Rollston Epigraphy

• Professor Christopher Rollston (rollston@gwu.edu)

George Washington University, Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

• An Overview.

On occasion, inscriptions with some very important content will come to light (much like the Mesha Stele, the Tel Dan Inscription, or the Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions, etc.).  With these three Megiddo Mosaic inscriptions, written in Greek, hailing from an early period of Christianity (early 3^rd century), and the region of the ancient city of Megiddo (referenced once in the New Testament as “Armageddon,” or better “Har-Mageddon, in Revelation 16:16), we have just such a case. Note that the site of these inscriptions is not Tel Megiddo, but close to it.  The name of the site in the preliminary publication is given as Kefar ‘Othnay (Tepper, Di Segni, Stiebel 2005).

In terms of the room in which these inscriptions are found, the preliminary publication refers to it as a 3^rd century “Christian Prayer Hall.”  I have a slight preference for the broader term 3^rd century “Christian Worship Hall,” since this seems to be a place for the celebration of Eucharist, which would have included Eucharist, prayers, and hymns (based on New Testament and Early Christian discussions of Christian worship services). In other words, “prayer hall,” seems a bit too restrictive of a term, from my perspective, as that term might be understood to imply that prayers were the primary thing that occurred in this hall.  Of course, someone could also justifiably refer to this as a “church,” I suppose, in light of the fact that the term ekklēsia (normally translated “church”) signifies in the New Testament not a building but rather a church meeting (e.g., 1 Corinthians 11:18), or the Christian community living in one place (e.g., Acts 5:11; 1 Corinthians 4:17; Philippians 4:15, etc.), or house churches (e.g., Romans 16:5; 1 Corinthians 16:19). But the problem with the term “church,” is that this term (post the New Testament) gradually came to signify large(r) buildings, and this is not what we have at Megiddo either.  Thus, I have settled on “worship hall” as a useful designation. 

In terms of the content of the inscriptions themselves, (1) we have one which includes this sequence of words: “God Jesus Christ,” as well as reference to a “table” which is most readily understood as a Eucharistic table, and a Greek word for “memorial.” Strikingly, this inscription was commissioned by a prominent woman named Akeptous.  Following the lead of the authors of the preliminary publication, I refer to this mosaic inscription as “the Akeptous Inscription.”  (2) In addition, we have one inscription with an imperative verb, exhorting its readers to remember four women, whose names are also contained in this inscription: Primilla, Kuriake (Cyriaca), Dorothea, and Chreste.  The fact that these women are the sole content of this inscription certainly reveals something about the high status of these women in this Christian community.  Following the preliminary publication, I refer to this as “the Women’s Inscription.”  (3) Finally, one of these inscriptions mentions a centurion with the Roman named Gaianus (his Greek name was Porphyrius) as the prominent benefactor who made the donation for the mosaic, replete with a medallion of two fish.  The name of the artisan who set (or made and placed) the mosaic is also given, Brutius, a good Roman name. Following the preliminary publication, I refer to this inscription as the “Gaianus Inscription.”  Within this post, I will deal with all three inscriptions, but I will devote more of my attention at this time to the Akeptous Inscription, in order to discuss in some depth usage of the term “God Jesus Christ.”

In terms of the date for this Early Christian Worship Hall, the preliminary edition contends that it was during the early 3^rd century CE (ca. 230 CE).  Of course, some people have often assumed that prior to the Edict of Toleration in 312 CE, Christianity was a persecuted religion and so some sort of worship hall, especially one associated with an officer in the Roman army, would not have been possible.  It should be remembered, however, as nicely articulated in the preliminary publication (passim), that there was an ebb and flow to persecutions of Christians prior to ca. 312 CE.

One of the things that I do in this post is to read these inscriptions through the lens of the New Testament, since these inscriptions do hail from a time period not long after the closing of the New Testament, as it were.  Moreover, there will also be some references to Early Christian sources, as well as to some of the most relevant Roman sources (from Pliny the Younger to Celsus, the Emperor Julian, etc.).

• Introduction to the Archaeological Site

According to the very fine preliminary excavation report of Yotam Tepper, Leah Di Segni, and Guy Stiebel (2005, p. 5), excavations were conducted between 2003 and 2005 of ca. 3000 square meters (3 dunams) “inside the ancient Jewish settlement of Kefar ‘Othnay” (also now known as the “Megiddo Prison,” because of usage in the modern period), near “the headquarters of the Roman Sixth Legion Ferrata” (i.e., the “Sixth Ironclad Legion,” with the Arabic place-name “el-Lajjun” preserving the Latin term “Legio), “and the city of Maximianopolis,” all of which are mentioned in Roman and Byzantine sources (Tepper, Di Segni, Stiebel 2005, 5; see also especially “Legio” by Adams, David, Tepper 2014).  Furthermore, this site is also very near the site of Tel Megiddo, a site mentioned in the New Testament book of Revelation as “Har-Magidon (Rev 16:16, literally meaning “the mountain of Megiddo,” with the Hebrew and Aramaic word for “mountain” being “har,” written in Greek as “ar” since Greek does not have a letter “h”), a word often transliterated into English translations as “Armageddon.”  This excavation was a salvage excavation, and it was conducted on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).  Archaeological remains dating from the Early Roman period to the late Byzantine periods were found.  The excavations were fairly extensive and reveal aspects of “daily life in the rural settlement that developed and expanded alongside the Roman army camp” (Tepper, Di Segni, Stiebel 2005, 5).

Significantly, during the course of the excavations “a large residential building, dating to the third century CE, was exposed during the excavation of the settlement” (Tepper, Di Segni, Stiebel 2005, 5).  Moreover, the conclusion of the publication team, based on archaeological finds, is that this large residential building (part of excavation “Area Q”) “was used by soldiers of the Roman army and that one of its wings functioned as a prayer hall for a local Christian community” (Tepper, Di Segni, Stiebel 2005, 5). This so-called “prayer hall,” was rectangular, measured “about 5 x 10 m,”, and it was paved, “with a mosaic floor adorned with geometric patterns and three Greek inscriptions” (Tepper, Di Segni, Stiebel 2005, 24). Because the tesserae of the mosaic are of uniform size and shape, the authors of the preliminary suggest that “the mosaic was the work of a single artist” (Tepper, Di Segni, Stiebel 2005, 25). It is also noted in this publication that “the layer that covered the mosaic contained pottery sherds, mostly of jars.”  And it is further noted that “on top of this layer were several fragments of fresco and numerous pieces of thick gray multi-layered plaster” (Tepper, Di Segni, Stiebel 2005, 25-26).  Based on the typology of the excavated pottery, the preponderance of the numismatic evidence (i.e., the coins which were excavated), and the typology of the script of the Greek inscriptions, the preliminary publication contends that this hall was constructed ca. 230 CE (Tepper, Di Segni, Stiebel 2005, 26-34, et passim; note also that there are some military bread stamps with Latin inscriptions, as well as some weapons, discussed especially on pages 29-31).  Evidence for these conclusions regarding space-usage and dating are quite cogently argued within the preliminary publication (I may return to the subject of dating based on numismatic evidence in a subsequent blog post, but suffice it to say that I consider the totality of the archaeological and historical evidence, including the numismatic evidence, to support the dating of this hall and the material artifacts found in it to the first half of the third century CE). 

Furthermore, along the lines of the presence of prominent Early Christians in this region, it is useful to note that a certain Bishop Paulus of Maximianopolis is mentioned as being present at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE (A.D. 325), and a certain Megas is reported to have been present in a council in Jerusalem in 518 CE, and a certain Domnus is reported to have been present at a council in Jerusalem in 536 CE (this evidence is all referenced in Tepper, Di Segni, Stiebel 2005, 10, citing Fedalto 1988, 1036).  This sort of evidence reveals that it is not surprising that an Early Christian worship hall was present in the region of Kefar ‘Othnay.

• The Three Mosaic Inscriptions in Greek

In the center of the hall are two rectangular panels.  The southern panel (1.78 m x 2.96 m) contains  two mosaic inscriptions in Greek.  The preliminary publication refers to these as the Akeptous Inscription and the Women Inscription, with the former six very short lines, and the latter four rather short lines.  The northern panel (2.95 x 3.40 m) contains a three-line inscription referred to as the Gaianus Inscription.  Within this northern panel is a mosaic “medallion” depicting fish, which the preliminary publication considers to be a tuna and a bass (Tepper, Di Segni, Stiebel 2005, 36). In terms of other aspects of this inscription, ligatures are present on multiple occasions, as are some word dividers.  Also, the sigmas are lunate, predictably.  At this juncture, I shall provide some comments regarding all three of these inscriptions, often using the lens of the New Testament as a hermeneutical tool for understanding these Early Christian inscriptions. Note that my readings and word-division do not differ with those contained in the preliminary publication, although some of my translations may differ in a modest fashion.

A. The Akeptus Inscription: Readings, Transliteration, and Translation (with word-division added).

1. ΠΡΟΣΗΝΙΚΕΝ (prosēniken)

2. ΑΚΕΠΤΟΥΣ (akeptous)

3. Η ΦΙΛΟΘΕΟΣ (ē philotheos)

4. ΤΗΝ ΤΡΑΠΕ- (tēn trape-)

5. -ΖΑΝ  ΘΩ  ΙΥ  ΧΩ (zan thō iu chō  [iu chō  = Iēsou Christō] )

6. ΜΝΗΜΟΣΥΝΟΝ (mnēmosunon).

Within the preliminary publication, the following translation is given: “The god-loving Akeptous has offered the table to God Jesus Christ as a memorial” (Tepper, Di Segni, Stiebel 2005, 36). This is a good, very literal, translation.  I might wish to translate it, slightly more idiomatically, in the following way: “Akeptous, the friend of God, has offered the table to God Jesus Christ (for) remembrance.”

It is useful to emphasize that in line five, the final three words are all abbreviated.  Naturally, the presence of these abbreviations is nicely noted in the preliminary publication (Tepper, Di Segni, Stiebel 2005, 36).  The fact that these are definitively to be understood as abbreviations is also signified in the mosaic by a horizontal line above each “word,” which was a common practice in antiquity. For a good discussion of such abbreviations in antiquity, see especially Metzger (1981, 36-37) and Hurtado (2006, 96-98).  In any case, as for the Megiddo Mosaic, ΘΩ is an abbreviation for ΘΕΩ (the dative form of the word for God).  Along those same lines, ΙΥ is an abbreviation for ΙΗΣΟΥ (the dative form of the personal name “Jesus”; nota bene: both the genitive and the dative of this personal name end in omicron upsilon, that is, ΟΥ, but syntactically it must be the dative form here), and ΧΩ is an abbreviated form of the word ΧΡΙΣΤΩ (that is, the dative form of the title “Christ”).

The phrase “God Jesus Christ” is quite striking, since it seems to be an affirmation of the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth (so also Tepper, Di Segni, Stiebel 2005, 41).  Of course, at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, this was the official decision (i.e., that Jesus was to be classified as “theos,” alongside the “father”; thus, some of the Nicene creed contains these words about Jesus: “true God out of true God, begotten not made,” with the word “theos” being used).  But such a reference in an inscription prior to Nicaea may seem surprising. After all, within even the books of the canonical New Testament, such an emphatic statement as this is hard to find (on this aspect of the New Testament, see the discussion below).   Moreover, since the Megiddo inscription uses abbreviations for each of these words (God Jesus Christ), someone might suggest that this phrasing is perhaps just a shortened form of a very common phrase in the introductory greetings of the New Testament letters of the Apostle Paul: “Grace to you and peace from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 1:7; 1 Corinthians 1:3; 2 Corinthians 1:2; Galatians 1:3; Ephesians 1:2; Philippians 1:2; 1 Thessalonians 1:1; 2 Thessalonians 1:2; Philemon 3; notice that the Pastoral Epistles, often considered Deutero-Pauline or even Pseudo-Pauline, have a slightly different order of the words Jesus and Christ, namely, “God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord”: 1 Timothy 1:2; 2 Timothy 1:2; Titus 1:4  cf. Colossians 1:21).

On the other hand, the authors of the preliminary publication correctly emphasize that some ante-Nicene Christians do actually use some very similar terminology, revealing that some of the ante-Nicene Christians understood Jesus of Nazareth to be “God.” The authors of the preliminary publication mention the names of some of these ante-Nicene fathers (namely, they list Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Hippolytus; see Tepper, Di Segni, Stiebel 2005,41).  Since they do not provide precise references, I shall provide a few in order to demonstrate the point more fully.  (1) In the writings of Ignatius of Antioch (floruit early 2^nd century, writing in Greek), we have the following: “For our God, Jesus Christ, was conceived by Mary…” (Letter to the Ephesians 18:3, using the word theos).  Or again, Ignatius uses the following as a means of referring to Jesus: “For our God Jesus Christ, since he is in the Father…” (Letter to the Romans 3:3, again, using the word theos). In Clement of Alexandria (floruit late 2^nd century and early 3^rd century, writing in Greek), and referring to Jesus as the “Word” (as does the Prologue of the New Testament Gospel of John), wrote the following: “….This Word, who alone is both God and man…” (Exhortation to the Greeks, chapter 1, paragraph 7, using the word theos).  In Polycarp (floruit early to mid 2^nd century, writing in Greek, but with this section of his Letter to the Philippians, among others, preserved only in Latin translation) we have this statement: “…believe in our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, and in his Father…” (Polycarp, Letter to the Philippians, 12:2, with the Latin translation using the word deus, a good translation of Greek theos). Of course, since someone might suggest that the writings of these ante-Nicene fathers had been modified after the Council of Nicaea (much as Bart Ehrman has contended for some of the textual variants in the New Testament, which were part of Christological dsicussions, Ehrman 1993).

       But certain lines of textual evidence converge in such a fashion so as to support taking the Akeptus Inscription from Megiddo at face value, namely, the inscription is most readily understood as affirming the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth.  These lines of evidence are (1) the presence of that notion already in the New Testament, (2) and the assumption of non-Christian Roman writers (e.g., Pliny the Younger, Julian, etc.) that (at least some) Christians believed Jesus was theos (in this regard, compare the Ebionite Christians of the 2^nd century CE, who did not).

Two New Testament texts in the gospel of John can most readily be understood as referring to Jesus as God.  (A) John 1:1 reads as follows: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (Greek: theos; note also that reading the totality of John 1:1-18 makes it clear that the author is using the word “Word,” that is, Greek logos, to refer to Jesus).  (B) Similarly, John 20:28 has the Apostle Thomas declare this, upon seeing Jesus after the crucifixion: “My Lord and my God” (theos).  Within the history of the study of John’s gospel, some in the modern period might want to parse the data differently.  However, the fact that this was an ancient understanding of these texts is also corroborated by the position of the Emperor Julian (mid 4^th century CE).  Thus, distinguished historian Robert Wilken has noted that Emperor Julian contended that “only one of the disciples, John, taught the new idea that Jesus was divine.  The other Apostles did not” (Wilken 1984, 179).  Furthermore, the late, brilliant New Testament scholar Raymond Brown is representative of a fairly broad consensus in the field in his Anchor Bible Commentary that these Johannine verses are most readily understood as a Johannine affirmation that Jesus of Nazareth was understood as theos, that is, God (Brown 1966, 5, 24, 25; see also Brown 1965, 545-573, especially 563-565; note that Brown also considers Hebrews 1:8-9 to be a New Testament text in which Jesus is regarded by its author as theos, and the hymn in Philippians 2:5-11, with its statement that Jesus was in the morphe theou, “the form of God” could be classified in a similar fashion). In any case, the main point is that although the references are rare, at least in the gospel of John, the notion that Jesus was theos is present (note that the term “son of God” is often assumed to signify that Jesus was divine, but most New Testament scholars would probably not embrace that notion, since the term “son of God” has a wider semantic range).  In terms of total usage of the word theos in the New Testament, there are 1250+ occurrences.

The Roman writer Pliny the Younger (floruit late 1^st and early 2^nd century) penned a description of the Christians, including their meetings, to the Emperor Trajan (r. ca. 98-117 CE).  Among the things that he said is that they had “met regularly before dawn on a fixed day to chant verses alternately among themselves in honor of Christ as if to a God….” (Latin: “…Christo quasi deo…”Pliny, Book 10:7).  Similarly the Emperor Julian also mentions that Christians of his day embraced this same notion, namely, that Christ was God (as noted above).  Julian, of course, argues against this view (so Wilken 1984, 179).  In any case, the main point is that the belief that Jesus was God is found, at the very least, in the New Testament gospel of John, and non-Christian Romans also consider this to be something that Early Christians affirmed (i.e., at least some of them, with the exception of Ebionite Christians of the 2^nd century, Arius of the 4^th century and his supporters, etc.).  Thus, it is not entirely surprising that we should find in the Akeptous Inscription words that also presuppose the same thing, namely, that Jesus of Nazareth was Theos, that is, God.

Before moving along to the Women’s Inscription, it is useful to discuss, at least in brief, some of the remaining contents of the Akeptous Inscription. 

(1) The name “Jesus,” was a common name in the First Temple Period and Second Temple Period, with scores of people having this as a first name.  In fact, even within the New Testament, it is used of multiple people (including Joshua from the book of Joshua, e.g., in Acts 7:45; Jesus son of Eliezer in the genealogy of Jesus of Nazareth, in Luke 3:29; Jesus Barabbas in certain manuscripts of Matthew 27:16; Bar-Jesus in Acts 13:6). Within the New Testament, the personal name “Jesus” is used ca. 900 times of Jesus of Nazareth.  This name comes from a Semitic root (yš‘) word meaning “save,” or “rescue.” 

(2) The word “Christ” is a title, and it literally means “the anointed one.”  The Hebrew equivalent of this term is the word “Messiah” (used in John 1:41; 4:25), which also literally means “the anointed one.”  It should be remembered that prophets, priests, and kings (in the Hebrew Bible, etc.) were among those anointed with olive oil, often as a means of setting them apart. The term “Christ” is used ca. 500+ times in the New Testament of Jesus of Nazareth. 

(3) Also, the personal name Akeptous is definitively that of a woman, since the article modifying “philotheos” is feminine (and singular), namely, η (ē). It is perhaps useful to mention that the recipient of the books of Luke and Acts had a variant of this word as his personal name (i.e., “Theophilus.” Nota bene: like many interpreters, I consider “Theophilus” in Luke 1:3 and Acts 1:1 to be a personal name, especially because the Lucan text uses the term “Most Excellent” in conjunction with that word). Also, the preliminary publication suggests that the personal name Akeptous “seems to be a feminine form of the Latin name Acceptus” (Tepper, Di Segni, Stiebel 2005, 41).

(4) Also, the verb used to signify that Akeptous offered or donated the table is prosphero, which occurs in the New Testament almost 50 times, and so a fairly common word.  Within the New Testament, the Septuagint, and Hellenistic literature more broadly, it is frequently used of bringing gifts, and sacrificial offerings, etc. (e.g., Matthew 2:11; Hebrews 8:3, 4; Hebrews 10:11; Hebrews 11:4; Acts 7:42, etc).

(5) The word translated table, that is, trapeza, occurs 15 times in the New Testament.  It was used of the table of showbread in the Temple (e.g., Hebrew 9:2, and in the Septuagint usage of the same), any table upon which a meal is placed, from an ordinary meal (e.g., Matthew 15:27; Mark 7:28; Luke 16:21) to the table which the Lucan gospel connects with the Passover meal (Luke 22:21).  It is also the term which occurs in the gospels with reference to Jesus overturning the tables of the moneychangers in the Temple (Matthew 21:12; Mark 11:15; John 2:15).  It could even be used to refer to a meal itself, that is, the food (e.g., Acts 6:2, etc.).  Significantly, Paul uses the word trapeza to refer to a Eucharist table (1 Corinthians 10:21). As for this Worship Hall, the two raised stones in the center could perhaps (from my perspective) have been the location of the table, the upper portion of which could have been more portable and thus not left in this hall when it was ultimately abandoned.

(6) Since Eucharist (cf. the Latin term: Mass) was such a central component of the Early Church’s worship services (e.g., Acts 2:42; Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 11:17-34; 1 Corinthians 10:16-17; cf. also Matthew 26:26-30; Mark 14:22-26; Luke 22:15-20), the reference to such a table in this inscription makes perfect sense, as does the word “remembrance” (on this, see the next section).  The Early Christian references to worship services, the celebration of the Eucharist, and Agape Feasts are nicely documented in Everett Ferguson’s peerless volume (Ferguson 1999, 79-132).

(7) As noted in the preliminary publication (Tepper, Di Segni, Stiebel 2005, 37), the word for remembrance, mnēmosunon, only occurs three times in the New Testament (the synoptic parallels in Matthew 26:13 = Mark 14:9, as well as in Acts 10:4; the gospel references are to an unnamed woman’s anointing of Jesus with expensive ointment, and the Acts reference states that the prayers of the Centurion Cornelius rose up to God as a memorial).  But it should be emphasized that linguistic cognates (verbs, nouns, etc.) with the noun mnēmosunon are present in the New Testament (both verbs and nouns), and these arguably shed even more light on the situation, especially since some of these are connected with remembering Jesus of Nazareth in connection with the Eucharist (e.g., 1 Corinthians 11:24, 25; Luke 22:19).

B. The Women’s Inscription: Readings, Transliteration, and Translation (with word-division added).

1. ΜΝΗΜΟΝΕΥΣΑΤΕ (mnēmoneusate)

2. ΠΡΙΜΙΛΛΗΣ ΚΑΙ ΚΥΡΙ- (primillēs kai kuri-

3. –ΑΚΗΣ ΚΑΙ ΔΩΡΟΘΕΑΣ (akēs kai dōrotheas)

4. ΕΤΙ ΔΕ ΚΑΙ ΧΡΗΣΤΗΝ (eti de kai chēstēn)

       Within the preliminary publication, the following very fine translation is given: “Remember Primilla and Cyriaca and Dorothea, and moreover also Chreste” (Tepper, Di Segni, Stiebel 2005, 41).  The preliminary publication also notes that Primilla is a “good Latin name, a diminutive of Prima” (Tepper, Di Segni, Stiebel 2005, 42). As for the remaining three names, the preliminary publication notes that the other three names are “common Greek names.” Finally, it is worth noting that the preliminary publication cautiously entertains the possibility that the women named in this inscription were martyrs, based on references to Christian women martyrs in the early part of the 3^rd century CE. (Tepper, Di Segni, Stiebel 2005, 42). This is certainly possible, but I am disinclined to suggest this as something that should be considered probable.  There is just not enough evidence to suggest this.  Of course, it may very well be that all four of these women who are to be remembered have passed away (i.e., are dead), but the cause of death is not something that one can ascertain in this case.

