The Silver Scrolls of Ketef Hinnom

In 1979, a thirteen-year-old volunteer made a chance discovery in a Jerusalem tomb that looked empty. It led to some of the oldest Bible text known today.

Scripture: ‘Yahweh bless you, and keep you. Yahweh make his face to shine on you, and be gracious to you. Yahweh lift up his face toward you, and give you peace.’

In Numbers, Yahweh tells Moses to have Aaron and his sons bless the children of Israel. That is the Priestly Blessing, shown here.

The place is Ketef Hinnom, southwest of Jerusalem's Old City. Cave 24 was a burial cave, in use for generations from about 650 BCE, and still used after Jerusalem fell.

Beneath the chamber lay a repository, where old bones were moved to make room for new burials. It held over a thousand objects, including two tiny silver scrolls, called KH1 and KH2.

The scrolls date to about 600 BCE. That comes from paleography, which means dating by the shapes of the letters, here in the old Paleo-Hebrew script.

Scripture: The texts are fragments, with a variation of the Priestly Blessing that parallels Numbers. The 2004 research team said they preserve the earliest known citations of such texts.

The date was challenged. Johannes Renz and Wolfgang Rollig argued the worn script could not be dated with certainty. A re-examination by the University of Southern California, using advanced photography and computer enhancement, confirmed a date just before Jerusalem's destruction.

Here is the careful part. Wayne Pitard says the evidence for the blessing's antiquity is compelling, but that does not mean Numbers already existed. James Davila calls the claim of proof an overinterpretation.

The sources describe them as amulets. As for where the scrolls are kept today, the sources I have do not say.

So the scrolls show an old blessing, not a finished book. May the Lord Jesus Christ be with you today. Follow Bible Evidence for more.