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Defusing Pseudo-Scholarship

Some Paleographic Success Stories

By Esther Eshel

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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Endnotes

1.

G. Bonani, Magen Broshi, Israel Carmi, S. Ivy, John Strugnell, W. Wöfli, “Radiocarbon Dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls”, ‘Atiqot 20 (1991), pp. 27–32.

2.

Hanan Eshel and Haggai Misgav, “A Fourth Century B.C.E. Document from Ketef Yeriho,” Israel Exploration Journal 38 (1988), pp. 158–176; Hanan Eshel, “How I Found a Fourth-Century B.C. Papyrus Scroll on My First Time Out!” BAR 15:05.

3.

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.