Clay Bullae and the Bible Again

The Gedalyahu ben Pashur seal and its potential connection to the Bible in Jeremiah 38 has made the news again.  There's nothing really new in the this article, but it is notable that Eilat Mazar has been getting a lot of press time lately for a biblical archaeologist.

For background on the seal and some links to discussions of its significance around the blogosphere, go here.

HT:  Jim Davila

The Bible in One Hand and the Spade in the Other

I used to think the field of "biblical" archaeology had moved beyond the simplistic approach of digging something up, then flipping through the Bible to find an explanation for it. That was the approach in the early days of biblical archaeology, but I thought Syro-Palestinian archaeologists had learned now that they can't make a priori connections between text and artifact.

So, I was completely taken aback to read the following quote from Dr. Eilat Mazar who was profiled last week in the Jerusalem Post magazine. You'll recall she is the archaeologist who found the Gedalyahu ben Pashur seal earlier this summer.

"I work with the Bible in one hand and the tools of
excavation in the other," she says. "The Bible is the most important
historical source."

I guess I was wrong. There are still a few biblical archaeologists running around with the Bible in one hand and a tool of some kind in the other. My program at the University of Wisconsin used to have that old style Book and the Spade emphasis back when Biblical archaeology was a bigger part of what was taught.

I should've known better. There will always be people out there using archaeology as a tool of apologetics to defend the inerrancy of the Bible against all attackers. If you're interested in learning more about them, visit The Book and the Spade or Bible and Spade. Those are the people who will get really upset about the upcoming Nova special, The Bible's Buried Secrets.

[Hat Tip to Todd Bolen where I first heard of the Mazar interview. I also read the story via Jack Sasson at the Agade mailing list and saw Jim West's post on it (even if I have 3 other sources, I'm required to mention Jim West. He gets testy if he's not acknowledged.) I also read the story directly from the Jerusalem Post (via Todd Bolen's link). The Nova special about the Bible was on my mind also because of yet another of Jim's posts today (where he unfairly disparaged the legacy of W.F. Albright, in my opinion. Yes, Albright produced G.E. Wright and a school of theological archaeologists, but he also created 2 of the greatest bible and ANE scholars of the latter half of the 20th century, Frank Moore Cross and David Noel Freedman.) I'd also like to thank Google for providing the search capability that led me to the links for The Book and the Spade and Bible and Spade. Ok, I think I've acknowledged everybody...oh wait, thanks to Scribefire for providing the interface where I typed my post.]

Archaeology Proves the Bible Again

[This is a re-post from earlier this morning. Technical difficulties.]

Just when you thought it couldn't get any more interesting, Ha'aretz goes and throws this out there: "Archaeologists unearth proof of plot to kill Prophet Jeremiah." Apparently, the discovery of a seal that probably bears a name known from the book of Jeremiah means that the events of Jeremiah 38 are now historically verified in their entirety.

We have a problem here between what the evidence can support and the burden that some would place on it. All the seal does is suggest that a person mentioned in Jeremiah was a real historical person. Despite lingering doubts about connecting the seal with the figure in Jeremiah, it seems highly unlikely that there would be another person with the same name holding a position of power warranting the need for a seal at about the same time. The existence of the Jehucal seal simply strengthens the connection. (Follow the links in earlier posts to comments by Charles Halton and G.M. Grena for background on this line of reasoning.)

The bulla provides another link supporting the assertion that the Bible can be reliably used as a witness to history similarly to any other ancient document. This does not mean that we should conduct archaeology in Israel with a Bible in one hand and a spade in the other - connecting the two with everything we dig up. However, there have been significant finds confirming that the Bible has a pretty good handle on the historical situation, at least in its broad strokes, once we reach the late eighth century. For example, the Siloam tunnel inscription reflects Hezekiah's preparations from his encounter with Sennacherib described in 2 Kings 18-20. The tunnel itself is mentioned in 2 Kings 20:20. Sennacherib's campaign against Judah is especially well-documented by non-biblical sources. His siege and capture of Lachish is recorded in all its gory detail on reliefs from the walls of his palace in Nineveh.

