Dear Sir,
An Israeli professor claims a 3,000 year old inscription discovered in Jerusalem is evidence of King Solomon’s reign (March EN ). The two pieces of a storage jar excavated in 2012 have part of a message scratched on them. Neither the start nor the end is preserved and some letters are missing in the middle. Comparing the writing with notices on Egyptian and other jars, Gershon Galil reconstructs the message to describe inferior wine from year twenty or thirty of King Solomon. The words for ‘year’ and ‘Solomon’ are not present and only the equivalent of the ‘y’ of twenty or thirty survives, which could be part of a quite different word (e.g. ‘city’). Other experts have written about the inscription, each offering a different interpretation. This discovery cannot 'prove biblical authenticity'.
That is also true for the reported discovery of a scarab in excavations at Khirbet el-Maqatir, identified as Ai, with the conclusion, ‘The scarab substantiates the historical accuracy of the narratives found in Joshua’ (March EN). Readers need to be made aware that this is based upon assumptions which many archaeologists, Christians and others, dispute. The location of Ai remains uncertain; usually the biblical descriptions are thought to apply to another site (et-Tell). The date when the scarab was made does not date the site independently because scarabs could be used for generations. The date of Joshua’s attack is disputed. The site may be the Ai that Joshua’s forces destroyed, but there is no certainty.
