Spelling Differences and Letter Shapes Are Telltale Signs

The famous Siloam Inscription, originally carved into the wall of Hezekiah’s Tunnel in Jerusalem to commemorate the tunnel’s completion, does not date to the late eighth century B.C.E., as universally accepted until now, but rather to a half millennium later, “strongly suggest” two English scholars in the cover story of the September 1996 issue of Biblical Archaeologist, the semipopular journal of the American Schools of Oriental Research. If authors John Rogerson and Philip Davies of the University of Sheffield are right, the keystone has fallen from the carefully constructed structure of First Temple epigraphy—and with it such other inscriptions […]