What Joseph Smith would have given for the "real deal!"

"Ancient... Papyrus document, which was stolen from Judean Desert cave, records shipment to king in ancient Hebrew script....

According to the authority, the papyrus document, which had been among the antiquities robbed from caves in the Judean Desert, represents the oldest external source found to date that cites Jerusalem.

The document details a shipment to be delivered to the king. Two lines of Hebrew script are extant and feature the words "wine," "king," and "[to] Jerusalem." It was recovered as part of an operation by the Antiquities Robbery Prevention Unit in the IAA, which is making preparations to put the findings on display for the general public and was planning to present the discovery at a conference on Wednesday.

"The document in our possession represents extremely rare testimony of the existence of orderly management in the kingdom of Judea," said Dr. Eitan Klein, deputy director of the Antiquities Robbery Prevention Unit.

"The document highlights the centrality of Jerusalem as the kingdom's economic capital," Klein said. He added that although it is known that the kings who ruled Jerusalem in this period were Manasseh, Amon, or Josiah, it is impossible to know for whom the shipment was meant."

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=37415



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/26/2016 06:05PM by Amyjo.

To me, this is really something special, Amyjo! Especially now.....

I received my copy of A PROVOCATIVE PEOPLE: A Secular History of the Jews, by Sherwin T. Wine, and as it happens, I just finished the section about King Josiah (640-609 BCE)...who evidently, is largely responsible for what we have "known" (erroneously, as it turns out) about the biblical David and Solomon.

Page 68:

"Again evidence intervenes. As with David, there are no signs of any material culture in the highlands of Judah and Israel that could sustain such glory. Even Jerusalem was, in Solomon's century, not much more than a walled village. If there are magnificent ruins there, they belong to a later time.

"Who the real David and Solomon were, we will never fully know. The splendor of David's conquests and Solomon's temple were probably real, but not in the time of David and Solomon. The figures we have in the Bible are creations of a later century. Some biblical historians suggest that the story in the Bible was created 300 years later, when Judah was richer and more powerful. At that time, King Josiah (640-609 BCE), a descendant of David and Solomon, attempted to conquer Israel and to make the Temple in Jerusalem the only temple in the land. In order to justify his ambitious program, he projected his scenario back into the times of his distant ancestors, the founding members of his dynasty. His temple became Solomon's temple. His ambition to control the territory of Israel became Solomon's ambition. Look at the biblical David and Solomon and you see Josiah."

There is a footnote to this section.. "Israel Finkelstein provides the most coherent explanation of the existing archeological evidence. Most of the Biblical recording of early Jewish history was created in the eighth, seventh and sixth centuries BCE, long after the events described presumably took place. In almost all cases the achievements of Israel were diminished and the glories of Judah were exaggerated. In the end the Bible is a Jewish, not an Israelite, document."



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/26/2016 08:44PM by Tevai.

Hmm, very interesting. The timeline of the narrative you shared is in tandem with the approximate dates of the papyrus find.

Thanks for adding that piece of the puzzle.

Tevai, you would probably enjoy the heck out of the John Sandford novel "Storm Front." The plot involves a newly discovered monument in Israel, written in a 'proto-Hebraic' script in which a victory is celebrated by an Egyptian prince over the relatively tiny 'kingdom of David' by this prince, whose name evolved into 'Solomon'. Thus this discovery 'proves' that rather than a Messiah being born through the Hebrew lineage of David, he actually descends from an Egyptian prince.

The novel then goes on to treat us to the hijinks that befall the thief who stole the discovery and the people who want to buy it from him, all for different religious reasons.

It also hints at an explanation regarding the 'Jewishness' of a person coming through the person's mother, not his father, pushing the notion that while one sometimes wasn't certain who sired one, one was in a better position to say who was one's mother. So in the end whether or not 'Solomon' was David's son or his conqueror, the Messiah's 'Jewishness' was not really affected.

I just checked, and although there was a really good chance that "Storm Front" was already in the family warehouse, the inventory list says it is not...

So...as it happens, and if things go as scheduled, someone here will be going on a book buying trip to The Last Bookstore, either tomorrow or the day after, and is going to pick up a copy for me then.

Thank you, EOD!!!

Joseph Smith did have 'the real deal' in terms of a real papyrus with Egyptian writing on it, but, well, we know what happened.

Darn. No mention in Reformed Egyptian of a sword delivery for Laban of the finest steel....

IN b 4 ~ some atheistic exmo sez the bible is fake ~