In terms of the meaning of the names, the following can be said: the name Primilla means essentially “first.”  As for the other names, Dorothea is a Greek name meaning “Gift of God.”  Chreste is a Greek personal name meaning “useful,” “suitable,” “kind,” “benevolent” (cf. Paul’s pun in Philemon 11). Kuriake (which is the way I prefer to transliterate this name, rather than Cyriaca) essentially is an adjective meaning “belonging to the Lord,” and as an adjective, this word actually occurs in the New Testament as a way of referring to the “Lord’s supper” (1 Cor 11:20) and the “Lord’s Day (Revelation 1:1), with “Lord’s” a means of referring to Jesus of Nazareth. It is at least plausible to suggest that Kuriake is a nickname, as nicknames are nicely attested in the New Testament (e.g., Peter, Barnabas, etc.).  On the other hand, one could also envision Christian parents giving this name to a daughter.  And, of course, since the term “lord” is not a distinctively Christian term (i.e., it occurs in a wide variety of contexts in Greek literature), nothing certain can be deduced from this personal name.

Here are some additional philological details.  The word mnēmoneusate is an aorist, active, imperative, 2^nd person plural from the verb mnēmoneuō.  This verb occurs 21 times in the New Testament.  The usage is broad, hence, within the New Testament it is used of remembering the miracle of the five loaves (Matthew 16:9 = Mark 8:18), remembering the word(s) of Jesus (John 15:20; Acts 20:35), remembering the poor (Galatians 2:10), remembering the resurrection of Jesus Christ (2 Timothy 2:8), remembering Paul’s labor and toil among the churches (1 Thessalonians 2:9). Perhaps most relevant for the Women’s Inscription, people are also to be remembered, thus, there is a command to remember Lot’s wife (Luke 17:32), and Paul mentions that he remembers the Thessalonians and their work in his prayers (1 Thessalonians 1:2-3).

It is particularly interesting that of the seven people named in these inscriptions, five are women, and just two are men (i.e., the centurion and the artisan responsible for laying the mosaics).  In this connection, in terms of women within Early Christianity, including within the New Testament period, it is useful to emphasize that Paul mentions a woman named Phoebe (referred to as “our sister”) at the church in Cenchreae, refers to her as a Deacon (Greek: diakonos, the same word used of men I 1 Timothy 3:8) of the church in Cenchreae, he commends her highly, and he encourages the Christians in Rome to welcome her, because she has been a benefactor to many, including him (Romans 16:1). And within this same pericope (paragraph), Paul mentions Prisca (Priscilla) and her husband Aquila, who have been instrumental in his own life (cf. also Acts 18:2, 18, 26; 1 Corinthians 16:19 2 Timothy 4:19).  A verse or two later, he encourages the Roman Christians to “greet Mary,” as well as a man named Adronicus and a woman named Junia (Julia), who were imprisoned with him for a time and who are “highly esteemed among the apostles,” and the list goes on with additional women and men mentioned (Romans 16:3-16).  Paul also mentions women praying and prophesying (1 Corinthians 11:3-5), and in Galatians, Paul wrote: “There is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female…” (Galatians 3:28). In other words, within Pauline writings, women were highly esteemed.

In terms of the broader New Testament (i.e., not just the Pauline material), there are additional references, which shed more light as well.  In the book of Acts, there is reference to the Deacon Philip whose four unmarried daughters were prophetesses (Acts 21:9).  Furthermore, a certain Lydia from the city of Thyatira, a dealer in purple cloth, and a convert to Christianity, is mentioned prominently (Acts 16:11-15). Along these same lines, Luke mentions a prophetesses named Anna (Luke 2: 36), and he also states that Mary Magdalene, Joanna (the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward), Susanna, and many other provided support for Jesus and his disciples “out of their means” (Luke 8:1-3; cf. also Luke 24:10; Luke 23:27, etc.).  In addition, all four canonical gospels state that there were women (or even, “many women,” in the Matthean account, etc.) were present at the crucifixion, with specific mention of Mary the wife of Clopas, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, the mother of James and John, a certain Salome, and Mary Magdalene, as well as Jesus’ mother, were present at the crucifixion (Matthew 27:55-56; Mark 15:40-41; Luke 23:49; John 19:25-27).  And all four canonical gospels also name this same basic group as among those at the tomb and witnesses to the resurrection (Matthew 28:1-8; Mark 16:1-8; Luke 24:1-12; John 20:1-13).  In this connection, it should also be noted that, according to the New Testament, some of Jesus’ miracles were performed at the behest of, or for, women (e.g. Matthew 15:21-28 = Mark 7:24-30; Luke 7:11, etc.).  And Jesus’ friendship with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus (the latter being the brother of the former two) is also a motif in some of the gospels (e.g., Luke 10:38-41; John 11:1-44, etc.). 

Within certain New Testament texts, a lower view of women can be prominent (perhaps most strikingly, 1 Timothy 2:8-15, a book which is often classified as Deutero-Pauline, as well as in the so-called “household codes,” Haus-tafeln of Ephesians 5:22-6:9 and Colossians 3:18-4:1, both of which are books also often classified as Deutero-Pauline or the like).

In sum, the prominence of women in the Women’s Inscription, as well as in the Akeptus Inscription, is something that is not surprising, in light of the similar motif present in substantial strands of the New Testament.  For convenient reference to some references to women in Early Christian literature outside the New Testament, as well as additional bibliography, see conveniently Ferguson (Ferguson 1999, 225-237). In addition, it is useful to highlight the fact that Pliny the Younger (Pliny, Book 10:8) mentions that in his attempt to ascertain certain facts about Christianity, he tortured two women who were said to be Christian “ministers” (Latin ministrae, a term which is sometimes considered to be the equivalent of diakonos, e.g., the term used of Phoebe in Romans 16:1).  In sum, evidence converges nicely to suggest that women could and did sometimes have substantial prominence in Early Christianity (and this was quite different from many segments of the Roman world, in general).

C. The Gaianus Inscription: Readings, Transliteration, and Translation (with word-division added).

1. ΓΑΙΑΝΟΣ Ο ΚΑΙ ΠΟΡΦΥΡΙΣ ΧΡ ΑΔΕΛΦΟΣ ΗΜΩΝ ΦΙΛΟ-

(Gaianos o kai Porphuri(o)s ChR [ChR  = ekatontarchēs] adelphos ēmon philo).

2. -ΤΕΙΜΗΣΑΜΕΝΟΣ ΕΚ ΤΩΝ ΙΔΙΩΝ (-teimēsamenos ek tōn idiōn)

3. ΕΨΗΦΟΛΟΓΗΣΕ  ΒΡΟΥΤΙΣ ΗΡΓΑΣΕΤΑΙ (epsēphologēse. Brouti(o)s ērgasetai).

Within the preliminary publication, the following very fine translation is given: “Gaianus, also called Porphyrius, centurion, our brother, has made the pavement at his own expense as an act of liberality.  Bruitius has carried out the work” (Tepper, Di Segni, Stiebel 2005, 34).  My translation is slightly different: “Gaianos, who is also called Porphyry, a centurion, our brother, having earnestly desired to do so, has commissioned this mosaic-inscription. Brutus has done the work.”  Within the preliminary publication, it is noted that the name Porphyrius is Greek.  It is also suggested that the name Gaianus “in spite of its Latin sound, may well be a transcription of the Arab name Ghaiyan.” It is also noted that, of course, the name “Brutius,” is a good Latin name (Tepper, Di Segni, Stiebel 2005, 35).

Before delving into a few philological details of this dedicatory inscription (i.e., the Gaianus Inscription), I wish to discuss a particular type of the “double-name phenomenon” (which is distinct from nick names, and the like).  Thus, note that the phrase “Gaianos o kai Porphurios.”  Gaianus also called Porphyrius” is the very same phrasing as is found in the book of Acts with regard to Paul (in Acts 13:9). That is, Acts uses the following phrase Saulos o kai Paulos (it should be remembered that de is postpositive, so I have not included it here, as I focus on the relevant phrase itself), that is “Saul the one also (called) Paul.”  And along these lines, it is useful to emphasize that it has often been stated that Saul changed his name to Paul after his conversion.  In spite of his popularity in semi-popular contexts, this is not a particularly accurate construal of the evidence.  Note, therefore, that Saul’s conversion is recorded in Acts 9 (he is introduced into the narrative of Acts in Acts 7:58, and he is then the focus of much of Acts 8).  Notice, however, that he is referred to as Saul not only in the remainder of Acts 9, but also in Acts 11:25, 30; Acts 12:25; Acts 13:1, 2, 7.  Then, in Acts 13:9 he is referred to as “Saul the one who is also (called) Paul.”  Thus, first and foremost, I would emphasize that the usage of the name “Paul” does not begin right after the conversion at all.  Second, I would emphasize that the biblical text certainly does not say “Saul who is now called Paul.”  Third, when the name Paul is introduced in the narrative, Paul has just embarked on his first missionary journey, and he and Barnabas are in the presence of a Gentile named Sergius Paulus (a proconsul).  That is, the impetus for the reference to the name Paul is that he is now among Gentiles and so his Gentile name is used.  In other words, Paul had two names: his given Hebrew name (Saul) and the vernacular name which he used in Gentile circles (Paul).  Since Paul worked so heavily among Gentiles, he ultimately (in the New Testament) and subsequent history is known by his gentile name.

The same basic double-name phenomenon (i.e., a Hebrew given name and a vernacular name for a diaspora Jew) is well attested in the Hebrew Bible, especially during the Exilic and Post-Exilic Period.  Thus, in the book of Daniel, Daniel’s Babylonian name is Belteshezzar, and his three friends Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah also have Babylonian names, that is “vernacular names” (in addition to their Hebrew names), namely, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (Daniel 1;7). The narrative frames these as “other names,” assigned by the palace-master, but the point is that these four figures have Hebrew names and vernacular (in this case, Babylonian) names as well.  Along the same lines, Hadassah is Esther’s Hebrew name (Esther 2:7), but she is known in non-Jewish circles as Esther.  For an earlier reference (at least in terms of the chronological framing), note that Joseph (in Genesis) was given the name Zaphenath-paneah by pharaoh (Gen 41:45), so he too had a Hebrew name and a vernacular name. In other words, based on the evidence from the Bible itself (in Acts itself, where his conversion is detailed nicely), Paul did not change his name when he was converted. Had this been the case, the name Paul would have been used in Acts 11, Acts 12, and the initial verses of Acts 13.  Rather, Paul, like many diaspora Jews (i.e., Jews living outside of Israel and Judah), had a Hebrew name and a vernacular name (i.e., a name used in non-Jewish circles).  Ultimately, of course, because Paul’s focus was the Gentile world, it is his Gentile name which he is known for, once he embarked on his first missionary journey and throughout the remainder of his life.    

In any case, as for additional philological details with regard to the Gaianus Inscription, the abbreviation for centurion is well attested.  Compare also a similar combination of the letters Χ and Ρ (i.e., chi and rhō) which comes to be used (in a similarly ligatured fashion) as an abbreviation for “Jesus Christ” (for discussion and bibliography, see Hurtado 2006, 136, 137).  Also, notice that for the names Porphurios and Brutios that the omicron is omitted, an abbreviation of sorts, intended to save at least a modicum of space.  The word philoteimēsamenos is an aorist middle participle nominative masculine singular of philotimeomai which can be rendered in various ways.  I have chosen (based on certain references in Liddell and Scott) to render it “earnestly desire.”  The word epsēphologēse is an aorist active indicative third singular verb of psēphologeō, consisting of two basic morphemes, psēphos meaning a “small stone,” “pebble,” and the morpheme logos (cognate with legō,meaning to say, speak, or even reckon). Finally, one last philological note.  The name Porphyry means, in essence, “purple,” or “like purple,” fitting for a person of some stature (because of the association of purple with wealth, power, royalty).  It is also very nice that we have the name of the artisan responsible for laying this mosaic, Brutus, a name which means something along the lines of weighty, heavy, or the like.

       The fact that a Roman centurion commissioned this inscription is certainly important, especially during such an early period in Christianity.  Let’s look at some additional details which provide some background for this inscription and its reference to a centurion who was Christian.  The term “centurion” (a leader of ca. one hundred Roman soldiers) occurs ca. 21 times in the New Testament. Upon reading this inscription, the New Testament text that comes most readily to mind is Acts 10, with Cornelius the centurion, the first Gentile convert mentioned in the book of Acts (hence a fairly long narrative about how the Apostle Peter came to embrace him as a convert).  According to Acts, he was a centurion of the Italian Cohort, and he was residing in Caesarea Maritime.  He is stated to be “godly, and fearing God with his whole household,” a clause that is usually suggested to mean that he was a proselyte to Judaism prior to his conversion to Christianity.  Also, it should be emphasized that this pericope of Acts mentions that he sent “a godly soldier” to request that Peter come to his home” (Acts 10:7, 8), and ultimately Cornelius and those close to him were baptized (Acts 10:22-48). 

In terms of some of the additional references to Roman centurions in the New Testament, a gospel narrative (Matthew 8:5-13; Luke 7:1-10; John 4:46-54) portrays a centurion requesting that Jesus heal his servant.  And in the passion narratives of the gospels, there are references to centurion(s), including one who states that he believed Jesus to be innocent of crimes against Rome (Luke 24:47), with the Matthaean and Marcan parallels containing verbiage suggesting that a centurion concluded Jesus was “the son of God” (Matthew 27:54; Mark 15:39). Mark also narrates a request of Pilate to a centurion to ascertain whether or not Jesus was dead (as a result of the crucifixion), and when the centurion confirmed this, he (Pilate) granted permission to Joseph of Arimathea to bury him (Mark 15:42-47). There are also multiple references in Acts to centurions, as part of the narratives about Paul’s travels after his arrest in Jerusalem (Acts 22:25, 26; Acts 23:17, 23; Acts 24:23; Acts 27:1, 6, 11, 31, 48). In other words, quite predictably, centurions are mentioned multiple times in the New Testament, with some framed in a very positive light.

More generally, chiliarchs (rulers of a “thousand” soldiers) are mentioned ca. 22 times in the New Testament, in various contexts, from the Marcan account of the birthday of Herod Antipas (Mark 6:21), the Johannine account of the arrest of Jesus (John 18:12), to those mentioned in Paul’s travels after his arrest (Acts 21:31-37; Acts 22:24-29; Acts 23:10-22; Acts 24:7, 22; Acts 25:23), and even a couple of references are present in the book of Revelation (Revelation 6:15; 19:18). And the term “soldier” (stratiōtēs) occurs ca. 26 times in the New Testament, in a variety of contexts, with those in the gospels mostly connected with the passion narratives in the gospels, and those in the book of Acts mostly connected with Paul after his arrest (Acts 21; Acts 23; Acts 27), but one with reference to the martyrdom of James the son of Zebedee (Acts 12:4), and the arrest of Peter (Acts 12:6, 18).  Among the most relevant gospel references vis à vis this Megiddo Mosaic inscription is the Lucan narrative about some soldiers coming to John the Baptist and asking him what they should do, and John replied that they should “rob no one by violence or by false accusation, and be content with your wages” (Luke 3:10-14). Finally, it should be noted that Early Christian writers (e.g., of the 2^nd century CE) discussed the subject of Christians in the military, and it seems that there was some discomfort (among Early Christian leaders) with Christians in the military.  The content of these discussions reflects the fact that some Christians were in the military, and even Celsus (a critic of Christianity) seems to suggest the same (for a useful collection of quotations, and some discussion and bibliography, see especially Ferguson 1999, 215-224).

The medallion with the two fish is certainly interesting (and there is a brief but useful discussion of this in a side-bar in the preliminary publication, namely, Tepper, Di Segni, Stiebel 2005, 40).  Within the New Testament, the standard word for “fish” is ichthus (ΙΧΘΥΣ).  It occurs 20 times in the New Testament, and a diminutive of this word is also attested (ichthudion). Of the New Testament references, the feeding of the 5000 men (andres), plus women and children (Matthew 14:13-21; Mark 6:32-44; Luke 9:10b-17; and John 6:1-15), and the feeding of the 4000 men, plus women and children (Matthew 15:32-39; Mark 8:1-10), with fish and bread as focal points, come rapidly to mind as among the most relevant for the fish imagery here in the Megiddo Mosaic. Various other New Testament texts have fish as a prominent motif, including the Matthaean narrative about the fish and the Temple tax (Matthew 17:24-27, and unique to Matthew), the “miraculous” catch of fish (Luke 5:1-11; cf. John 21:1-11), Jesus referring to the disciples as “fishers of people” (Matthew 4:19; Mark 1:17), and according to a Lucan narrative, a post-resurrection appearance to the disciples (Luke 24:42).

Significantly, during the early centuries of Christianity, fish became a frequent Christian symbol.  Along these lines, note that the Greek word ΙΧΘΥΣ came to be used as an acronym, signifying aspects of Early Christian beliefs about Jesus (at least among the Proto-Orthodox), namely, the iota (the first letter of the word ichthus) came to signify the name “Jesus” (as iota is the first letter of the name Jesus), the chi came to signify the word “Christ” (since chi is the first letter of the Greek word for Christ), the third letter, that is, the theta, came to signify the word “of God” (since theta is the first letter of the Greek word theou, “of God”), the fourth letter, that is, upsilon, is the first letter of the word for “son” (uios), and the final letter of the word for “fish,” namely, the sigma, came to be understood as signifying the word sōtēr (other variants of this acronym are attested)  In sum, the word ΙΧΘΥΣ was not only the word for “fish” in Early Christianity, but it came to be understood as an acronym for conveying the essence of the Proto-Orthodox beliefs about Jesus, namely, “Jesus” was “Christ,” “the son of God,” and “savior.”  Understanding the word “fish” as an acronym is attested already in the Sibylline Oracles (8:217ff) in an acrostic poem on the judgment (see translation by John Collins in volume 1 of James Charlesworth’s Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 423), in Tertullian (early 3^rd century), etc. (for discussion and bibliographic references, see the recent article by Rasimus, 2012, 329ff, et passim).  As is also widely known, the motif of the fish is found in Early Christian tomb contexts (e.g., the catacombs in Rome), within baptismal, Eucharist, and burial contexts, beginning in the 2^nd century in some cases, and continuing for some time.  In sum, the presence of a medallion with a fish fits in very nicely with that which is known about the New Testament and Early Christianity.

Conclusion:

In sum, the 3^rd Century Christian Worship Hall mosaic inscriptions are particularly interesting, an archaeological and textual window into Early Christianity, some of its adherents, their beliefs and practices, their prominence, and their diversity.  These mosaics will factor prominently in any discussion of Earliest Christianity in the Levantine world, and in the Greco-Roman world in general.

Sources Cited

Adams, Matthew J; David, Jonathan, Tepper, Yotam, “Legio: Excavations at the Camp of the Roman Sixth Ferrata Legion in Israel,” in Bible History Daily, May 1, 2014 (https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-sites-places/biblical-archaeology-sites/legio/#note02r).

Brown, Raymond E.  “Does the New Testament Call Jesus God?”  Theological Studies 26 (1965): 545-573.

______.  The Gospel according to John (1-12): Introduction, Translation, and Notes. The Anchor Bible.  New York: Doubleday, 1966.

Ehrman, Bart D. The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament.  New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Ferguson, Everett, Early Christians Speak: Faith and Life in the First Three Centuries. 3^rd edition.  Abilene: Abilene Christian University Press, 1999.

Hurtado, Larry.  The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins.  Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006.

Metzger, Bruce M.  Manuscripts of the Greek Bible: An Introduction to Greek Palaeography.  New York: Oxford University Press, 1981.

Rasimus, Tuomas, “Revisiting the Ichthys: A Suggestion Concerning the Origins of the Christological Fish Symbolism.”  Pp. 327-348 in Mystery and Secrecy in the Nag Hammadi Collection and Other Ancient Literature: Ideas and Practices: Studies for Einar Thomassen at Sixty, edited by Christian H. Bull, Liv Ingeborg Lied, and John D. Turner.  Leiden: Brill, 2012.

Tepper, Yotam; Di Segni, Leah, with contribution by Guy Stiebel, “A Christian Prayer Hall of the Third Century CE at Kefar ‘Othnay (Legio): Excavations at the Megiddo Prison.  Israel Antiquities Authority, 2005.

Recently, various press outlets have run stories about a stone artifact with a very fragmentary Old Hebrew Inscription on it (e.g., https://www.israeltoday.co.il/read/bibles-reliability-further-affirmed-as-king-hezekiah-inscription-deciphered/ , citing the proposed restorations and interpretations of Gershon Galil and Eli Shukron), discovered ca. 15+ years ago on an excavation. I would like to make some brief comments on this inscription and the proposed interpretation.

Here are the facts: two fragmentary lines are present. The preserved letters are: (1) […]qyh[…] (2) […]kh.b[…]. The first preserved line may very well contain the end of a personal name, namely, the letter qop, followed by the Yahwistic theophoric element, or a portion thereof. The second preserved line consists of a kap and a hey. After the hey, there is a word divider (indicating that the hey was the last letter of the preceding word) and then a bet (as the first letter of the next word). That’s it. And we don’t know how many lines this inscription consisted of, and we don’t know where in this inscription the two preserved lines fall. And we don’t have the left side or the right side of the inscription.

Although it has been claimed that there are traces of a zayin prior to the qop on the first preserved line, I only see a fractured area of a stone prior to the qop, and if there are traces, they certainly don’t strike me as those of a zayin. In short, the first line just has qyh. The second line just has kh. b .

In terms of the date of the script, the morphology and stance of the letters is consistent with excavated inscriptions hailing from the late 8th or early 7th centuries BCE.

