Ancient Monuments

In the Old Testament, Numbers 22-24 tells the strange story of Balaam son of Beor, a pagan prophet sent by the king of Moab to curse the Israelites passing through the land. While riding a donkey, Balaam encounters an angel of God. The donkey actually speaks to Balaam and rebukes him. God makes Balaam bless rather than curse the Israelites.

In 1967, a Dutch archaeological team explored an ancient pagan shrine at Deir Alla in the Jordan Valley. They discovered the first evidence outside the Bible that Balaam was a real person in history. The team discovered inscriptions in Aramaic dialect written on plaster in red and black ink. At first, they thought the original inscriptions were written on a stele (a freestanding monument) covered with plaster. Later analysis indicated the inscription was written on white plaster that covered a mudbrick wall. The plaster was damaged, apparently by an earthquake. Many plaster fragments were found on the ground. After some excruciating work, the team reassembled significant parts of the inscriptions into readable frames, somewhat like giant jigsaw puzzles. Some fragments were too small for assembly. A major part of the inscriptions remains unreadable. Initially, the inscriptions were dated to the eighth to sixth century BC time frame, with more recent investigations narrowing the date to the eighth century BC. The reassembled plaster frames are on display at the Amman Archaeological Museum in Jordan.

The readable parts of the inscriptions have clear references to Balaam. One part says

This is the inscription of Balaam son of Beor. He was a divine seer. And the gods came to him at night, and they spoke to him according to the vision of El, and they said to Balaam, son of Beor: “This will the [ ] do in the future. No man has seen what you have heard…”

(The brackets [ ] represent an unreadable part.) Another part of the inscription appears to pronounce judgment against Balaam. The gods say to Balaam

“You have been condemned for what you have said, and banned from producing words of execration.”

What I find amazing about this discovery is that even a Bible character as obscure as Balaam is confirmed by archaeological finds. The readable parts of the inscriptions do not have the story of the talking donkey. Who knows what stories remain hidden among the many tiny plaster fragments? You can learn more about the Deir Alla inscriptions in the articles listed below under References.

References

Baruch A. Levine, “The Deir ