Theory and Argument in Biblical Criticism

Abstract

"It is the viewpoint that creates the object. " (de Saussure, 1966, p. 8) Israeli archaeologist Gabriel Barkay has recently published a pre-liminary report and reading of Hebrew inscriptions incised on two thin silver strips (Barkay, 1986, esp. pp. 29-31). Each has been identified as a version of the so-called priestly benediction that appears in the Masoretic Text in Num 6:24-26. The larger text is said to contain traces of the three benedictions that we read in the MT. Contrary to what an inno-cent reader might suppose from any of a number of newspaper accounts of the discovery and deciphering of the texts, the paleographer, Ada Yardeni, did not identify the famous passage by simply reading the ancient Hebrew characters. She had, at first, considerable difficulty in distinguishing the Hebrew letters from other scratches in the silver. She could, however, make out three instances of the tetragrammaton, YHWH. She proceeded to identify, decipher, and read additional letters and words only after a friend had suggested that, in view of the three occurrences of YHWH, the text might correspond to the threefold priestly benediction (Rabinovich, 1986, p. 12). The delicately engraved

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