In any case, it has been claimed (as per the link cited above) that the royal name “Hezekiah” can be restored in the first line and that the word “pool” can be restored in the second line, as can also the place-name “Jerusalem” (after the bet). Such a proposal had also been proposed a number of years ago by Peter van der Veen (but without gaining the attention in the press that Galil and Shukron’s proposal has received)

In other words, Galil and Shukron propose to restore two thirds of the root of the name “Hezekiah” (i.e., they restore the het and zayin). And they also propose to restore two thirds of the root word for “pool” (i.e., the bet and resh of the word brkh). And in addition, they propose to restore every single letter of the word for Jerusalem. Mathematically speaking, that’s a high percentage of restoration (i.e., restoring more than twice as many letters as are preserved!). I should add that although the bet in line two is arguably the preposition bet, that’s not the only possible option.

A relevant little anecdote: Long ago, in a doctoral seminar on the Dead Sea Scrolls at Johns Hopkins University, I mentioned some restoration that some scholar had proposed for a lacuna in the scroll which we were reading. Lawrence Schiffman was the professor and I was among the students. I thought that the restoration was reasonable. I will never forget Professor Schiffman’s response: “I don’t spend time discussing restorations” (or something along those lines). At that moment, I recognized the wisdom of Professor Schiffman’s position on restorations, and I adopted it immediately and forever. That is, unless one has very good grounds for a restoration (e.g., boiler-plate phrasing in a legal text, or a text that is repeating something from earlier or later in the document, or something that is citing some other source-document which we also have, etc.), restorations are speculation, and often as foundationless as quick sand.

Naturally, if we had two letters of a tri-literal root, we would be on better footing….but still not necessarily on absolutely secure footing. But we don’t even have two root letters for a single word of this fragmentary inscription! Again, in line one, I see no traces that are demonstrably those of a zayin. Thus, we only have one letter (other than the letter of the theophoric). And the same is true for line two. We don’t have a bet or a resh preserved (or anything else). We only have the final root letter (a kap), and a hey after that. And, as noted, the place-name Jerusalem is entirely absent.

Someone might suggest that restoring a het and a zayin in the first line is good. Well, let’s think about that, and let’s especially think about some other possible personal names, based on personal names attested in the Hebrew Bible and in Old Hebrew inscriptions, personal names which have a qop as the final root letter (as in line one of this inscription). And we could cast our net even further if we wished, that is, personal names in Phoenician and Ugaritic, for example, with qop as the final root letter. But it should be sufficient simply to use Biblical and Epigraphic Old Hebrew (i.e., Old Hebrew inscriptions from the First Temple Period), in order to make the point that there are plenty of other possible personal names that could be restored.

Here are some of them: Bqy, Bqyahu, Bzq  (and ‘Adnybzq), Drqwn, Ḥbqwq, Ḥlq, Ḥlqywh, ‘Zqy, Ṣdqyhw, (and ‘Adny-ṣdq, Yhwṣdq, Mlky-ṣdq), Bqbwq, Yṣḥq, ‘zbwq, ‘mwq, ‘šq, Rbqh, Šwbq, Ššq. And this list is certainly not exhaustive. There are more.

And, of course, the same could be said in spades for the proposed restoration of the word for “pool” in line too. Indeed, too much is missing to begin to hazard a guess as to what that word might be. There are scores of possibilities.

Of course, if the question is “could these restorations be correct?,” the answer is yes. But there is a vast difference between suggesting something is “possible” and suggesting it is “probable,” “compelling,” or “certain.” Someone might say, “well, is it plausible?” The answer to that may be yes as well. But there is also a lot of distance between something being “plausible” and something being probable, compelling, or certain.

Well, what’s the best course of action in a case like this? After all, based on ancient evidence, the Siloam Tunnel was something that King Hezekiah commissioned. And it is located in Jerusalem. True enough. But the fact remains that this is a fragmentary stone inscription, it was not found in situ, and in terms of size, the preserved fragment is about the size of the palm of a hand. And since there are many things that it could be, I’d prefer to leave it at that. I wish that this inscription weren’t so fragmentary, but it is. In sum, sensational claims have been made, on the basis of six preserved letters, which are portions of three different words. That is, we don’t even have a single actual word preserved. It’s a bridge too far to draw too many conclusions about this.

Although I do not really like the “could it be” game, it may be useful for me to play this game for just a moment. Thus, if line one does contain a personal name, could it be the name of a stone-mason responsible for the inscription (as some have suggested for the name ‘Oniyahu of Khirbet el-Qom), or could it be the name of some high official (e.g., of the palace, as in the Royal Steward inscription, or of the temple), or could it be some military official of Judah, or could this even be the fragmentary remains of a list of officials (we do have such lists in the book of Kings)? Could it be some sort of a memorial inscription, mentioning some great figure of the past (known to us, or not known to us)? Or again, in terms of date, must this inscription be from the time of the completion of the tunnel (late 8th century), or, since this water tunnel was used for some time after the late 8th century, could it be the name of someone (e.g., from one of the above categories) from the early 7th century (as the script would allow)? Ultimately, the answer to all of the above questions is certainly yes, at least at the theoretical level. And that’s the problem with speculation. We just don’t know. And in addition to all of this, the content of inscriptions, even monumental ones, sometimes surprises us (within the broader field of Northwest Semitic)…making speculations particularly precarious. On top of all this, we do not have a full list in the Hebrew Bible of all the officials of the palace, temple, or military of ancient Judah in the 8th or early 7th centuries. Thus, I prefer not to speculate about such things [nota bene: I added this paragraph on November 10 around 7:00 am eastern, about twelve hours after the original post, as a reply to Danel Kahn’s very useful comment].

One final note is perhaps useful, before I conclude this post. According to the Israel Today article (cited above), Gershon Galil stated that “since until today it was commonly accepted that the kings of Israel and Judah, unlike the kings of the ancient Middle East, did not make themselves royal inscriptions and monuments… to commemorate their achievements.”

It is true that some scholars have suggested this. But quite a few have stated that Israel and Judah did produce monumental inscriptions. Indeed, in my volume entitled “Writing and Literacy in the World of Ancient Israel: Epigraphic Evidence from the Iron Age,” I cite a few inscriptions that, although fragmentary, qualify as monumental inscriptions in Old Hebrew. In other words, some of us have contended (long ago) that Israel and Judah did produce monumental inscriptions and also referred to some that qualify.

Well, such are my brief methodological musings about these recent claims regarding a particularly fragmentary inscription, with the six preserved letters that constitute the partial remains of three different words.

Christopher Rollston, George Washington University (rollston@gwu.edu)

The Mount Ebal Lead ‘Curse’ Inscription in Late Bronze Age Hebrew: Some Methodological Caveats

Christopher Rollston (rollston@gwu.edu)

George Washington University, Professor of Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures, Chair of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.

_

Setting the Stage:

Some sensational claims were made in a press conference on March 24, 2022 about a small lead ‘inscription’ that is purported to hail from the Late Bronze Age, to be written in the Ancient Hebrew language, to consist of forty letters, to be full of curses (i.e., with the tri-literal root ’rr occurring ten times), and to twice mention Yahweh. And as part of these claims, it was asserted in the press conference that there are a lot of firsts for this inscription (e.g., oldest Hebrew inscription, earliest reference in a Hebrew text to Yahweh, etc.).  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrWTCgQZ_eA ).

These are some mighty sensational claims. However, sensational claims require sensational evidence, that is, evidence that is absolutely overwhelming and entirely compelling.  And in this case, I would suggest that some methodological doubt is probably a very useful thing. Of course, this find does hail from Mount Ebal, the famous site which was excavated by Adam Zertal during the 1980s. Therefore, this find is interesting, and it is ostensibly important. But something else that is normally just as important is methodological caution regarding sensational conclusions! After all, dramatic claims have been so very common during recent years, and the end result is almost always the same: the dramatic and sensational claims crumble under the weight of scrutiny, and then more sober conclusions rise to the fore as the most compelling.

Some Further Details

Here are some of the basic facts.  On March 24, 2022 at Lanier Theological Library (in Houston, Texas), Scott Stripling (Provost of The Bible Seminary in Katy, Texas; and the Director of Excavations for the Associates for Biblical Research at Khirbet el-Maqatir and Shiloh, Israel), along with Pieter van der Veen (Johannes Gutenberg-University, Mainz), and Gershon Galil (University of Haifa) held a press conference to announce the discovery and putative decipherment of a 2 cm x 2 cm folded lead inscription (nota bene: the inscription remains folded, that is, it has not been opened). According to Stripling, Galil, and van der Veen, the forty letters on the inside of this folded lead object are not discernible via the naked eye.  However, via imaging that was conducted in Prague at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, they (i.e., van der Veen and Galil) believe that forty letters can be seen, that these letters can be read, and the words that result can be deciphered.  Here is their translation: “Cursed, cursed, cursed – cursed by the God Yhw [Yahweh], You will die cursed. Cursed you will surely die. Cursed by Yhw – cursed, cursed, cursed.” Furthermore, these scholars contend that the script of this inscription is “Proto-Alphabetic” (it is perhaps useful to mention that a standard means of describing the alphabetic script at this time period would be Early Alphabetic or Proto-Canaanite, rather than “Proto-Alphabetic).  Stripling, Galil, and van der Veen also state that there are some letters on the outside of this folded lead object, but they do not mention which letters or words they might be reading on the outside.

Significantly, this inscription was not found in a stratified context during excavations at “Mount Ebal.” Note that Adam Zertal directed the excavations at Mount Ebal in the 1980s, and he believed that he had found at this site a “structure” which he (Zertal) believed was probably an altar and could be connected in some fashion with the altar mentioned in Joshua 8:30-31 (on this, see now an update below, as an addendum to this blog post of mine). Rather this inscribed lead object was found in 2019, as part of a process of wet sifting and dry sifting some of the dirt that had been removed as part of the 1980s excavations. Perhaps also useful to mention: the press conference at Lanier Theological Library references some carbon remains that were found during the sifting, but there is no reference, alas, to any carbon dates (e.g., AMS, etc.). Also important to mention is the fact that Stripling, Galil, and van der Veen have not yet finished writing the scholarly article about this find.  They are hoping to complete it in the coming months and then to submit it for publication somewhere.

Some Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Background

The Claims of Stripling, van der Veen, Galil…and Some Responses

There are some rather striking claims in the press conference about this lead inscription and about its implications.  First and foremost, I would emphasize that reading and deciphering Early Alphabetic inscriptions is difficult. Thus, is hard for me to believe that all of the readings of Stripling, Galil, and van der Veen will stand the test of time. In fact, I would predict that almost all of the readings posited in the press conference will be vigorously contested, once scholars in the field of epigraphy are allowed to see the images of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. Furthermore, I am certain that the translations of the readings will also be contested.

And it should also be emphasized that at the press conference *no* images from the Academy of Sciences of the Czeck Republic were shown.  Thus, claims were made, but the real evidence was not shown! Normally, even during a press conference about a new inscription, a good image or two of the inscription is shown.  But in this case, None!  Also of import: it is striking that the only drawing presented at the press conference was a single drawing of a single putative occurrence of the divine name Yhw.  And I would emphasize that this drawing struck me as particularly schematic in nature. As a result of all of these sorts of things, my hermeneutic of suspicion is, therefore, quite heightened.

But it’s worth looking even more at some of the dramatic claims.  Stripling stated that: “One can no longer argue with a straight face that the Biblical text was not written until the Persian Period or the Hellenistic Period, as many higher critics have done when we clearly do have the ability to write the entire text [of the Bible] at a much, much earlier date.” Galil makes the same basic statement: “No one can claim the Bible was written in later periods, the Persian Period or the Hellenistic Period.”  Similarly, Galil stated: “the person who wrote this was a genius, not only a scribe, but a theologian!” Stripling also stated that “our friends from the other side of the academic aisle have disparagingly spoken of us [that is, those] who believe that the Bible was written at an early date as this, because that was not [supposed to be] possible because there was no alphabetic script with which to write it.  Clearly this [inscription] flies in the fact of that.” Galil goes on to state that “the scribe who wrote this important text….believe me…he could write every chapter in the Bible.” Galil also goes on and states that this “is the most important inscription ever found in Israel.”

It’s useful to step back for a moment. First, I would emphasize that with all due respect to Striping, most epigraphers believe that the alphabet was invented by the 18^th century BCE. Thus, his statement that scholars have contended that there was no alphabet to write with doesn’t make enormous sense. Note also that Ugaritic is also an alphabetic language (and dates mostly to the 13^th century BCE).

Second, I was also struck by the “loose language regarding chronology” in the press conference.  For example, I think that what Stripling, Galil, and van der Veen were intending to say is that this inscription (as they understand it) provided evidence that writing of the Pentateuch (or portions of it), or the Hexateuch (i.e., Genesis through Joshua) could have been written prior to the Persian or Hellenistic Period.  The fascinating thing is that normally they did not use very precise language and seemed to speak about the writing of the Bible as a whole. Thus, someone who is not familiar with the field might assume that this inscription proves that the whole Hebrew Bible was written in the second half of the 2^nd millennium BCE (their date for this inscription).  I don’t think that’s what they intended to say (as books such as Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, 1-2 Chronicles, etc. are obviously all Second Temple, and none of the Latter Prophets or the book of the Twelve could have been written so early, based on the material in these books and the chronological reference points contained therein, etc.). 

Also, it is perhaps worth mentioning that people such as I have argued for some time that there was a fair amount of alphabetic writing in the late 2^nd millennium BCE (e.g., Rollston, “Inscriptional Evidence for the Writing of the Earliest Texts of the Bible: Intellectual Infrastructure in Tenth- and Ninth-Century Israel, Judah, and the Southern Levant.” Pp. 15-45 in The Formation of the Pentateuch: Bridging the Academic Cultures of Europe, Israel, and North America, eds. Jan C. Gertz, Bernard Levinson, Dalit Rom-Shiloni, and Konrad Schmid. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016). And so I found it striking that these authors did not seem to know about the history of the field in this regard.

Also, and perhaps even more importantly, even if we assume everything that Stripling, Galil, and van der Veen state about the readings and translation is correct (and that’s a big assumption), they have told us that there are 40 letters. They have also said that the word curse or accursed occurs 10 times. There are three letters in that root (’rr). So that’s 30 of the 40!  And the remaining 10 letters are used to write “God,” “die,” and “Yhw.” If we do have those four words or roots: namely, “curse,” “God,” “die” and “Yahweh,” I’m happy to say that somebody back then and there could write, and hopefully somebody else back then and there could read it. But to say that based on those four words or roots that somebody could write the whole Bible….well, that’s a bridge (way) too far for me.  After all, there are 8500+ words in the Hebrew Bible (counting verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, particles, common nouns, proper nouns), and four is a pretty small fraction of the whole, therefore!

Furthermore, Galil also stated: “this is not just a curse. It is actually a legal text, not just a legal warning.” Van der Veen also is of the same mind: “It is a legal verdict about an unknown person or group who are addressed in the inscription.” This too is quite a leap.  After all, we have 40 letters, four basic root words, and all of a sudden we have a legal text! I don’t think that my own esteemed master-teacher of law and diplomacy in the ancient Near East (the late Raymond Westbrook) would find these statements by Galil and van der Veen to be the least bit compelling.  And neither do I.

But it gets even more interesting.  When Stripling is asked by someone in the audience if this inscription coincides or correlates with the Covenant Renewal Ceremony in the book of Joshua, he replied: “I believe the answer is ‘yes.’” And when someone in the audience asks if this inscription impacts the way in which we should conceive of the Exodus from Egypt and the Conquest, he replies that this inscription reveals that “the Exodus from Egypt and the Conquest of the land of Canaan would have occurred at an earlier date” than has usually been supposed. He elaborates further than this inscription “tips the scale in favor of an earlier date.”

It is perhaps useful for me to mention in this connection that the consensus view (among those, such as I, who believe that there was some sort of Exodus, and that there was also some sort of entrance into the land of Canaan for at least some of the Proto-Israelites, and that there were at least some battles as part of that) is that the 13^th century BCE is the operative century for the Exodus and Conquest (based on the convergence of a fair amount of evidence, biblical and otherwise…in other words, I fall into the same category as Richard Elliott Friedman in his volume entitled Exodus: How it Happened and Why it Matters).  However, a date in the 15^th century has been the darling of a few scholars through the years (especially because of the statement in 1 Kings 6:1 that the First Temple was built 480 years after the Exodus. As for me, I mostly feel that 40 is a stock numeral in the ancient Near East and in the Bible, and since 12 is the number of the tribes of Israel, well, 480 sounds like a schematic numeral that plugs in two very common biblical numerals). In any case, Stripling even concludes on the basis of this little inscription that he finds support for the early date.  That’s quite a leap on the basis of a lead inscription that cannot be dated with enormous precision and contains zero personal names (of historical people) and zero references to any historical event!  Again, this is a bridge too far.

It is also worth mentioning that I am not too certain that the divine name Yhw is in this inscription (although I hope that it is). Moreover, I would emphasize that the script of this inscription (if there actually is a legible inscription) is Early Alphabetic, not Hebrew.  Thus, I’d really be very disinclined to call it the earliest Hebrew inscription (in terms of script or language).  In this connection it is worth noting that the words “God,” “cursed,” “die,” “death,” are all Common Semitic.  That is, they are present in several different ancient Semitic languages (e.g., Ugaritic, Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew, Akkadian, etc.); thus, they are not “diagnostic” for any particular Semitic language, since they occur across the Semitic languages. Sometimes I hear someone say, “Oh, this text must be Hebrew, because this is a Hebrew word.” Well, the problem with that is that the word may be Hebrew, but it is not *exclusively* Hebrew.  But rather it occurs in several different Semitic languages (hence the term “Common Semitic”). Of course, someone might say in reply to me, “Yes, those other words in this inscription are Common Semitic, but the word Yhw is the name of the God of Israel.” And I would reply that we can talk more about this when good images of this inscription are available.  But even if these three letters are present (yhw) and are to be read in this order (which may not be the case), that’s not the only word that those letters could be.  In short, I tend to believe that it’s best to try to avoid making precarious statements.  And I’ll stick with that methodology for this inscription as well. 

Conclusions:

In sum, I would mostly suggest that we step back and let the dust settle on this one.  It seems to me that Stripling, Galil, and van der Veen have made a fair number of big assumptions. Moreover, I am far from convinced of their readings….especially since they have not even provided so much as a single good image!

And it also seems to me that the best predictor of the future is the past, and in the past, time and time again, sensational claims turn to ash in the crucible of serious, philological and epigraphic analysis. So, let’s wait and see how this turns out.  But as for me, I’m afraid that I’m too methodologically cautious to embrace the sensational assumptions of Stripling, Galil, and van der Veen.

Addendum: Prof. Amihai Mazar has emphasized to me (personal communication) that Zertal’s suggestion that he had found an altar at Mount Ebal is “much debated within the archaeological community.” He has also emphasized that in this region, “no one has seen, before or after this discovery, an altar of approximately 8m x 9m in size.” Prof. Mazar has also noted that “the earlier installation could have been used in a cultic context, but does not resemble an altar.” I’m very grateful for Prof. Ami Mazar’s note and for the data contained in it. Sincerely, Chris Rollston

Tell Umm el-Marra (Syria) and Early Alphabetic in the Third Millennium:

Four Inscribed Clay Cylinders as a Potential Game Changer

Christopher Rollston, George Washington University

Introduction:

              The excavations at Tell Umm el-Marra in Western Syria were conducted from 1994-2010.  The excavations were sponsored by Johns Hopkins University and the University of Amsterdam, and they were co-directed by Glenn Schwartz and Hans Curvers. Among the major supporters of the excavations were National Geographic and the National Science Foundation. Within this blog post, I will convey the basic contours of the evidence outlined in Schwartz’s (2021) article, and then at the conclusion of my synthesis, I will convey my own perspective regarding these four inscribed clay cylinders: namely, the script is Early Alphabetic (based on the clear morphology of the letters), the language is arguably Semitic, and the date is early (based on the secure archaeological context and carbon 14 dates). At this time, I will turn in earnest to this task…

              The site of Umm el-Marra is ca. 20 hectares (i.e., ca. 50 acres).  It is located in the Jabbul Plain of northwestern Syria, roughly between the city of Aleppo and the Euphrates valley (Tell Umm el-Marra is about halfway between ancient Aleppo and ancient Emar). It has been suggested that Tell Umm el-Marra was the ancient city of Tuba, known from cuneiform sources. It is arguably the largest site in the Jabbul plain.

              Schwartz has noted that “particularly striking with respect to the third millennium BC occupation on Umm el-Marra is the activity on the acropolis in the middle of the site.  Here, at least ten mausoleums were built, one next to the other, over a period of some 300 years. Judging from their large-scale architecture and contents, including personal items of gold, silver, and lapis lazuli, the tombs were associated with individuals of high social rank, possibly the ruling families of Umm el-Marra or its region” (Schwartz 2021, 256).  In short, there is demonstrable evidence that some of those at the site of Umm el-Marra were very wealthy elites.

I. Four Inscribed Clay Cylinders from Tell Umm el-Marra: The Basic Data

              Significantly, during the 2004 field season, four small inscribed clay cylinders were found at Umm el-Marra in a third-millennium tomb. These were “lightly baked” (Glenn Schwartz, personal communication). In a very recent, and particularly erudite article, Glenn Schwartz has described this find and its archaeological context in substantial detail (Schwartz 2021; cf. also Schwartz 2010, for his earlier views).  In terms of the precise archaeological context, Schwartz has indicated that “the contents of the upper layer of Tomb 4 are stylistically homogenous and belong to the Early Bronze IVA or ENL 4 period, perhaps ca. 2450-2300 BC, equivalent to Umm el-Marra Period V.” he goes on to state that “since the pottery exhibits good parallels with the ceramic assemblage from Ebla Palace G, whose destruction is best assigned to ca. 2300 BC, I posit a twenty-fourth century BC date for the Tomb 4 upper layer” (Schwartz 2021, 256-257).  Furthermore, and particularly importantly, Schwartz also notes that this dating is “supported by the carbon-14 results from Umm el-Marra, which provide dates in the late third millennium for the EB IVB/ENL 5 period which succeeds EB IVA/ENL 4” (Schwartz 2021, 257).

