Ketef Hinnom
Encyclopedia
Ketef Hinnom is an archaeological site southwest of the Old City of Jerusalem, adjacent to St. Andrew's Church of Scotland. The site consists of a series of rock-hewn burial chambers based on natural caverns. In 1979 two tiny silver scrolls
, inscribed with portions of the well-known apotropaic Priestly Blessing
of the Book of Numbers
and apparently once used as amulet
s, were found in one of a burial chambers. 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 contain what may be the oldest surviving texts from the Hebrew Bible
, dating from around 600 BCE.
Compare lines 3-6 to:
The omission of "thousands" may have originally appeared on line 7 as in Deuteronomy 7:9.
Erik Waaler tentatively identifies the bearer of this scroll as "Joahaz son of Johanan" in his 2011 reconstruction of the deteriorated first line. He also proposes some new readings of some of the lacunas:
Compare lines 3-4a to
Compare lines 4b-10a to
Compare lines 16-20 to
Compare lines 7-13 to:
(Note that the two bold italicized phrases above are not present on this scroll; also note that all of Numbers 6:25-26 may have appeared on KH1 after line 18 where the scroll has disintegrated).
, professor of archaeology at Bar-Ilan University
. The site appeared to be archaeologically sterile (the tomb had last been used for storing rifles during the Ottoman
period), but a chance discovery by a 13-year-old "assistant" revealed that a partial collapse of the ceiling long ago had preserved the contents of Chamber 25.
A reconstruction indicates that there were five chambers and a central 'hall' in cave 24. The cave could hold about 22+ bodies on benches, each with a headrest of stone. Under three of the chambers in the cave there were repositories. The repositories were used for secondary burial, which means that the bones and other remains of the long deceased body were removed and put into the repository, thus making space for another body on that particular bench. The chambers were neatly cut with smoothed surfaces using the royal cubit as measure. The repositories, such as that under chamber 25, had rough surface and a sack-like form, thus it was not intended to be seen. Ketef Hinnom cave 24 has a similar outline and capacity as the Mamilla cave complex 1 and 2, however, these cave complexes have more rooms than cave 24 at Ketef Hinnom. To accommodate more people Ketef Hinnom cave 24 has used the large chamber to the right to accommodate about 10 people, whereas this room in the Mamilla cave complexes did not have benches, thus probably they were used for chemical treatment of the bodies.
The repository under chamber 25 contained approximately 60 cm. of material with over a thousand objects: 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. The tomb had evidently been in use for several generations from about 650 BCE, that is towards the end of the First Temple period, and it continued to be used after the destruction of Jerusalem in 587/6 BCE.
KH1 was found in Square D, the middle of the repository, 7 cm above the floor, while KH2 was found while sifting dirt from the lower half of the deposits in Square A, the innermost portion of the repository. Both amulets were separated from Hellenistic artifacts by 3 meters of length and 25 cm of depth, and embedded in pottery and other material from the 7th/6th centuries BCE.
Barkay initially dated the inscriptions to the late-7th/early-6th centuries BC (later revised downward slightly to the early 6th century) on paleographic grounds (the forms of the delicately-incised paleo-Hebrew lettering) and on the evidence of the pottery found in the immediate vicinity. This dating was subsequently questioned by Johannes Renz and Wolfgang Rollig (Handbuch der Althebraischen Epigraphik, 1995), who argued that the script was in too poor a condition to be dated with certainty and that a 3rd/2nd century BCE provenance could not be excluded, especially as the repository, which had been used as a kind of "rubbish bin" for the burial chamber over many centuries, also contained material from the fourth century BCE.
A major re-examination of the scrolls was therefore undertaken by the University of Southern California
's West Semitic Research Project, using advanced photographic and computer enhancement techniques which enabled the script to be read more easily and the paleography to be dated more confidently. The results, published in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research
(BASOR) in 2004, confirmed a date immediately prior to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586/7 BCE. (An innovation in the report was the simultaneous publication of an accompanying "digital article," a CD version of the article and the images). Dr Kyle McCarter of Johns Hopkins University
, a specialist in ancient Semitic scripts, has said the study should "settle any controversy over [the date of] these inscriptions".
