Israeli Scientist Says Ancient Pottery Shard Supports History Stated in the Bible

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Israeli Scientist Says Ancient Pottery Shard Supports History Stated in the Bible

22Apr, 2015by Warner Todd Huston

 

Israeli scientists and researchers are carefully studying a shard of ancient pottery that they say would support historical claims made in the Bible.

The team is researching the shard at Tel Aviv University.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported Wednesday that a Tel Aviv University team has been examining pieces of First Temple-era pots and vessels with ancient inscriptions scratched in. The ancient pot fragment is known as an ostracon.

One of the inscriptions addressed events described in the biblical book of Jeremiah. Haaretz reported:

Even more gripping is the tale told by perhaps the most known ostracon from the period, which was found in Lachish, the largest Judahite town after Jerusalem. In the dispatch, an official stationed outside the city reports to his commander on the fall of a nearby stronghold, saying that “we can see the signals from Lachish, but we no longer see Azekah.”

Scholars have taken this as a confirmation of the biblical narrative of Jeremiah, which recounts that Azekah and Lachish were the last fortresses of Judah to fall before Jerusalem was besieged and destroyed by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II.

The Israeli foreign ministry has noted that more than 100 ostraca written in Paleo-Hebrew script have been found in Arad in southern Israel, calling it “the largest and richest collection of inscriptions from the biblical period ever discovered in Israel.” Paleo-Hebrew was used in the ancient kingdoms of Judah and Israel.