English translation of the deciphered text:
1' you shall not do [it], but worship the [Lord].
2' Judge the sla[ve] and the wid[ow] / Judge the orph[an]
3' [and] the stranger. [Pl]ead for the infant / plead for the po[or and]
4' the widow. Rehabilitate [the poor] at the hands of the king.
5' Protect the po[or and] the slave / [supp]ort the stranger.
I’m not a scholar, however, any communication that replaces the traditional B.C. (before Christ) with B.C.E. (before current era) is suspiciously P.C(politically correct) to me.
Any time I see the letters BCE, I know it is coming from a Christian hating bigot. No other possible reason to use that term.
There is one thing sure, if a man claims to be the Son of God, he is either a nut (and not just a prophet/philospher), or he is telling the truth. I choose to believe the latter so this origin/time nonsense is of no import to me.
Ping!
The reference to Hebrew is interesting, but there seems to be something overlooked here.
The King James or New International versions of the Bible were translated from prior languages. That doesn’t devalue the significance of the text.
Why couldn’t early Biblical texts have been written in a language that preceded Hebrew? Why is it important to refer to this as an early version of Hebrew?
It may have simply been an earlier language than Hebrew.
The dating of this inscription puts it at less than 300 years after Moses’ death, if you accept the Biblical chronology. I’m not sure why they have so much difficulty considering that the original was written in Moses’ time, as it says it was.
Awesome God, He has been alongside His creation faithfully all along!
Current theory, they say? What intellectually masturbatory academic rot-gut do these idiots consume, anyway?
Moses lived 1500 - 1300 BC. The finger of God inscribed the 10 Commandments and gave them to Moses. What language in the 14th Century BC does one logically suppose the 10 Commandments were written in to the HEBREW PEOPLE???
So just because modern scholars haven't found alot of 10th Century Hebrew writing on clay tablets in ink, it somehow didn't exist? Are they trying to say that Solomon didn't write his Proverbs nor Moses or David their Psalms? An inscribed ancient clay staff topper has been unearthed from the 1st Temple Period, belonging to what is believed to be a relic from the destroyed 1st temple. What language do you suppose it's inscribed in? Do I have to say any more?
I laugh at the sophomoric self-important "since I didn't find it it didn't happen" philosophical approach to archaeological academia. These pompous-assed pricks are far too "intelligent" to actually be smart.
FReegards!
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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The article is correctly dated Tevet 24, 5770 along with teh more recent January 10, 2010 dating, but though it's an interesting article, those who consider the use of BCE a demonstration of Israeli/Jewish Christian hatred should probably skip the thread. No point in aggravating yourselves.
Until people start checking which verse this is, they need to stop calling it scripture
Cuz I sure cant find any of this in my searches, not in this form at all. not in this order, not these verses.
Ping.
ping
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. “Galil said this discovery disproves the current theory, which holds that the Bible could not have been written before the 6th century B.C.E., because Hebrew writing did not exist until then.”
That’s ridiculous!!
I had never heard that claim before, concerning the use of earliest known Hebrew writing as a basis for the plausible beginning of the religious belief system we now refer to as Judaism.
Before Abraham and his descendants (that is in the time of Adam, Noah etc.), it is difficult to place most biblical characters in specific language-identifiable groups, other than the Middle East generally.
But what we now refer to as Judaism, as a systematic presentation of a common set of beliefs about God, begins with Abraham in Mesopotamia, in an ancient town known to have existed north of present-day Baghdad in Iraq (where Abraham was born and grew to adulthood) - centuries BEFORE the 6th century BC/BCE.
The tribes that later founded Israel, Judea and Samaria developed the written form of “Hebrew” later on, as did other Semitic tribes who developed other scripts, like the more generalized Aramaic, which in both written and spoken form had similarities with Hebrew - similarities that remain in some of the other languages still spoken in the Middle East.
In, sum - Abraham most likely pre-existed the written script of “Hebrew”. That does not mean that the religious roots of Judaism, in Abraham, and in his ancestors, were non-existent, as a set of beliefs, prior to the 6th century BC/BCE.
From Abraham and until Moses, the religion of “the Hebrews” was predominately passed on in the oral traditions of the people. Written recordings of them were most likely few and most often not on imperishable materials. That is true of the majority of Middle East ancient societies, which is why, whether from Abraham and his people, or others of his day, written records of the time are rare and when found are found most frequently in the form of records kept by the rulers and those that worked for them; usually not artifacts of the common people or others not in positions of high status.
None of that proves any lack of continuity of religious belief from the Hebrews of the 6th century BC/BCE back to Abraham, nor back to Abraham’s ancestors. The lack of a single continuous same-written-language “paper trail” is not evidence of a lack of a trail in peoples beliefs.
Not to quibble with the author, but some scholars already believed the original writing went much further back. These authors, though, believe the Bible is true, and are therefore discounted by most of academia.
Without getting too far into it, their reasoning is that the early chapters of Genesis were written on tablets rather than in scroll form, and that these tablets were handed down from generation to generation. The accounts of the generations interspersed through the first chapters of Genesis were the separation points of these individual accounts. These scholars also speculate (please note, speculate) that when Esau traded his birth right to Jacob for a bowl of soup that he was swapping the family histories (which would have included all the previous generations) to Jacob.
Remember that not that long ago, scholars claimed Moses could not have written the first five books of the Bible because writing hadn't been invented in Moses time, and thus claimed the first five books of the Bible were only oral histories.
English translation of the deciphered text:
1’ you shall not do [it], but worship the [Lord].
2’ Judge the sla[ve] and the wid[ow] / Judge the orph[an]
3’ [and] the stranger. [Pl]ead for the infant / plead for the po[or and]
4’ the widow. Rehabilitate [the poor] at the hands of the king.
5’ Protect the po[or and] the slave / [supp]ort the stranger.
What I find most striking is how much the substance of the text exactly mirrors the criteria Jesus Christ set for the final judgment of the nations:
Matthew chapter 25
31 “When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. 33 And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. 34 Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: 35 for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; 36 I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.’
37 “Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? 38 When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? 39 Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ 40 And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’
41 “Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels: 42 for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; 43 I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’
44 “Then they also will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?’ 45 Then He will answer them, saying, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ 46 And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”