Joasch inscription

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Joasch inscription is an incomplete ancient Hebrew inscription on a black sandstone tablet that became known in January 2003. The text deals with building work on the Jerusalem temple under the government of King Joash of Judah . The Israeli Antiquities Authority classifies the Joasch inscription as a forgery.

description

The sandstone slab is a greywacke , probably from northern Syria or Cyprus , with the dimensions 24 × 30 cm and a thickness of 7.5 to 9 cm.

The inscription includes 15 lines in paleo-Hebrew script . It belongs to the type of royal building inscriptions, as it is known in the ancient Orient, but differs greatly from all known Semitic inscriptions of this type. 75% of the text is identical to passages in the Hebrew Bible . In more than a dozen cases, the inscription differs from ancient Hebrew. While every single one of these deviations could be explained by itself, “the cumulative weight of just some of these deviations brings the probability of the inscription's authenticity to practically zero.” Some of these are formulations or word meanings that were used in ancient Hebrew only since the Hellenistic period are attested, but occur frequently in New Hebrew.

publication

A broader public learned of the spectacular find through an article in the Haaretz newspaper on January 13, 2003.

Allegedly, two Palestinians found the stone slab in 2001 in the area of ​​the Muslim cemetery south of the Temple Mount and sold it to an Israeli collector. The collector had the object checked by the epigrapher Joseph Naveh ( Hebrew University ), who thought the inscription was a forgery, but commissioned the Geological Institute of Israel (GSI) to carry out a further examination. This turned out to be positive: the stone had a patina in which there were carbon particles, which, using the C14 method, dates back to 400–200 BC. With a reliability of 95%. There were also particles of pure gold. This team published their research results, which made the inscription known. Unusually, S. Ilany, A. Rosenfeld and M. Dvorachek, as geologists, also offered a translation and historical classification of the text. They speculated that the gold particles might have got onto the stone tablet in connection with the destruction of the temple by the Babylonians (583 BC). Ilany and Rosenfeld had already confirmed the authenticity of the Jakobus ossuary in 2002 .

Rumor has it that the Yoash tablet was offered to the Israel Museum for $ 4 million. The director of the museum said that the plaque had been shown to experts at the museum to check its authenticity; A price was not discussed.

Investigations

In the case of authenticity, the stone slab would be the property of the State of Israel. Therefore, the Israeli collector only came into contact with Joseph Naveh through an intermediary in a hotel room. Investigators from the Israel Antiquities Authority managed to identify this person with a Tel Aviv private detective. When questioned, he admitted that his client was Oded Golan, who was already known as the owner of the James Ossuary. On March 19, 2003, the Ma'ariv newspaper reported a police search of Golan's apartment and other properties he used. Among other things, photos were found in which Golan posed next to the Joasch inscription. In addition, numerous artefacts of unclear provenance and forgeries in a half-finished state were seized, as well as epigraphic specialist literature, tools and labeled containers with soil samples from various archaeological sites. Oded Golan testified that he was just a middleman and that the tablet belonged to the late antique dealer Abu-Yasser Awada, who asked him to sell the object.

The Israeli minister of culture, Limor Livnat , then commissioned a commission of experts to assess the authenticity of the James ossuary and the Joasch inscription. The commission declared both inscriptions to be modern forgeries. The arguments in the case of the Joasch inscription in detail:

  • Shmuel Ahituv (epigraphist, Ben Gurion University): The text comes from a spokesman for New Hebrew, who tried to create an old Hebrew, biblical-sounding text using ancient sources, but failed.
  • Avigdor Horovitz (philologist, Ancient Languages ​​of the Middle East, Ben Gurion University): The author shows no knowledge of Hebrew from the 9th century BC. Chr., Rather individual parts of the text from different sources were put together.
  • Hagai Misgav (epigrapher, Hebrew University): The inscription was created from script patterns from the time of the First Temple.
  • Ronny Reich (archaeologist, Hebrew University): The inscription seemed authentic to him at first, as such a good forgery was difficult to imagine. However, Reich was convinced by the arguments of the committee members.

process

Oded Golan had to answer in court on charges of running a forgery workshop and trading in counterfeit antiquities. The trial in the Jerusalem District Court lasted seven years.

The verdict was pronounced on February 29, 2012. Judge Aharon Farkash acquitted Oded Golan on charges of forgery and fraud; However, he was found guilty of the subordinate points of trade in antiques without permission and the possession of possibly stolen objects. The judge explained that the court was not making a statement about the authenticity of the artifacts, but only found that the prosecution could not prove that Oded Golan was the forger.

On September 29, the Supreme Court dismissed Golan's appeal and combined this with general criticism of the antique trade.

