Back Again

There are some interesting claims made in this short article. I'm not sure that the conclusions are apparent from the data. An English translation is provided.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-mah010710.php

rob117

The subtitle's a bit sensationalist. Also, I don't see how this sherd proves that complex historical texts were be written this early. It's certainly evidence that they could have been, but not proof that they were. It does seem to indicate that things like the "Covenant Code" (Exodus 21-23) were circulating in written form this early, which has long been postulated by biblical scholarship. I'd agree that it's telling that this was discovered in a provincial town, however.

Also, the claim that this proves the Kingdom of Israel existed in the 10th century BC is dependent on one's acceptance of the traditional archaeological chronology (which I accept). If you go by the low chronology this would be 9th century, and thus not proof of anything for the 10th century BC. Traditional chronology archaeologists dealing with early artifacts tend to forget that when they make these statements.

What it does prove, however, is that Finkelstein's depiction of Judah as without real literacy before the late 8th century is wrong.

spamandham

The article doesn't state how it was dated. I can assume it wasn't via paleography or radiometric dating.....based on where it was found?

Toto

Robert Cargill blog

A discussion of the translation

rob117

This inscription was actually found about a year ago; it just hasn't been deciphered until recently (due to the archaic script).

According to the article below, organic material that was found with the ostracon was C14-dated to the 10th century:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...1103091035.htm

Zeluvia

So, the job of the king was wealth redistribution? And this is our oldest bible fragment?

I am down with that.

spamandham

Cool. Thanks!

Anat

I'm having trouble deciphering the writing. Am I correct that it is written left-to-right (or at least shown that way) and individual letters appear to be in any odd orientation? For example in the second line the word judge is repeated twice, and the letter shin appears once pointing left and once pointing up?

rob117

I believe I've read somewhere that the direction of writing was not fixed at this time; so it could be left-to-right, right-to-left, or boustrophedon. That's just off the top of my head though, and I could be misremembering.

Back Again

The part that annoys me in the most recent article is that little or no mention is made about the script (or character set) that the text is written in. The authors describe it as a "Hebrew inscription". My assumption is that the script is some form of proto-Canaanite (as stated in the earlier article). Translation then would likely consist of comparing the characters to known similar characters in a related script. Doing this, one could get an idea of the sounds and then compare those sounds to sounds in the Hebrew language.

I don't know the details and I'm only speculating, but I wouldn't be surprised if this "translation" only amounts to an educated guess. Remember that this relatively short inscription took 1 1/2 years to translate. Also notice from Toto's link that the newer translation doesn't seem to line up with the old one at all.

Further, I'm failing to understand how an inscription written in some primitive Canaanite script in a language which shares some verbs with Hebrew says anything about a united monarchy under a guy named David. The most I would conclude is that someone lived at that location in the 10th century BCE that spoke a language similar to Hebrew...and that there was at least one locally understood written script that the language could be transliterated to.