What's the Oldest Hebrew Inscription?

Biblical Archaeology Review ^ | May/Jun 2012 | Christopher A. Rollston

[SunkenCiv]

Four contenders vie for the honor of the oldest Hebrew inscription. To decide we must determine (1) whether they are in Hebrew script and/or language and (2) when they date. Not easy!

The first contender, the already famous Qeiyafa Ostracon, was discovered only in 2008 at Khirbet Qeiyafa, a site in the borderland of ancient Judah and Philistia.a The five-line ostracon (an ink inscription on a piece of broken pottery) is not well preserved and is subject to varying readings.

As the Qeiyafa Ostracon is a recent find, so the Gezer Calendar is an old one. It was discovered exactly a hundred years earlier, in 1908, by Irish archaeologist R.A.S. Macalister at Tel Gezer, between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. It describes agricultural activities over a 12-month period. Inscribed on a piece of soft limestone, it is sometimes supposed to be a schoolboy's ditty.

[SunkenCiv]

:’) Thanks for the ping!

[Wuli]

I did NOT say it was not important “to me”.

I said that resolving the question was, to me, not important to a Jewish or Christian faiths (in my view), but it does have importance in the history of written language.

[Wuli]

As to Abraham - the first "Hebrew" (Genesis 14:13) - it would likely be safer to say he "spoke" the father Semitic tongue/language, or a proto-Semitic language, from which the spoken languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic and Samaritan evolved - as they have their differences but a common root that is distinguishable, large and pronounced.

"The etymology of the Semitic languages, which are fully developed yet have retained their primeval root system in pristine form, is of a different nature; theirs is an entirely internal affair. There is very little that Hebrew can gain from the etymological consideration of the few other surviving members of its family of tongues. Hebrew and its living relatives — Arabic and Aramaic [and Samaritan] — are formally similar, have identical roots of assorted shades of meaning, and are barely etymologically distinguishable from one another." [ http://www.hebrewetymology.com/Introduction%20%28English%29.pdf ]