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Re: orion translation central?
>
>> >How about the Priestly blessing, dated late First Temple, in a
>> silver
>> >trinket from Kidron?
>>
>> That's evidence of a living corpus of literature? Come now. Who
>> can show Jesus from the shards of Pilate's temple offering from
>> Caesarea? Or from Caiaphas's ossuary? No connection except a
>> circularity.
>
> Is not Numbers 6:24-26 inscribed on a silver talisman from the 7th
>century BCE probative of a pre-exilic Numbers?
>
> Jack Kilmon (jpman@accesscomm.net)
>
Not exactly!
In the first place, it's my recollection that that the formula is not
exactly word for word what we have in in Numbers 6:24-26. Even Gaby
Barkai, who found it and published it, concedes that.
In the second place, it proves only that such a formula was known at the
time the amulet was created.
The very fact that it was found on an amulet indicates that it's the kind
of formula that might be recited and repeated a lot and passed on down the
line. It could have been around for a century or two before the writing of
the P document of which Numbers 6 forms part.
So, much as I would LOVE definitive proof of a pre-Exilic P, I would say
the jury is still out!
Shabbat Shalom
Judith Romney Wegner
jrw@brown.edu
PS to Tom Simms. It most certainly was not a trinket. An amulet or
talisman, maybe; but please don't diss it by calling it a trinket!