              My initial thought (because of the graphemic shapes of the signs on the cylinders and the clear similarity to Early Alphabetic letters) was that these cylinders might be intrusive, coming from the second millennium BCE, not the third millennium. However, Schwartz has emphasized that “it is very unlikely that the cylinders were intrusive from a later period.”  He goes on to state that “they were resting on a tomb floor in a relatively widely-distributed area, not in a closely-arranged bunch as one might expect if they had been inside a small, undetected animal burrow or pit.” He states further that “they were about 80 cm below a scatter of broken mudbricks that had probably collapsed from the walls of the tomb, sealing the context of the cylinders.” In terms of size and shape of the cylinders themselves, Schwartz has stated that they are about that of “a human finger” and “are perforated lengthwise.” (Schwartz 2021, 257).   

              As for the signs on these four cylinders, Schwartz indicates that he finds them to be “relatively crude” (I do not find them to be any more crude than most of the rest of Early Alphabetic, something which I attribute to the fact that Early Alphabetic was never really standardized with regard to the direction of writing, the orientation of the letters, or the stance of the letters). Moreover, Schwartz suggests that they were probably incised with an implement like a wooden stick or a reed rather than a carefully made stylus” (Schwartz 2021, 257).  As for the number of graphemic signs, Schwartz notes that there are twelve individual graphemes (if the single sign from the fourth cylinder is included). Since some signs occur more than once, it is useful to note that Schwartz has stated that there are “eight distinct” signs (Schwartz 2021, 258). He also notes that “given the small number of sign values attested, it is difficult to ascertain whether the system was logographic, syllabic, alphabetic, or a combination of these” (Schwartz 2021, 258). Schwartz then moves into a methodical analysis of the various possibilities for these signs, based on writing systems or recording systems in the ancient Near Eastern world.  First and foremost, these signs are certainly not cuneiform.  Furthermore, Schwartz notes that they do not seem to be “potmarks incised on jars and pots in third millennium Syria and upper Mesopotamia” (Schwartz 2021, 258). They also do not seem to be “numerical characters,” such as are known in the Habur region (Schwartz 2021, 259). Furthermore, he mentions that “besides cuneiform, the major Near Eastern writing system of the third millennium BC was Egyptian.”  He notes that although there are some similarities (e.g., N5 and S29 in Gardiner 1957), but he concludes that “the similarities are not especially close, and perforated clay cylinders with hieroglyphic or hieratic inscriptions are not attested in Egypt” (Schwartz 2021, 259). More distantly, he notes that there were some connections between the Indus civilization and southern Mesopotamia in the third millennium, and that three of the characters on his clay cylinders might be compared with certain Indus symbols (namely, 283, 358 variant b, and 215 variant a), but he then concludes that “none of these parallels is especially close” (Schwartz 2021, 259). He also considers the early second millennium “pseudo-hierlglyphs from Byblos,” but reasonably concludes that “there are few convincing matches with the symbols from Umm el-Marra (Schwartz 2021, 259).

II. Early Alphabetic in Second Millennium Mesopotamia

              Early Alphabetic inscriptions are also seemingly attested in Mesopotamia, and Schwartz recognizes the significance of this (Schwartz 2021, 260). These alphabetic inscriptions are part of the Schoyen Collection. I have discussed these in the past (Rollston 2020, 69-70), and find it useful (for reasons of economy) largely to cite here my previous statements: “Stephanie Dalley has recently published a number of Akkadian tablets from the First Sealand Dynasty, and some brief, difficult Early Alphabetic inscriptions are present on the edge of four of these tablets (Dalley 2009, 15; plate 175 and drawings on plates 30, 50). In terms of date, Dalley stated that ‘the cuneiform King-lists place the First Sealand Dynasty between the Old Babylonian and the Kassite, and there seems no reason to contest that’ (Dalley, personal communication; see also Dalley 2009, 1-17). Regarding the grammar and the logograms (etc.) of these tablets, Dalley stated that this makes it certain that this corpus of tablets ‘come from a period at the end of the Old Babylonian Dynasty.’ Thus, regarding an approximate absolute date of these tablets from the First Sealand Dynasty, Dalley has stated that a date of ca. 1500 BCE is the most convincing (the presence of certain known royal names is also part of the equation)” (Rollston 2020, 69-70). Nevertheless, there is a fly in the ointment which I would be remiss not to emphasize.   Namely, as is the case with tens of thousands of cuneiform tablets, these Sealand Tablets were not found on a scientific excavation, but rather they appeared for sale on the antiquities market.  Therefore, we have no actual archaeological context for them.  Regarding the authenticity of the tablets, including the alphabetic inscriptions on four of them, however, Dalley has stated that she has ‘no doubt that these are all genuine” (personal communication). My sense is that Dalley is probably correct about the authenticity, although I do still harbor some modest doubts. In any case, if accepting the authenticity of the alphabetic inscriptions on the Sealand Tablets, the presence of these alphabetic inscriptions from Mesopotamia in the 15^th century is important (Rollston 2020, 69-70).

III. Early Alphabetic in Egypt and the Levant

              In terms of the earlier history of the alphabet, especially as reflected in the Early Alphabetic inscriptions from Serabit el-Khadem and Wadi el-Hol, the most elegant and convincing date (based especially on things such as the palaeographic similarities between Middle Egyptian Hieroglyphic and Hieratic vis a vis the Early Alphabetic inscriptions from Serabit el-Khadem and Wadi el-Hol as well as the dating of Egyptian inscriptions at these same sites, etc.) is often contended to be the chronological horizon of the 18^th century BCE.  The history of this discussion, along with various augmentations of it, have been recited by various scholars in various publications, including some of mine (see, for example, Rollston 2020, along with the bibliography there).  Of course, someone might attempt to push the data down chronologically and argue for the 17^th century BCE for the inscriptions of Serabit and el-Hol. Conversely, it is worth emphasizing that as for the date of the invention of Early Alphabetic, Orly Goldwasser has argued for a date of ca. 1840 BCE (Goldwasser 2017, 142), an earlier date than has often been embraced.  Frank Moore Cross dated the invention of the alphabet to ca. 18^th century BCE (Cross 1994, 57) and Joseph Naveh dated the invention of the alphabet to ca. 1700 BCE (Naveh 1987, 42). In essence, therefore, this chronological horizon (19th or 18th century) has been the consensus view (although occasionally a [much] lower date will be proposed [e.g., Sass 2005], but the data continue to mount against that view).

It is also important to emphasize the usage of Early Alphabetic in the broader Levant during the second millennium BCE. At this juncture, therefore, I will summarize this point by reiterating the data which I have discussed in various previous publications (e.g., Rollston 2020, 73).  Namely, Ugaritic (13^th century BCE, and wedge-shaped in nature) is not the only attested alphabetic writing system in the Levant during the second millennium BCE. Indeed, various Early Alphabetic inscriptions (which are pictographic in nature,….and are reflective of the acrophonic principle) have been discovered at a number of sites in the Levant, ranging from around the 17^th century BCE through the 10^th century BCE. Note in this connection the following: the Beth Shemesh Ostracon (Driver 1954, 100-101, and plate 40; Naveh 1987, 35 with drawing), the Beth Shemesh Incised Potsherd (McCarter, Bunimovitz, and Lederman 2011), The Gezer Sherd (Taylor 1930 and plate 1), the Gezer Jar Signs (Seger 1983 and plates 1-4), Izbet Sarteh (Naveh 1978), the Ophel (Jerusalem) Incised Sherd (Mazar, Ben-Shlomo, and Aḥituv 2013; Hamilton 2015, with literature), Lachish Ewer (Cross 1954 and literature), the Lachish Dagger (Starkey 1937), the Lachish Bowl Inscripton (Ussishkin 1983, 155-157, and plate 40), the Megiddo Gold Ring (Guy 1938), the Qubur Walaydah Bowl (Cross 1980), the Qeiyafa Ostracon (Misgav, Garfinkel, and Ganor 2009; Rollston 2011), the Qeiyafa Ba’al Jar Inscription (Garfinkel, Golub, Misgav, and Ganor 2015), the Raddana Handle (Cross and Freedman 1971), the Shechem Plaque (Böhl 1938). Added to the discussion is now a new inscription from Tel Lachish (Höflmayer, Misgav, Webster, Streit 2021).

              Of these inscriptions, the Lachish Dagger is among the most important of the Early Alphabetic inscriptions from the Levant.  The archaeological context for this dagger is a tomb of the Middle Bronze Age (Starkey 1937; Sass 1988, 53-54; Goldwasser 2017, 140-142), arguably ca. the 17^th century BCE.  Cross suggested (in 1967) that this inscription (consisting of four letters) may not be Early Alphabetic (see conveniently Cross 2003, 317-329, esp. note 13), but the script seems indeed to be Early Alphabetic and the fact that the archaeological context is a secure tomb of the 17^th century is also paramount (in terms of date). In addition, I would contend that it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Gezer Jar Signs (Seger 1983), incised before the firing of the pots, are Early Alphabetic and date to the Middle Bronze Age or early Late Bronze Age. Indeed, excavator Joseph Seger contends that these date to ca. the late 17^th century BCE. Furthermore, the Megiddo Gold Ring must be part of the discussion as well. It hails from an excavated tomb, and according to P.L.O. Guy, the pottery found with the ring was MB II and LB II (Guy 1938, 173-177, and 68-72, plus Pl. 128: 15; and fig 177).  The precise letters that are attested have been the subject of discussion, but the fact that this inscription is written in Early Alphabetic is certain. Thus, I cannot concur with the statement of my dear friend Benjamin Sass that this inscription is a “pseudo-inscription” (pace Sass 1988, 101). I have collated this microscopically and consider it a nice, and readable, Early Alphabetic inscription (Rollston 2020, 73).

IV. Umm el-Marra’s Early Alphabetic: More Detailed Focus

              It is worth noting that in the past Schwartz has been reluctant to affirm that the four inscribed clay cylinders from Tomb 4 of Umm el-Marra are alphabetic (Schwartz 2010). Thus, he certainly did not rush to this conclusion.  Moreover, his most recent article about these is also very cautious (Schwartz 2021), as he moves through various possibilities (as discussed above).  But it is clear that he is now willing to state that this is the most reasonable position (i.e., it is Early Alphabetic).  And I concur.  That is, the most reasonable conclusion is that the Umm el-Marra clay cylinders are inscribed with signs that are most readily understood as Early Alphabetic letters (graphemes).  Moreover, since the Early Alphabetic alphabet was used to write Semitic, it is logical to conclude that this is the language of the Umm el-Marra inscriptions (the fact that they were found in Syria would also augment this conclusion, of course). 

The readings (with various caveats and provisos) of the first cylinder and third cylinders are posited by Schwartz to be, in essence, k’y (reading dextrograde), with that of the second reading wn‘ls. The fourth cylinder is more fragmentary with only a single grapheme preserved, and probably not fully (thus the options are greater, in terms of possible readings).  Furthermore, as Schwartz notes, reading sinistrograde is also option (i.e., he does not commit to either dextrograde or sinistrograde).  Indeed, Early Alphabetic could be written dextrograde (left to right), sinistrograde (right to left), boustrophedon (with consecutive lines written dextrograde and then sinistrograde, and so on), as well as columnar (top to bottom).  Naturally, since we are dealing with one-line inscriptions, making a certain determination about the direction of writing is difficult (since one can often find a possible root word in Semitic with which to associate one’s decision about the direction of reading).  That is not to say that it is entirely arbitrary.  It is not, since lexical and morphemic matters will often bring a particular word to the fore (and that’s the case with these inscriptions as well), as will at times the direction of the “face” of the letters.  It is also worth emphasizing that not only is the direction of writing a variable with Early Alphabetic, stance and rotation are as well (and these are often impacted by the direction of writing, of course).  Thus, the stance and rotation of the letters on these inscriptions are not surprising.  After all, with Early Alphabetic, this aspect of writing was certainly not fixed.

V. Some Final Reflections

              One factor which is of paramount importance is the putative time-frame for the production of the Umm el-Marra Inscriptions.  I have pressed my friend and teacher Glenn Schwartz on this quite hard (in the past), but he has strongly affirmed (in his articles on these inscriptions, as noted above, and in personal correspondence) that it just does not seem all that convincing to consider these to be intrusive elements from a later period in this third millennium tomb.  In this connection, it is worth noting that there were established connections between Syria and Egypt in the Early Bronze Age (e.g., Biga 2016). Furthermore, there were also established connections between Syria and Mesopotamia in the Early Bronze Age (e.g., Cooper, 2012; Cooper 2013).  And, of course, with the Levantine site of Byblos, the connections with Egypt during this chronological horizon (and earlier ones, as well as later ones) are especially clear as well. In short, in terms of the origins of the alphabet and its movement to places such as Umm el-Marra, there are various possible or plausible options.

              The problem, of course, is that any attempt to decipher Early Alphabetic is difficult and precarious (with a few exceptions) because of (among other things) the brevity of most of the texts at our disposal.  These specimens of Early Alphabetic from Umm el-Marra are no exception in that regard. I’m sure that some will posit with confidence this or that reading and understanding.  I’m not so inclined.  Indeed, that which would be really useful and important at this time would be for longer inscriptions to be found, and similar sorts of inscriptions from this early of a period (i.e., 3^rd millennium BCE) in this region or some other region (be it Egypt, or Mesopotamia proper, or the northern or southern Levant).  Suffice it to state, though, that we have here some important inscriptions, it is most reasonable (based on the morphemic similarities with Early Alphabetic attested elsewhere) to contend that these are Early Alphabetic, and to note that the early history of the alphabet may have begun earlier than we had thought. In short, these inscriptions from Umm el-Marra do seem to be game changers and these should and will be a component of all future debates and discussions about the world’s first use of an alphabetic writing system.

Christopher Rollston (Rollston@gwuedu)

** I should like to mention that I was a member of the excavation staff in 1995, and I also studied archaeology at the graduate level with Glenn Schwartz at Johns Hopkins. Along those same lines, I should also like to mention that I benefited from discussions with Assyriologist Jerrold Cooper and Archaeologist Glenn Schwartz about these finds from Tell Umm el-Marra.

References:

Biga, Maria Giovanna.

2016  La Syrie et l’Egypte au IIIe Millenaire av. J.-C. d’apres les archives d’Ebla. Comptes Rendus. Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres April-June 2016: 691-711.

Böhl, F. M. Th.  1938.

“Die Sichem Plakette.” ZDPV 61:1-25.

 

Cooper, Lisa.

2012 Cultural Developments in Western Syria and the Middle Euphrates Valley during the Third Millennium BC.  In H. Crawford (ed.), The Sumerian World, 478-97.  London: Routledge

Cooper, Lisa.

2013 The Northern Levant (Syria) during the Early Bronze Age.  In A. Killebrew and M. Steiner (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeolgy of the Levant, c. 8000-332 BCE.  Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Cross, Frank M. 1954.

“The Evolution of the Proto-Canaanite Alphabet.” BASOR, 134: 15-24.

Cross, Frank M. 1980.

“New Found Inscriptions in Old Canaanite and Early Phoenician Scripts.” BASOR, 238: 1-20.

Cross, Frank M. and David Noel Freedman. 1971. 

“An Inscribed Jar Handle from Raddana.”  BASOR, 201: 19-22.

Dalley, Stephanie. 

2009.  Babylonian Tablets from the First Sealand Dynasty in the Schoyen Collecction. CUSAS 9. Bethesda: CDL.

Driver, G. R. 1954. 

Semitic Writing: From Pictograph to Alphabet, 2^nd ed.  London: Oxford.

Gardiner, Alan

1957. Egyptian Grammar: Being an Introduction to the Study of Hierolglyphs. Oxford.

Garfinkel, Yosef, Mitka R. Golub, Haggai Misgav, and Saar Ganor. 2015.

“The ‘Išba‘al Inscription from Khirbet Qeiyafa.”  BASOR, 373: 217-233.

Goldwasser, Orly.

2017.  “From the Iconic to the Linear—The Egyptian Scribes of Lachish and the Modification of the Early Alphabet in the Late Iron Age.” In Alphabets, Texts and Artifacts in the Ancient Near East: Studies presented to Benjamin Sass, edited by Israel Finkelstein, Christian Robin, and Thomas Römer, 118-160. Paris: Van Dieren Publishers.

Guy, P. L. O. 1938.

Megiddo Tombs.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hamilton, Gordon J. 2015.

“Two Methodological Issues concerning the Expanded Collection of Early Alphabetic Texts.” In Epigraphy, Philology, & the Hebrew Bible: Methodological Perspectives on Philological & Comparative Study of the Hebrew Bible in Honor of Jo Ann Hackett, edited by Jeremy M. Hutton and Aaron D. Rubin, 127-156. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.

Höflmayer, Felix; Misgav, Haggai; Webster, Lyndelle; Streit, Katharina, 2021

“Early Alphabetic Writing in the ancient Near East: The ‘Missing Link’ from Tel Lachish. Antiquity 2021.

Mazar, Eilat, David Ben-Shlomo, and Shmuel Aḥituv. 2013

“An Inscribed Pithos from the Ophel, Jerusalem.” IEJ, 63: 39-49.

McCarter, P. Kyle, Shlomo Bunimovitz, and Zvi Lederman. 2011.

“An Archaic Ba‘l Inscription from Tel Beth-Shemesh.” Tel Aviv, 38:35-49.

Misgav, Haggay, Yosef Garfinkel, and Saar Ganor. 2009.

“The Ostracon from Ḥorvat Qeiyafa.”  Innovations in the Archaeology of Jerusalem and its Environs, 3: 111-123.   

Naveh, Joseph. 1978.

“Some Considerations on the Ostracon from ‘Izbet Sartah.” IEJ, 28: 31-35.

Naveh, Joseph. 1987.

Early History of the Alphabet: An Introduction to West Semitic Epigraphy and Palaeography. 2nd ed. Jerusalem: Magnes.

Rollston, Christopher A. 2011.

“The Khirbet Qeiyafa Ostracon: Methodological Musings and Caveats.” Tel Aviv,38: 67-82.

Rollston, Christopher.

2019. “The Alphabet Comes of Age: The Social Context of Alphabetic Writing in the First Millennium BCE.” Pp. 371-390 in The Social Archaeology of the Levant: From Prehistory to the Present, eds. Assaf Yasur-Landau, Eric Cline, and Yorke Rowan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rollston, Christopher.

2020. “The Emergence of Alphabetic Scripts.” Pp. 65-78 in Wiley Blackwell Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Languages, ed. Rebecca Hasselbach-Andee. Wiley Blackwell.

Sass, Benjamin. 2005.

“The Genesis of the Alphabet and Its Development in the Second Millennium B.C, Twenty Years Later.” 2004-2005. KBR, 2: 147-166.

Schwartz, Glenn M.

2010. “Early Non-Cuneiform Writing? Third-Millennium BC Clay Cylinders from Umm el-Marra.” Culture and History of the Ancient Near East, 42: 375-395.

Schwartz, Glenn M.

2021    Non-Cuneiform Writing at Third-Millennium Umm el-Marra, Syria: Evidence of an  Early Alphabetic Tradition?  Pasiphae XIII: 255-66.

Seger, Joe. 1983.

“New Evidence of the Earliest Alphabet.” In The Word of the Lord Shall Go Forth: Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman in Celebration of His Sixtieth Birthday, edited by Carol L. Meyers and M. O’ Connor, 477-495. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns.

Starkey, J. L. 1937.

“Excavations at Tell edl-Duweir.” PEFQS, 70: 239-240.

Taylor, W.R. 1930.

“The New Gezer Inscription.” JPOS, 10: 79-81.

Ussishkin, David.  1983

“Excavations at Tel Lachish 1978-1983, Second Preliminary Report.”  Tel Aviv, 10: 97-185.

Déjà vu all over Again:

The Antiquities Market, the Shapira Strips, Menahem Mansoor, and Idan Dershowitz

By Christopher Rollston, George Washington University

(Rollston@gwu.edu)

Introduction

Idan Dershowitz has authored an article entitled “The Valediction of Moses: New Evidence on the Shapira Deuteronomy Fragments,” ZAW 133 (2021): 1-22. In his article, Dershowitz states that he offers “new evidence and arguments against the prevailing theory that Wilhelm Moses Shapira forged his infamous Deuteronomy fragments.” He considers the Shapira Strips to be authentic, basically, the first of the real Dead Sea Scrolls. That’s quite a claim.  In fact, he also believes that “The Shapira fragments are not only authentic artifacts, but are unprecedented in their significance: They preserve a pre-canonical antecedent of the Book of Deuteronomy” (p. 22 of his article). He also has a forthcoming monograph dealing with this subject, which will include a full transcription of the Shapira Strips, replete with translation and copious notes.

First and foremost, I would emphasize that Idan Dershowitz is doing the scholarly community a great service in producing a very useful transcription of the Shapira Strips, replete with copious annotations. This will be of much value for those interested in the history of modern inscriptional forgeries.

But I believe that his work will convince very few epigraphers (i.e., scholars who specialize in actual, ancient inscriptions) that the Shapira Fragments are authentic, ancient documents. And I do not believe that his work will convince all that many text scholars (i.e., scholars who primarily work not with actual ancient inscriptions, scrolls, papyri, but rather with edited texts in print editions) that the Shapira Strips are ancient…although I suspect some text scholars will find Idan Dershowitz’s proposal alluring, especially since it seems to “confirm” the things some of them have believed about the textual transmission of Deuteronomy in its earliest forms.

Nevertheless, the totality of the extant empirical evidence continues to demonstrate that the Shapira Strips are modern forgeries, and they reflect the same basic tendencies and problems which are present in most modern fakes and forgeries of the past two, three, or four centuries. I will discuss some of the evidence in this blog post, but in a more detailed fashion in a print publication.

Finally, I should also mention that I was an invited participant in the symposium at Harvard Law which was held in 2019 in which Idan Dershowitz presented his views. As I emphasized in that meeting, the evidence against authenticity is compelling: the Shapira Strips are indeed modern forgeries, modeled mostly on the book of Deuteronomy, with the sort of “forger’s flourishes, augmentations, and additions,” that are hallmark features of forgers’ methods…time and time again through the centuries.