Some scholars - the so-called "biblical minimalists" - have argued that the Bible was a relatively recent invention by Jewish leaders who took control of Judea in the late fourth century BCE. "The new research on the inscriptions suggests that that's not true," according to Dr. Wayne Pitard, professor of the Hebrew Bible and ancient Near Eastern religions at the University of Illinois. Despite this, Pitard has mentioned that although evidence for the antiquity of the Priestly Blessing is now compelling, this does not necessarily mean that the Book of Numbers
already existed at that time. Dr. James R. Davila, Reader in Early Jewish Studies at the University of St Andrews' St Mary's College, has similarly pointed out that the idea that the scrolls are "proof that the Five Books of Moses were in existence during the First Temple period" (as described in an article in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz) is "an overinterpretation of the evidence." He nonetheless acknowledged that the find proves that at least "some of the material found in the Five Books of Moses existed in the First Temple period."
Scroll
A scroll is a roll of parchment, papyrus, or paper, which has been drawn or written upon.Scroll may also refer to:*Scroll , the decoratively curved end of the pegbox of string instruments such as violins...
, inscribed with portions of the well-known apotropaic Priestly Blessing
Priestly Blessing
The Priestly Blessing, , also known in Hebrew as Nesiat Kapayim, , or Dukhanen , is a Jewish prayer recited by Kohanim during certain Jewish services...
of the Book of Numbers
Book of Numbers
The Book of Numbers is the fourth book of the Hebrew Bible, and the fourth of five books of the Jewish Torah/Pentateuch....
and apparently once used as amulet
Amulet
An amulet, similar to a talisman , is any object intended to bring good luck or protection to its owner.Potential amulets include gems, especially engraved gems, statues, coins, drawings, pendants, rings, plants and animals; even words said in certain occasions—for example: vade retro satana—, to...
s, were found in one of a burial chambers. 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 contain what may be the oldest surviving texts from the Hebrew Bible
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible is a term used by biblical scholars outside of Judaism to refer to the Tanakh , a canonical collection of Jewish texts, and the common textual antecedent of the several canonical editions of the Christian Old Testament...
, dating from around 600 BCE.
The scrolls
The scrolls are known as KH1 and KH2. Text below in square brackets represents informed deduction.KH1 (27 x 97 mm; 1.0 x 3.75 inches)
- [Top line(s) broken]
- ...] YHW ...
- [...]
- the grea[t ... who keeps]
- the covenant and
- [G]raciousness towards those who love [him] and (alt: [hi]m;)
- those who keep [his commandments ...
- ...].
- the Eternal? [...].
- [the?] blessing more than any
- [sna]re and more than Evil.
- For redemption is in him.
- For YHWH
- is our restorer [and]
- rock. May YHWH bles[s]
- you and
- [may he] keep you.
- [May] YHWH make
- [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
- DanielBook of DanielThe Book of Daniel is a book in the Hebrew Bible. The book tells of how Daniel, and his Judean companions, were inducted into Babylon during Jewish exile, and how their positions elevated in the court of Nebuchadnezzar. The court tales span events that occur during the reigns of Nebuchadnezzar,...
9:4—keeping covenant and mercy to them that love Him, and to them that keep His commandments - NehemiahBook of NehemiahThe Book of Nehemiah is a book of the Hebrew Bible. Told largely in the form of a first-person memoir, it concerns the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem by Nehemiah, a Jew who is a high official at the Persian court, and the dedication of the city and its people to God's laws...
1:5—keeping covenant and mercy for them that love Him and observe His commandments
The omission of "thousands" may have originally appeared on line 7 as in Deuteronomy 7:9.
Erik Waaler tentatively identifies the bearer of this scroll as "Joahaz son of Johanan" in his 2011 reconstruction of the deteriorated first line. He also proposes some new readings of some of the lacunas:
- [for Joahaz ??]
- son of Johanan
- bless him
- by YHWH. The
- God of strength keeps
- the covenant and
- his loving kindness towards those who love
- him and keep his commandments
- in thousand gen-
- erations, eternally. Stronger
- is a blessing than all
- snare and evil,
- for redemption is in him.
- For YHWH
- is our restorer [and]
- Rock. Bless you by
- YHWH and
- keep you.
- May YHWH make
- his face shine upon you
- [Bottom line(s) broken.]
Compare lines 3-4a to
- RuthBook of RuthThe Book of Ruth is one of the books of the Hebrew Bible, Tanakh, or Old Testament. In the Jewish canon the Book of Ruth is included in the third division, or the Writings . In the Christian canon the Book of Ruth is placed between Judges and 1 Samuel...
2:20 Bless him by YHWH, Naomi said to her daughter-in-law
Compare lines 4b-10a to
- Deuteronomy 7:9 The God who is faithfull keeps his covenant and his loving kindness of those who love him and keep his commands in thousand generations.
Compare lines 16-20 to
- NumbersBook of NumbersThe Book of Numbers is the fourth book of the Hebrew Bible, and the fourth of five books of the Jewish Torah/Pentateuch....
