. At first, this matter would have been impossible to see, because it could not hold visible light, until, over time, electrons began to meet with nuclei and create atoms, allowing the light to shine through. To some, the overlap is undeniable. In

the words of one scientist, the Big Bang conclusively shows that, "the universe had a definite starting point — a creation — as described in the Book of Genesis. To deny this now is to deny scientific fact." Many have pointed out that it goes further than that. Numerous times throughout the Bible, the universe is described as being "stretched out," seeming to conform with modern scientific knowledge that the universe is constantly expanding. Interestingly, different verb forms are used to describe this stretching. Sometimes, the verb used implies continual or ongoing stretching, while in other places, the verb used

implies that the stretching was completed some time ago, inferring that the stretching is both finished and ongoing. Why does this matter? Because the complimentary finished and ongoing aspect of the stretching of the universe presented in the Bible is precisely how the Big Bang describes the creation of the universe – an event in which all laws of physics which give the universe its form are instantly created, designed, and finished, so as to guarantee the continual expansion of the universe. It appears as though, somehow, the ancient writers of the Bible presented an understanding of the creation of

the universe which only in the last half-century did modern science begin to recognize as truth. How could this be possible? So, there you have it, nine famous biblical events backed by modern science. Did these events really take place? And if they did, were they scientific, or supernatural? Moreover, are there any that we missed? Let us know in the comments below.