NB: In this blog post, I reference a number of my articles.  Most of these (but not all) are available on www.academia.edu.  I have included bibliographic data for these in the “for further reading” section at the end of this blog post.  I would have liked to have integrated all of these references into this blog post, but since the New York Times article appeared today, and I wanted to get this post up rapidly, I am just including these as an addendum at the bottom of this blog post.

The Setting in the 19^th centuy: 1868-1884

The Shapira Strips surfaced on the Antiquities Market in ca. 1883, and were shopped around far and wide by Moses Wilhelm Shapira (1830-1884) who had an antiquities shop in Jerusalem.  If they had been deemed ancient in 1883, they would have been by Shapira’s own statements) worth an absolute fortune. A decade prior to the surfacing of the Shapira Strips, Shapira had been closely connected with the Moabite Forgeries (ca. 1873, 1874, etc.).  The Moabite Forgeries were inscribed terra cotta and stone objects, with inscriptions modeled rather poorly on the great Mesha Stele Inscription, discovered in ca. 1868 (of which Salim al-Kari, an associate of Shapira, had made a squeeze prior to the famous shattering of the Mesha Stele by heating it and pouring water on it).  Although a number of scholars at the time deemed these Moabite Forgeries to be ancient (e.g., the great Semitist Konstantin Schlottmann), the archaeologist and epigrapher Charles Clermont-Ganneau rapidly debunked them as modern forgeries.  Clermont-Ganneau was absolutely correct.  In fact, the Moabite Forgeries would not fool even a beginning student of Northwest Semitic inscriptions today. 

It is also worth noting that many forgeries were surfacing in this era, in the wake of discoveries such as the Mesha Stele and the Temple Mount Inscription.  Clermont-Ganneau debunked many of them, authoring articles and even a monograph on the subject.  And, of course, Clermont-Ganneau was among the first to debunk the Shapira Strips as well, along with Christian David Ginsberg. Notably, Konstantin Schlottman asserted that the Shapira Strips were forgeries!

Also important to mention is that Shapira was very familiar with aged scrolls (e.g., from the Middle Ages), as he sold a number of them to the British Museum, especially from the region of Yemen.  It should also be emphasized that the Shapira Strips are no longer extant. After Shapira himself committed suicide in the Netherlands (after the Shapira Strips were declared to be modern forgeries), the Shapira Strips were later sold at auction and are often presumed to have later been burnt in a tragic house fire. At the very least, they have never surfaced again.

Further notation: During the past three or four centuries, many hundreds of forged inscriptions have appeared on the antiquities market.  These modern forgeries come in all shapes and sizes and are written in a number of languages, including Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Phoenician, Latin, Syriac, and Coptic. Some of these modern forgeries were quite poor, some of them were quite good.  But the production of textual forgeries in the modern period is quite a common thing, and it has often been quite lucrative for the forgers and for those who sell forgeries.  It is a major problem in the field and has long been so.

__

I. Not the first, not the last.

Idan Dershowitz is not the first scholar to attempt to contend that the Shapira Strips are ancient, and he will not be the last. That is, most famously, Menahem Mansoor (University of Wisconsin, 1959 “The Case of Shapira’s Dead Sea [Deuteronomy] Scrolls of 1883) argued at length that the Shapira Strips were not modern forgeries, but actual ancient Dead Sea Scrolls. But the convergence of epigraphic evidence is squarely against the Shapira Strips. However, I would emphasize that when one thinks about the long history of textual forgeries (going back many centuries), the Shapira Strips are quite good, especially for their time (i.e., late 1800s), but not nearly good enough to be considered ancient. That is, they are modern forgeries. I do not know if Shapira himself forged them.  But I am quite certain that they are demonstrably modern forgeries, not at all ancient.

II. A Methodological Imperative: Dramatic Claims Require Dramatic and Compelling Evidence (and we just don’t have dramatic, compelling evidence)

From the outset, I would emphasize that dramatic claims require dramatic and compelling evidence. Phrases such as: “Could it be?” “What if?” or “Might it be the case?” are simply not good enough.  Speculations about possibilities, or specious arguments about what a forger would have known, could not have known, might have done, might not have done, could have forged, could not have forged, could have written in his forgery, could not have written in his forgery…well, these have been demonstrated time and time again to be fruitless speculations, certainly not empirical evidence. And when scholars mount such arguments, time and time again they are demonstrated to have been wrong in their assumptions about all of these things that a forger could or could not have done, or could or could not have known.

Let’s now frame this in a very pragmatic fashion.  If the Shapira Fragments were to surface today, the leather would be subjected to carbon 14 tests; the ink would be subjected to chemical analyses (e.g., using a scanning electron microscope equipped with an EDS); there would be very careful analyses, using magnification, of the script itself, its morphology, the stance of the letters, and the ductus (i.e., the number of strokes forming a letter, the direction of those strokes, and the order of those strokes); the patina on the surface above the ink would be analyzed for modern contaminants in it and under it; there would be analyzes of the ways in which the ink had or had not flowed into the current cracks in the leather itself (much as was recently done with the Museum of the Bible’s Dead Sea Scrolls Forgeries). But the Shapira Fragments are lost to history. They were presumably destroyed. So there is no way to do these sorts of basic, benchmark, empirical analyses. And without these sorts of analyses today, no inscription would be declared ancient by a serious scholar trained in epigraphy.

But, in essence, Idan Dershowitz is essentially asking that we forget about all that, and consider the Shapira Strips to be ancient manuscripts, not modern forgeries.  But since the Shapira Strips have disappeared, and are presumably gone forever: (a) there can be no carbon 14 tests of the leather, (b) there can be no laboratory testing of the chemical composition of the ink (e.g., using a Scanning Electron Microscope equipped with an EDS), (c) there can be no careful palaeographic analysis of the script using magnification of the inscriptions themselves, (d) there can be no laboratory analysis of the patina which is present on the leather or on the ink, (e) and there can be no analyses of the ways in which the ink has adhered to the leather (e.g., when someone attempts to forge a manuscript today, the ink will often “leak” into ancient cracks in the leather…and that is very telling, of course).  Moreover, looking at a photo or a hand-copy of an inscription is absolutely not the same as holding an inscription in your hands. There is just no substitute for being able to look at a manuscript oneself and to collate it oneself.  Thus, for someone to attempt to declare the Shapira Strips ancient or authentic in spite of the fact that none of these analyses (such as those listed above) can be done is an absolute deal breaker.  We simply must be able to analyze the Shapira Strips themselves (i.e., the actual documents) before anyone can make a compelling declaration of antiquity.

To put it differently, if an inscription appeared on the antiquities market today, a smart, methodologically savvy, trained epigrapher (i.e., a scholar trained in the actual ancient media, ancient writing technologies, ancient media, etc.) would not declare an inscription to be ancient without first subjecting the inscription to the examinations mentioned above.  Thus, to ask us today to accept as ancient the Shapira Strips when such analyses cannot be done is a bridge too far, way too far.  And, of course, on top of all this, the evidence (mentioned already back in 1883 and 1884 is quite damning, including, but not limited to, the anomalies with the script).  The Shapira Strips are modern forgeries.

Dramatic claims require dramatic, compelling evidence, and we just don’t have it with regard to the Shapira Strips. Rather we have hypotheticals, and circumstantial evidence, at best. And that’s just not going to make the cut, alas, in light of the insurmountable problems with the script (and the eerie parallels to the Moabite Forgeries).

III. Motives: Economic in part, but also in part to Bolster the Traditional View that Deuteronomy was Ancient, not a Pious Forgery of the late 7^th century BCE.

There was a strong economic motive for the production of the Shapira Forgeries.  After all the Shapira Strips were stated (by Shapira, among others) to be worth a fortune. But there was more: The Shapira Strips were intended by the forger to Bolster the Traditional View that Deuteronomy was very ancient, and not a pious forgery of the late 7^th century BCE. Of course, the forger also knew that any “find” that could bolster the traditional view would garner much attention, and be worth even more, in all sorts of ways.

Many within both Judaism and Christianity have long believed that the Pentateuch (also known as the Torah, that is, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) was written by Moses, who lived during the 13th century BCE.

The Shapira Strips are largely taken from the book of Deuteronomy (and modeled on the script of the Mesha Stele, which hailed from the 9^th century BCE). Thus, if the Shapira Strips were ancient, they would be dated much closer to the time of Moses than any manuscripts of the Pentateuch available in the 1800s (or even now).  For this reason, some people really wanted (then and now) the Shapira Strips to be ancient and authentic, since that would put them much closer to the time of Moses (again, the script of the Shapira Strips was modeled on the Mesha Stele, which did come from the 9^th century BCE).    

Now, let’s put all of that in context, in the 1800s.  “Biblical Criticism” was gaining a great deal of headway during the 1800s and was embraced by many scholars and laypeople, but it was repudiated by many others as heretical.  In terms of Biblical Criticism of the 1800s, note that W.M.L. DeWette had argued in the early 1800s that the book of Deuteronomy was a pious forgery from the 7th century BCE, not from the time of Moses in the 13th century BCE.  Please allow me to emphasize that date: EARLY 1800s (decades prior to the forged Shapira Strips)….in other words, this view that Deuteronomy was a pious forgery had been circulating for several decades…and many traditionalists were still upset about it, and they longed for hard evidence to the contrary.

Similarly, the first edition of Julius Wellhausen’s book entitled “The Composition of the Hexateuch” (note: Hexateuch is a way of referring to the first six books of the Bible, namely, Genesis through Joshua) was published in 1876-1877, and in this volume Wellhausen also argued for a “late date” for the composition of Deuteronomy (among other books).  

Again, many in Christianity and Judaism had long believed that Moses (who lived during the 13th century BCE) was responsible for Deuteronomy as well as the rest of the Pentateuch.  But scholars such as DeWette, along with many other scholars in the 1800s, were dating Deuteronomy to the 7th century BCE, that is, around 500 or 600 years after Moses.  Many traditionalists (even many scholars) believed that to be absolutely heretical. 

Indeed, the traditionalists believed that the Bible itself was under assault from Biblical Criticism and its late-dating of Biblical texts. 

Now….enter the Shapira Strips!! They solved everything and vindicated the Bible….that is, The fact that the Shapira Strips seemed to demonstrate that Deuteronomy could be dated much closer to the time of Moses than scholars such as DeWette had contended was widely hailed as absolutely marvelous. And the Shapira Strips could demonstrate that Deuteronomy was much older than the late 7^th century….after all, the script of the Shapira Strips was very similar to the script of the Mesha Stele, and the Mesha Stele was 9^th century…more than two hundred years prior to DeWette’s dating of Deuteronomy! 

Of course, it should always be remembered that modern forgers (and ancient forgers) know their market.

And it’s also worth emphasizing again that the Shapira Strips were being touted as priceless…and for this reason the price Shapira was asking for them was indeed a fortune. 

___

IV. Textual Forgeries: A very old story

(1) There is a long history of talented, unscrupulous people (including scholars, antiquities dealers, and disgruntled students) producing textual forgeries (as well as other types of forgeries, of course, as well).  Thus, we have textual forgeries from the ancient, medieval, and modern world….that is, from ancient Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, as well as ancient Israel and Early Christianity, from the Middle Ages (e.g, the Donation of Constantine), and from the modern world (I deal with this in a print article on the long history of textual forgeries).  Thus, it’s a very old tactic. (2) During the past few centuries, modern forgeries revolving around the Bible and Biblical World have surfaced on the antiquities market. These have generated (even before, during, and after the time of Shapira) a great deal of money.  These forgeries are in various languages, including Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, Coptic.  (3) Forgers have often patinated their works so as to cause them to appear ancient.  And also, the forgers will, when possible, use older or ancient media as well (e.g., ancient pots, ancient papyri, parchment). In short, forgers have long been quite sharp, quite knowledgeable. (4) Forgers and dealers often produce forgeries that will peak the interest of scholars and collectors….that is, forgers know the market…they know their target-audience, “marks” well. They know what people want, and they produce fakes with the desired content. (5) Forgers and dealers often go to “text” scholars, rather than to epigraphers, palaeographers, and papyrologists….they do this because text scholars are accustomed to working more with edited texts than with ancient written artifacts (this was the case with the Jesus’ Wife Papyrus, and with countless other modern forgeries). (6) These text-scholars often take the bait, as it were (in my two Maarav articles, I deal with some of this….and the ways in which various scholars ultimately “authenticated” inscriptions which were actually modern forgeries).  (7) Shapira either produced himself, or commissioned the production of, the Moabite Pottery Forgeries and the Moabite Stone Forgeries. These are pretty bad forgeries…and would not fool anyone in the field today, but they fooled quite a few people in the 1870s.  I’ve written about these some (e.g., see the articles in the Finkelstein volume and the Naveh volume, in which I deal some with Shapira, especially his pottery and stone forgeries).  (8) The Shapira Strips were declared modern forgeries in the 1880s on the basis of strong and compelling evidence.  Thus, Ginsberg and Clermont-Ganneau were quite right (that is, long ago, at the time the Shapira Strips surfaced).  (9) Shapira had means, motive, opportunity. .  

___

V. Basic Principle: After the discovery of a truly sensational ancient inscription, forgers will often produce modern forgeries which are similar in terms of script or content to the authentic, ancient one. The Mesha Stele (discovered in 1868, and often called the Moabite Stone) was just such an inscription…it dates to the 9th century BCE, is written in the Old Hebrew script (because, as the inscription itself mentions, that King Omri of Israel had subjugated the Moabites and held hegemony over them), it is written in the Moabite language (remember: language and script are two different things), and it contains content which dovetails with the Bible’s description of King Mesha of Moab (e.g., 2 Kings 3). The Mesha Stele is a truly sensational, ancient inscription.  

It has been clear for more than a century that he Moabite Clay forgeries were largely the product of Shapira’s friend and business associate Salim al-Kari (Salim had made a squeeze of the Mesha Stele, hence, he knew what the script looked like), while the Moabite Stone Forgeries were the product of Martin Boulos, but the fact remains Shapira himself is also definitely and deeply connected with these blazing forgeries of the early 1870s. In fact, Shapira or an associate of his would sometimes take would-be buyers to a site, state that some of these clay and stone “inscriptions” had recently been found at this or that site, and then he would invite the would-be buyers to dig around…and lo and behold they would find some in the ground.  Of course, these had been “planted” there so that they could be found, but it was a very effective tool in the toolbox of Shapira.

The Shapira Strips are also modeled on the script of the Mesha Stele.  The script of the Shapira Strips is considerably better than that of the Moabite Forgeries.  This is not surprising, as a decade had passed between the time of the production of the Moabite Forgeries and the Shapira Strips.  Scholars had been quite critical of the script of the Moabite Forgeries, and this was all documented in journal articles of that time.  The forger of the Shapira Strips was reading those articles, especially those published in ZDPV.

Of the many similar stories is this more recent one: The Tel Dan Stele Inscription was discovered on the excavation at Tel Dan in 1993 and 1994. This inscription mentions the “House of David” (i.e., the Dynasty of David), is written in Aramaic, and dates to the 9th century BCE. Less than a decade after the discovery of the Tel Dan Stele, a modern forgery (which also fooled a number of scholars) known as the Jehoash Inscription surfaced on the antiquities market (in ca. 2001).  I collated this inscription in the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem, a day or two before my testimony for the prosecution in the Israel Forgery trial in the 2000s.  Again, the point is that in the wake of the discovery of a bona fide sensational inscriptional find, forgers begin to produce very similar fakes…and these can, and sometimes do, sell for vast amounts of money.

There is also a very similar situation with a Greek inscription from the Temple Mount, discovered in 1871.  It is a truly fascinating inscription which contains a warning to any foreigners who might venture too far into the Temple complex in Jerusalem.  And not long after this discovery, a forged Temple Mount inscription appeared on the antiquities market. 

In short, the appearance of the Shapira Strips and the Moabite Forgeries follows an established pattern, a pattern that is attested in the periods before and after Shapira’s time.

__

VI. A few words about the Script

The script of the Shapira Strips is not the same as the bastardized script of the Moabite Clay and Stone Forgeries sold by Shapira. Indeed, the script of the Shapira Strips is much better than the script of the Moabite Clay and Stone Forgeries, but the script of the Shapira Strips has a handful of eerie similarities to the Moabite Clay and Stone Forgeries. 

Idan wishes for us to dismiss this evidence, or to assume that those producing the hand-copies of the Shapira Strips were utterly inept.  But, with all due respect to Dershowitz, we have enough good hand-copies, and even script charts, to be able to state that the script of the Shapira Strips is flawed, and these flaws are similar to the sorts of flaws often found in modern forgeries through the decades.  This evidence cannot simply be dismissed.

  Also relevant: we can state that the script of the Moabite Clay and Stone Forgeries and that of the Shapira Strips is similar (in a few tell-tale ways) because we have some fairly good hand-copies of the Shapira Strips (hand-copies which were made by scholars after Shapira announced the Shapira Strips in ca. 1883), and, of course, many of the Moabite Clay and Stone Forgeries are still in existence today (especially in England and Israel).  In short, the script of the Shapira Strips is a better than that of the Moabite Clay and Stone Forgeries, but the hallmark features that demonstrate the script is forged are present in both groups (i.e., the Moabite Clay and Stone Forgeries as well as that of the Shapira Strips).

VII. Forgers often model their forgeries on ancient literary texts (e.g., the Bible, or some other ancient literary text), or on some ancient inscription.

Especially relevant for the Shapira Strips: In this connection it is useful for me to emphasize another standard method of forgers: forgers often model their forgeries on the script and words of actual ancient texts.  They do this for a number of reasons, one of which is to attract the attention of scholars and the public (as people will often say about these that “they authenticate the Bible”).  But there is another reason as well: it is hard for someone in the modern period to produce a fake which contains no errors with regard to the script, spelling, syntax, and word-meanings (when compared to actual ancient texts), but if the forgers mimic some of the words, sentences, spelling, or syntax, of a genuine inscription or an ancient literary text, it is much easier to avoid mistakes…and so forgers often mimic or copy the words from ancient texts..  Thus, many forgers borrow quite heavily from genuine ancient texts (either inscriptions or literary texts).  The forger of the Shapira Forgeries is very heavily dependent on the book of Deuteronomy.  The forger of the Shapira Strips picked and chose this text and that text (as forgers often do), but the dependence is crystal clear.  Idan Dershowitz wishes to claim that a forger could not have done that. I have learned, in part the way, that making assumptions about what a forger could or could not do, is perilous. For centuries, they have really been quite good, much smarter and better than we thought.

VIII. Modern Forgeries dismissed early on by a consensus of scholars, with some scholar or scholars coming along later and arguing that these were not forgeries after all: We’ve seen this previously too.

After the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (beginning in 1947), some people began to suggest that the (now lost) Shapira Strips might have been authentic and were, basically, the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls.  As already noted, among those who contended this was Menahem Mansoor of the University of Wisconsin.   

This sort of thing happens from time to time with regard to forgeries.  For example, there is a modern forgery known as the “Brazilian Phoenician Inscription.”  This surfaced during the late 1800s and was rapidly dismissed as a modern forgery, that is, it was deemed not to be ancient Phoenician, but rather a modern forgery.  However, during the 1960s, Cyrus Gordon, then of Brandeis University began to contend (in an article published in 1968) that the Brazilian Phoenician inscription was ancient.  Frank Cross of Harvard rapidly wrote a rejoinder (published also in 1968) demonstrating that the Brazilian Phoenician Inscription was a modern forgery, and not a particularly good one. In short, it’s nothing new for someone to come along and suggest that some modern forgery is actually ancient.  It happens.

In the case of this most recent attempt by Idan Dershowitz to suggest that the Shapira Strips are ancient, I would simply note that this has been attempted in the past, and without success (e.g., Menahem Mansoor).  

In Professor Dershowitz’s case, he is attempting to contend that the contents of the Shapira Strips (the things included as well as the things excluded) corresponds with just what scholars would expect for an early version of the book of Deuteronomy. I would counter that it is always precarious to argue that an inscription from the market must be considered ancient based on what we think a non-extant (!) proto-biblical text might have said! That’s putting the cart before the horse in all sorts of ways.

__

I will be including a long discussion of the Shapira Strips in my forthcoming volume entitled (tentatively), Pious Forgeries: Forging History in the Ancient World of the Bible & the Modern World of Biblical Studies. Eerdmans Publishing Company. Forthcoming. I look forward to continuing this conversation, and to providing additional, detailed evidence against the Shapira Strips.

Sincerely,

Christopher Rollston (Rollston@gwu.edu)

For Further Reading:

“Non-Provenanced Epigraphs I: Pillaged Antiquities, Northwest Semitic Forgeries, and Protocols for Laboratory Tests.” Maarav 10 (2003): 135-193.

“Non-Provenanced Epigraphs II: The Status of Non-Provenanced Epigraphs within the Broader Corpus of Northwest Semitic.” Maarav 11 (2004): 57-79.

“Navigating the Epigraphic Storm: A Palaeographer Reflects on Inscriptions from the Market.”  Near Eastern Archaeology 68 (2005): 69-72.

“The Antiquities Market, Sensationalized Textual Data, and Modern Forgeries.” Co-authored with Andrew Vaughn. Near Eastern Archaeology 68 (2005): 61-69.

“The Public Display of Forgeries: A Desideratum for Museums and Collections.”  Written with Heather Dana Davis Parker. Near Eastern Archaeology 68 (2005): 75.

“Who Wrote the Torah according to the Torah?” TheTorah.com (August 2017). https://www.thetorah.com/article/who-wrote-the-torah-according-to-the-torah

“Forging History: From Antiquity to the Modern Period.” Pp. 176-197 in Archaeologies of Text: Archaeology, Technology, and Ethics, eds. Matthew Rutz and Morag Kersel.  Joukowsky Institute Publication Series of Brown University, Oxbow Books, 2014.

“The Ivory Pomegranate: The Anatomy of a Probable Modern Forgery.” Pp. 238-252 in Epigraphy, Philology and the Hebrew Bible: Methodological Perspectives on Philological and Comparative Study of the Hebrew Bible in Honor of Jo Ann Hackett, eds. Jeremy M. Hutton and Aaron D. Rubin. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2015.

