“Why are photocopies of the Dead Sea Scrolls on the Internet not available free to the public?” Thus starts Don Srail’s Talkback piece in the Biblical Archaeology Review site, and he goes on to lament the suppression of valuable information from the public eye.

Once long ago, my dad was trying to move a bed from one room to another. And I was helping him. But being just four or so, he told me later, I was an additional weight that he was dragging with the bed. So it is in this struggle to get true science and true archaeology into the open, many of us are more of a nuisance than a help.

We experience a trend in the world suppressing anything that might substantiate the Bible. This mission of suppression has become more important for many in academia and research circles than the very truth that they ought to be trying to discover, establish, and document.

Yes, although both science and archaeology have made tremendous strides in recent times, yet both have been influenced for some time by a set of presumptions that gradually became assumptions. It is not possible, even if there was freedom, to extricate immediately, the many wonderful findings from the false premises and resulting erroneous inferences made, that in turn may have become premises for other studies that may have involved other exciting finds and many hours of sweat and toil. Obviously, it is a complicated matter, and this struggle is not primarily a Christian struggle. It is a fight for truth that many non Christians also want to participate in.

Some of us, well meaning Christians, because of our ignorance, naivety, and pride, get into debates and discussions for which we are poorly equipped, and end up like the four-year old– more of a nuisance than a help. The moral of the story is not that we have to keep out of the way, but rather to read more, listen more, become better informed and more humble and attentive when discussing these subjects with people expressing their opinions.