The most significant finding in Biblical archeology

In 1979, what was later called, "one of [the] most significant discoveries ever made" for biblical studies was found in a burial cave. It was dug up just south of JeruSalem, right next to the main road between the city and BethLehem.

Here’s the site:

What did they find? Two tiny silver scrolls, evidently used as amulets, rolled up tightly. After three long years of figuring out how to unroll them, the researchers set their eyes on the oldest surviving texts from the Hebrew Bible ever discovered! The words are only partially legible but seem to contain a mixture of Biblical quotes (possibly) from Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Numbers.

The scrolls date from around the late 7th to early 6th century BC, before JeruSalem was destroyed by the Babylonians. No one has ever found any surviving words from the Bible that date so far back.

Today they are officially known as the Ketef Hinnom Scrolls but are more commonly called The Silver Scrolls.

The most famous part of the scrolls is from Scroll 2, lines 5-12. They read:

[E]vil: May bless you,
YHWH,
keep you.
Make shine, YH-
-[W]H, His face
[upon] you and g-
-rant you p-
-[ea]ce.

These are clearly from Numbers 6:24–26, which reads (in our translation):

Experts who evaluated the scrolls commented that they are “the earliest known citations of texts also found in the Hebrew Bible and ... the earliest examples of confessional statements concerning Yahweh.”

If you would like to see the Silver Scrolls in person, you can do so at the Israel Museum in JeruSalem. You can read much more about the scrolls in their Wikipedia entry.

Warm regards

The 2001 Translation

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