Scientists find ruins that can confirm the truth of the Bible

Until now, it was believed that a section of the wall in the very center of Jerusalem was built by Hezekiah, king of Judah. His reign spanned the 7th and 8th centuries BC.

He had seen his neighbor to the north, the kingdom of Israel, destroyed by the Assyrian Empire. It was believed that the king built the wall to protect himself from the invaders, the Daily Mail writes.

But now, almost a decade of research has shown that it was built by his great-grandfather, Uzziah, after a strong earthquake. This echoes the biblical account.

The Old Testament describes the construction in the Second Book of Chronicles. It reads: "And Uzziah built towers in Jerusalem at the Corner Gate, at the Valley Gate, and at the corner of the wall, and he fortified them."

The Holy Scriptures also testify to seismic activity - the Old Testament Book of Amos dates back to "two years before the earthquake, when Uzziah was king of Judah."

The study, a joint project of the IAA, Tel Aviv University, and the Weizmann Institute of Science, revealed the origin of the ancient wall using radiocarbon dating. This method uses the decay of the radioactive isotope carbon (14C) to measure the time and date objects containing carbonaceous material.

According to the IAA, this period of history was previously considered a "black hole" for carbon-14 dating because of fluctuating levels of this isotope in the atmosphere at the time. But by using ancient tree rings from Europe, scientists were able to chart these fluctuations year by year.

The scientists took their samples from organic artifacts found at four different excavation sites in the ancient center of Jerusalem, sometimes called the City of David. These included grape seeds, date pits, and even bat skeletons.

All of them were cleaned, turned into graphite, and then placed in a particle accelerator at 3,000 km per second to separate carbon-14 from other organic materials. Measuring the carbon content allowed us to determine the true age of the sample.

Until now, it was believed that the city was expanding due to the arrival of refugees from the Kingdom of Israel from the north after the Assyrian exile. However, the new findings reinforce the idea that Jerusalem grew in size and spread toward Mount Zion as early as the ninth century BC.

Moreover, they show that the city was larger than it was thought to be in the days of David and Solomon.

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