ISIS jihadists might have inadvertently documented the historicity of the Bible, according to a worldwide Christian ministry.
Initial indications suggest ISIS destruction of the tomb of Jonah in Mosul, Iraq, "may actually have unearthed archaeological evidence that corroborates the historicity of a part of the Bible that has no parallel in the Quran,"Â said the Barnabas Fund.
When ISIS seized Mosul, it destroyed churches and blew up the shrine believed to comprise the tomb of the prophet Jonah and also dug deep tunnels underneath it.
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Now that ISIS has been evicted from East Mosul, Iraqi archaeologists have found that its actions "have revealed an untouched 600 B.C. palace including a marble cuneiform inscription relating to King Esarhaddon."
That's significant, Barnabas Fund noted, because although Jonah is mentioned in the Bible and the Quran, Esarhaddon is mentioned only the Bible, in 2 Kings 19:37 and Isaiah 37:38.
Esarhaddon was the Assyrian king at the time of the deportation of Manasseh to Bablyon, as described in 2 Chronicles 33:11.
"Significantly Manasseh was taken to Babylonia rather than to the capital of Assyria, possibly as Esarhaddon was then rebuilding Babylonian cities," the report said.
Barnabas Fund aids persecuted Christians around the world, especially those in Islamic countries.
The London Daily Telegraph also reported the discovery, noting limited excavation had been carried out by the Ottoman governor of Mosul in 1852. The site was revisited by the Iraqi department of antiquities in the 1950s.
But neither team reached as far as the palace.
The report said that inside one of the tunnels, Iraqi archaeologist Layla Salih discovered the marble cuneiform inscription of King Esarhaddon thought to date back to the Assyrian empire in 672 B.C.
The report said that while the king's name is not visible on the cuneiform slab, "a historian who has seen photographs of it says phrases are legible which were used only to describe him, in particular his rebuilding of Babylon after his father Sennacherib had it destroyed."
"The palace was built for Sennacherib, renovated and expanded by Esarhaddon (681-669 B.C.), and renovated again by Ashurbanipal (660-627 B.C.). It was partly destroyed during the Sack of Nineveh in 612 B.C."
Eleanor Robson, chief of the British Institute for the Study of Iraq, told the Telegraph that ISIS' "destruction actually led us to a fantastic find."
She said there's "a huge amount of history down there, not just ornamental stones."
"It is an opportunity to finally map the treasure-house of the world's first great empire, from the period of its greatest success," Robson said.
She does, however, believe that ISIS "looted hundreds of objects before Iraqi forces recaptured the eastern side of the city," the report said, so an emergency documentation effort is going on now.
ISIS is estimated to have damaged or destroyed hundreds of historically significant sites in the region.
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