Friday, August 26, 2016

Results of inscription survey

THE BIBLE PLACES BLOG: Favorite Ancient Inscription Results Todd Bolen gives the main results of the survey noted here. I did think about the Mesha Stele (Todd's favorite), but in the end I voted for the Balaam inscription from Tel Deir 'Alla. Todd quotes my reasoning in the post.

A couple of past posts involving the Balaam inscription are here and here. A recent English translation is by Edward M. Cook in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, volume 1 (ed. Bauckham, Davila, and Panayotov; Eerdmans, 2013), pp. 236-43.

By the way, the seal of Baruch the scribe is widely regarded to be a forgery. (See here and here and links.)