Endnote 16 – The Bat Creek Inscription: Did Judean Refugees Escape to Tennessee?
See Frank M. Cross, “Papyri of the Fourth Century B.C. from Daliyeh,” in New Directions in Biblical Archaeology, ed. David Noel Freedman and Jonas C. Greenfield (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969), pp. 41–62, and esp. figs. 34 and 35. In Cross’ photograph, this letter appears to be rather broken, but his sketch reconstructs it to virtually the Bat Creek form. As Cross himself points out (p. 60), the Samaritan and paleo-Hebrew scripts did not go their separate ways until the first century B.C. This seal, although Samaritan, may therefore be taken as a prime example of Second Temple paleo-Hebrew. Thanks to Cross, therefore, Gordon’s identification of this letter is positively confirmed.