Readers of Rogerson and Davies’s Biblical Archaeologist article on the Siloam Inscription might well conclude that paleography has no scientific basic. But that is not the case at all. Not only is paleography a useful and accurate tool, but its results are supported by external evidence.
Consider the following three success stories:
Carbon 14 datings of Dead Sea Scrolls have confirmed the dates assigned to them by paleographers. In one radiocarbon dating, for example, the scholars who published the results of the test conclude: “Our research put to test both radiocarbon method and paleography; seemingly, both disciplines have fared well.”1
The second example concerns an Aramaic papyrus document (Jer. pap. 1) discovered by Hanan Eshel in a cave, now known as the Ab’ior Cave, at Ketef Jericho.2 One side of the document apparently lists the names of people who borrowed money, while the other side records the loans’ repayment. Eshel and Haggai Misgav, who published the text, dated the document to 343 B.C.E., when Jericho was destroyed by the Persian king Artaxerxes III; they conjectured that the document was deposited in the cave at that time. Professor Frank Moore Cross, however, on paleographic grounds, argued that the document must be dated later than Wadi ed-Daliyeh 1 (335 B.C.E.), one of a cache of papyri found in a cave nine miles north of Jericho.3 In 1993, Cross was proved right by evidence turned up during “Operation Scroll” (the effort by Israel to discover new Dead Sea Scrolls around Jericho and Qumran before Jericho 049came under Palestinian control). Eshel and Boaz Zissu excavated a terrace at the foot of the Abi’or Cave, where they found 15 papyrus documents written in Aramaic and Greek from the time of the Bar-Kokhba Revolt (132–135 C.E.) and a silver drachma coin struck in 323 B.C.E. from the reign of Alexander the Great.4 These finds had been dumped from the Abi’or Cave. The coin proves that the refugees who fled to the Ab’ior Cave did so no earlier than 323 B.C.E. Operation Scroll also turned up other fourth-century coins in other caves west of Jericho.5 Given this new evidence, Eshel and Zissu now propose that the loan document and silver coin were brought to the Abi’or Cave by people who fled from Jericho in 312 B.C.E., when Ptolemy I sent inhabitants of Judea and Samaria into exile in Egypt. Thus archaeological finds confirm Professor Cross’s paleographical argument.6
The third success story involves seven inscribed pottery sherds discovered in 1993 in one of the subterranean caves at Maresha. These fragments constitute part of a marriage document of 12 lines (see “Edomite Wedding Vows,” in this issue). This ostracon was published by Amos Kloner and myself.7 Written in Aramaic script, it can be dated by paleography to the end of the third century B.C.E. or the first half of the second century B.C.E. The first line of the Maresha ostracon reads: “In the month of Sivan of the year 136 (of) Se[leucus the king].” The month of Sivan, in the Seleucid year 136, corresponding to June 176 B.C.E.,8 also corresponds exactly with the paleographic dating. Comparison of this dated document to other scripts dated by Cross, on paleographic grounds, to the early part of the second century B.C.E. provides proof that paleographical typology is an accurate science.
These examples, as well as many others, show that paleography stands on a strong and stable foundation. Today paleography can date documents to within half a century. It is true that paleography alone can only tell us that the Siloam Inscription may have been written at the end of the eighth century or in the seventh century B.C.E.,9 but paleography can tell us with certainty that the inscription was not written in the second century B.C.E., as Rogerson and Davies “strongly suggest.”
Readers of Rogerson and Davies’s Biblical Archaeologist article on the Siloam Inscription might well conclude that paleography has no scientific basic. But that is not the case at all. Not only is paleography a useful and accurate tool, but its results are supported by external evidence.
Consider the following three success stories:
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Hanan Eshel and Misgav, “Fourth Century B.C.E. Document,” p. 174, n. 47; Frank Moore Cross, The Ancient Library of Qumran, 3rd rev. ed. (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), p. 49, note 3 and p. 172, note 4; and “Samaria Papyrus 1: An Aramaic Slave Conveyance of 335 B.C.E. Found in Wadi ed-Daliyeh,” Eretz-Israel 18 (1985), pp. 7*–17*.
4.
See Hanan Eshel and Boaz Zissu, “Ketef Jericho, 1993,” Israel Exploration Journal 45 (1995), pp. 292–295.
5.
M. Prich, “A Hoard of Tetradrachmas from Jericho,” Israel Numismatic Journal 11 (1991), pp. 24–25.
6.
Cross, “The Development of the Jewish Scripts,” in George Ernest Wright, ed., The Bible and the Ancient Near East: Essays in Honor of W.F. Albright (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961), pp. 133–202. Note also that in 1975 another dated document of this period was published: a bilingual ostracon discovered in Hirbet el-Kôm dating to the sixth year of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (277 B.C.E.); see Lawrence T. Geraty, “The Khirbet el-Kom Bilingual Ostracon,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 220 (1975), pp. 55–61.^
7.
Esther Eshel and Amos Kloner, “An Aramaic Ostracon of an Edomite Marriage Contract from Maresha, Dated 176 B.C.E.,” Israel Exploration Journal 46 (1996), pp. 1–22.
8.
Richard A. Parker and Waldo H. Dubberstein, Babylonian Chronology, 626 B.C.–A.D. 45 (Chicago: Oriental Institute, 1942), p. 39.
9.
G. Levi Della Vida, “The Shiloah Inscription Reconsidered” (in German), in Beihette zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 103 (1968), pp. 162–166; and Zipora Talshir, “The Detailing Formula ‘WZE(H)DBR’” (in Hebrew), Tarbiz 51 (1981–1982), pp. 23–25.
