Person

Lawrence Mykytiuk

American scholar of Hebrew and Semitic studies and academic librarian at Purdue University, best known for a rigorously filtered count of biblical persons attested outside the Bible: 53 from the Hebrew Bible and 30 from the New Testament, 83 in all. His method for deciding when a person named in an ancient inscription is the same person named in Scripture, first set out in his 2004 Society of Biblical Literature monograph, is the standard reference point for that question in popular and apologetic writing, and the codex uses his list as its baseline count.

Mykytiuk's value lies in his restraint. He refuses forgeries and unprovenanced objects whose authenticity is not established, refuses matches resting on a single shared name, and insists on reading an inscription from non-biblical evidence before comparing it with the Bible. The lists that survive that filter are hard for a skeptic to set aside.

Life

Ph.D. in Hebrew and Semitic Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison (1998). His dissertation became Identifying Biblical Persons in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions of 1200-539 B.C.E.
Purdue University Libraries: associate professor of library science and history librarian, later full professor of library science; from 2014 he also held a courtesy appointment as associate professor of history.
Retired in 2020 as Emeritus Professor of Library Science.
He traces his interest in inscriptions naming biblical people to the Baruch bulla in 1978 and to a bulla he saw in 1992, which set his research going. He later came to accept Christopher Rollston's case that the Baruch bulla is a likely forgery.

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Major works

Identifying Biblical Persons in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions of 1200-539 B.C.E. (Society of Biblical Literature, Academia Biblica 12, 2004), the revised dissertation. It sets out the first comprehensive protocol for evaluating proposed identifications, grades each in one of six categories of strength from the most certain down to disqualified, applies the system in detail to the Mesha Stele, the Tel Dan Stele and several Hebrew inscriptions, and assesses more than seventy-five biblical persons in more than ninety inscriptions in its appendixes.
"Corrections and Updates to 'Identifying Biblical Persons in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions of 1200-539 B.C.E.,'" Maarav 16.1 (2009): 49-132.
"Sixteen Strong Identifications of Biblical Persons (Plus Nine Other Identifications) in Authentic Northwest Semitic Inscriptions from before 539 B.C.E.," in Meir and Edith Lubetski, eds., New Inscriptions and Seals Relating to the Biblical World (SBL, 2012), 35-58.
"Archaeology Confirms 50 Real People in the Bible," Biblical Archaeology Review 40:2 (March/April 2014).
"Did Jesus Exist? Searching for Evidence Beyond the Bible," Biblical Archaeology Review 41:1 (January/February 2015).
"Archaeology Confirms 3 More Bible People," Biblical Archaeology Review 43:3 (May/June 2017), adding Tattenai, Nergal-sharezer and Nebuzaradan.
"New Testament Political Figures Confirmed," Biblical Archaeology Review 43:5 (September/October 2017), 23 persons.
"New Testament Religious Figures Confirmed," Biblical Archaeology Review (Summer 2021), completing the New Testament list of 30.
The Bible History Daily web supplements, "53 People in the Bible Confirmed Archaeologically" and "30 People in the New Testament Confirmed," which carry the full charts and endnotes.

Method

Three criteria, all required:

Authentic data. The inscription must be known to be authentic, "not perhaps authentic." Antiquities-market objects are suspect until proven.
Matching settings. Same time (within about fifty years) and same socio-political place, usually the same kingdom.
Identifying marks. Enough marks to point to one individual. Name, father's name and title are typical; three matches make a lock, two a reasonable hypothesis, one is not enough.

And two working rules:

Interpret the inscription from non-biblical data first, because reading the Bible into the inscription and then citing it as confirmation "opens the door to circular logic."
Say "confirmed," not "verified," because "verified" implies the inscription is a better witness than the Bible.

He is equally plain about the limits: confirming that a person existed is not usually confirming that the person did what the Bible says.

How the codex uses him

The baseline count. Biblical Figures Confirmed by Archaeology reproduces his 53 Hebrew Bible and 30 New Testament figures, with the inscriptions, coins and writings he cites, and explains his grades of confidence.
Against "the Bible is all fiction." Bible Stories Are All Fiction Objection Defeater uses his count as its first fast fact.
Against minimalism. His method grants the minimalist demand that the Bible not be taken as history on its own say-so, and still arrives at 53 Hebrew Bible persons, David's dynasty among them. He describes minimalist denials of the Hebrew Bible's historical value as misguided. He pairs naturally with Kenneth Kitchen, who answers the same school from the ancient Near Eastern comparative record.
Artifact pages. His readings bear on the Tel Dan Stele, the Mesha Stele, the Jeremiah Bullae, Hezekiahs Bulla, the Jehoiachin Ration Tablets and the Nebo-Sarsekim Tablet. On the Caiaphas Ossuary he is more cautious than most, counting Caiaphas as confirmed through Josephus and grading the ossuary inscriptions as possible but inconclusive.

Scholarship

Published academic works this page draws on, each matched to a publisher, index or library catalog record.

Meir Lubetski, New inscriptions and seals relating to the biblical world (2012). Open Library
Lawrence J. Mykytiuk, Identifying Biblical persons in Northwest Semitic inscriptions of 1200-539 B.C.E (Society of Biblical Literature, 2004). Open Library