In the newspaper “Le Monde” of August 23, 2002, an article was published: “Two archaeologists contest the historical reality of the Bible”. It is about a Book “The Bible Unearthed” (The Free Press), written by two famous Jewish archaeologists Israel Finkelstein, professor of Tel-Aviv University and his colleague Neil Asher Silberman. The authors, reveals the article, “have no doubt about the non-authenticity of the great founding tales. According to them, the Bible is a genial reconstruction, literary as well as political, of all the history of the Jewish people which corresponds to the emergence of the kingdom of Judah”. This book appeared a year ago in the USA and has been condemned by the traditional Jews.

This biblical “reconstruction”, which is a manipulation of the original Biblical text, took place under the reign of king Josiah who ruled the southern kingdom of Judah from 640 to 609 BC. Josiah was defeated by the pharaoh Neko in Megiddo in the year 609 BC. Josiah wanted to unify the two sides of the Israelite people: those of the South, founded by David and those who formed the Northern Kingdom of Israel founded, as you know, by Jeroboam (1 Kings 12).

He planned to re-establish Jewish worship in the temple of Jerusalem. He decided to restore it. During the restoration works, the high priest Hilkiah finds a mysterious Book: The Book of the Law (Torah). He decides to inform king Josiah (2 Kings 22,8-13). By virtue of what was written in this Book, the king decided on a total reform in the territory of Judah as well as that of Israel, in an attempt to reunite the two factions of the people in an attempt to reunite the two factions of the people in an attempt to reunite the two factions of the people -that of the South: Judah, and that of the North: Israel- so that there is “only one people (Jewish); one king (reunification of the two kingdoms divided by Jeroboam); one God; one Capital: Jerusalem and one Temple, that of Solomon”. To achieve this, it was necessary to do violence to the northern territory and destroy the temple of the North and the various places of worship which are in the North as in the South, so that only the only Temple of Solomon remained (2 Kings 23).

But violence was also to be exacted to the text of the “Book of the Law” itself, making it say what suited Josiah’s expansionist plan. The aforementioned article, as we have said, explains that the two authors of the book in question “indeed have no doubts of the inauthenticity of the grand founding narratives. For them, “the Bible is a genius reconstruction, literary and political, of the whole history of the Jewish people… It is a revolutionary key to interpretation of the Bible that Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman propose”, of these“legendary, amplified, embellished accounts to serve king Josiah’s project of reconciling the two Israeli kingdoms, and to impose themselves against the great regional empires: Assyria, Egypt, Mesopotamia.” The article also reveals, that another professor of archeology at Tel Aviv University, Zeev Herzog, had already discovered that “not a single scientific approach proves the reality of this Exodus from Egypt, the great years of wandering in the desert, or the conquest of the Promised Land”.

“Le Monde”, finally, explains that “famous biblical sites such as Beersheba and Edom did not exist at the time of Exodus. And no King was found in Edom to face the Israelites. Authors’ conclusion: ‘The sites mentioned in Exodus indeed existed. Some were known and were apparently occupied, but well after the presumed time of Exodus, well after the emergence of the Kingdom of Judah , when the texts of the Biblical narratives were composed for the first time’”. The book’s authors, as well as other researchers, are grouped among the “revisionists accused of making up arguments for Palestinians” by demonstrating through archeology and history that the Jerusalem of Kings, was, at the time of David and Solomon, but a tiny village. These revisionists further demonstrated that “Jericho was empty when the Hebrews arrived and that the famous trumpets were part of an epic story, and not military”, and not Holy Scripture inspired by God!

This prompted me to buy the book of the two archaeologists. Going through it, I read in page 37 that the authors will “reconstruct history as revealed to us by the archaeological discoveries, which remain the only source to have undergone neither purging, nor reworking, nor the censures exercised by the many generations of biblical scribes”. This precious scientific information concerning the scribes’ intervention in the Biblical texts enlightened me on “the lying pen of the scribes” which Jeremiah spoke of. Thus, from an archaeological light, another point springs up in my head, its twin, on the intervention of the prophet Jeremiah and his anger, like that of Jesus, against the scribes and Pharisees, who soiled the Bible’s purity with the spear of their accursed “lying pens”. I want to share it with you.

