In Situ: The Seal Of Gedaliah?
31Jul08
The Jerusalem Post reports
A seal impression belonging to a minister of the Biblical King Zedekiah which dates back 2,600 years has been uncovered completely intact during an archeological dig in Jerusalem’s ancient City of David, a prominent Israeli archeologist said on Thursday. The seal impression, or bulla, with the name Gedalyahu ben Pashur, who served as minister to King Zedekiah (597-586 BCE) according to the Book of Jeremiah, was found just meters away from a separate seal impression of another of Zedekia’s ministers, Yehukual ben Shelemyahu, which was uncovered three years ago, said Prof. Eilat Mazar who is leading the dig at the site.
As always, Mazar draws a connection where none may exist- with the Bible in one hand and any and every sherd dug from Jerusalem in the other. The Gedaliah of the seal may, or may not, be the same chap who the Bible reports served Zedekiah. And unless it says so directly, there’s no reason to suspect that the fellow mentioned in the Bible was the only chap who ever bore that name. Or, it’s equally possible, isn’t it, that the biblical account is based on historical factlets without itself being ‘historical’.
When such things are discovered, responsible (and not ideologically driven) archaeologists should simply report the facts: ‘A bulla was found with so and so name on it. Thank you.’ Anything more is saying too much. [With thanks to Joseph Lauer for the tip].
Filed under: archaeology |
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12 Responses to “In Situ: The Seal Of Gedaliah?”
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1. 1 Lawrence Mykytiuk on July 31, 2008 said:
Jim, I appreciate your quick posting of this _Jerusalem Post_ report. It would be best to wait until a photo of the bulla becomes available before making any pronouncements at all. If, for all we know at this point, the bulla might say, “lgdlyhw bn p$xwr (bd tsdqyhw” (pardon my two-letter tsade), then it would be difficult to say that it is not, or even not necessarily, the biblical Gedaliah ben Pashhur (Jeremiah 38:1), the minister of Zedekiah. At this point, Prof. Eilat Mazar knows what letters are on the bulla, and you do not, so for the time being you are not in the best position to say that her identification is inconclusive. To move so quickly to a verdict, whether pro, con, or “not necessarily,” in itself suggests some sort of ideological bias.
2. 2 Jim on July 31, 2008 said:
the photo has just come to me via joseph lauer.
3. 3 Jim on July 31, 2008 said:
oh and I wasn’t really rendering a judgment on the bulla itself but on her linking of a name with a biblical text. it is that linkage that causes me problems. it seems ideological at best. and, as i suggested, archaeologists should simply say what’s been found and leave the exegesis to exegetes.
4. 4 Bob Schillaci on July 31, 2008 said:
I hope she read this one in the right direction this time.
5. 5 Jim on July 31, 2008 said:
indeed.
6. 6 Bill on July 31, 2008 said:
Jim, correct me if I’m way off here, but I feel like I’m finally starting to understand you on this stuff. Did you see Iyov’s post about not talking to the police? It made me realize how speculation can merely create more ground for skeptics to incriminate believers. Is that part of the reason for your objection to this and to “history”?
7. 7 Jim on July 31, 2008 said:
Bill – no – i’m sorry but i’ve not seen the posting to which you refer.
And you may well be onto something after all. Think Hebrews 11:1.
8. 8 Lawrence Mykytiuk on July 31, 2008 said:
Okay, via a photo, a scan, and the Internet, now we can read the letters on the bulla for ourselves. Conveniently, there is no iconography to be endlessly debated. An evaluation of this potential ID can be based on three questions. 0
Question 1, authenticity: Since this bulla has been excavated under controlled conditions, I accept it as authentic, not least because Prof. Eilat Mazar is a scholar and archaeologist of the highest integrity. This acceptance is also butressed, as far as I can tell, by the absence of aberrant paleographic details and the absence of any other discernible, serious anomalies in the available data.
Question 2: setting, i.e., time and place, which amount to the question of a date of the inscriptional person (the seal owner) within about 50 years of the biblical person and the question of a match between the socio-political entity to which the inscriptional person belonged and that of the biblical person):
2a. Date: as far as I can tell, the paleography fits the late seventh to early sixth centuries. That would match the lifetime of the biblical Gedalyahu ben Pashhur, minister of Zedikiah, king of Judah (Jer 38:1). In this question of paleographic dating, I definitely defer to the expert opinions of Northwest Semitic paleographers of the caliber of Dr. Christopher Rollston, Dr. Andrew Vaughn, and their peers.
2b. Socio-political entity: From the provenance in the City of David, the -yhw ending on the name of the seal owner (indicating the southern kingdom of Judah rather than the northern kingdom of Israel), and the clearly Hebrew paleography, the bulla belonged to a Judahite.
