Words Unseen - The BAS Library

Words Unseen - The BAS Library

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In , archaeologist Gabriel Barkay discovered two miniature silver scrolls from a late Iron Age (seventh century B.C.E.) tomb in Ketef Hinnom outside of Jerusalem. When unrolled, the scrolls had tiny texts written on them—similar to the priestly blessing in Numbers 6:24–26. Curiously, though, these texts were hidden from human eyes, which begs the question: Who was their intended audience?

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Endnotes

1.
Gabriel Barkay, “The Priestly Benediction on Silver Plaques from Ketef Hinnom Jerusalem,” Tel Aviv 19 (1992), pp. 139–192.

2.
Barkay, “The Priestly Benediction,” pp. 169–174; Ada Yardeni, “Remarks on the Priestly Blessing on Two Amulets from Jerusalem,” Vetus Testamentum 41.2 (1991), pp. 176–185.

3.
Gabriel Barkay, Marilyn J. Lundberg, Andrew G. Vaughn, Bruce Zuckerman, and Kenneth Zuckerman, “The Challenges of Ketef Hinnom: Using Advanced Technologies to Reclaim the Earliest Biblical Texts and Their Context,” Near Eastern Archaeology 66.4 (2003), pp. 162–171.

4.
Gabriel Barkay, M.J. Lundberg, Andrew G. Vaughn, and Bruce Zuckerman, “The Amulets from Ketef Hinnom: A New Edition and Evaluation,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 334 (2004), pp. 41–71.

5.
An alternative reading is “those who love [hi]m.”.

6.
For discussion, see Jeremy D. Smoak, The Priestly Blessing in Inscription and Scripture: The Early History of Numbers 6:24–26 (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2015); Nadav Na’aman, “A New Appraisal of the Silver Amulets from Ketef Hinnom,” Israel Exploration Journal 61.2 (2011), pp. 184–195.

7.
For discussion, see Theodore J. Lewis, “Job 19 in the Light of the Ketef Hinnom Inscriptions and Amulets,” in Marilyn J. Lundberg, Steven Fine, and Wayne T. Pitard, eds., Puzzling Out the Past: Studies in Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures in Honor of Bruce Zuckerman (London: Brill, 2012), pp. 99–114.

8.
Barkay, “The Priestly Benediction,” p. 148.

9.
Barkay, “The Priestly Benediction,” p. 148.

10.
Barkay, “The Priestly Benediction,” p. 148.

11.
Stephanie Langin-Hooper, “Fascination with the Tiny: Social Negotiation Through Miniatures in Hellenistic Babylonia,” World Archaeology 47.1 (2015), p. 62.

12.
Langin-Hooper, “Fascination with the Tiny,” p. 62.

13.
Douglass W. Bailey, Prehistoric Figurines: Representation and Corporeality in the Neolithic (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 42.

14.
For discussion, see Sheila Kohring, “Bodily Skill and the Aesthetics of Miniaturisation,” Pallas 86 (2011), pp. 31–50.

15.
For more, see Pasi Falk, “Written in the Flesh,” Body Society 1.1 (1995), p. 95.

16.
Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Durham: Durham Univ. Press, 1993), p. 38.