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May Yahweh bless you and keep you; may Yahweh cause his face to shine upon you and find favor with you; may Yahweh lift up his countenance upon you and grant you peace. Numbers 6:24-27
The very oldest Scriptural text ever found, dating back almost 2,600 years. This was found in a tiny silver amulet which contained a Seventh Century b.c.e. extract from the Book of Numbers (6:24-26), the Priestly Blessing. The rolled up amulet was part of a treasure hoard found by a Tel Aviv University archeologist in a First Temple Period family tomb in Jerusalem, Israel. When this amulet was written, the Temple of Solomon still stood, the heirs of King David still ruled on the throne, and the Dead Sea Scrolls would not be written for another four hundred years.
It was three years after its discovery before this fragile amulet could be unrolled by technical experts at the Israeli Museum. On this amulet the Name of Yahweh could be clearly read in the original Hebrew language. Complete details of this magnificent find can be read in the June 28, 1986 and the August 9, 1986 issues of The Jerusalem Post, and the June, 1987 issue of The Readers Digest.
Dr. Gabriel Barkay points to the tomb where he discovered the tiny biblical artifacts that date from well before the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The words are among the most familiar and ecumenical in the liturgies of Judaism and Christianity. At the close of a worship service, the rabbi, priest or pastor delivers, with only slight variations, the comforting and fortifying benediction:
"May [Yahweh] bless you and keep you; may {Yahweh] cause his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; may [Yahweh] lift up his countenance upon you and grant you peace."
An archaeological discovery in 1979 revealed that the Priestly Benediction, as the verse from Numbers 6:24-26 is called, appeared to be the earliest biblical passage ever found in ancient artifacts. ["May Yahweh bless you and keep you; may Yahweh cause his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; may Yahweh lift up his countenance upon you and grant you peace."]
Two tiny strips of silver, each wound tightly like a miniature scroll and bearing the inscribed words, were uncovered in a tomb outside Jerusalem and initially dated from the late seventh or early sixth century B.C. - some 400 years before the famous Dead Sea Scrolls.
But doubts persisted. The silver was cracked and corroded, and many words and not a few whole lines in the faintly scratched inscriptions were unreadable. Some critics contended that the artifacts were from the third or second century B.C., and thus of less importance in establishing the antiquity of religious concepts and language that became part of the Hebrew Bible.
So researchers at the University of Southern California have now re-examined the inscriptions using new photographic and computer imaging techniques. The words still do not exactly leap off the silver. But the researchers said they could finally be "read fully and analyzed with far greater precision," and that they were indeed the earliest.
In a scholarly report published this month, the research team concluded that the improved reading of the inscriptions confirmed their greater antiquity. The script, the team wrote, is indeed from the period just before the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. by Nebuchadnezzar and the subsequent exile of Israelites in Babylonia.
The researchers further reaffirmed that the scrolls "preserve the earliest known citations of texts also found in the Hebrew Bible and that they provide us with the earliest examples of confessional statements concerning Yahweh."
Some of the previously unreadable lines seemed to remove any doubt about the purpose of the silver scrolls: they were amulets. Unrolled, one amulet is nearly four inches long and an inch wide and the other an inch and a half long and about half an inch wide. The inscribed words, the researchers said, were "intended to provide a blessing that will be used to protect the wearer from some manner of evil forces."
The report in The Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research was written by Dr. Gabriel Barkay, the archaeologist at Bar-Ilan University in Israel who discovered the artifacts, and collaborators associated with Southern California's West Semitic Research Project. The project leader is Dr. Bruce Zuckerman, a professor of Semitic languages at U.S.C., who worked with Dr. Marilyn J. Lundberg, a Hebrew Bible specialist with the project, and Dr. Andrew G. Vaughn, a biblical historian at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minn.
A companion article for next month's issue of the magazine Near Eastern Archaeology describes the new technology used in the research. The article is by the same authors, as well as Kenneth Zuckerman, Dr. Zuckerman's brother and a specialist in photographing ancient documents.
