Gabriel Barkay, Professor of Biblical Archaeology at Bar Ilan University (Tel Aviv) and Hebrew University (Jerusalem).
He discovers small silver plaques containing the priestly benediction(s) from the Torah [Book of Numbers (Bamidbar) 6: 22–27 [see Exhibit].
These plaques, according to the History Channel documentary (Apr 27, 2008), are apparently currently the oldest known biblically–related inscriptions, and apparently date back to 600 BCE. Thus they date back to prior to the destruction of Temple I, or roughly to the time of Jeremiah (Yirmiyahu), meaning 150 years prior to Ezra’s zenith 150 years later.
According to Barkay, the actual physical discovery was made by a young kid (7 years old) hanger on to one of his academic forays to one of the Jewish tomb–sites just outside of Jerusalem. Barkay desribes the youngster jokingly as the quintessential perpetual pest. Now, as will be seen, this perpetual pest impacted history significantly not just with his initial physical discovery (of this oldest biblically–related inscription item) – which took place in a tiny forbidding tomb, which he purposely slipped his 7–year–old frame into, but several decades later as well…for the discovery had a “kicker.”
Thus, the plot thickens in 2005:
According to Simcha Jacobovici on the same History Channel documentary noted earlier in this entry: Apparently employing advanced NASA technology in 2005, archaeologists discern a second biblical section on the plates, this time from Deuteronomy (Devarim) Chaper 7. The existence of the two biblical extracts on the same 600 BCE plates, one from Deuteronomy and one from Numbers, according to Jacobovici, undermines the “Documentary Hypothesis” (1876/7) of (the German biblical scholar) Julius Wellhausen.
But if both inscriptions appear in the same plate in Jerusalem pre–Churban I in 600 BCE (figure 600–625 BCE), they could not have been penned by separate authors (as posited by Wellhausen) in Babylon post–Churban I, 150–175 years later in 450 BCE. Concrete evidence fatally undermining the (heretical to Orthodox Judaism) “Documentary Hypothesis” challenge of Welhausen.
[Author – Four separate authors would have left a minimum of “four separate trails,” particularly in the intellectually dynamic Jewish maelstrom of metropolitan Babylon of 450 BCE, with many hundreds of scholars and rabbinics and students and scribes massed together in one metropolis.
Having “marched through hell” keeping the faith with Temple I Judaism, Torah and all, the Jews of Babylon respectfully did not need to reinvent what they already had. If “reinvention” was underfoot, the Talmud compilers might just have “noticed it.”]
Nevertheless, supporters of the Documentary hypothesis make a comprehensive case for their proposition. They might assert that the Barkay scrolls are not inconsistent with the Documentary Hypothesis, as the hypothesis posits that, although redacted by (possibly) Ezra in 450 BCE, three of the four proposed Documentary authors wrote in the 950 BCE, 850 BCE and 521 BCE periods respectively.
[The Documentary Hypothesis (a.k.a. the J E P D Hypothesis) posits 4 separate authors (J, E, P and D) of different sections of the Torah (the Five Books of Moses), edited and stitched–together by an editor, possibly Ezra (zenith: 450 BCE), according to hypothesis adherents. Yeshiva University and the Orthodox, in general, have always roundly rejected the “Documentary Hypothesis.”]