I wanted to have a closer knowledge of Jeremiah, to establish a direct link between him and the events of his time. He “is the son of the great priest Hilkiah from Anatot”, not far from Jerusalem (Jeremiah 1,1). God’s word came to him “in the days of Josiah”, the time which concerns us. Now this Hilkiah is the high priest to whom Josiah recurred, for the restoration of the Temple. He is the one who found this mysterious Book of the Law (2 Kings 22,3-8). He gave it to the kings’ secretary, so to be given to king Josiah. After having read it, the king decided a political and religious reform (2 Kings 22,10-13). The religious reform consisted of a systemic destruction of pagan symbols, which polluted Judaea and even Jerusalem itself, as well as what was found in Samaria (2 Kings 23,1-19). It was the occasion to unite the country from North to South, to fortify it against the menacing Assyrians, and to prepare themselves for war against their ally: Egypt.

To achieve this, he had to motivate the people religiously, to bring back to mind and recuperate the “splendor” of the past, to establish a “Solomonian empire”, an independence, and a territorial hegemony, etc… All this in the Name of YHVH, and for divine glory through his “chosen people”. The famous Book of the Law that was retrieved, was just there to justify his ambitions. But this book lacked an aspect that arouses military enthusiasm. No problem! The lying pen of the scribes was there to add the salt, pepper, and the ferment necessary “till the flour was leavened all through”, to use the expression of Jesus. The scribes did not lack zeal; they launched themselves into it!

Now Jeremiah, being the son of Hilkiah, learned from his father of the accurate content of the Book discovered. He knew that the scribes were busy getting God to say what He never said about sacrifices and offerings, and the respective returns that came back to the priests. They had taken the opportunity to also include in the Book of the Law all that was materially in their favor. This is why he rebelled against them: “How dare you say: We are wise, and we possess the Law of Yahweh? But look how it has been falsified by the lying pen of the scribes!” (Jeremiah 8,8). He also adds to this: “When I brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt, I said nothing to them, gave them no orders, about holocaust and sacrifice. These were my orders: Listen to my Voice, then I will be your God and you shall be my people.” (Jeremiah 7,22-23) But the scribes and the priests were not content in listening to God’s Voice; they coveted the benefits from sacrifices that God explicitly refused. Jesus in turn, did not fail to denounce the hypocritical scribes and Pharisees thirsty for profit (Matthew 23). We understand the spitefulness perpetrated by the authors of these shenanigans against Jeremiah and against the Messiah… even against the Creator Himself!! St Paul was right to warn believers, to “stop taking notice of Jewish myths and doing what they are told to do by people who are no longer interested in the truth.” (Titus 1,14)

The result of this skullduggery was deadly for Josiah and the whole people; Josiah perished in “Megiddo”. Jeremiah then composed his “Lamentations” on Jerusalem.

Today, another Megiddo is being prepared, much bigger than the one in the past: a “Har-Megiddo”, a grand Megiddo, known as Armageddon. It is being prepared under the auspices of Bush, Sharon and company. It will undergo an even more ominous fate; It was announced by Jesus (Luke 21,20-34) and the Book of Revelation, which designates Iraq on the Euphrates, twice (Revelation 9,13-21 / 16,12-16). Bush and his allies resort to the same methods of mind manipulation, claiming that their military plan is a war of good, embodied by the US and its allies, against terrorist evil, embodied by Iraq and others.

The Vatican, headed by Pope John-Paul II, sank into the same injustice as that of the scribes by deforming, in favor of their policies, the messages that the Virgin Mary delivered in La Salette and Fatima.

With that, I leave you to read the Biblical texts and to meditate. And if you find the book “The Bible Unearthed”, be sure to read it carefully. And to pray well for its authors and their fellows. It is for such Jews, often “badly branched” by the Zionists, that our Father asks us to pray.