Other scholars not affiliated with the research but familiar with it agreed with the group's conclusions.
They said it was a relief to have the antiquity and authenticity of the artifacts confirmed, considering that other inscriptions from biblical times have suffered from their uncertain provenance.
Scholars also noted that early Hebrew inscriptions were a rarity, and called the work on the amulets a significant contribution to an understanding of the history of religion in ancient Israel, particularly the time of the Judean Monarchy 2,600 years ago.
"These photographs are far superior to what you can see looking at the inscriptions with the naked eye," said Dr. Wayne Pitard, professor of the Hebrew Bible and ancient Near Eastern religions at the University of Illinois.
Dr. Pitard said the evidence for the antiquity of the benediction was now compelling, although this did not necessarily mean that the Book of Numbers already existed at that time. Possibly it did, he added, but if not, at least some elements of the book were current before the Babylonian exile.
A part of the sacred Torah of Judaism (the first five books of the Bible), Numbers includes a narrative of the Israelite wanderings from Mount Sinai to the east side of the Jordan River. Some scholars think the Torah was compiled in the time of the exile. A number of other scholars, the so-called minimalists, who are influential mainly in Europe, argue that the Bible was a relatively recent invention by those who took control of Judea in the late fourth century B.C. In this view, the early books of the Bible were largely fictional to give the new rulers a place in the country's history and thus a claim to the land.
"The new research on the inscriptions suggests that that's not true," Dr. Pitard said. In fact, the research team noted in its journal report that the improved images showed the seventh-century lines of the benediction to be "actually closer to the biblical parallels than previously recognized."
Dr. P. Kyle McCarter of Johns Hopkins University, a specialist in ancient Semitic scrip ts, said the research should "settle any controversy over these inscriptions."
A close study, Dr. McCarter said, showed that the handwriting is an early style of Hebrew script and the letters are from an old Hebrew alphabet, which had all but ceased to be used after the destruction of Jerusalem. Later Hebrew writing usually adopted the Aramaic alphabet.
There was an exception in the time of Roman rule, around the first centuries B.C. and A.D. The archaic Hebrew script and letters were revived and used widely in documents. But Dr. McCarter noted telling attributes of the strokes of the letters and the spelling on the amulets that, he said, ruled out the more recent date for the inscriptions. Words in the revived Hebrew writing would have included letters indicating vowel sounds. The benediction, the scholar said, was written in words spelled entirely with consonants, the authentic archaic way.
The two silver scrolls were found in 1979 deep inside a burial cave in a hillside known as Ketef Hinnom, west of the Old City of Jerusalem. Dr. Barkay, documenting the context of the discovery, noted that the artifacts were at the back of the tomb embedded in pottery and other material from the seventh or sixth centuries B.C. Such caves were reused for burials over many centuries. Near this tomb's entrance were artifacts from the fourth century, but nothing so recent remains in the undisturbed recesses.
It took Dr. Barkay another seven years before he felt sure enough of what he had to announce details of the discovery. Even then, for all their microscopic examination of the inscriptions at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, scholars remained frustrated by the many unreadable words and lines.
About a decade ago, Dr. Barkay enlisted the help of Dr. Zuckerman, whose team had earned a reputation for achieving the near-impossible in photographing illegible ancient documents.
Working with scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Dr. Zuckerman's group used advanced infrared imagining systems enhanced by electronic cameras and computer image-processing technology to draw out previously invisible writing on a fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The researchers also pioneered electronic techniques for reproducing missing pieces of letters on documents. By examining similar letters elsewhere in the text, they were able to recognize half of a letter and reconstruct the rest of it in a scribe's own peculiar style.
"We learned a lot from work on the Dead Sea Scrolls," Dr. Zuckerman said. "But at first a processing job like this would send your computers into cardiac arrest. We had to wait for computer technology to catch up with our needs."
As the researchers said in their magazine article, the only reasonably clear aspect of the inscriptions was the Priestly Benediction. Other lines preceding or following the prayer "could barely be seen."
