Watch the Program This two-hour program is divided into thirteen chapters. Choose any chapter below and select QuickTime or Windows Media Player to begin viewing the video. If you experience difficulty viewing, it may be due to high demand. We regret this and suggest you try back at another time.

Merneptah Stele Near the banks of the Nile in southern Egypt, in 1896, archeologist Flinders Petrie unearths an Egyptian stone monument containing the first mention of a people named Israel.

running time 6:45 Who Wrote the Bible? Traditional beliefs hold that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, but scholars today identify the hand of at least four different groups of scribes writing over several hundred years.

running time 6:52 The Exodus Archeologists have not yet found evidence of the mass migration described in the book of Exodus, but its message, an inspiring theme of freedom, remains powerful to this day.

running time 8:53 The Canaanite Cities Following the Exodus, the Bible says that a great warrior, Joshua, leads the Israelites into the Promised Land with a blitzkrieg military campaign. Does archeology back up this claim?

running time 8:50 Israelite Origins A radical new theory suggests that tribes of serfs, slaves, and commoners abandon the old Canaanite city-states and eventually emerge in a new place as a new people—the Israelites.

running time 9:19 The Search for YHWH The Israelites, a mixed multitude of disenfranchised people, are bound together by a vision of freedom. However, artifacts suggest that their monotheistic embrace of a single God is not immediate.

running time 7:04 House of David Of all the names in the Hebrew Bible, none appears more frequently than David. The earliest biblical figure confirmed by archeology to be historical, he likely lived around 1000 B.C.

running time 8:26 Archeological Methods In the past, biblical archeologists dated ruins based on the pottery they found associated with those ruins. Today, there is a scientific method to anchor pottery to firm dates—radiocarbon dating.

running time 10:17 Architectural Evidence The remains of what may be King Solomon's gates, mentioned in the Bible, offer evidence of a united Israelite kingdom.

running time 6:55 Ideas About Worship Solomon builds a great Temple where the Israelites practice animal sacrifice and pay tribute to their God, but many people continue to worship pagan idols.

running time 9:18 Birth of Judaism In 586 B.C. the Babylonians invade Israel, destroying Jerusalem and the Temple and creating a theological crisis. In exile, the ancient Israelite cult is transformed into the modern religion of Judaism.

running time 11:02 Sacred Scrolls A team led by Gabriel Barkay discovers the Silver Scrolls, which predate the earliest Dead Sea Scrolls by 400 years. The find confirms that at least some verses of the Hebrew Bible were written down by the 7th century B.C.

running time 8:34 The Bible Today At the intersection of science and scripture is a story that began over 3,000 years ago and continues to this day.

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