Word: hebrews
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...archaeologists revealed that several lumps of figured clay called bullae, bought from Arab dealers in 1975, had once been used to mark documents. Nahman Avigad of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem identified the impressions stamped into one piece of clay as coming from the seal of Baruch, son of Neriah, a scribe who recorded the doomsday proclamations of the prophet Jeremiah. Another bore the seal of Yerahme'el, son of King Jehoiakim's son, who the Book of Jeremiah says was sent on an unsuccessful mission to arrest both prophet and scribe - again confirming the existence of biblical characters...
...Avraham Biran of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and Joseph Naveh of the Hebrew University announced they had found an inscription bearing the phrases "House of David" and "King of Israel." The writing - dated to the 9th century B.C., only a century after David's reign - described a victory by a neighboring King over the Israelites. Some minimalists tried to argue that the inscription might have been misread, but most experts believe Biran and Naveh got it right. The skeptics' claim that King David never existed is now hard to defend...
Just because most scholars no longer accept Joshua's war of conquest, though, doesn't mean the question is settled by any means. Conservatives have plenty of ideas about how the tide could swing back to a more biblical interpretation. Experts like Abraham Malamat, a biblical historian at the Hebrew University, suggest that no evidence exists of destruction at Ai, for example, because the city was in a different location 3,000 years ago. Bryant Wood, director of the pro-Bible Associates for Biblical Research, insists that his own research supports Joshua's assault on Jericho. Perhaps, he suggests, Kathleen...
...what might even be called the Holy Grail of biblical archaeology - is a royal archive from before the time of King David or King Solomon. No such archive has ever been located inside Israel, although surrounding countries have yielded many from the same era. Sighs Amnon Ben-Tor, a Hebrew University archaeologist: "It's like striking oil. Everywhere but here...
...longer. Shulamit Aloni, an outspoken member of the Israeli Knesset, recently suggested that there has been too much focus on classical Jewish literature in Israeli schools. She recommended a little less Judah ha-Levi (the towering figure of medieval Hebrew literature) and a litte more Rabelais. While it is not fair to implicate all secular Israelis in the switch from Hebrew to French literature, the trend is there. And insofar as its boosters would have Israel become an ersatz California or phony France, the trend...