Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Jack Kilmon" <jkilmon AT historian.net>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "uri hurwitz" <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com>
To: "Biblical Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT franklin.metalab.unc.edu>
Sent: Saturday, January 18, 2003 8:50 AM
Subject: [b-hebrew] RE: joash transcription


>
>
>   Just one comment on Jack's excellent message. He mentions, among other
> problems, the lack of a word divider in BYTDVD ; this was discussed and
> various other examples of similar usage were listed in BAR, for instance.
>   Another such an occurrence, not mentioned at the time, is BN'MN (Bnei
> 'Ammon) in the Tell Siran inscription, Basor 212.
>
>   But to return to the Jehoash inscription: not enough attention is given
> to the physical report of the geologists. This seems crucial in the eyes
> of some epigraphers -- if the tablet is indeed ancient,can the inscription
> on it have been faked? Not according the technical reports so far.
>                                                                Uri


Any unprovenanced epigraphy in palaeo script is going to draw suspicions if
for nothing else our lack of a complete understanding of the convention and
orthography of the time.  The geological report, however, is, IMO, almost
certain proof for the tablet being genuine.  The C14 of the soot and the
pure gold microbodies convince me this artifact hails to the destruction of
the first temple.  I have not read the original publication yet but I am
sure that cation ratio analysis must have been done on the inscribed vs base
stone. I don't see, therefore, how palaeographic concerns can get by the
geological analysis.

I am also not disturbed by the smaller and compressed text of the first
lacunate lines, believed by some to indicate the inscription was placed
after the breakage.
I noticed that when I was attempting to transcribe the stone for the first
time.  Although it did add to my suspicions at first, I also noticed that
the script does gets larger and more spaced as the lines descend reaching
their maximum size in the next to last line and compressed again on the last
line with the same amount of fonts per length as in the first line.  That
along with the partially lacunate (beyt?) in the second line leaned me in
the direction of genuiness for the inscription.

shlama amkon

Jack