“The Bullae of Baruch ben Neriah the Scribe and the Seal of Ma‘adanah Daughter of the King: Epigraphic Forgeries of the 20^th Century.” Pp. *79-90 (English) in Eretz Israel 32: The Joseph Naveh Volume, eds. Joseph Aviram, Shmuel Ahituv, et al. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2016.

“The Putative Authenticity of the New ‘Jerusalem’ Papyrus Inscription: Methodological Caution as a Desideratum,” Pp. 321-330 in Rethinking Israel: Studies in the History and Archaeology of Ancient Israel in Honor of Israel Finkelstein, ed. Oded Lipschits. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2017.

The Forger Among Us:

The Museum of the Bible Dead Sea Scrolls and the Recent History of Epigraphic Forgeries

Prof. Christopher Rollston (Ph.D. Johns Hopkins University)

rollston@gwu.edu

Dept. of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

George Washington University

             

On March 13, 2020, the Museum of the Bible held a symposium in Washington, D.C.  The focus of the symposium was the presentation of various laboratory tests (on the basis of physical characteristics, elemental and molecular analysis, chemical analyses; using, for example, FTIR analyses, XRF analyses, SEM-EDS analyses, etc.) performed on sixteen fragments, putatively of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are part of the Museum’s holdings.  The point-person for the laboratory tests was Colette Loll (of Georgetown University), founder and director of Art Fraud Insights, the firm responsible for the laboratory report (which is 212 pages long).  The hard-science team included (in addition to Colette Loll) Abigail Quandt (of the Walters Art Museum), Aaron Shugar (of the State University of New York), Rebecca Pollak (SAFA Senior Research Conservator), Jennifer Mass (Bard Graduate Center for Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture), and Thomas Kupiec (Founder of the Kupiec Group and CEO of ARL, Bio Pharma and DNA Solutions).  The respondents at the symposium (the symposium was entitled “A Journey for the Truth: Investigating the Recent Dead Sea Scrolls Fragments”) were, in order of presentations: Dr. Greg Bearman (Cal Tech), Dr. Christopher Rollston (George Washington University), Dr. Kipp Davis (Trinity Western University), Dr. Sidnie White Crawford (University of Nebraska and Princeton Theological Seminary), and Dr. Lawrence Schiffman (New York University).  Respondents were given access to the full laboratory report (i.e., all 212 pages) during the weeks prior to the symposium.   

              Dr. Jeff Kloha (Chief Curatorial Officer of the Museum of the Bible; Ph.D. University of Leeds; Kloha joined the Museum of the Bible in 2017) began the symposium with a brief welcome, and Dr. Michael Holmes (Director of the Museum of the Bible Scholars Initiative; Ph.D. Princeton Theological Seminary; Holmes joined the Museum in November 2014) provided a brief history of research on the “Museum of the Bible Dead Sea Scroll Fragments” (including the fact that these “fragments” were said to be, in part or in whole, from the Kando family, that is, the family of Khalil Eskander Shahin, who was a broker and seller of many of the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered during the late 1940s and early to mid-1950s).  Among the things that Kloha and Holmes indicated in their remarks was the fact that they fully accept the verdict of Art Fraud Insights: all sixteen Dead Sea Scroll fragments are actually modern forgeries, not ancient.  Based on the constellation of evidence (palaeographic, laboratory), it is (from my perspective, previously and also now) readily apparent that all sixteen of the Museum’s Dead Sea Scroll fragments are indeed modern forgeries.  This seemed to me to be the clear consensus of all of the respondents.

              The conclusions of Art Fraud Insights were preceded by prior laboratory tests (on a smaller selection of the Museum’s Dead Sea Scrolls fragments, tests which also suggested that these fragmentary materials were modern forgeries) and the assessments of various Biblical Scholars and Epigraphers (e.g., Dr. Kipp Davis, Dr. Arstein Justnes, Dr. Michael Langlois, among others).  Thirteen of these Dead Sea Scroll fragments had been published in a volume entitled Dead Sea Scrolls Fragments in the Museum Collection (eds. Emanuel Tov, Kipp Davis, and Robert Duke; Leiden: Brill, 2016, 236pp).  The morning of the symposium, a National Geographic article authored by Michael Greshko was published online (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/03/museum-of-the-bible-dead-sea-scrolls-forgeries/).

              It is important to put the Museum’s sixteen modern forgeries in a broader framework.  (1) First and foremost, it should be emphasized that textual forgeries have a very long history, going back to Ancient and Medieval times.  For example, the Famine Stele was an ancient Egyptian forgery (hailing from the Ptolemaic Period but purporting to come from the time of the Egyptian Old Kingdom), the Manishtushu Cruciform Monument was an ancient forgery (purporting to hail from the time of Sargon the Great’s son in the late 3rd millennium BCE, but in reality hailing from the Neo-Babylonian Period, some fifteen hundred years later), and the Donation of Constantine was a Medieval forgery (and in reality not from Constantine the Great, but a forgery from the Middle Ages which purported to be from Constantine the Great; for discussion of these, see Rollston, “Forging History: From Antiquity to the Modern Period,” 2014, pp. 177-184, and the earlier literature cited there).  (2) Textual forgeries (in Phoenician, Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, etc.) also abounded during the late 19^th century and the early 20^th century, with the Shapira Forgeries (some on stone, some on pottery, and some on parchment), the Brazilian Phoenician Forgeries, and “the Messerschmidt Clay Forgeries” (http://www.rollstonepigraphy.com/?m=201311 ).  (3) Furthermore, during the final decades of the 20^th century and the early years of the 21^st century, epigraphic forgeries continued to abound, with the Hebron Philistine Documents, the Moussaieff Ostraca, the Jehoash Inscription (all dealt with in Rollston 2003, Rollston 2004, Rollston 2005, as well as in some later articles of Rollston), the Ma’adanah Seal, the Baruch Bullae (both dealt with in Rollston 2016), the Ivory Pomegranate (dealt with in Rollston 2015), the Ya‘akov [James] Ossuary, the Jesus Wife Papyrus, the Jerusalem Papyrus (the latter two dealt with in Rollston 2017) being some of the most famous.  (4) And the list could go on.  But the point is that these forged Dead Sea Scroll fragments are part of a much broader phenomenon.  It is also important to mention that all of these forgeries of the past 150 years are connected with the Antiquities Market in some fashion. (5) The methods of forgers are varied, but can be fairly well ascertained without much difficulty.  Forgers have a multitude of tools at their disposal (see Rollston 2003, pp. 137-139, forgers can and do use the best of our lexica and grammars, the best of our epigraphic and palaeographic discussions, the best of our historical and cultural discussions.  (6) They also read our discussions of laboratory analyses (cf. Rollston 2003, pp. 182-191, for discussion of various protocols and procedures for laboratory tests, and the failings of some laboratory scientists as well), including the chemical composition of inks and patinas (and forgers will read this superb analysis by ArtFraudInsights, alas, and they will learn much from it so as to produce better forgeries on a variety of media).  And, of course, forgers can and do use ancient media (e.g., ancient potsherds, stones of Levantine quarry, ancient papyrus, ancient vellum; for fuller discussion, see Rollston 2003, pp. 138-139; Rollston 2004).  Indeed, only the most foolish of forgers would not use some ancient medium (e.g., with the hope that a carbon test on the medium may be performed and thus “authenticate” the inscription itself).  (7) And forgers have also (since at least the time of the Shapira Forgeries) attempted to create fake patinas (see Rollston 2003, pp. 183-186).  (8) Furthermore, modern forgers are also becoming quite adept at duping even some fairly good hard-scientists by salting things such as carbonized remains into their fake patinas (as was the case with the Jehoash Inscription; see Rollston 2003, pp. 183-186 et passim), and by using ancient carbonized remains (e.g., from the remains of beams burnt in antiquity) to make inks which can pass laboratory tests (dealt with especially in Rollston 2017, pp. 322-323).

              The motives of the forgers are varied.   Here are the ones which I have contended (in various publications, including Rollston 2003, pp. 191-193; Rollston 2014, pp. 176-177) are most common during the past 150 years, but many (if not all) are also part of the ancient world in some fashion. Some have suggested (or assumed) that the primary motive for forgers is economic.  True enough, venality is certainly a motive through all time.  However, I am confident that a larger number of motivations can be posited, based on known forgeries: (1) Venality (i.e., greed); (2) Hubris (i.e., the forger’s belief that he or she is too good to make mistakes, detectable or otherwise); (3) “Sour Grapes” (e.g., of a doctoral student purged from a program, or a veteran scholar who feels he or she has been slighted by another scholar); (4) Professional Rivalry (e.g., the production of a forgery which confirms something which said scholar has previously said in print); (5) Pranks (i.e., an outright joke); (6) Professional/Personal Aggrandizement (e.g., fame for being associated with some stunning new inscription from the market); (7) Religion and Politics (especially the desire to prey on the sincere beliefs, hopes, and fears of good people).  I have discussed all these in greater detail in various places through the years (again, Rollston 2003; Rollston 2004; Rollston 2014).

As an ancillary note, and as a modus operandi of forgers: namely, forgers of, dealers of, and owners of forged antiquities often seek out scholars whom they believe will “authenticate” their finds.  Along these lines, forgers, dealers, and owners know which scholars most frequently “authenticate” inscriptions (including some forgeries) from the Antiquities Market and they especially seek out the opinions of those scholars (because they want their own inscriptions to be authenticated). 

Similarly, forgers, dealers, and owners will often approach scholars whom they know do not work with epigraphic remains, but are rather “text scholars” (i.e., scholars who mostly work with edited texts rather than the actual physical objects…and so these scholars do not intimately know the look and feel of something which is actually ancient). 

It is important to mention that although some have suggested that scholars are never the culprits, the facts on the ground demonstrate otherwise.  Note, in this connection, the famous forgery published by Princeton Professor Coleman-Norton (dealt with in Rollston 2003, pp. 192-193), a forger who was outed by his own student, Bruce Metzger.

_________________________

              The Forger of the Museum of the Bible Dead Sea Scroll Forgeries: With this basic summary of some of the early history of forgeries, I should like to return, in earnest, to the forger of the Museum of the Bible’s forgeries.  I shall be fairly forthright here.  Here is a profile of the forger: I believe that the forger of these Dead Sea Scrolls forged fragments is a trained scholar in our field, with access to actual ancient scrolls.  I believe that the forger forged them during the course of a few months, or more likely, a couple years (this also accounts for some of the variation in the script).  I believe that venality (indeed, outright and blatant greed) is a primary motivation (literally, netting the forger millions of dollars for these Museum of the Bible forgeries), but greed is not the only motivation.  I believe the scholar of these forgeries is particularly hubristic, and assumed he (or she) could fool all other scholars (and also probably delighted in this assumption).  I do not think that these were forged as some sort of a joke (as was the case in the Coleman-Norton forgery and in the case of the Hebron Philistine Documents). Clearly, I believe that the forger is amoral.  Also, I believe that the forger worked primarily alone, but could have included a paid friend or associate who had at least a high-school level knowledge of chemistry (these forgeries are not sophisticated enough to have included the assistance of a trained scholar in chemistry). 

              Also, I believe that a good investigative journalist should be capable, given the resources (e.g., several months of compensated work) of a good newspaper or learned society, should be able to discover the identity of the forger.  I hope that the weight of all of the relevant national and international laws is brought forth against this forger (although, as a realist with regard to conviction rates, I suspect that the most that can be hoped is that the identity of the forger will be discovered).

              Some final reflections: The Museum of the Bible (and its precursors, associated entities, etc.) engaged in some lamentable and egregious actions, as well as lapses of professional ethics, some of which were also breaches of the law (hence the US Dept. of Justice case, of course).  This cannot, and should not, be forgotten (for all sorts of reasons).  It was bad, and it was wrong (I’m thinking here of, among other things, the purchase of many objects, including cuneiform tablets, from conflict zones in the Middle East).  And the Museum has paid a price for those actions, not only in the serious tarnishing of the reputation of the Museum and the surrender of pillaged objects and inscriptions, but also substantial financial penalties from the US Dept. of Justice.  But I have also long said, and long believed, in the possibility and importance of true penitence and the possibility of forgiveness and redemption.  Indeed, I do believe in the possibility of forgiveness and redemption, on a personal scale as well as for organizations, learned societies, and even nations. 

              So, for what it’s worth, here’s what I think in this case of these forged Dead Sea Scroll fragments now in the custody of the Museum of the Bible, and some of the broader implications.  These were purchased with the understanding that they were known prior to the enactment of the “Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property – 1970” (e.g., that they came from the Kando family and so the chain of custody was secure).  Frankly, I believe those advising the Museum at the time of the purchase were (at the very least) naïve, but that’s another story for another time.  The thing that I wish to emphasize here is that the Museum of the Bible ultimately came clean: They rapidly acknowledged that these scroll fragments might be modern forgeries and that the lore (and documents) associated with their origins might be a fabrication (indeed, I have long said that I put zero credence in any “statement about the antiquity” or “documentation” that is shown to me by an owner, collector, or dealer, as they have so many reasons to prevaricate).  Then, the Museum funded the very extensive laboratory tests (I have no idea what this must have cost, as the laboratory reports were numerous, conducted by first-tier scientists, and are reported in a tome that exceeds 200 pages….the final sum for all this work must be in the five figures, and I would not be surprised if it was in the low six figures).  And then, to top it all off, major people in the current senior leadership at the Museum (e.g., Jeff Kloha and Michael Holmes….and many others, I believe as well) have embraced the results of the laboratory report: All sixteen of these Dead Sea Scroll fragments are modern forgeries.  I would imagine that this was, and is, a tough pill to swallow.  And frankly, I’m impressed that they publically and unambiguously stated that they accept this conclusion.  Indeed, I’m impressed.  I’m not surprised, as I have come to know Jeff Kloha and Michael Holmes some during the past few years.  These are honest people, good and kind people, and smart scholars.  Frankly, I have come to like and appreciate them. 

              One final point: I have believed for a long time (and said in print long ago, after a comment to me from mentor and friend, the late Frank Moore Cross), museums should have forgery exhibits so as to raise the awareness of the public and of scholars about the problem of modern forgeries (see Rollston and Parker 2005).  The Israel Museum did this a number of years ago with regard to the Shapira Forgeries.  It was a marvelous exhibit, drew a lot of attention to the problem, did a lot of good, and my earnest hope is that the Museum of the Bible will allocate space, as a signal of its further desire to right wrongs, for an exhibit of these forged Dead Sea Scroll fragments.  And, along those same lines, since many museums have modern forgeries in their holdings (including the Smithsonian and the Met), perhaps the Museum of the Bible could work with such museums to produce a first-class exhibit about the problem of the antiquities market and the problem of modern forgeries.  That’s an exhibit I would love to see.  It’s unusual, it’s important…and, of course, the Museum does have the forgeries.

Select Bibliography

Rollston, Christopher A. “Non-Provenanced Epigraphs I: Pillaged Antiquities, Northwest Semitic Forgeries, and Protocols for Laboratory Tests.” Maarav 10 (2003): 135-193.

______.  “Non-Provenanced Epigraphs II: The Status of Non-Provenanced Epigraphs within the Broader Corpus of Northwest Semitic.” Maarav 11 (2004): 57-79.

______.  “Navigating the Epigraphic Storm: A Palaeographer Reflects on Inscriptions from the Market.”  Near Eastern Archaeology 68 (2005): 69-72.

Rollston, Christopher; Heather Dana Davis Parker.  “The Public Display of Forgeries: A Desideratum for Museums and Collections.”  Near Eastern Archaeology 68 (2005): 75.

Rollston, Christopher.  “Forging History: From Antiquity to the Modern Period.” Pp. 176-197 in Archaeologies of Text: Archaeology, Technology, and Ethics, eds. Matthew Rutz and Morag Kersel.  Joukowsky Institute Publication Series of Brown University, Oxbow Books, 2014.

______“The Ivory Pomegranate: The Anatomy of a Probable Modern Forgery.” Pp. 238-252 in Epigraphy, Philology and the Hebrew Bible: Methodological Perspectives on Philological and Comparative Study of the Hebrew Bible in Honor of Jo Ann Hackett, eds. Jeremy M. Hutton and Aaron D. Rubin. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2015.

______.  “The Bullae of Baruch ben Neriah the Scribe and the Seal of Ma‘adanah Daughter of the King: Epigraphic Forgeries of the 20th Century.” Pp. *79-90 in Eretz Israel 32: The Joseph Naveh Volume, eds. Joseph Aviram, Shmuel Ahituv, et al. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2016.

______.  “The Putative Authenticity of the New ‘Jerusalem’ Papyrus Inscription: Methodological Caution as a Desideratum,” Pp. 321-330 in Rethinking Israel: Studies in the History and Archaeology of Ancient Israel in Honor of Israel Finkelstein, ed Oded Lipschits.  Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2017.

The Bible, a New Hebrew Inscription from Jerusalem, and a High Official of Judah

Christopher A. Rollston, George Washington University (rollston@gwu.edu)
__

Introduction:

During October 2018, a particularly important piece of ancient Judean officialdom was found: an Old Hebrew bulla with the name of a high official. The press reports about this important inscription began to appear in late March and early April of 2019 (see the link to the New York Times article at the conclusion of my blog post). This is a fairly striking find, and so I especially applaud those connected with this find and the careful press reports about it (e.g., Excavators Yuval Gadot and Yiftah Shalev as well as Epigrapher Anat Mendel Geberovich) for the sober historical approach which they have taken. I consider this cautiousness to be a model for the field, and I find myself (to use a phrase of affirmation that I first heard from the late Frank Moore Cross) to be in happy agreement with the statements that Gadot, Shalev, and Mendel Geberovich have made regarding this find. At this juncture, I shall turn to some of my reflections on this bulla.

Synopsis of the Details:

I. The reading of the bulla, the palaeographic date, and its archaeological context.
The clay bulla consists of two registers. The first register reads: LNtnmlk (“Belonging to Nathan-Melek”) and the second register reading: ‘bd hmlk (“Servant of the King”). The reading is certain, as all of the letters are clear. I would date the script to the mid-7th century BCE (ca. 675-625 BCE). Indeed, I would be quite disinclined to push the date down into the early 6th century, primarily because the morphology and stance of several of the letters (e.g, nun, lamed, and especially the kap) reflect the hallmark features of the mid-7th century Old Hebrew script, not the further developments that are part of the Old Hebrew script of the late 7th or early 6th centuries BCE. It is also worth noting and emphasizing that the script of this bulla is definitively that of the Old Hebrew script. Note, for example, that the curvature at the terminal portions of the nun, mem, and kap are diagnostic markers of the Old Hebrew script (and as such, they can be distinguished from the contemporary Phoenician and Aramaic scripts as well as the daughter scripts hailing from those script traditions). It is also worth emphasizing that this bulla is aniconic (i.e., without imagery), something that is a standard feature of Old Hebrew seals (and thus also bullae) from the time after the reforms of Hezekiah (reigned ca. 715-687 BCE) and Josiah (reigned ca: 640-609 BCE). Significantly, this inscription was found on a scientific excavation in Jerusalem (namely, the City of David). Moreover, this inscription was found in the remains of a large, First Temple Period administrative building. Thus, it hails from officialdom.

II. The Personal Name Nathan-Melek: Meaning and Biblical Reference

The name “Nathan-Melek” means “The King has given.” That is, ntn is a Hebrew verb in the perfect tense, and mlk is the common noun “king.” Martin Noth’s discussion of this personal name remains current (Noth, Die israelitischen Personennamen im Rahmen der gemeinsemitischen Namengebung [Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1928], 21, 118, 170). Furthermore, as Noth correctly states, the word “Melek” is to be understood as a means of referring to God. Thus, this personal name is a means of referring to the benevolence of God. As such it is analogous to personal names such as Nathaniel (“El has given”) and Natanyahu (Yahweh has given). Of particular significance is that there is only one reference in the entire Hebrew Bible (2 Kgs 23:11) to someone with this name: Nathan-Melek a sārîs (meaning: royal attendant, or perhaps eunuch; on this see Nili Sacher Fox, In the Service of the King: Officialdom in Ancient Israel and Judah [Cincinnati: HUC Press, 2000], 196-203) in the court of King Josiah of Judah. In short, according to 2 King, a certain Nathan-Melek was a high official and was mentioned in the context of the great religious reforms of King Josiah (for the similar reforms of Hezekiah, see 2 Kings 18:3-8, etc.). Here is the fuller context of that reference in Kings: “Josiah….removed the horses which the kings of Judah had given to Shamash (the Sun God), (that is, those placed) at the entrance to the House of Yahweh (i.e., the Temple in Jerusalem) by the chamber of Nathan-Melek, the sārîs, which was in the precincts (reading with NRSV). And he burned the chariots of the (aforementioned) Shamash with fire” (2 Kings 23:11). It should be remembered that in the ancient Near East (e.g., Mesopotamia) Shamash (literally: “sun”) was often connected with horses and a chariot, in essence symbolizing the travel of the (sun) God Shamash through the sky each day. Quite obviously, the presence of the chariots of the Sun (Shamash) in the Judean Temple was understood as syncretism by King Josiah (and as such was to be removed).