The Israel Antiquities Authority then failed in its attempt to secure the Joasch tablet as state property, on the grounds that the inscription was forged, but the reverse of the stone had been cut into shape in ancient times. The Supreme Court decided in October 2013 with 2: 1 votes that the Joasch plaque had to be returned to Oded Golan.

meaning

Biblical Studies

In 1998, Nadav Na'aman took up the old thesis again in a specialist journal that inscriptions could have been used as a source by the authors of biblical scriptures. He specified: That would be plausible with a building inscription. In the text of 2 Kings 12, Na'aman found several clues: The year of the reign of the building project is mentioned. The language of the temple renovation section differs slightly from the context. Assuming the inscription is inauthentic, the forger may have been stimulated by reading this article.

politics

Control over construction work on the Temple Mount is controversial, as the State of Israel has annexed the Temple Mount as well as East Jerusalem, which is not recognized internationally. The Waqf authority , whose staff is deployed and paid by Jordan, manages the area, but sometimes acts without coordination with Israeli government agencies when it comes to renovation measures. Israeli building law is not consistently enforced on the Temple Mount; There is no archaeological support for construction work. The origin of such a construction project was also assumed for the Joasch inscription. The (alleged) find was therefore used as an argument by political actors who advocate disempowerment of the Waqf authority, such as the Temple Mount Faithful .

Web links

literature

  • Reinhard Achenbach : Some observations on the so-called "Jeho'asch ​​inscription". A tablet from the 9th century BC Or a fake? In: Biblische Notizen 117 (2003), pp. 5-14.
  • Frank Moore Cross: Notes on the Forged Plaque Recording Repairs to the Temple . In: Israel Exploration Journal 53 (2003), pp. 119-122.
  • Israel Eph'al: The 'Jehoash-Inscription': A Forgery . In: Israel Exploration Journal 53 (2003), pp. 123-128.
  • Edward L. Greenstein: Methodological Principles in Determining that the So-Called Jehoash-Inscription is Inauthentic . In: Marilyn J. Lundberg, Steven Fine, Wayne T. Pitard (Eds.): Puzzling Out the Past: Studies in Northwest Semitic Languages ​​and Literatures in Honor of Bruce Zuckerman . Brill, Leiden / Boston 2012, pp. 83-92.
  • Ernst Axel Knauf : Jehoash's Improbable Inscription . In: Biblische Notizen 117 (2003), pp. 22–26.
  • Ernst Axel Knauf: The "Joasch" inscription - an obituary . In: World and Environment of the Bible 28 (2003) p. 62f.
  • Stig Norin: The so-called Joaschin script: Real or false? In: Vetus Testamentum 55 (2005), pp. 61-74.
  • Neil Asher Silberman , Yuval Goren: Faking Biblical History. In: Karen D. Vitelli, Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh, John Stephen Colwell (Eds.): Archaeological Ethics . Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham 2006, pp. 49-63. (A slightly different text version was published in 2003 in the journal Archeology: PDF )

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stig Norin: The so-called Joaschin script: Real or false? , 2005, p. 61.
  2. ^ Edward L. Greenstein: Methodological Principles in Determining that the So-Called Jehoash-Inscription is Inauthentic , Leiden / Boston 2012, p. 92.
  3. ↑ Nadav Shragai: Sensation or forgery? Researchers hail dramatic First Temple period finding . In: Haaretz, January 13, 2003.
  4. ↑ Shimon Ilany, Amnon Rosenfeld, M. Dvorachek: Archaeometry of a stone tablet with Hebrew inscription referring to the repair of the house . In: Geological Survey of Israel, Current Research 13 (2003), pp. 109-116.
  5. ^ Neil Asher Silberman, Yuval Goren: Faking Biblical History , Lanham 2006, p. 56.
  6. ^ A b Eric H. Cline : Biblical Archeology: A Very Short Introduction . Oxford University Press, New York 2009, p. 127.
  7. ^ Neil Asher Silberman, Yuval Goren: Faking Biblical History , Lanham 2006, p. 57.
  8. ^ Matti Friedman: After 7-year saga, a surprising end to antiquities fraud case . In: The Times of Israel, March 14, 2012.
  9. ^ A b Matthew Kalman: After Supreme Court ruling, collector Oded Golan poised to reclaim Jehoash Tablet . In: The Jerusalem Post, October 18, 2013.
  10. ↑ Nadav Na'aman: Royal Inscriptions and the Histories of Joash and Ahaz, Kings of Judah . In: Vetus Testamentum 48 (1998), pp. 333-349.
  11. ^ Neil Asher Silberman, Yuval Goren: Faking Biblical History , Lanham 2006, p. 54.
  12. ↑ Stig Norin: The so-called Joaschin script: Real or false? , 2005, p. 73: "Politically the inscription is a hot topic because it can be used to strengthen the Israelite claims to the temple area."