The Gedalyahu bulla does not have nearly the impact of these other finds precisely because it provides so little information. We can't jump from "he's likely a historical person" to "everything connected to him in the Bible is now proven."

[For a list of many of the occurrences of the name "Gedalyahu" in the Bible and epigraphic texts, see the recent post at Abnormal Interests. Thanks to Jim West and Jim Davila for posts that drew my attention to the Ha'aretz story. My apologies for linking to wikipedia for background support. I wouldn't do it if they didn't say what I already knew was true and could document from "real" sources that aren't close at hand right now.]

Update: I just discovered Michael Halcomb's blog with comments on the seal. I completely agree with his assessment of the significance of the find and the problems with the tendency to make too much of the archeology's ability to "prove" the Bible.

More on Gedalyahu ben Pashur

I've noticed today that Duane at Abnormal Interests has also shared some thoughts on the Gedalyahu seal. I think he summarizes the significance of the find well when he says:

"Does this prove the Hebrew Bible in some way? No, not in the way that some might hope. It does seem to confirm that a person named Gedalyahu likely lived at about the time the Hebrew Bible indicates that he did and that he may have had something like the role the Hebrew Bible says he had."

Everyone interested in the seal should also take a look at the detailed discussion by Chris Heard at Higgaion. He includes G.M. Grena's drawings of the seal along with comments on Grena's paleographic analysis. In considering the identification of the character, Grena comments on the post and mentions the important detail that a similar seal (the Jehucal bulla) with the name of another official mentioned in Jer. 38:1 was found earlier by the same archaeologist at the same site.

The fact that two bullae bearing the names of Zedekiah's officials from Jer. 38:1 were found by the same archaeologist at the same dig site can be taken two ways. Either they reinforce each other's connection to the biblical verse (a real find independent of the biblical text that corroborates a detail from the text), or the biblical verse suggested the connection (a questionable find dependent on the biblical text for the association). I'm not personally questioning the authenticity of the find (though seals have been forged before). I'm just pointing out that statistically, it's either the real thing linking to biblical persons or it was faked to look like it. For one antiquities dealer's description of how he sifts out the authentic artifacts from the fake ones, see here.

New Discoveries

Wow, you take a day off, two important archaeological discoveries get announced, and there's nothing left for you to say.  I'm speaking, of course, about the news of a new alphabetic inscription discovered at Zincirli and the discovery of a seal bearing the name Gedalyahu ben Pashur (a biblical name from Jer. 38:1, but don't be too hasty on the connection).

Here's a roundup of representative posts I've found today on these two important finds.

Jim Davila at Paleojudaica has excerpts from a Jerusalem Post article about the Gedalyahu seal and presents the Agade announcement about Zincirli. 

Peter Bekins also mentioned the Zincirli find, but more importantly has a very informative summary explaining the relationship of Sam'alian to Aramaic and the Canaanite dialects.  I also found his discussion of Garr's Dialect Geography helpful in this regard.

Jim West has a couple of posts about the Gedalyahu seal.  The first has a picture and links to the Jerusalem Post article, and the other presents the views of UW-Madison alum Lawrence Mykytiuk, an expert on the methods of identifying biblical names in epigraphic finds.

Mykytiuk is understandably cautious in jumping to the conclusion that the name on the seal is definitely the same man mentioned in Jeremiah 38:1.  Charles Halton at Awilum feels the identification is a little more likely than Mykytiuk will allow.

Todd Bolen at the Bible Places Blog also has a good summary of the Gedalyahu find with some additional comments about the Jerusalem Post article and useful links to photos of the seal and the excavation site.

Between all the above sites and the links they contain, there's not much more for me to say except to advise that if you're going to SBL and want to hear Pardee's presentation of the Zincirli inscription, find out what room it's going to be in and camp out there all weekend.  Arriving early on the day of the talk won't be enough.  (I just checked and it's not on the SBL online program book yet).