Endnote 15 – Can Archaeology Help Date the Psalms?

In the surviving provenanced Hebrew inscriptions from the eighth through sixth centuries B.C.E., it has been observed that when samekh is immediately followed by pe, the two letters are consistently written the same way. Based on this, it has been suggested that Israelite scribes in this period were trained in an order in which samekh was followed by pe See Ryan Byrne, “The Refuge of Scribalism in Iron I Palestine,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 345 (2007), pp. 4–6. Thus, the pe/ayin order may now be supported by a different line of evidence.