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Another View: Christopher Rollston’s Methodology of Caution

By Yosef Garfinkel

In “What’s the Oldest Hebrew Inscription?” (BAR 38:03), Christopher Rollston discusses four different early inscriptions: the Khirbet Qeiyafa Ostracon, the Gezer Calendar, the Tel Zayit Abecedary and the Izbet Zartah Abecedary. He argues that none of them can be identified as Hebrew. However, Rollston does not suggest any alternative identification. Are these inscriptions Canaanite? Phoenician? Moabite? If they are written in Canaanite, did Canaanite people build the Iron Age cities of Israel and Judah in the tenth and ninth centuries B.C.E.? If these inscriptions are Phoenician or Moabite, are there any indications of migrations of people from Lebanon or […]

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Endnotes

1.

E. Mazar, W. Horowitz, T. Oshima, and Y. Goren, “A Cuneiform Tablet from the Ophel in Jerusalem,” Israel Exploration Journal 60 (2010), pp. 4–21.

2.

C.A. Rollston, “A Fragmentary Cuneiform Tablet from the Ophel (Jerusalem): Methodological Musings about the Proposed Genre and Sitz im Leben,” Antiguo Oriente 8 (2010), pp. 11–21.

3.

See Haggai Misgav, Yosef Garfinkel and Saar Ganor, “The Ostracon,” in Yosef Garfinkel and Saar Ganor, eds., Khirbet Qeiyafa, vol. 1, Excavation Report 2007–2008 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2009), pp. 247–254.

4.

B. Zissu, and Y. Goren, “The Ossuary of ‘Miriam Daughter of Yeshua Son of Caiaphas, Priests [of] Ma’aziah from Beth ‘Imri,’” Israel Exploration Journal 61 (2011), pp. 74–95.

5.

B. Zissu, and Y. Goren, “The Ossuary of ‘Miriam Daughter of Yeshua Son of Caiaphas, Priests of Ma’aziah from Beth ‘Imri,’” Qadmoniot 44 (2011), pp. 84–87 (Hebrew).

6.

C.A. Rollston, “The Ossuary of Mariam Daughter of Yeshua’ in Context: Limning the Broad Tableau of the Epigraphic and Literary Data” (2011), www.rollstonepigraphy.com/?p=241.