New discoveries and a new dating method… this is a good one. Researchers dated 21 destruction layers at archaeological sites in Israel, and they did it by reconstructing the direction and intensity of the Earth’s magnetic field at the time of destruction. The short of it is this: When burned, magnetic minerals record the magnetic field as it was during the time of the fire, and researchers can then date an object by checking these records against a geomagnetic dataset that they’ve created. Because of this, they were able to verify Old Testament accounts of military campaigns. For example, the findings show that King Hazael was responsible for destroying several cities, but they refute the theory that he conquered Tel Beth-Shean. As another example, the findings indicate, “that the Babylonians were not solely responsible for Judah's ultimate demise. Several decades after they had destroyed Jerusalem and the First Temple, sites in the Negev, which had survived the Babylonian campaign, were destroyed — probably by the Edomites who took advantage of the fall of Jerusalem. This betrayal and participation in the destruction of the surviving cities may explain why the Hebrew Bible expresses so much hatred for the Edomites — for example, in the prophecy of Obadiah,” according to Erez Ben Yosef.