Question 3: Are there sufficient marks of an individual to avoid confusing two different persons? The name fo the seal owner matches the consonants of Jer 38:1. If the letter after nun in ben is really a pe’, then the patronym would also match the consonants in Jer 38:1 (I am using _Biblia Hebraica Leningradensia_ [ed. Aron Dotan; Hendrickson, 2001], the nearest Tanakh I could grab off the shelf).
I need to explore whether the letter after the nun in ben might be a letter of similar shape, such as kaph, mem, or nun. Note: might this letter provide a possibility for reading another name? It’s time to look up possible alternative names and verbal roots, but k$xwr and n$xwr are not Hebrew words—I wish I had _DNWSI_ available, but it’s at home. As for a possible m$xwr, which I would vocalize as mashxor, meaning “darkness,” is _it_ in the classical Hebrew onomasticon? No, I do not find it as a Hebrew name. I do find this word in _The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew_, vol. 5, ed. D. J. A. Clines (Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 519a, but not as a personal name (”I am dark but comely” in the Song of Songs notwithstanding).
It seems, then, that we have a name and patronym that match the biblical name and patronym, i.e., two identifying marks of an individual. There is no title, second patronym, or other mark of an individual in the bulla. Unless additional data from the site becomes available (?maybe conclusive proof that it was a palace or royal administrative building? Compare my _Identifying Biblical Persons_ (SBL, 2004), 145-147, for similarities to and differences from the case of the bulla of Gemaryahu ben Shaphan) or increased understanding of existing data becomes available, we must work with our current understanding of the data now available from the bulla itself. According to reference sources, the patronym could only be Pashhur. If the patronym turns out to be verifiable as Pashhur in the bulla itself, then this ID is grade 2, reasonable but not certain. But it cannot be more than a grade 2 ID, because there could have been more than one father-and-son pair having a son named Gedalyahu and a father named Pashhur. In that case, this ID has enough in its favor to be a reasonable hypothesis, but not an ID to be relied on.
9. 9 Bill on July 31, 2008 said:
Amen on Faith, Jim. May it ever be so. And it will.
The link to Iyov’s post and a few thoughts are on my site here as of two minutes ago. I’d love some more feedback on this topic there, if you feel so inclined…
10. 10 Lawrence Mykytiuk on August 1, 2008 said:
Oh, and thanks for the cute icon next to my comments, Jim.
11. 11 Peter van der Veen on August 1, 2008 said:
Dear Larry (Lawrence Mykytiuk),
I agree with you that the bulla would be Grade 2. But there is more to it. The palaeography recalls directly the Gedalyahu ’shr clhbyt (either Gedaliah the governor before 586 BC or alternatively (as Bob Becking suggested) Gedaliah bn Pashhur). There is another unprovanced bulla from the S. Moussaieff collection which portrays almost precisely the same letters. This is exciting on its own as the typology of the letters used by the engraver of the unprovenanced bulla came first and hence this may help to establish its authenticity. The first impression I had was, ‘the same engraver’. As I have very little time now to decide on the matter (I had to prepare 5 lectures for two important conferences, the second is right ahead of me beginning of next week aat the EABS in Lisbon) a more in-depth study must wait. But if I am right about this, this may well add considerable weight to the identity of the person involved and hence may be a stronger case than Grade 2.
Whatever,
Best wishes
Peter (Peter van der Veen)
12. 12 Bruce Sabin on August 1, 2008 said:
Dr. West.
It seems to me you might be a little too critical in this case. Skepticism is good, but might you have crossed over into your own ideology?
First, because this second bulla was found so close to the first, and both (apparently) contain the names of ministers mentioned in Jeremiah, the conclusion these are the men from Jeremiah seems most reasonable. Of course, it is not certain, but it is most reasonable. Further research is needed and will be done, but saying these are the men from Jeremiah seems the best hypothesis at this point.
And there should be no problem admitting these are likely the men from Jeremiah. Many, many portions of the historical books of the Bible have been discovered to be quite reliable. The Cyrus Cylinder, for example, seems to attest to portions of Ezra.
Yet, you criticize Mazar for making “a connection where none may exist.” Isn’t a hypothesis, by definition, a connection where none may exist?
Archaeology is a historical science and part of the role should be to connect the pieces and help us understand the story of history. History is not isolated “factlets.” Archaeologists have been studying the “Ice Man” Otzi trying to discern how he lived, why he was high in the Alps, who killed him, etc. These are legitimate roles in non-biblical archaeology. Shouldn’t they be legitimate in biblical archaeology, as well?