Key Background Information on the Kh. Qeiyafa Inscription

In a guest post over at Jim West’s place, Barnea Selevan of Foundation Stone, a financial sponsor of the ongoing excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa, notes the following:

The point many miss is that the huge city itself [Khirbet Qeiyafa] is mute testament to a polity, to a government. Dating of the pottery has a huge consensus that it is the 10th century even without the olive pits [dated by C-14 to 1050-970 BCE]. Israel [Finkelstein, a famous low chronologist whose hypotheses minimalists like Jim West treat as manna from heaven] said, maybe it is Philistine? At an earlier session, excavators fresh from a summer of digging of Gath, Ashkelon, Timna; and earlier excavators of Ekron Timna and Lachish, agreed one after another, as Sy Gitin  [HUC-JIR] said, “this is not a coastal assemblage!” While Zvi [Lederman] and Shlomo [Bunimovitz] of TA  [Tel Aviv University] digging Bet Shemesh, nearby and also in Judah, said, “This is like our Level II to IV, early Iron Age.”

The above evidence is the reason the inscription is so important, regardless of what the inscription says, though the fact that it includes phrases and words like אל תעש , עבד, שפט and מלך is telling.

  I note that minimalists are already framing the debate without regard to the evidence in hand, but in relation to those they love to hate, i.e., the maximalists. For its part, the evidence does not confirm maximalism. However, it disconfirms a series of theses minimalists have touted for decades. This is a very important discovery. As I've suggested before, minimalism will go down in the annals of scholarship as a classic case of over-reach.

Here is another important article. For those who know Modern Hebrew, here is an important link.

Comments

[jan joosten]

John,
should that be ‘al ta‘as with an aleph at the beginning?
Jan

[JohnFH]

Jan,

Of course. Thanks for noting the error, now fixed.

[Angela Erisman]

What puzzles me, John, is this:

There is no substantive debate until the inscription and concrete information on its archaeological context are published. People, both "maximalists" and "minimalists" are debating over air. The inscription doesn't yet confirm or deny anything, because we don't know what it says.

The discussion going on now (absent full publication of the inscription) accomplishes two things: (a) hypes up excitement about it; (b) polarizes people. The former may be good, but the latter, in my view, isn't. Why? Because we're already laying out the interpretive options before we've even seen the inscription. Rather putting the cart before the horse.

[JohnFH]

Hi Angela,

I've tried to be careful to make claims that do not depend on anything beyond what is already known about the inscribed ostracon: a few key words, its script, and in particular, its archaeological context. That's a lot to go on already.

I assume, of course, that the archaeologists know their assemblages and the epigrapher is top-notch. Indeed, since I've read their work and followed the careers of many of the key players, I have reason to be confident.

It's possible to wait until the editio princeps appears and the relevant archaeological context is published in its entirety before saying anything of substance. There is even a chance that both will be available sooner rather than later, a rarity in scholarship.

Normally, however, as is true in this case, people start forming opinions and battle lines are drawn before all the relevant information is in.

The site is fabulous and will take years to excavate and decades to publish. In the meantime, you comment on the information you have, not the information you wished you had.

Since I have archaeological field experience and know how much more valuable finds are when stratigraphical context is understood, it peeves me no end, believe me, that sourced ancient inscriptions, ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, etc., are usually discussed without reference to archaeological context. So it's nice to discuss this inscription straight off in terms of its archaeological context.

The paradox here is that already, I can associate in my mind's eye the ostracon with a particular type of cultural assemblage with the same or higher degree of specificity than I can with the Gezer calendar, the Ketef Hinnom silver amulets, the Kuntillat Ajrud inscriptions, the Arad, Lachish, and Tel Dan inscriptions, etc. My sense is that I am hardly alone in this.