6:24-26 The LORD bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.
KH2 (11 x 39 mm; 0.5 x 1.5 inches)
- [Top line(s) broken: For PN xxxx]
- -h/hu. May be blessed h/sh-
- -[e] by YHW[H,]
- the warrior/helper and
- the rebuker of
- [E]vil: May bless you,
- YHWH,
- keep you.
- Make shine, YH-
- -[W]H, His face
- [upon] you and g-
- -rant you p-
- -[ea]ce.
- [Bottom line(s) broken.]
Compare lines 7-13 to:
- NumbersBook of NumbersThe Book of Numbers is the fourth book of the Hebrew Bible, and the fourth of five books of the Jewish Torah/Pentateuch....
6:24—Yahweh bless you and keep you; - NumbersBook of NumbersThe Book of Numbers is the fourth book of the Hebrew Bible, and the fourth of five books of the Jewish Torah/Pentateuch....
6:25—Yahweh make his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you; - NumbersBook of NumbersThe Book of Numbers is the fourth book of the Hebrew Bible, and the fourth of five books of the Jewish Torah/Pentateuch....
6:26--Yahweh lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.
(Note that the two bold italicized phrases above are not present on this scroll; also note that all of Numbers 6:25-26 may have appeared on KH1 after line 18 where the scroll has disintegrated).
Excavation details
The scrolls were found in 1979 in Chamber 25 of Cave 24 at Ketef Hinnom (i.e. the shoulder of Hinnom), during excavations conducted by a team under the supervision of Gabriel BarkayGabriel Barkay
Gabriel Barkay is an Israeli archaeologist. Born in 1944 in Hungary, he immigrated to Israel in 1950. He received his PhD in Archaeology from Tel Aviv University in 1985. His dissertation was about LMLK seal impressions on jar handles. He participated in the Lachish excavations with David Ussishkin...
, professor of archaeology at Bar-Ilan University
Bar-Ilan University
Bar-Ilan University is a university in Ramat Gan of the Tel Aviv District, Israel.Established in 1955, Bar Ilan is now Israel's second-largest academic institution. It has nearly 26,800 students and 1,350 faculty members...
. The site appeared to be archaeologically sterile (the tomb had last been used for storing rifles during the Ottoman
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
period), but a chance discovery by a 13-year-old "assistant" revealed that a partial collapse of the ceiling long ago had preserved the contents of Chamber 25.
A reconstruction indicates that there were five chambers and a central 'hall' in cave 24. The cave could hold about 22+ bodies on benches, each with a headrest of stone. Under three of the chambers in the cave there were repositories. The repositories were used for secondary burial, which means that the bones and other remains of the long deceased body were removed and put into the repository, thus making space for another body on that particular bench. The chambers were neatly cut with smoothed surfaces using the royal cubit as measure. The repositories, such as that under chamber 25, had rough surface and a sack-like form, thus it was not intended to be seen. Ketef Hinnom cave 24 has a similar outline and capacity as the Mamilla cave complex 1 and 2, however, these cave complexes have more rooms than cave 24 at Ketef Hinnom. To accommodate more people Ketef Hinnom cave 24 has used the large chamber to the right to accommodate about 10 people, whereas this room in the Mamilla cave complexes did not have benches, thus probably they were used for chemical treatment of the bodies.
The repository under chamber 25 contained approximately 60 cm. of material with over a thousand objects: 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. The tomb had evidently been in use for several generations from about 650 BCE, that is towards the end of the First Temple period, and it continued to be used after the destruction of Jerusalem in 587/6 BCE.
KH1 was found in Square D, the middle of the repository, 7 cm above the floor, while KH2 was found while sifting dirt from the lower half of the deposits in Square A, the innermost portion of the repository. Both amulets were separated from Hellenistic artifacts by 3 meters of length and 25 cm of depth, and embedded in pottery and other material from the 7th/6th centuries BCE.
Barkay initially dated the inscriptions to the late-7th/early-6th centuries BC (later revised downward slightly to the early 6th century) on paleographic grounds (the forms of the delicately-incised paleo-Hebrew lettering) and on the evidence of the pottery found in the immediate vicinity. This dating was subsequently questioned by Johannes Renz and Wolfgang Rollig (Handbuch der Althebraischen Epigraphik, 1995), who argued that the script was in too poor a condition to be dated with certainty and that a 3rd/2nd century BCE provenance could not be excluded, especially as the repository, which had been used as a kind of "rubbish bin" for the burial chamber over many centuries, also contained material from the fourth century BCE.
