To: a.c.smith AT juno.com, b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
Subject: Re: pre-exilic Hebrew papyrus
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 20:22 -0500 (EST)
The only info I have on this is from "The New Bible Dictionary", IVP
Leicester 1962. I quoted this rather tentatively as I was half
expecting to get a response saying that this dating had long been
disproved, but nothing has come so far! Here is the full extract from
the article "Papyri and Ostraca", by KA Kitchen, DF Payne and BF
Harris:
"By far the oldest Hebrew papyrus known is the palimpsest found at the
Wadi Murabba'at by the Dead Sea. It contains a list of personal names,
written in the palaeo-Hebrew ('Phoenician') script, and dates from the
7th, or even 8th, century BC."
From another part of the same article:
"Before the end of the second millennium BC, papyrus was being
exported extensively to Syria-Palestine and doubtless beyond. About
1090 BC Zakarbaal, the prince of Phoenician Byblos, quoted
timber-prices to the Egyptian envoy Wenamun from the rolls of accounts
kept by this predecessors, and in Wenamun's part-payment for timber
were included '500 (rolls of) finished papyrus' (ANET, pp.27a, 28a)."
Also from the article "Writing" by DJ Wiseman in the same dictionary:
"The papyrus is not directly mentioned in the Old Testament as a
writing-material... It was, however, obtainable from Phoenicia, Lake
Huleh, and the Jordan (see PAPYRI) in the 11th century and onwards,
and its use is attested by the marks on the backs of seal impressions
originally attached to this perishable substance (e.g. the reverse of
the seal of GEDALIAH, q.v.). Papyrus... was also known to the
Assyrians and the Babylonians in the 7th century (R.P. Dougherty,
'Writing on Parchment and Papyrus among the Babylonians and the
Assyrians', JAOS, XLVIII, 1928, pp.109-135)."
Peter Kirk
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Subject: pre-exilic Hebrew papyrus
Author: a.c.smith AT juno.com at internet
Date: 11/01/1999 05:32
>>a surviving
>>pre-exilic Hebrew papyrus as well as impressions of papyrus on the
>>backs of pre-exilic seals.
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