Ancient Seal Found In The City Of David: Evidence Of Bethlehem’s Existence Long Before Jesus Was Born

AncientPages.com - During archaeological excavations conducted in the City of David, in the “Walls around Jerusalem National Park”, a crucial artifact was recently unearthed.

The artifact is a clay bulla, or seal measuring c. 1.5 cm and bearing the name of the city of Bethlehem written in ancient Hebrew script - the city mentioned in the Torah - the Five Books of Moses.

According to Israeli archaeologists working on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, this is the first physical evidence supporting Old Testament references to Bethlehem's existence in ancient times, long before the town became the birthplace of Jesus.

The bulla was impressed with the seal of the person who sent the document or object, and its integrity was evidence the document or object was not opened by anyone unauthorized to do so.

A 2,500 years old clay bulla, or seal, inscribed with the name Bethlehem, the only known ancient reference to the city found outside the Bible. (Israel Antiquities Authority / May 23, 2012)

The bulla dates back to the First Temple period (1006 – 586 BCE), and is carved with three important lines of ancient Hebrew script.

The first says "in the seventh;" the second says Bethlehem; and the third has the letter "ch," which was probably the last letter of melech, the word for king.

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According to Eli Shukron, director of the excavation on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “it seems that in the seventh year of the reign of a king (it is unclear if the king referred to here is Hezekiah, Manasseh or Josiah), a shipment was dispatched from Bethlehem to the king in Jerusalem."

"The bulla we found belongs to the group of “fiscal” bullae – administrative bullae used to seal tax shipments remitted to the taxation system of the Kingdom of Judah in the late eighth and seventh centuries BCE," he said.

"The tax could have been paid in the form of silver or agricultural produce such as wine or wheat”. Shukron emphasizes.

"This is the first time the name Bethlehem appears outside the Bible, in an inscription from the First Temple period, which proves that Bethlehem was indeed a city in the Kingdom of Judah, and possibly also in earlier periods”.

In the Bible, Bethlehem is first mentioned in the verse “in Ephrath, which is Bethlehem”, and it was on the way there that Rachel died and it is where she was buried (Genesis 35:19; 48:7).

The descendants of Judah settled there, among them the family of Boaz described in the "Book of Ruth", a fascinating short story about a non-Jewish woman who married into a Jewish family and became an ancestor of David and Jesus.

Bethlehem’s greatness begins with the anointing of David, son of Jesse, as king (1 Samuel 16).

Written by AncientPages.com