Serious or sarq?
Posted on 01/16/2008 6:41:36 PM PST by Alouette
A stone seal bearing the name of one of the families who acted as servants in the First Temple and then returned to Jerusalem after being exiled to Babylonia has been uncovered in an archeological excavation in Jerusalem's City of David, a prominent Israeli archeologist said Wednesday.
The 2,500-year-old black stone seal, which has the name "Temech" engraved on it, was found earlier this week amid stratified debris in the excavation under way just outside the Old City walls near the Dung Gate, said archeologist Dr. Eilat Mazar, who is leading the dig.
According to the Book of Nehemiah, the Temech family were servants of the First Temple and were sent into exile to Babylon following its destruction by the Babylonians in 586 BCE.
The family was among those who later returned to Jerusalem, the Bible recounts.
The seal, which was bought in Babylon and dates to 538-445 BCE, portrays a common and popular cultic scene, Mazar said.
The 2.1 x 1.8-cm. elliptical seal is engraved with two bearded priests standing on either side of an incense altar with their hands raised forward in a position of worship.
A crescent moon, the symbol of the chief Babylonian god Sin, appears on the top of the altar.
Under this scene are three Hebrew letters spelling Temech, Mazar said.
The Bible refers to the Temech family: "These are the children of the province, that went up out of the captivity, of those that had been carried away, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried away, and came again to Jerusalem and to Judah, every one unto his city." [Nehemiah 7:6]... "The Nethinim [7:46]"... The children of Temech." [7:55].
The fact that this cultic scene relates to the Babylonian chief god seemed not to have disturbed the Jews who used it on their own seal, she added.
The seal of one of the members of the Temech family was discovered just dozens of meters away from the Opel area, where the servants of the Temple, or "Nethinim," lived in the time of Nehemiah, Mazar said.
"The seal of the Temech family gives us a direct connection between archeology and the biblical sources and serves as actual evidence of a family mentioned in the Bible," she said. "One cannot help being astonished by the credibility of the biblical source as seen by the archaeological find."
The find will be announced by Mazar at the 8th annual Herzliya Conference on Sunday.
The archeologist, who rose to international prominence for her recent excavation that may have uncovered King David's palace, most recently uncovered the remnants of a wall from Nehemiah.
The dig is being sponsored by the Shalem Center, a Jerusalem research institute where Mazar serves as a senior fellow, and the City of David Foundation, which promotes Jewish settlement throughout east Jerusalem.
Warning! This is a high-volume ping list.
ggg ping
How can they keep finding evidence for all those fairy tales.
This must be stopped at once. Don’t they realize this land belongs to the Palestinians? /s
BTW, thanks for the cool post. I love this stuff.
Keep me on your Ark of the Covenant ping list for when it is found.
Awesome.
***”The seal of the Temech family gives us a direct connection between archeology and the biblical sources and serves as actual evidence of a family mentioned in the Bible,” she said. “One cannot help being astonished by the credibility of the biblical source as seen by the archaeological find.”***
Wonderful!
Serious or sarq?
bttt
We always associate the shape called the “crescent” moon with Islam, but couldn’t it also be symbolic for the beginning of the Jewish month (the New Moon?)?
It would be shocking if the Bible were entirely falsified. I don’t think anybody has ever argued that it was a fairy tale.
Thanks for posting.
this will have the muzzies doing massive self flagellation...very cool....
I think that your sense of humor might be construed by some as to be something no less than funny.
I once saw a seal on the Ed Sullivan Show.
Interesting...ping.
Your ping lists may find this interesting.
It has already been found. It is currently in a U. S. government storehouse in a crate marked TOP SECRET.
btt
You haven't been paying attention to the Archbishop of Canterbury have you? He spouts so much heresy that he's not even a Christian.
This is awesome.
The Babylonian Captivity was seventy years, just as God said it would be.
Daniel was taken as a teenager to Babylon and rose to be the most trusted of the King’s servants, both under the Babylonian King and the Persian King.
Daniel petitioned God for the return of the Jews to Jerusalem, when he was in his mid eighties, reminding God of His promise that the exile would last only seventy years.
That this seal testifies to a minor name in the Bible shows that all details are important to God, and everything in Scripture is there for a reason.
To date, archeaology has not disproven the Bible, but rather reinforces God’s Word as a reliable account of the way things happened.
Has this been verified? There are a lot of fakes out there. It is wonderful if true.
Picture?
And the crescent moon STILL appears prominently in Islam. Coincidence or more proof that Islam is just a continuation of the old pagan religions?
Fascinating. I thought seals only lived in colder climates.
ping
“It has already been found. It is currently in a U. S. government storehouse in a crate marked TOP SECRET.”
At Area 51
Being worked on by “experts”, Mr. Jones. “By experts”.
We’re doing a great Beth Moore study on Daniel. It’s exciting! More and more proof of the Bible’s authenticity is being ‘unearthed’ today.
You're right. I haven't.
I'm not one of those who believes every word in the Bible is literally true. For example, I don't believe that Noah's Flood ever occurred as described.
On the other hand, some of the stuff from contemporary writers of the time surely did happen.
Having one reference confirmed is great, but it really doesn't mean the rest of the passages are literally true. I could write a factually true statement in a novel, but that wouldn't change the whole book from fiction to non-fiction.
I'm not denigrating this find. It's significant and historic. But I'm cautioning about reading more into it than is logically justified.
I'd be more excited about evidence that the Jews were ever slaves in Egypt or that there was an Exodus, because there's no evidence of that whatsoever.
Some things never change.
“Top. Men.”
Why would they make that up?
I blame the Jews!
Cool Ping.
Biblical law in tension with Biblical narrative. And the Biblical Jews are the most self-flagellating people in history. You won’t find that in the records of anyone else either.
I'm not sure that it was intentionally made up. In fact, it might be true, although that seems unlikely with the archealogical evidence that we have.
My current best guess is that the very early history of the Jews was passed down orally and finally put into written word in the "Books of Moses." It was truth as the writer recounted it, because that is what he had been told. He wasn't lying.
I really think that the references to the "pillar of fire by night, and the "pillar of cloud by day" referred to in the Bible was the Thera volcanic explosion, but the location of that wouldn't have guided anyone from Egypt.
It would have led them from Iraq or the Arabian peninsula, which is very much in keeping with the similarities between the Gilgamesh Epic and Noah's Flood.
I don't think the Jews came from Egypt. I think they came from Mesopatamia.
You don't get the Old Testament references to the Nile very much. It's the Tigris and Euphrates. Even the Garden of Eden was there.
‘they’ decide what is fairy tales or not...
I will take God’s truth in His word....
how do you think the jews got out of captivity in egypt? a song and dance?
Kewl.
I'm still waiting for the fossilized flying horse dung shrine, oh wait that's the dome!
Shouldn't the ishmaelites move their fictional flying equine latrine somewhere else?
CTR
Why should I give an explanation to you for something that I already said probably didn’t happen?
You’re asking the wrong person. Either that, or your reading skills suck.
Oh, is that what that was? ;-)
I think it was sarcasm
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My father, an old Navy man, saw the scene in Indiana Jones where it was put in a crate by the government and laughed long and loud. When I finally got him to tell me what was so funny, he said, “now it’s really lost!”
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