A major re-examination of the scrolls was therefore undertaken by the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
's West Semitic Research Project, using advanced photographic and computer enhancement techniques which enabled the script to be read more easily and the paleography to be dated more confidently. The results, published in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research
Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research
The Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research is one of three academic journals published by American Schools of Oriental Research....
(BASOR) in 2004, confirmed a date immediately prior to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586/7 BCE. (An innovation in the report was the simultaneous publication of an accompanying "digital article," a CD version of the article and the images). Dr Kyle McCarter of Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...
, a specialist in ancient Semitic scripts, has said the study should "settle any controversy over [the date of] these inscriptions".
The apotropaic nature of the amulets
Jeremy Smoak has argued that the combination of the terms "guard" and "protect" is typical of apotropaic amulets and find parallels among Phonecian and Punic amulets from the Iron Age (2011:80-82). He finds reflection of the custom of making such apotropaic amulets in Psalm 12:7-9: "The utterance of Yhwh are pure utterances, silver refined in a furnance in the eart, purified seven times. You O Yhwh, will guard them; you will protect him from this generation forever. On every side the wicked prowl, a vilness is exalted among humankind" (Smoak 2011:85). Among iron age polytheists it was usual to evoke plural deities as protectors against evil. On KH1 we find at least two texts from the Hebrew Bible, one that is associated with Aaron (Num 6:24-26) and one that is associated with Moses (Deut 7:9). The first blessing (lines 3-4) is actually found in various religious settings in the Iron Age, but in the hebrew bible the closest parallel is Ruth 2:20. If this implies indirect reference to David the king, Moses the prophet and Aaron the priest; the amulet might have functioned as a substitute for polytheistic incanations calling on several deities.Indirect literary dependency on Exod 20:9?
The identification of an extended parallel between Deut 7:9 and Amulet 1 suggests literary dependence between these two texts. Deut 7:9 is commonly regarded as Decalogue interpretation (Exod 20:9, Deut 6:10). Granted a literary link between the amulet and Deut 7:9, the direction of influence might be suggested as follows: 1) Exod 20:9 , 2) Deut 6:10, 3) Deut 7:9, 4) Ketef Hinnom amulet 1.Significance
The 2004 team described the scrolls as "one of most significant discoveries ever made" for biblical studies. Apart from their significance for our knowledge of the development of the Hebrew alphabet, the scrolls "preserve the earliest known citations of texts also found in the Hebrew Bible and ... the earliest examples of confessional statements concerning Yahweh." The reference to Yahweh as "Rebuker of Evil," found in later incantations and amulets associated with Israel, is evidence that these artifacts were also amulets.Some scholars - the so-called "biblical minimalists" - have argued that the Bible was a relatively recent invention by Jewish leaders who took control of Judea in the late fourth century BCE. "The new research on the inscriptions suggests that that's not true," according to Dr. Wayne Pitard, professor of the Hebrew Bible and ancient Near Eastern religions at the University of Illinois. Despite this, Pitard has mentioned that although evidence for the antiquity of the Priestly Blessing is now compelling, this does not necessarily mean that the Book of Numbers
Book of Numbers
The Book of Numbers is the fourth book of the Hebrew Bible, and the fourth of five books of the Jewish Torah/Pentateuch....
already existed at that time. Dr. James R. Davila, Reader in Early Jewish Studies at the University of St Andrews' St Mary's College, has similarly pointed out that the idea that the scrolls are "proof that the Five Books of Moses were in existence during the First Temple period" (as described in an article in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz) is "an overinterpretation of the evidence." He nonetheless acknowledged that the find proves that at least "some of the material found in the Five Books of Moses existed in the First Temple period."
See also
- Biblical archaeologyBiblical archaeologyFor the movement associated with William F. Albright and also known as biblical archaeology, see Biblical archaeology school. For the interpretation of biblical archaeology in relation to biblical historicity, see The Bible and history....
- List of artifacts significant to the Bible
- EpigraphyEpigraphyEpigraphy Epigraphy Epigraphy (from the , literally "on-writing", is the study of inscriptions or epigraphs as writing; that is, the science of identifying the graphemes and of classifying their use as to cultural context and date, elucidating their meaning and assessing what conclusions can be...
- Paleography
External links
- "Jerusalem — Silver Plaques" Brief overview at Jewish Virtual Library, sourced from the Islraeli Foreign Ministry.
- "The Riches of Ketef Hinnom" Biblical Archaeology Review online article.
- The Ketef Hinnom tombs Photos provided by Holy Land Photos.
- "St. Andrew's Scottish Church" Photos and details of KH's location relative to the church.