To get higher-definition photographs of the inscriptions, Ken Zuckerman applied an old photographer's technique called "light painting," brought up to date by the use of fiber-optic technology. He used a hand-held light in an otherwise dark room to illuminate a spot on the artifact during a time exposure. In addition, he photographed the artifact at different angles, which made the scratched letters shine in stark relief.
The next step was to convert the pictures to digital form, making possible computer processing that brought out "the subtleties of the surface almost at the micron level." This analysis was particularly successful in joining a partial letter stroke on one side of a crack with the rest of the stroke on the other side. It also enabled the researchers to restore fragments of letters to full legibility by matching them with clear letters from elsewhere in the text.
In this way, the researchers filled in more of the letters and words of the benediction itself and for the first time deciphered meaningful words and phrases in the lines preceding the benediction.
Scholars were particularly intrigued by a statement on the smaller artifact. It reads: "May h[e]/sh[e] be blessed by YHWH, the warrior/helper, and the rebuker of Evil."
Referring to God, Yahweh, as the "rebuker of Evil" is similar to language used in the Bible and in various Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars said. The phraseology is also found in later incantations and amulets associated with Israel, evidence that these artifacts were also amulets, researchers concluded.
"In the ancient world, amulets were taken quite seriously," Dr. Zuckerman said. "There's evil out there, demons, and you need protection. Having this around your neck, you are involving God's presence and protection against harm."
Dr. Esther Eshel, a professor of the Bible at Bar-Ilan and an authority on Hebrew inscriptions, said this was the earliest example of amulets from Israel. But she noted that the language of the benediction was similar to a blessing ("May he bless you and keep you") found on a jar from the eighth century B.C.
If the new findings are correct, the people who wore these amulets may have died before they had to face the limitations of their efficacy. They might then have asked in uncomprehending despair, "Where was Yahweh when the Babylonians swooped down on Jerusalem?"
Other scholars, including those previously skeptical, will soon be analyzing the improved images. In a departure from usual practices, the researchers not only published their findings in a standard print version in a journal but also as an accompanying "digital article," a CD version of the article and the images to allow scholars to examine and manipulate the data themselves.
The research group said, "As far as we are aware, this is the first article to be done in this fashion, but it certainly will not be the last." New York Times Article
By E. C. B. Maclaurin Sydney
Translation and Commentary by Dr. David M. Hargis
CLICK ON IMAGE TO ORDER THIS BOOK We are pleased to announce that the YPTC publication Psalms and Selected Scriptures is now available for distribution. This 155 page book is a revision of the 1901 American Standard Version of the Bible. The Sacred names were reinserted into the translation and the archaic English has been brought up to date. Each individual edit was exhaustively researched in multiple translations and the Hebrew Scriptures were consulted before changes were made. Many prayerful hours were devoted to making this the best offering we could.
This book is used in the YPTC worship service for devotions, and opening and closing the weekly Sabbath and holy days. The project was undertaken to promote unity in worship services during congregational reading. Extra blank pages are included in the front and back for notes.
For those dedicated brethren and seekers of Yahweh’s Truth who are interested, individual copies of this book can be obtained for a donation of $8.00 each .This offering reflects the cost to produce the book and includes shipping and handling throughout the US mainland. Call for shipping costs elsewhere or for small quantity shipments. 888-FOR-YPTC. Online ordering is via PayPal. Click on PayPal logo below to order. CLICK ON IMAGE TO ORDER THIS BOOK
Our Present Task Is To Faithfully Restore The True Names And Titles Into The English Translations. As We Attempt To Do So We Are Desirous Of Any Honest Input.
