Ancient Pottery Shards Analyzed by Israeli Scientists Seem to Support Biblical Narrative

Amanda Casanova | ChristianHeadlines.com Contributor | Updated: Apr 25, 2015

Ancient Pottery Shards Analyzed by Israeli Scientists Seem to Support Biblical Narrative

Archaeologists, meteorologists and physicists in Israel are working to decipher the meaning of inscriptions found on 2,500-year-old pottery fragments.

The pieces are from the First Temple-era and the fragment is known as ostracon.

According to the newspaper Haaretz, one of the inscriptions describes the book of Jeremiah.

More than 100 ostraca written in Paleo-Hebrew script have been found in Arad in southern Israel. 

Haaretz reported: “One of the potsherds from Arad, probably sent to one of Eliashiv’s superior officers, is a panicked note from the king in Jerusalem with an order ‘incumbent upon your very life’ to send reinforcements to nearby Ramat Negeb to counter a threat from the neighboring Edomites.

“We don’t know what the response to the message was, but shortly after the order was received, the Edomites, who were allied with the Babylonians, overran the entire area and destroyed the Arad citadel.”

Experts started working to decipher the fragments about six years ago. They use a special camera to take photos of the ostraca to see inscriptions that the human eye cannot see.

“Once, the technician mistakenly photographed the reverse side of an ostracon, which was known to be blank, and the image revealed four clear lines of text there,” mathematician Arie Shaus said to Haaretz reporters. “It had been sitting in a museum for 50 years and nobody ever noticed this.”

 



Ancient Pottery Shards Analyzed by Israeli Scientists Seem to Support Biblical Narrative