I had something completely different planned for this week, and then I was surfing through some ring blogs and ran across Blogotional's October 6 blog entry Stairway to Links. The first link is to an article called, The Top 15 Finds from Biblical Archaeology, by Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. Ph.D. In all fairness, Blogotional links to another Blog entry. The article, itself, is found here.
Obviously, the Dead Sea Scrolls made the list; but not until no. 3. The #1 find I had never heard of, Ketef Hinnom Amulets -- only the oldest Old Testament text known to exist. Even though reading about them is intersting, you expect the oldest texts to make the list. Some of the other entries, though, were less obvious.
Of course, I have heard of the Gilgamesh Epic. I vaguely knew that it was recorded in cuneiform on tablets. I would not, however, have thought to classify it as a Biblical find. The author does so, however, because it is an alternative flood story. He highlights several similarities and differences between the Gilgamesh flood and Noah's, but I would never have thought of Gilgamesh as having anything to do with Biblical Archaology.
Most of the other entries on the list are a little more obvious than the Gilgamesh story. I found them all interesting, and a very different change from what I usually run across when surfing.
JusticeSeeker
JusticeSeekerOK@aol.com
Friday, October 13, 2006
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I teach world history to Jewish high school students, most of whom believe in Torah as written. Therefore, when we discuss Gilgamesh each year as we study Mesopotamia, it emerges as a critical component of Biblical studies -- and world studies in general, as we talk about why cultures have stories of destruction by gods of wrath and what that says about our universal concerns and fears.
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