HEBREW-ENGLISH Scripture ISBN 965-431-005-8 Published in 1997 Hardbound, imitation leather, gold lettering on cover
1,893 pages 6.5 X 9.0 inches
New Testament and Old Testament in Parallel Hebrew and English
Old Testament in Massoretic Hebrew Text
New Testament in modern Hebrew
NKJV used for English text
The perfect Scripture for Hebrew Roots and Messianic Jewish study! Hebrew speakers and English speakers will find this Scripture an invaluable tool. A Must have! Vowel pointers help pronounce the Hebrew words. Verse and chapters numbers correspond between the Hebrew and English for easier reading and word comparisons. Published in Israel! This Scripture was edited by Hebrew Scholars and printed in the Holy Land. The Hebrew text portion makes the Scripture come alive as it was originally written.
The Masoretic text has been transliterated into Ketav Levonah, with traditional word divisions retained. One-inch margins and twelve-point, double-spaced type on single-sided 8.5x11 paper, the printed version allows plenty of room for making notes. Designed for study, The Torah in Paleo Hebrew: the Writings of Light; ca. 277 pages.
Buy Or Read It Online Of the Bible - The Hidden Truths
A similar warning is given concerning Father Yahweh's inspired word.
You shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall you diminish [ought] from it, that you may keep the commandments of Yahweh your Almighty One which I command you (Deuteronomy 4:2).
Every word of Yahweh [is] pure: He [is] a shield unto them that put their trust in Him. Add not unto His words, lest He reprove you, and you be found a liar (Proverbs 30:5-6).
For I testify unto every man that hears the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, Yahweh shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, Yahweh shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and [from] the things which are written in this book (Revelation 22:18-19).
I do not believe that translations are without error and that translators are not without bias in their translating.
These pictures are intended to give the reader the proofs necessary to understand that in any translation, the readers must "trust" the transmission of the translators to translate objectively. Sadly, this is not the case with any bible or translation from the original tongues. We have here images graciously donated to HMI for posting that show a 1611 King James Facsimile from the Toledo Lucas County Public library, in the rare book room, third floor, in the vault. These Images have proofs that the Anglican church, as well as all other translators impute their own brand of religion into the Set Apart scriptures, and even in some cases purposefully mistranslate to preserve "their" particular doctrine. Such scribery and "monk'ing" with Yah's Set Apart Scriptures will no doubt be rebuked upon the return of the King. Below you will find an index of images with explanations and proofs that will hopefully enlighten the reader and provoke him to study to show himself approved unto YHWH , bewaring the "lies, vanity, and [things] wherein [there is] no profit." - Jeremiah 16:19 There are also some general information and pictures of interest included throughout.
Note that the English letters W and Y are sometimes used as vowels and that these letters are used in the English transliteration of our Heavenly Father and Creator's Name YHWH. "Note: In the English language, the written vowels are a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes w and y. The spoken vowels are much more numerous." SOURCE
Webster's Collegiate Dictionary:
“Jehovah — False reading of the Hebrew YAHWEH.”
(“Jehovah,” Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, 1973 ed.)
Encyclopedia Americana:
“Jehovah — erroneous form of the name of the God of Israel.”
(Encyclopedia Americana, vol. 16., 1972 ed.)
Encyclopedia Britannica:
“The Masoretes who from the 6th to the 10th century worked to reproduce the original text of the Hebrew Bible replaced the vowels of the name YHWH with the vowel signs of Adonai or Elohim. Thus the artificial name Jehovah came into being.”
(“Yahweh,” The New Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. 12, 1993 ed.)
The Jewish Encyclopedia:
“Jehovah — a mispronunciation of the Hebrew YHWH the name of God. This pronunciation is grammatically impossible.”
(“Jehovah,” The Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. 7, 1904 ed.)
The New Jewish Encyclopedia:
“It is clear that the word Jehovah is an artificial composite.”
(“Jehovah,” The New Jewish Encyclopedia, 1962 ed.)
According to the Encyclopedia Judaica, p. 680, vol. 7, “the true pronunciation of the tetragrammaton YHWH was never lost. The name was pronounced Yahweh. It was regularly pronounced this way at least until 586 B.C., as is clear from the Lachish Letters written shortly before this date.”
See the following link for more scholarly information on why "Jehovah" is not the Name of our Heavenly Father and Creator.
