Significance
The 2004 team described the scrolls as "one of most significant discoveries ever made" for biblical studies. Apart from their significance for our knowledge of the development of the Hebrew alphabet, the scrolls "preserve the earliest known citations of texts also found in the Hebrew Bible and ... the earliest examples of confessional statements concerning Yahweh." The reference to Yahweh as "Rebuker of Evil," found in later incantations and amulets associated with Israel, is evidence that these artifacts were also amulets.
Dr. Wayne Pitard has stated that although evidence for the antiquity of the Priestly Blessing is now compelling, this does not necessarily mean that the Book of Numbers already existed at that time. Dr. James R. Davila has similarly pointed out that the idea that the scrolls are "proof that the Five Books of Moses were in existence during the First Temple period" (as described in an article in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz) is "an overinterpretation of the evidence." He nonetheless acknowledged that the find proves that at least "some of the material found in the Five Books of Moses existed in the First Temple period."
Read more about this topic: Ketef Hinnom
Famous quotes containing the word significance:
“For a parent, it’s hard to recognize the significance of your work when you’re immersed in the mundane details. Few of us, as we run the bath water or spread the peanut butter on the bread, proclaim proudly, “I’m making my contribution to the future of the planet.” But with the exception of global hunger, few jobs in the world of paychecks and promotions compare in significance to the job of parent.”
—Joyce Maynard (20th century)
“The hypothesis I wish to advance is that ... the language of morality is in ... grave disorder.... What we possess, if this is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts of which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have—very largely if not entirely—lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.”
—Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (b. 1929)