III. The Title ‘bd hmlk (or ‘bd + Royal Name) “Servant of the King.”

Significantly, the term ‘bd hmlk (or ‘bd + Royal Name) is definitely not a way to designate a slave (although the term ‘bd alone can and normally does signify this), but rather it is the title of a high royal official. It is nicely attested in Northwest Semitic inscriptions. For example, a Hebrew seal was found during the excavations of 1932 at Miṣpah (Tell en-Naṣbeh) in Tomb 19 and reads: “ly’znyhw ‘bd hmlk” (“Belonging to Ya’azanyahu, servant of the king”; Nahman Avigad and Benjamin Sass, Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals; Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences, Israel Exploration Society, Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology, 1997, 52 [#8]). Similarly, Lachish Ostracon 3 (line 19) refers to a certain “Ṭbyhw ‘bd hmlk” (“Ṭobiyahu, servant of the king”; Frank Cross 1985). Along the same lines, a seal was found at Megiddo in the 1904 excavations and reads: “lšm‘ ‘bd yrb‘m” (“Belonging to Šema, servant of Jeroboam”; Avigad and Sass 1997, 49 [#2], that is, with the personal name of the king of Israel stated (rather than simply giving the title). This same title (i.e, ‘bd + hmlk or ‘bd + Royal Name) is also attested in various additional Northwest Semitic dialects (e.g., Avigad and Sass 1997, 322 [#859] from an Ammonite tomb; Avigad and Sass 1997, 322 [#860] from Tall Umeiri in the Madaba Plains; Avigad and Sass 1997, 388 [#1050]; (Avigad and Sass 1997, 389-390 [#1051] from Tell el-Kheleifeh. In addition to the epigraphic evidence, there are a number of attestations of this title (or a related title) in the Hebrew Bible as well (e.g., 2 Sam 18:29; 19:29; 2 Kgs 5:6; 2 Kgs 22:12; 2 Chr 34:20; 2 Kgs 25:8; cf. also 1 Sam 21:8; 1 Sam 29:3; 2 Chr 13:6, etc.; for discussion and earlier literature for the biblical and epigraphic materials, see Fox 2000, 53-60).

IV. Sealing Practices

Before drawing conclusions about the possible identification of the Nathan-Melek of the new bulla and the Nathan-Melek of the Hebrew Bible, some reference to the usage of stamps seals in the Iron Age Levant is useful. Namely, seals were part and parcel of the economic and legal activities of the people of the ancient Near Eastern world, particularly the elites. Seals would be used in cases, for example, of the purchase or sale of something of substantial value (e.g., land, precious metals), or in the case of a marriage, or divorce, or adoption (etc.). Within Iron Age Israel, Judah, Moab, Ammon, Edom, Phoenicia, Philistia, and Syria, stamps seals were very commonly used. Many seals have been found on scientific excavations in these regions. Most of these seals are quite round and have about the same diameter as a small coin (although they are thicker than coins). Most were made of attractive, and sometimes rare, stones (incised with a sharp incising tool, made of metal). Most seals have holes drilled through them so that a string (“cord”) could be attached to them. Some were attached in antiquity to a ring, and on rare occasions (such as tomb contexts), the seal and ring are found together. Seals with words inscribed on them are called “Epigraphic Seals.” Seals without words inscribed on them are called “Anepigraphic Seals.” Seals with imagery (e.g., animals, people) on them are called “Iconic Seals.” Seals without imagery are called “Aniconic Seals.” Some seals have words and imagery, some just imagery, some just words. Seals are often divided into “lines.” Each line is referred to as a “register.”
There are some particularly nice references to seals and sealing practices in the Hebrew Bible. Among the most detailed descriptions is the one contained in the book of Jeremiah, a prophet of the late First Temple and early Exilic Periods. Within this biblical text (Jeremiah 32), the prophet is said to have purchased a field from a kinsman of his, in the tenth year of Judean King Zedekiah (ca. 587 BCE, just as Jerusalem was about to fall to King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon). Jeremiah is said to have signed a deed of purchase, in the presence of witnesses. There were two copies of this deed (both probably written on papyrus), one the “open copy” and one the “sealed copy.” The open copy would normally be retained for rapid reference and would often have been kept by the purchaser (or a close associate). The sealed copy, however, would normally be archived, often in the house of a scribe, or in an archive of a palace or temple. The sealed copy was the binding legal copy and would only be opened if and when there was some reason to verify in a decisive legal fashion the fact or the nature of the agreement (e.g., purchase, or sale, or marriage, or adoption, or divorce, etc.). In any case, the sealed copy would be rolled up or folded up, and a string would be wrapped around it and then a small clump of wet clay would be attached carefully and precisely to the string, and then the parties to the agreement would press their seals into the clumps of wet clay (the result would be an impression of the seal in the clay, the impressed clumps of clay are referred to as “bullae,” sing: “bulla”). The seals would serve as proof of the event (e.g., purchase, sale, marriage, divorce, adoption). Note that seals are normally incised (i.e., made) in mirror image, so that when they are impressed into the clay, the resulting image is positive (i.e., in the correct orientation). Within the narrative of Jeremiah, the prophet Jeremiah gives both the sealed copy and the open copy to Baruch ben Neriah for safe keeping.

V. Nathan-Melek the servant of the King and Nathan Melek the Sārîs

Finally, some reference is in order regarding the possible identification of Nathan-Melek the Sārîs (2 Kgs 23:11) and Nathan-Melek ‘bd hmlk of this Old Hebrew bulla. (1) First and foremost, it must be emphasized that this personal name is rare. Indeed, as noted, it is attested in the Hebrew Bible for just one person. (2) Second, the figure Nathan-Melek in the Hebrew Bible is connected with King Josiah (r. ca. 640-609 BCE) of the second half of the 7th century BCE, and this is also the most convincing palaeographic date (and the archaeological context as well). (3) Third, the Nathan-Melek of the Bible and of this bulla both have royal titles. (4) This data converges to make it probable that the figure of the Bible and the figure of this bulla are one and the same. Nevertheless, it must be conceded that the two titles are different (although arguably someone referred to as a sārîs could also be referred to as an ‘bd hmlk, or conversely, could be understood to have risen to the position of an ‘bd hmlk). Ultimately, therefore, I would contend that although it is not absolutely certain that the biblical Nathan-Melek and the epigraphic Old Hebrew Nathan-Melek are the same, I would consider it most likely that we are indeed talking about one and the same. Of course, fate can sometimes be cruel, and sometimes the most convincing of assumptions proves to be false. Thus, because we do not have a patronymic for Nathan-Melek in the Bible or on the bulla, and because the titles are not identical (cf. 1 Sam 8:15; 2 Kgs 24:12), certitude remains just beyond reach. But, as for me, I am entirely comfortable considering it most likely, or virtually certain, that 2 Kings 23:11 and this bulla refer to the same person.

Addendum: Added at 3:50 p.m. on 1 April 2019: It is useful for me to mention that because of the practice of patronymy and the practice of papponymy, someone might wish to contend that this bulla is not that of biblical Nathan-Melek, but rather that of his son (or grandson). Also…in terms of an additional PN that contains some related data, see also Elimelech (my God is King”) in the book of Ruth.

The ‘Isaiah Bulla’ and the Putative Connection with Biblical Isaiah: A Case Study in Propospography

By Christopher Rollston, George Washington University (rollston@gwu.edu)

The Old Hebrew bulla excavated by Dr. Eilat Mazar, and published in Biblical Archaeology Review (March-May 2018) in an article entitled _Is this the Prophet Isaiah’s Signature(pages 65-73, notes on page 92) is of much interest and certainly merits substantive and substantial discussion.
____
Prolegomenon. It is perhaps useful in this connection to reference certain components of the time-line, as things have developed fairly rapidly, and I’ve been trying to carve out a few hours during the past few days to discuss this interesting find (hence this third blog on the bulla). During the afternoon of February 21, 2018, I was contacted by National Geographic to provide my reflections on the press release about an article on the “Yesha’yahu Bulla, an article slated to be published online at midnight that evening. Thus, after clearing my desk some, and after reading closely the press release, I wrote up my brief reflections about the need for caution regarding the assumption that this bulla was made from a seal of Isaiah the Prophet. I sent this off to National Geographic within about two hours of the original request. Biblical Archaeology Review published their article (i.e., the editio princeps) on February 21, 2018, and various news-outlets, of course, subsequently released their articles, including National Geographic. A number of my statements were included in that story (https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/02/prophet-isaiah-jerusalem-seal-archaeology-bible/). I found the National Geographic story to be very useful, especially since most or all other news-outlets seem to have presumed that this bulla was probably (or was certainly) that of Isaiah the Prophet. Around 8:30 a.m. on February 22, 2018, prior to heading off to teach, I posted the full version of my comments to my blog (http://www.rollstonepigraphy.com/?p=796), in which I mentioned (as I had to National Geographic) my core concerns, namely, the root yš‘ is a very productive root for personal names (with around twenty people in the Hebrew Bible with names derived from that root, thus, revealing that there many people with the name “Isaiah,” or some similar name based on the same root, in Judah during any given time; as well as my concern about the absence of an alep (which is essential for understanding this to be the word for prophet); my concern about the presence of a presumed internal yod mater lectionis (in light of the dearth of internal matres lectionis in Hebrew inscriptions of the late 8th and early 7th centuries BCE and in light of the fact the Lachish Letter 3.20 does *not* have the mater); my concern about the absence of the article (as in the majority of occurrences in ancient Hebrew of the word “prophet,” it is linguistically definite); as well as a notation about the fact that there are a number of proper nouns in Hebrew that begin with the root letters nun and bet. Mazar’s article anticipated some of these criticisms, and her article uses the phrasing “may” be the bulla of Isaiah the Prophet, but the thrust of the article is about the prophetic figure. In any case, a day later, that is, at ca. 1:00 p.m. on February 23, 2018, I went live with a second post on this bulla, fleshing out some of my suggestions in my first blog (of February 22nd), including and especially the various possibilities for the letters nun, bet, yod (nby) of the third register (http://www.rollstonepigraphy.com/?p=801). Now, at this time (February 26, 2018), I here posting some additional details about this bulla, especially regarding the three letters on the third register, heavily incorporating data from my previous two blog posts. Note that this third blog post is the basis for a forthcoming article in a traditional publication venue (i.e., a print publication, rather than just a blog).

__
Discussion of Bulla
__
Material: Impressed Clay.

Condition of Bulla: Partially Broken.

Reading of Bulla: First Register: Partially broken, fragmentary iconograhic element; Second Register: L-yš‘yh[w]; Third Register: nby. Note the absence of bn “son of” (but note that this morpheme is sometimes absent from patronymics in the epigraphic record).

Thus, the bulla reads “Yešayahu, nby”

NB: The word that follows the first personal name on a seal (and, thus, a bulla) is normally: a patronymic, a gentilic (descriptor), or a title.
__
Date: this inscription putatively dates to the 8th century or the early 7th century. That is, I would emphasize that the script is the script of the late 8th or early 7th century BCE, and there is no way to be more precise than that. And, of course, the archaeological context is not such that the date can be stated to be only the 8th century. Ultimately, a date in the late 8th century is permissible, but so is a date in the early 7th century.
__
Potential Problems with understanding nby on the third register as prophet, that is, potential problems with assuming that the third register is to be understood as reading: nby[’]:

The fact that an alep is not present, or preserved, after the yod is of critical importance. Without it, we do not have the word for prophet. With it, we would not be conversing about this…because if there were an alep there, then we would have the word prophet (or a verbal or nominative based on that same root). But, alas, we don’t have it, hence the necessity of this conversation (and I do not find it convincing to contend that because of the, especially later, quiescent nature of the alep, it simply wasn’t written on this bulla; after all, we have it present in many Iron Age inscriptions, including in the very word for prophet in Lachish 3:20). I have essentially noted all of this previously but also emphasize it here as a point of departure. Ultimately, this entire conversation (about wanting to read the word prophet here, even though we don’t have a critically important letter that must be present to make the case with certainty), reminds me of the previous attempts to contend that he broken Hebrew seal with the letters “yzbl” must refer to Queen Jezebel (I deal with those analogous assumptions in an article entitled “Prosopography and the YZBL Seal” in IEJ 59 [2009]: 86-91). That’s not the only possible reading of that seal; similarly, reading “prophet” on this bulla is not the only possible reading here.

Furthermore, the preponderance of the occurrences of the word for prophet are definite (either via the usage of the article, or via the presence of a pronominal suffix, or in a construct chain in which the nomen rectum is definite). I have noted all of this in the previous posts, but emphasize it here as well. And it is also worth emphasizing that the epigraphic occurrence of the word prophet (h-nb’) in Lachish 3:20 conforms with this pattern. In any case, as I have noted, the absence of the article here does not mean that this word cannot be the word for prophet, but it merits attention nonetheless, as it is concerning. Furthermore, after noticing that Eilat Mazar’s article suggests (e.g., in the accompanying drawing) that the article (i.e., the hey) could be reconstructed at the end of the preceding line, I would emphasize that I find that very, very difficult to accept. There is simply no room at the end of the previous line for that letter (note that the Old Hebrew letter hey normally takes up a fair amount of horizontal space). Anat Mendel-Geberovich has indicated to me that she also believes that there is not sufficient space for the letter hey at the end of the preceding line.

Moreover, as I mentioned in the previous blog posts, if this word on the bulla is the word “prophet” (i.e, if someone were to assume that the alep were really present and that we have the word for prophet), the presence of a yod mater lectionis is thus different from the attested spelling of this word in epigraphic Hebrew, namely, Lachish Letter 3, line twenty (an inscription that dates to the early 6th century, a time period during which we see even more internal matres lections). ). Moreover, as I also mentioned in my previous posts, although we do have internal matres lectionis in Old Hebrew inscriptions, beginning in the late eighth century, it is rare (for discussion and bibliography, see “Scribal Education in Ancient Israel: The Old Hebrew Epigraphic Evidence.” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 344 [2006]: 47-74, especially pages 61-66). Ultimately, because we do not have the yod in the Lachish Ostracon, it could be suggested that this weakens the case for this being the word prophet in this new bulla (and, as noted, the absence of the alep is a major obstacle).

Or again, as I have mentioned in my previous posts, it is also the case that the Hebrew names are based on Hebrew roots, of course, and the root yš‘ (yod, shin, ‘ayin) is the basis not just for the name of Isaiah the prophet, but for almost twenty different people in the Bible (from various periods). And this name persists deeply into the Second Temple Period as well, with at least a dozen attestations (see, for example, Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity, Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, 2002, p. 180). Thus, during any given period, there were likely a number of people running around in Judah, and the city of Jerusalem, who had the name Isaiah (or a form thereof, based on the same Hebrew root).
__
Nevertheless, it seems that in spite of the absence of the critically important alep (etc.), and in spite of the absence of an article, the presence of the yod, and the prevalence of the PN “Isaiah,” some have contended that this bulla is that (or most likely that) of the prophet Isaiah. And most have argued this because they believe that about the only reasonable understanding of the letters nby is to restore an alep and read the word “prophet.”
__
Before proceeding, I would emphasize (and reiterate) in this connection that those proposing this are presupposing the yod is an internal mater lectionis and that there is sufficient space after the yod for an additional letter.
__
It is useful, therefore, for me to reference again (while also augmenting my previous posts at times) some of the various additional possibilities that must be considered for nby. Here are a few options:

(1) The name Nbyt (attested as a personal name, often contended to be a gentilic of sorts, in Genesis 25:13). Such a proposal would suggest that the yod is an internal mater lectionis and that there is sufficient space after the yod for an additional letter. In this case, the word would arguably be a patronymic.

(2) The name Nbṭ (i.e, with the final consonant a ṭet). This personal name is attested within the Hebrew Bible (e.g. 1 Kgs 11:26) as well as in Old South Arabic personal names (see (see M. Noth, Die israelitischen Personennamen im Rahmen der gemeinsemitischen Namengebung, Beiträge zur Wissenschaft vom Alten und Neuen Testament, III, 10. Stuttgart, 1928 [reprint: Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1966], pages 36, 186). This name seems to be based on a root that means “bring to light.” Such a proposal (i.e., for this word) would suggest that the yod is an internal mater lectionis and that there is sufficient space after the yod for an additional letter (note that although the formation in the Bible is based on this root, the form on the bulla would need to reflect a different formation so as to account for the yod as a mater lectionis; thus, in this case, one could posit a qattîl or a qātîl. For these formations, see Bruce K. Waltke and M. O’Connor, Biblical Hebrew Syntax, Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1990, section 5.4, page 89). In this case, the word would arguably be a patronymic (as in the previous case).

(3) The name Nabil is also something that is plausible, a name that arguably has a core semantic domain of meanings such as “noble,” “wise,” “light,” or “flame.” This proposal would suggest that there is room for a letter after the bulla’s yod. Note that there is, of course, a very famous pun (cf. the phenomenon of nominal pejorative equivoces) in the Bible (1 Sam 25:25) on a personal name “Nabal” (I dealt with this name in “Ad Nomen Argumenta: Personal Names as Pejorative Puns in Ancient Texts,” in the volume entitled In the Shadow of Bezalel: Aramaic, Biblical, and Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honor of Bezalel Porten, ed. Alejandro F. Botta. Leiden: Brill, 2013, pages 367-386; in that article I follow James Barr, with regard to this personal name). In the case of this personal name, (especially) the qattîl formation or (perhaps) the qātîl formulation, would arguably account for a yod mater lectionis (Bruce K. Waltke and M. O’Connor, Biblical Hebrew Syntax, Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1990, section 5.4, page 89). In this case, the word would arguably be a patronymic (as in the previous cases).

(4) The root Nbz. This word is attested in Imperial Aramaic (see Hoftijzer and Jongeling, Dictionary of the Northwest-Semitic Inscriptions, Leiden: Brill, sv Nbz) and seems to mean something such as “document,” “receipt.” In this case, as with the previous possibilities, it would be presupposed that there is room after the yod of the bulla for an additional letter, and in the case of this word, the yod would be understood as a mater lectionis, and the word could be understood as a title, something such as “recorder” (on the subject of foreign words and loan words in Northwest Semitic, see works such as Stephen A. Kaufman, The Akkadian Influences on Aramaic (Assyriological Studies 19), Chicago: University of Chicago 1974; Paul V. Mankowski, Akkadian Loanwords in Biblical Hebrew, Harvard Semitic Studies 47, Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2000). Of course, in the case of a title, I would also prefer for there to be a definite article (hey), since we often get it with titles. But since some are willing to propose that the article is not necessary before the word “prophet,” then I think it is also fair to state that it could be nbz as a title (or, less likely, a personal name), with a yod mater (and someone could propose that it follows a formation such as a qattîl or a qātîl. For these formations, see again Bruce K. Waltke and M. O’Connor, Biblical Hebrew Syntax, Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1990, section 5.4, page 89). I should emphasize that I might in this case contend that the title could have entered Hebrew through Akkadian (something that would not be sui generis in Hebrew, of course). Ultimately, I do not think that this would be the most compelling restoration (i.e., of a zayin), but, again, there is a remote possibility, depending on the kind of formation that someone might propose.

(5) There are a number of personal names (in various languages, including Hebrew) that are built upon the theorphic element Nb- (i.e, the God Nabu). It is possible that the bulla’s nb is this theophoric element, but space constraints would perhaps militate against this (as the non-theophoric component would require at least two or three letters and there is not sufficient space for that), as would perhaps also a putative Judean having such a name in the late 8th century or early 7th century, as would perhaps also, of course, the presence of a yod on the bulla (but…the yod might not be a problem, if, for example, it were part of a verbal or nominal modifier). Of course, the spelling of this DN would normally include a waw. Note also in this connection that double names are a well-known phenomenon in the Semitic world, as well as later in the Greco-Roman world (and thus one could conceivably argue that the first name is the Hebrew name and the second name is an Akkadian name for the same person; cf. of course, later cases such as Hadassah = Esther; Daniel = Belteshazzar; Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah = Shadrack, Meshach, Abednego [Abednebo[; Saul = Paul, etc.). Again, I am disinclined to embrace this possibility, but it is theoretically possible.

(6) The GN (geographic noun) “Nob” comes readily to mind and this famous biblical GN (e.g., 1 Sam 21:2, et passim) is one of those I had in mind in my initial post with my reference to proper-noun possibilities (hence the choice of the term proper “noun” rather than “personal name” in that initial post). In this case, it might be possible to contend that the word Nby of the bulla is a gentilic, meaning something such as “Nobite.” Moreover, Lawson Younger has indeed suggested that understanding Nby as a gentilic (e.g., “Nobite,” and thus “Isaiah the Nobite”) is something he considers quite appealing; and Nathaniel Greene has independently indicated to me that he is inclined to view it this way. Furthermore, Nadav Na’aman has independently indicated to me that he embraces this understanding, and he has noted the name Nobay (Nobite) in Nehemiah 10:20 (cf. also the spelling in LXX). And Younger, Greene, and Na’aman have (cumulatively) also referenced three seals from the antiquities market in this regard and one from Lachish (see Nahman Avigad and Benjamin Sass, Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals, Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1997, #379; #227; #693; and from an excavation, #530 [Lachish]). Of these, I would emphasize that #530 is from an excavation and so it is the one that can best carry the weight, that is, be considered the best evidence for the presence of this reading in the epigraphic record. In addition Na’aman has drawn my attention to H. Rechenmacher’s Althebraische Personennamen, Munster 2012, 179. In this case, “Nobite” would be a gentilic (rather than a patronymic or a title). Obviously, in this case the yod could be viewed as a final mater (and these are nicely attested as early as the late 9th and early 8th centuries BCE), but, as P. Kyle McCarter has emphasized (personal communication) the yod probably represents -at, only later developing to final î. Furthermore, as Kyle McCarter has also emphasized, if this is a straightforward gentilic, we would also want the article here “the Nobay,” “the Nobite.” Thus, McCarter has indicated that his preference is to understand this as an original gentilic (ay) which had become a personal name (as also with the father of Zephaniah, “Cushi”, Zeph 1:1), thus, yielding for this bulla a standard patronymic, “Isaiah (son of) Nobay.” And because the father of the prophet Isaiah’s is named “Amoz” (Isa 1:1), this is clearly not a bulla of Isaiah the prophet (cf. the #379, from the market, which does have bn before nby).
And the elegance of this is that there is no presumption that there is a letter after the yod and there is no need to resort to an internal matres lectionis to account for the yod. Note in this connection that Lawrence Mykytiuk has indeed mentioned to me the fact that he is not convinced there is enough space for a letter after the yod. I have similar concerns.

