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January 17, 2008
On The Seal du Jour
I was going to write a long post on the "Persian-era seal found in Jerusalem’s environs," as Chris Heard calls it. But Chris at Higgaion already wrote the post I had hoped to write. He even did the tracings I was going to do and discussed the various Hebrew names I wanted to discuss. And he made the most important point that I had hoped to make.
This seal expands our pool of data for paleographic and iconographic studies of ancient Judah—and not much else. The seal doesn’t “confirm” anything in the Bible; at most, it tells us that שלמת (or תמח, if Mazar’s longshot comes through) was a proper name really used in Iron II or Persian-era Judah. I don’t think anybody every really doubted that the names in Ezra’s list of returnees were realistic. To say, with Mazar, that this seal belonged to that תמח would seriously overstate the evidence even if the seal really did read תמח at all.
Then Chris punctuated his conclusion with a humorous illustration before stating the obvious, ". . . 'Name X' on a seal and 'Name X' in the Bible doesn’t mean that the biblical X owned the seal." To which I would only add, "No other supporting evidence being available."
Heck, Chris even provides links to other posts on the seal by Jim West, Todd Bolen and Jim Davila. But I think Chris' post does the best job so far of bring everything together. Go thou and read Higgaion.
Posted by Duane Smith at January 17, 2008 3:39 PM | Read more on Hebrew Bible |
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