Posted on 07/10/2007 5:48:08 PM PDT by blam
Tiny tablet provides proof for Old Testament
By Nigel Reynolds, Arts Correspondent
Last Updated: 7:33pm BST 10/07/2007
The sound of unbridled joy seldom breaks the quiet of the British Museum's great Arched Room, which holds its collection of 130,000 Assyrian cuneiform tablets, dating back 5,000 years.
But Michael Jursa, a visiting professor from Vienna, let out such a cry last Thursday. He had made what has been called the most important find in Biblical archaeology for 100 years, a discovery that supports the view that the historical books of the Old Testament are based on fact.
Searching for Babylonian financial accounts among the tablets, Prof Jursa suddenly came across a name he half remembered - Nabu-sharrussu-ukin, described there in a hand 2,500 years old, as "the chief eunuch" of Nebuchadnezzar II, king of Babylon.
Prof Jursa, an Assyriologist, checked the Old Testament and there in chapter 39 of the Book of Jeremiah, he found, spelled differently, the same name - Nebo-Sarsekim.
Nebo-Sarsekim, according to Jeremiah, was Nebuchadnezzar II's "chief officer" and was with him at the siege of Jerusalem in 587 BC, when the Babylonians overran the city.
The small tablet, the size of "a packet of 10 cigarettes" according to Irving Finkel, a British Museum expert, is a bill of receipt acknowledging Nabu-sharrussu-ukin's payment of 0.75 kg of gold to a temple in Babylon.
The tablet is dated to the 10th year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, 595BC, 12 years before the siege of Jerusalem.
Evidence from non-Biblical sources of people named in the Bible is not unknown, but Nabu-sharrussu-ukin would have been a relatively insignificant figure.
"This is a fantastic discovery, a world-class find," Dr Finkel said yesterday. "If Nebo-Sarsekim existed, which other lesser figures in the Old Testament existed? A throwaway detail in the Old Testament turns out to be accurate and true. I think that it means that the whole of the narrative [of Jeremiah] takes on a new kind of power."
Cuneiform is the oldest known form of writing and was commonly used in the Middle East between 3,200 BC and the second century AD. It was created by pressing a wedge-shaped instrument, usually a cut reed, into moist clay.
The full translation of the tablet reads: (Regarding) 1.5 minas (0.75 kg) of gold, the property of Nabu-sharrussu-ukin, the chief eunuch, which he sent via Arad-Banitu the eunuch to [the temple] Esangila: Arad-Banitu has delivered [it] to Esangila. In the presence of Bel-usat, son of Alpaya, the royal bodyguard, [and of] Nadin, son of Marduk-zer-ibni. Month XI, day 18, year 10 [of] Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.
Yes, it is very plausible. Keep in mind that Old Testament Hebrew was written with no vowels. The vowels are basically just guessed at. And "sh" and "s" are the same letter in Semitic languages. The "in" at the end of the name was probably taken as a plural, which would be written "im" in Hebrew.
So "Nabu-sharrussu-ukin" could easily become "Nebo-Sarsekim" when transliterated into Hebrew.
It is interesting to note that in the past some people stamped this passage (Daniel 5) and all of the Book of Daniel as mere myth-telling because Historians didn’t believe there was such a king as Belshazzar who ever reigned in Babylon. But in 1854, a member of the British Consul was exploring ancient ruins in southern Iraq and dug into a great tower built there. He found a time capsule: clay cylinders inscribed with cuneiform writing; the cylinders were inscribed at the time of Nabonidus, king of Babylon from 555-539 B.C., and commemorated repairs the king made to the tower; they included a prayer for long life of Nabonidus and his oldest son, Belshazzar, proving Belshazzar was not a fictional character.
That is, that the grammatical and vocabulary flow was from the Sa'ami to the newcomers, and not the other way around as had been supposed for several centuries.
Although you continue to see the Sa'ami languages (11 of them still spoken) being part of some sort of Finno-Ughric subgroup, not all linguistic researchers agree. Sure, all those languages are agglutinative, but when you subtract the Sa'ami loanwords into Finnish or Estonian, showing their closer connection to Hungarian and Tibetan, Sa'ami begins to look more and more like it has a reasonably close relative in ancient Sumerian.
There are even ancient Sumerian texts that make sense only if you imagine these people wandering about among glaciers and polar bears.
With those understandings, the next closest language group to this hypothetical Summerian/Sa'ami isolate would be the Dravidian languages.
The word matches aren't all that great but the similar grammatical characteristics can be rationally argued as being related.
None of this was convincing to me until I saw the miniature multi-thousand year old pre-Biblical clay Santa Claus dug out of the mud in the upper Euphrates Valley. There were also miniature reindeer. These items are on display at the Indiana art musem on the Indiana University campus in Bloomington.
#13 - Well said.
Ok, but I remember when that “Tomb of Jesus” guy was being bashed over less variation than this.
Yes, these stories are no more “religious” than stories about King Alfred of England.
Or mumbled rapidly.
Just recall they are not dealing with Words in the English language. but related languages. The Babylonians were Semites.
When you get into the really ancient stuff, there's simply very little to go on many times. The Sumerian texts were translated a little at a time over a long period of time by language geniuses.
Okay, but that sounds like you can make things seem the same, if you really want to. Again, even if the same historical figure is mentioned in both cases, it just means that two ancient texts agree in one place. It doesn’t prove anything else.
~”I thought perhaps you meant the ... uh... procedure... was a “small thing”...”~
I suspect the thing was smaller after the procedure...
What you described, known as the “higher criticisms”, while not of the purest intent, did make a lot of interesting discoveries along with the dross. All told, they really opened the door to several new ways of examining religious history and doctrines, especially what this article is talking about: looking for non-Biblical sources to confirm Biblical writings and events.
They also went beyond “lower criticisms”, which was the study of translation errors and textual changes over time, to actual linguistic analysis. This resulted in all sorts of interesting discoveries about differences in writing style between different authors.
Even today, profound discoveries are being made along these lines, such as the agonizingly slow reformation of the original Hebrew Pentateuch being done in Israel with some of the world’s top Hebraic language scholars, which revealed that it was written in an archaic poetic form. With each small phrase needing books of footnotes to justify.
So in a manner of speaking, the higher criticisms never really ended, forcing Judeo-Christian religions to question arguable interpretations, and changing or not changing their doctrines accordingly.
Of course, the higher criticisms did produce a lot of whoppers, such as trying to rationalize supernatural events with natural causes.
Interesting tidbit of history. Thanks for posting it.
Thanks for the ping! Highly interesting information, just confirming the truth that the Bible is true.
And that records were kept on tablets of gold in that era (587 B.C., which is mighty close to 600 B.C.)
Very interesting article. Thanks for posting it.
Actually a whole lot of Palestinians HAVE read them, especially impressionable children and older students. And unfortunately, they believe them.
Actually, there are books written about the history of Christians living in Palestine, dating all the way back to Pentecost. Some of their descendants still live there.
Sadly, many Americans, including even many Christian Americans, pay no heed to these people or their history.
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