The Times and the Telegraph have nicely complementary reports of the discovery of the name of a minor Bible character, from the book of Jeremiah, on a cuneiform tablet from ancient Babylon. I have written about this here and here. Details like this are a strong indication that the book of Jeremiah is a genuine eye witness account of events; they are extremely hard to explain on the currently popular “minimalist” models, according to which all of the Old Testament was written centuries later, in Hellenistic times. This may also indicate what happened to the gold from the temple in Jerusalem: dedicated to the great temple in Babylon.
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Chris Heard has a good balanced discussion of this issue. Doug, thanks for the link, and for your own comments. Henry, thanks also for yours.
Plenty more activity on this one, including second posts from Claude Mariottini and from Chris Heard, and a helpful one from John Hobbins. These scholars seem to be moving towards a consensus that the new tablet tends to confirm the (T)NIV rendering over the NRSV, ESV etc one, although we can’t be sure that it refers to the same individual mentioned in Jeremiah.
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