Ketef Hinnom

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One of a series of rock-hewn burial caves at Ketef Hinnom ("shoulder of Hinnom") near Jerusalem is an archaeological site in Israel that is most famous for the recovery in 1979 of two silver scrolls that were used as amulets, inscribed with portions of the well-known apotropaic Priestly Blessing of the Book of Numbers.

The delicate process of unrolling the scrolls while developing a method that would prevent them from disintegrating took three years. Brief as they are, they rank as the oldest surviving texts from the Hebrew Bible. These are also the oldest Biblical texts with the name of God YHWH, "the private, unpronounceable name of God, which is often pronounced in the West as 'Jehovah'"[1].

Contents

[edit] KH1 (27 x 97 mm; 1.0 x 3.75 inches)

  • [Top line(s) broken]
  1. ...] YHW ...
  2. [...]
  3. the grea[t ... who keeps]
  4. the covenant and
  5. [G]raciousness towards those who love [him] and (alt: [hi]m;)
  6. those who keep [his commandments ...
  7. ...].
  8. the Eternal? [...].
  9. [the?] blessing more than any
  10. [sna]re and more than Evil.
  11. For redemption is in him.
  12. For YHWH
  13. is our restorer [and]
  14. rock. May YHWH bles[s]
  15. you and
  16. [may he] keep you.
  17. [May] YHWH make
  18. [his face] shine ...
  • [Bottom line(s) broken.]

Compare lines 3-6 to:

  • Exodus 20:6--showing mercy to thousands of them that love Me and keep My commandments
  • Deuteronomy 5:10--showing mercy to thousands of them that love Me and keep My commandments
  • Deuteronomy 7:9--keeping covenant and mercy with them that love Him and keep His commandments to a thousand generations
  • Daniel 9:4--keeping covenant and mercy to them that love Him, and to them that keep His commandments
  • Nehemiah 1:5--keeping covenant and mercy for them that love Him and observe His commandments

Note that the omission of "thousands" may have originally appeared on line 7 as in Deuteronomy 7:9.

[edit] KH2 (11 x 39 mm; 0.5 x 1.5 inches)

  • [Top line(s) broken: For PN xxxx]
  1. -h/hu. May be blessed h/sh-
  2. -[e] by YHW[H,]
  3. the warrior/helper and
  4. the rebuker of
  5. [E]vil: May bless you,
  6. YHWH,
  7. keep you.
  8. Make shine, YH-
  9. -[W]H, His face
  10. [upon] you and g-
  11. -rant you p-
  12. -[ea]ce.
  • [Bottom line(s) broken.]

Note that the two bold italicized phrases below were omitted from the blessing on this scroll:

  • Numbers 6:24--Yahweh bless you and keep you;
  • Numbers 6:25--Yahweh make his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you;
  • Numbers 6:26--Yahweh lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.

But also note that all of 6:25-26 may have appeared on KH1 after line 18 (where the scroll has disintegrated).

[edit] Excavations Details

Gabriel Barkai, professor of archaeology at Bar-Ilan University, uncovered the inscribed scrolls from a site that had appeared from initial inspections to have been thoroughly looted over the millennia. The tomb had last been used for storing army rifles during the Ottoman period, but a partial collapse of the ceiling long ago had preserved the larger tomb, which probably belonged to a wealthy family. It was found intact with over a thousand objects in it: many small pottery vessels, artifacts of iron and bronze (including arrowheads), needles and pins, bone and ivory objects, glass bottles, and jewelry including earrings of gold and silver, as well as the inscribed scrolls.

The date of the find, which is based on the form of the delicately-incised paleo-Hebrew lettering has been disputed. The tomb had been in use for several generations towards the end of the First Temple period, and continued to be used for new interments for some time after the destruction of Jerusalem in 587/6 BCE. Barkay et al have suggested a date at the end of the First Temple period close to 600 BCE based on late Iron Age artifacts found in the undisturbed area of the tomb where they were located.

KH1 was found in Square D, the middle of the repository, 7 cm above the floor. KH2 was found while sifting dirt from the lower half of the deposits in Square A of Chamber 25, which comes from the innermost portion of the repository. Both amulets were well separated from the Hellenistic artifacts by 3 meters of length and 25 cm of depth.

In spite of the archeological context, Johannes Renz and Wolfgang Rollig (Handbuch der Althebraischen Epigraphik, 1995) have argued for a second century BCE date. Based on paleographic evidence Erik Waaler (A revised date for Pentateuchal texts? 2002) dates the amulets somewhat earlier than the other artefacts in the cave (725-650 BCE).

Granted a 7th century date, the combination of two different passages from the Pentateuch suggests that a larger document containing these texts may have existed at the time of - or some years after Joshias reform.


[edit] Notes

  1. ^ According to the biblical archaeologist Gabriel "Gaby" Barkay words as they are mentioned at the article "Archaeologist recounts discovery of oldest biblical text" of the Baptist Press.


[edit] See also:

[edit] External links

[edit] Further reading

  • Barkay, Gabriel (1983). "News From the Field: The Divine Name Found in Jerusalem". Biblical Archaeology Review 9:2 (March/April): 14-9. 
  • Gabriel Barkay, Marilyn J. Lundberg, Andrew G. Vaughn, Bruce Zuckerman (2003). "The Challenges of Ketef Hinnom: Using Advanced Technologies to Reclaim the Earliest Biblical Texts and Their Contexts". Near Eastern Archaeology 66:4 (December): 162-71. 
  • Erik Waaler (2002). "A revised date for Pentateuchal texts? Evidence from Ketef Hinnom". Tyndale bulletine 53 (1): 29-50. 
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