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Genre EphemeraNotes- When decoded, this paper tape recording of the historic message transmitted by Samuel F. B. Morse reads, "What hath God wrought?" Morse sent it from the Supreme Court room in the U.S. Capitol in Washington to his assistant, Alfred Vail, in Baltimore. Morse's early system produced a paper copy with raised dots and dashes, which were translated later by an operator. Across the top of this artifact of his historic achievement Morse has given credit to Annie Ellsworth, the young daughter of a good friend, for suggesting the message he sent. She found it in the Bible, Numbers...

Photography of Mesha Stele. Credit: Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository =============================================================== The biblical King Balak may have been a historical figure, according to a new reading of the Mesha Stele, an inscribed stone dating from the second half of the 9th century BCE. A name in Line 31 of the stele, previously thought to read 'House of David', could instead read 'Balak', a king of Moab mentioned in the biblical story of Balaam (Numbers 22-24), say archaeologist Prof. Israel Finkelstein and historians and biblical scholars Prof. Nadav Na'aman and Prof. Thomas Römer, in an article published in Tel Aviv:...

The Rise and Fall of a Prophet and What His Story Means for Us Msgr. Charles Pope • December 14, 2015 • Balaam and the Angel, by Gustav Jaeger, 1836.He is one of the more curious figures of the Bible; the details of his life and story are caught up in textual complexities in the Book of Numbers. Though a prophet, he was not even an Israelite. He wrote no book and is not counted among Israel's prophets. And yet a prophet he was, for he spoke the oracles of God and brought blessings to Israel at a critical time...