(7) Within the corpus of ancient Hebrew (biblical and epigraphic), a final yod (or alep) can function as a hypocoristic element (with the hypocoristic signifying a DN). This yod was arguably consonantal at first, rather than being a pure mater lectionis. As for the final yod, note, gor example, ’ḥzy (Reisner Samaria Ostracon 25:3; meaning something such as “DN has seized”), bgy (EnGedi 2:6; arguably meaning something such as “DN has enriched,” so F.W. Dobbs-Allsopp J.J. M. Roberts, C.L. Seow, R.E. Whitaker, Hebrew Inscriptions, New Haven: Yale, 2005, 596), m‘šy (Arad 22:4; meaning something such as “work of DN”), ‘wpy (Jer 40:8; Khirbet el-Qom), šby (Yavneh Yam 1, end of line 7 and beginning of 8, meaning something such as “DN has returned”), and bqy (1 Chr 5:31; 6:36; an ostracon from Jerusalem, arguably from a geminate root or a medial w/y root). In addition, reference can also be made to ḥgy (Gen 46:16; Numb 26:15; and with epigraphic attestations, for example, in Hebrew, Phoenician, Old South Arabic, as well as later Arabic, and often understood to be a way of referring to someone who was born on a festal day), and also yš‘y (1 Chr 2:31, et passim; this being arguably a shortened form of yš‘yhw, but note also the Phoenician form of this personal name with an alep hyporistic and thus certainly not a Yahwistic theophoric). Thus, with that evidence in mind, and now as for the bulla’s third register reading of nby, it is useful to note that there is a Northwest Semitic geminate root nbb (also attested in the Bible, but with some etymologies that might not necessarily yield a great personal name), a Northwest Semitic middle waw root (attested in the Bible and the epigraphic corpus with the meaning “prosper,” or “rain abundantly,” and so something that would yield a good personal name), and a Northwest Semitic middle yod root meaning “fruit,” “give fruit” (and thus something that would yield a good personal name; cf. Isa 57:19, et passim; cf. also Mal 1:12). And, furthermore, it is possible that this putative gentilic in Neh 10:20 is actually to be connected with this root. In this case, the yod of the bulla’s nby (and thus also the Bible’s) would be a hypocoristic; and in this case there would be no need to restore a letter after the yod, and there is no need to resort to understanding the yod as an internal mater lectionis (something that, as noted, is difficult to have so early, as they are so rare in the late 8th or early 7th century). And, of course, as noted, the latter two roots mentioned in this paragraph would yield good personal names. The elegance of numbers 6 and 7 (in terms of not needing to resort to any special pleading) is particularly attractive. And, of course, in this case, the second name is a patronymic (cf. #379, from the market, which does have bn before nby). And because the name of the father of the prophet Isaiah is given as “Amoz” (Isa 1:1) this is clearly not a bulla of Isaiah the prophet.

(8) Furthermore, if one were to contend that the middle waw or middle yod root above is the operative one in this name, one could also argue (if someone believed that there was room after the yod for an additional letter) that the yod of the bulla is actually followed by a hey (although that would not necessarily be required) and that this is a PN (based on the middle waw or middle yod roots) and it is to be understood as something such as “Yahweh has given fruit” or “Yahweh has granted abundantly.”

(9) And there are additional options (e.g., a 1cs pronominal suffix on a verbal or nominal consisting of nb), which I will discuss in the print version of the article on this bulla (including, for the sake of thoroughness, discussion of the p > b phenomenon that is attested in epigraphic Old Hebrew, among other places). I do not think that this is operative in the case of the bulla, but it would open additional linguistic possibilities (including various personal names, such as biblical npyš).
___

Ultimately, the conclusion is that there are a number of different possibilities for the second word of this inscription. I have listed some of them here, and there are at least five to seven additional ones that could be listed. The “take away” is this. I would like to be able to say that this bulla is that of the prophet Isaiah, but that’s not at all the sole possibility, and although some of the suggestions here (above) are more likely than others (I have a slight methodological preference for options six and seven, as they do not require the positing of an internal mater lectionis and they do not require the addition of a letter after the yod, something which may be important in light of the apparent space constraints), it is certainly not the case that one can weight them in such a fashion as to affirm or declare that this or that one is *the* most likely. Some are more probable than others, but that’s about as far as good methodology allows us to go. And so the reading nby’ (“prophet”) will remain one of a number of various possibilities. Some will want certainly want “prophet” (nby[y]) to be *the* correct restoration (or understanding), but in light of the various alternatives, that is a very subjective opinion. And it’s important to be forthright about stating this. Alas, ultimately, we must always attempt to reflect deeply and broadly on restorations and readings. And in the case of this bulla, I think that there are a number of additional options and there is no empirical method of making a decisive determination.

Final Reflections on Broader Themes: It is perhaps useful to emphasize an additional, important facet of all such finds: we as a field are best served, of course, by always being vigilant and careful in the wake of a new archaeological or epigraphic find. Indeed, Carol Meyers and Eric Meyers felt this so strongly (in the wake of the Talpiyot Tomb media blitz) that they convened a symposium at Duke University in April 2009, and the volume entitled Archaeology, Bible, Politics, and the Media (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2012), was published on the basis of the lectures given at that symposium. Within my lecture at that symposium and my article in the volume (“An Ancient Medium in the Modern Media: Sagas of Semitic Inscriptions,” pages 123-136), I recount a number of occasions during the past fifty years in which there was a fair amount of distance between the early sensational claims made about various finds and the cold, hard historical and philological reality, namely, that the finds were, in fact, very nice finds, but fairly standard and mundane in terms of actual content and significance. I would like to reiterate here some of my concluding thoughts at the end of that article in the Meyers and Meyers volume: (1) “Scholars who interface with the media must always strive to be circumspect and intentional…searching for critiques of conclusions rather than just collegial confirmation”; (2) “Scholars must always remember that epigraphic finds are rarely as ‘dramatically important,’ ‘sensational,’ or ‘stunning’ as they might seem at first blush”; (3) “‘Gale-force winds’ often develop when inscriptions are discovered and the media typically want rapid and decisive comment, especially if the find putatively connects with something that is important biblically, religiously, or politically. Scholars should remind the media that the best constructs of the data are usually the result of a slow, methodical, scholarly process…” (p. 133); (4) Long ago, Max Miller emphasized to me that after some misunderstanding gets out in the public or scholarly world (and he was referencing especially things such as a mislabeling of a site on a biblical map), it becomes virtually impossible to excise. (5) In sum, methodological caution and methodological rigor are always “desiderata.”

Christopher Rollston, George Washington University (rollston@gwu.edu).

Acknowledgements: I am grateful to P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., Nadav Na’aman, Jason Bembry, Joel Burnett, Larry Mykytiuk, Nathaniel Greene, Anat Mendel-Geberovich, and Lawson Younger for discussing matters related to this bulla with me.

The Isaiah Bulla from Jerusalem: 2.0

By Christopher Rollston, George Washington University (rollston@gwu.edu)

The Old Hebrew bulla excavated by Dr. Eilat Mazar, and published in Biblical Archaeology Review (March-May 2018) in an article entitled _Is this the Prophet Isaiah’s Signature(pages 65-73, notes on page 92) is of much interest, as noted in my previous post on this subject.

Date: this inscription putatively dates to the 8th century or the early 7th century. That is, I would emphasize that the script is the script of the late 8th or early 7th century BCE, and there is no way to be more precise than that. And, of course, the archaeological context is not such that the date can be stated to be only the 8th century. Ultimately, a date in the late 8th century is permissible, but so is a date in the early- to mid- 7th century. We must be candid about that.

In any case, within this post, I wish to emphasize certain things that I mentioned in the previous post and also especially to flesh out some of the possibilities for the second word, that is, word, or word fragment, that is present on the third register: nun, bet, yod. As with my previous post, this will be done in brief. I will publish a full journal article on this bulla at a later date in the near future. In any case, my view is that this second word could be a patronymic (in which case this bulla is certainly not Isaiah the Prophet’s as his father was Amoz), a title, or a gentilic.

The fact that an alep is not present, or preserved, after the yod is of critical importance. Without it, we do not have the word for prophet. With it, we would not be conversing about this…because if there were an alep there, then we would have the word prophet (or a verbal or nominal of the same root). But, alas, we don’t have it, hence the necessity of this conversation (and I do not find it convincing to contend that because of the [especially later], quiescent nature of the alep, it simply wasn’t written on this bulla; after all, we have it present in many Iron Age inscriptions, including in the very word for prophet in Lachish 3:20. I have essentially noted all of this previously but also emphasize it here as a point of departure.

Ultimately, this entire conversation (about wanting to read the word prophet here, even though we don’t have a critically important letter that must be present to make the case with certainty), reminds me of the previous attempts to contend that the broken Hebrew seal with the letters “yzbl” must refer to Queen Jezebel (I deal with those analogous assumptions in an article entitled “Prosopography and the YZBL Seal” in IEJ 59 (2009): 86-91). Jezebel is not the only possible reading of that seal, and reading “prophet” on this bulla is not the only possible reading here.

Furthermore, the preponderance of the occurrences of the word for prophet (nb’) in ancient Hebrew are definite (either via the usage of the article, or via the presence of a pronominal suffix, or in a construct chain in which the nomen rectum is definite). I have noted all of this in the previous post, but emphasize it here as well. And it is also worth emphasizing that the epigraphic occurrence of the word prophet (h-nb’) in Lachish 3:20 conforms with this pattern. In any case, as I have noted, the absence of the article here does not mean that this word cannot be the word for prophet, but it merits attention nonetheless, as it is concerning. Furthermore, after noticing that Eilat Mazar’s article suggests (e.g., in the accompanying drawing) that the article (i.e., the hey) could be reconstructed at the end of the preceding line, I would emphasize that I find that restoration very, very difficult to accept. There is simply no room at the end of the previous line for that letter (note that the Old Hebrew letter hey normally takes up a fair amount of horizontal space). Anat Mendel-Geberovich has indicated to me that she also believes that there is not sufficient space for the letter hey at the end of the preceding line.

Moreover, if this word on the bulla is the word “prophet” (i.e, if someone were to assume that the alep were present on the seal and thus assume that we have the word for prophet), the presence of a yod mater is thus different from the attested spelling of this word in epigraphic Hebrew, namely, Lachish Letter 3, line twenty (an inscription that dates to the early 6th century, a time period during which we see a growing number of more internal matres lections in Old Hebrew). As I mentioned in my previous post, this problem is not insurmountable, but it is noteworthy. Furthermore, as I noted in my previous post, we do have internal matres lectionis attested in the late 8th century (“Scribal Education in Ancient Israel: The Old Hebrew Epigraphic Evidence,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 344 (2006): 47-74, esp 61-66), but it is not the norm.

Or again, as I have mentioned in my previous post, it is also the case that the Hebrew names are based on Hebrew roots, of course, and the root yš‘ (yod, shin, ‘ayin) is the basis not just for the name of Isaiah the prophet, but for almost twenty different people in the Bible (from various periods). And this name persists deeply into the Second Temple Period as well, with at least a dozen attestations (see, for example, Tal Ilan’s, Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity, Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, 2002, p. 180). Thus, during any given period, there were likely a number of people running around who had the name Isaiah (or a form thereof, based on the same Hebrew root).
________

Nevertheless, it seems that in spite of the absence of the critically important alep (etc.), some have contended that this bulla is that of the prophet Isaiah. And some have argued this because they believe that the second word, that is, the letters nby, are to be understood as the word “prophet.” It is useful, therefore, for me to expand on my brief reference in my previous post to the fact that the word “prophet” (nby[‘]) was not the only viable understanding of the extant letters. Here are some of a number of other possible understandings, with the assumption that there is room for an additional letter after the yod (which is something that is certainly presupposed by those advocating that we are to understand the word “prophet” on this bulla). In any case, here are a few options, some of which presuppose that there is a letter after the yod and some of which do not presuppose this:

(1) The name Nbyt (attested as a personal name, arguably a gentilic, in Genesis 25:13). Such a proposal would suggest that there is enough room on the bulla, after the yod, for an additional letter.

(2) The name Nbṭ. A personal name based on this root is attested within the Hebrew Bible (e.g. 1 Kgs 11:26) as well as in Old South Arabic personal names (see M. Noth, Die israelitischen Personennamen im Rahmen der gemeinsemitischen Namengebung, Beiträge zur Wissenschaft vom Alten und Neuen Testament, III, 10. Stuttgart, 1928 [reprint: Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1966], pages 36, 186). This name seems to be based on a root that means “bring to light.” As with the previous proposal, this proposal would presuppose that there is enough room after the yod for an additional letter. Moreover, the preserved yod on the bulla, could be understood in this case as being a mater (although the formation in the Bible is based on this root, it reflects a different formation and so a mater is not present).

(3) The name Nabil is also something that is plausible, a name that arguably has a core semantic domain of meanings such as “noble,” “wise,” “light,” or “flame.” There is, of course, a very famous pun (cf. the phenomenon of nominal pejorative equivoces) in the Bible (1 Sam 25:25) on a personal name “Nabal” (I dealt with this name in “Ad Nomen Argumenta: Personal Names as Pejorative Puns in Ancient Texts,” in the volume entitled In the Shadow of Bezalel: Aramaic, Biblical, and Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honor of Bezalel Porten, ed. Alejandro F. Botta. Leiden: Brill, 2013), pages 367-386; in that article I follow James Barr, with regard to this personal name). In this regard, cf. the Qattîl formulation, arguably with a yod mater (Bruce K. Waltke and M. O’Connor, Biblical Hebrew Syntax, Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1990, section 5.4, page 89), which could account for the yod on the bulla.

(4) The root Nbz. This word is attested in Imperial Aramaic (see Hoftijzer and Jongeling, Dictionary of the Northwest-Semitic Inscriptions, Leiden: Brill, sv Nbz) and seems to me something such as “document,” “receipt.” Understanding the yod as a mater, this word could be understood as a nomen occupationis, that is, something such as “recorder” (on the subject of foreign words and loan words in Northwest Semitic, see works such as Stephen A. Kaufman, The Akkadian Influences on Aramaic (Assyriological Studies 19), Chicago: University of Chicago 1974; Paul V. Mankowski, Akkadian Loanwords in Biblical Hebrew, Harvard Semitic Studies 47, Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2000). Of course, in this case, I would prefer the definite article (hey) as well (since we often get it with titles), but since some are willing to propose that the article is not necessary before the word “prophet,” then I think it is also fair to state that it could be nbz as a title, with a yod mater, and that it follows the standard pattern for nomen occupationis (Bruce K. Waltke and M. O’Connor, Biblical Hebrew Syntax, Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1990, section 5.4, page 89). In this case, I should emphasize that I might in this case contend that the title could have entered Hebrew through Akkadian (something that would not be sui generis in Hebrew).

(5) It might also be possible to contend that the word Nby is a gentilic, meaning something such as “Nobite” and since we do have the GN “Nob” attested in the Bible, this is a viable option as well (cf. 1 Sam 21:2). Indeed, Lawson Younger has suggested that this is something he considers possible and Nathaniel Greene has independently indicated that he is inclined to view it this way. Both Younger and Greene have mentioned in this connection the famous Old Hebrew seal from the antiquities market that has a PN followed by Nby, “the Nobite” (see Nahman Avigad and Benjamin Sass, Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals, Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1997, #379; cf. also #227).

(6) There are a number of personal names (in various languages, including Hebrew) that are built upon the theorphic element Nb (i.e, the God Nabu). It is possible that the bulla’s nb is this theophoric element, but space constraints would perhaps militate against this (as the non-theophoric component would require at least two or three letters and there is not sufficient space for that), as would perhaps also a putative Judean having such a name in the late 8th century or early 7th century, as would perhaps also, of course, the presence of a yod on the bulla (but…the yod might not be a problem, if, for example, it were part of a verbal or nominal modifier). Note also in this connection that double names are a well-known phenomenon in the Semitic world, as well as later in the Greco-Roman world (and thus one could conceivably argue that the first name is the Hebrew name and the second name is an Akkadian name for the same person; cf. of course, later cases such as Hadassah = Esther; Daniel = Belteshazzar; Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah = Shadrack, Meshach, Abednego [Abednebo[; Saul = Paul, etc.). Again, I am disinclined to embrace this possibility, but it is theoretically possible.

(7) Within Semitic, because of middle w/y words and because of geminate roots, there are a number of additional possibilities.

(8) Furthermore, it is possible to contend that there is a hey or alep after the yod (forming the theophoric yh, or forming some sort of hypocoristic).

(9) Finally, I wish to emphasize that it is possible that there is not enough space after the yod for an additional letter. Along those lines, Lawrence Mykytiuk has indeed mentioned to me the fact that he is not convinced there is enough space for a letter after the yod.

______

Ultimately, the conclusion is that there are a number of different possibilities for the second word of this inscription. I have listed some of them here, and there are at least five to seven additional ones that could be listed. The “take away” is this. I would like to be able to say that this bulla is that of the prophet Isaiah, but that’s not at all the sole possibility, and although some of the suggestions here (above) are more likely than others, it is certainly not the case that one can weight them in such a fashion as to affirm or declare that this or that one is *the* most likely. Some are more probable than others, but that’s about as far as good methodology allows us to go. And so the reading nby’ will remain one of a number of possibilities. Some will want that one (nby[y]) to be the correct restoration (or understanding), but in light of the various alternatives, that is a very subjective opinion. And it’s important to be forthright about stating this. Alas, we must always attempt to reflect deeply and broadly on restorations and readings. And in the case of this bulla, I think that there are a number of additional options and there is no empirical method of making a decisive determination.

Christopher Rollston, George Washington University (rollston@gwu.edu).
Acknowledgements: I am grateful to Jason Bembry, Joel Burnett, Larry Mykytiuk, Lawson Younger, Anat Mendel Geberovich, and Nathaniel Greene for discussing matters related to this seal with me.

The Putative Bulla of Isaiah the Prophet: Not so Fast

The Old Hebrew bulla excavated by Dr. Eilat Mazar, and published in Biblical Archaeology Review (March-May 2018) in an article entitled _Is this the Prophet Isaiah’s Signature(pages 65-73, notes on page 92) is of much interest.

Numerous stamp seals and bullae have been discovered in the Iron Age Levant. For a synopsis of the use and significance, see the article entitled “Seals and Scarabs” (Volume 5, pages 141-146 in _The New Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible_, Nashville, Abingdon Press, 2009, available via my www.academia.edu page).

This new bulla consists of three registers. Much of the top portion of this bulla is missing (including much of the top register), so the bulla is not fully preserved. The first register has no legible letters (although some iconography is preserved). The second register of the bulla reads “L-yš‘yh[w].” The third register has three preserved letters: “nby.”

Although cautious, it is stated in the press release and in the article itself that this bulla (a lump of clay that has been impressed by a seal) may say “Belonging to Isaiah the Prophet” (note that the lamed [L] at the beginning of the bulla is best translated “belonging to,” and the personal name after this lamed is the personal name “Isaiah” (with the Yahwistic theophoric mostly preserved). The third register, as noted, has the letters nby. Note also that the first the two Hebrew consonants for the word “prophet” are nun and bet, that is, nb).

It would be nice if this bulla did refer to the prophet Isaiah of the Bible, but it would not be wise to assume that this bulla definitely reads that way or that it definitely refers to Isaiah the prophet. In this regard, I very much applaud Dr. Mazar for not assuming that this bulla is definitively that of Isaiah the prophet. That is, the operative word is “may.”

In any case, here are briefly some of the reasons for my methodological caution regarding the assumption that this is a bulla associated with Isaiah the Judean prophet of the eighth century:

(1) Hebrew names are based on Hebrew roots, of course, and the root yš‘ (yod, shin, ‘ayin) is the basis not just for the name of Isaiah the prophet, but for almost twenty different people in the Bible (from various periods). In any case, because this root was such a productive root with regard to personal names (and certainly also, therefore, the root used for the names of many, many people who are not mentioned in the Bible), it is very clear there were lots of people walking around in the 8th century and 7th century BCE with the name Isaiah, or names that were based on the exact same root-word.

(2) Most of the time, the second name on a seal is the name of the father of the owner of the seal (often preceded by the word /ben/ meaning “son of.” However, sometimes a title does occur as the second element, but it is much less common.

(3) The critically important letter that would be needed to confirm that the second word is the title “prophet” is an alep. But no aleph is legible on this bulla, and so that reading cannot be confirmed at all.

(4) Compounding this problem is the fact that in the Hebrew Bible, there are around a dozen proper nouns that begin with the letters “nb” (that is, place names or personal names that begin with those two letters) and so that second word could be a number of different things, including the name of the father…and in that case, it would definitely not be the bulla of the prophet Isaiah, as his father’s name was Amoz (Isaiah 1:1).

(5) The presence of the yod in this bulla that was found is interesting, because this spelling is different from the spelling of the word prophet in the epigraphic record. That is, the word “prophet” occurs in a very famous ostracon (an inscription written in ink on a broken piece of pottery) from the great Judean site of Lachish, not far at all from Jerusalem. And in that inscription (Lachish Letter 3, line twenty), there is no yod (that is, the “y” is absent). Moreover, although we do have internal matres lectionis in Old Hebrew inscriptions, beginning in the late eighth century, it is rare (for discussion and bibliography, see “Scribal Education in Ancient Israel: The Old Hebrew Epigraphic Evidence.” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 344 [2006]: 47-74, especially pages 61-66). Ultimately, because we do not have the yod in the Lachish Ostracon, it could be suggested that this weakens the case for this being the word prophet in this new bulla (and, as noted, the absence of the alep is a major obstacle).

(6) There is one final thing that causes me some pause about understanding this bulla as containing the word prophet. And that is the absence of the Hebrew article. We have a few hundred occurrences of the words “prophet” or “prophets” in the Bible, and in the overwhelming majority of these cases, the word is definite (i.e., either with the word “the,” or with a pronominal suffix, or with a personal name after it, which are all ways of making a word in Hebrew definite). In short, if this were the word “prophet,” I would have liked to have seen the word “the,” as in “Isaiah the prophet.” But, alas, we don’t have the word “the” on this bulla.

In sum, in light of the fact that there almost twenty people mentioned in the Bible whose names are based on the same root word as the name “Isaiah” (and thus plenty of people walking around with that name or its basic equivalent); and in light of the fact that the word being read as “prophet” is lacking the critically important letter (the alep); and in light of the fact that there are plenty of names in the Bible that begin with nun and bet (and so that second word could be a lot of different things); and in light of the presence of a yod and the absence of the article on this new bullae…I feel obliged to state that we had better be cautious about assuming too much. Of course, the assumption that this is a bulla of Isaiah the prophet is scintillating, but it is certainly not something that we should assume is at all certain. It’s not.

Christopher Rollston, George Washington University
(rollston@gwu.edu)