April 6, 2022
The Connection Between a Just-Discovered Ancient Hebrew Inscription and Modern Yiddish
By Philologos"An earthquake in biblical scholarship” is how the discovery has been described. That's true, as are the connections it reveals between ancient languages and modern ones.
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“An earthquake in biblical scholarship”—so the recent discovery of an ancient, amulet-like Hebrew inscription tentatively dated to the 13th century BCE has been called. The inscription was found in debris from an archeological dig on the biblical Mount Eval, which rises to the north of the Palestinian city of Nablus, the biblical Shechem.
“Earthquake” is not overstating it. If the proposed dating and decipherment of the inscription’s proto-Canaanite script prove to be correct, the result will be a radical revision in the thinking of biblical scholars. The Bible’s account of the early history of the Israelite people, their settlement in the Land of Israel, and the time frame in which this took place will have to be taken far more seriously than it generally has been until now.