For me Shiloh was a myth: just some place in the Southern States during the Civil War.
As a non-religious and uninformed child, I had never heard of Shiloh in Israel. And maybe one reason was that this Shiloh did not exist yet, or rather, its secrets were locked underground in Samaria.
Atheists, whom I call simply ignorant, believe that the Bible is a collection of myths. Therefore, there is no God.
Those who read the Bible know the stories of Shiloh: The Ark of the Covenant rested there for 369 years, and the place was visited by the Prophet Samuel and those whom he anointed kings—Saul and David.
But it wasn’t until 1967, with Israel’s stunning and historic victory over the Arabs, that Jews seeking to settle in these new territories of the biblical heartland could search out the very sites mentioned in Scripture.
So where was Shiloh of the Bible?
Israeli settlers visited an Arab Christian village called Kafr Sila (Shiloh in Greek) on a hill in Samaria, and asked the locals if they knew where ancient Shiloh was located. “Of course,” they said, pointing down into the valley. The Arabic-speaking Christians maintained a tradition of knowing where that and other biblical places lay.
As the Israelis started sifting through the earth, they found clay shards of the plates upon which the Israelites ate of their offerings to the Lord and then smashed them so that they would never be used again, as commanded in the Bible (see Leviticus 6:28). Four Greek Orthodox churches and monasteries were also uncovered, with a mosaic in Greek found at the entrance to one of them stating: “May the Lord [Jesus] have mercy on the people of Shiloh.”
Bingo!
Now the whole area is being excavated, including Tel Shiloh, with more and more discoveries during each archaeological season.
The importance of turning Shiloh from a myth into reality is that if this place really existed, then so did the Prophet Samuel, and so did King Saul and King David. On the other hand, if Shiloh was merely a myth, then the Bible is a man-made piece of fictional literature and God does not exist.
It looks like the atheists need to do some rethinking.
Now-a-days folks from around the world can visit biblical sites that provide archeological evidence of the veracity of the Bible. Including places like Shiloh; Bethel (where Abraham built an altar and Jacob had his famous dream of the ladder ascending into heaven); Joshua’s altar between Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal; the giant foot formations in Argaman and Nahal Tirzah; Joshua’s altar; and the City of David in Jerusalem.
Atheists need to wake up and study these state-of-the-art scientific proofs regarding the Bible and the existence of God.
Check out Shiloh: Where God Put His Name at First and other articles in our Guiding God’s Land series
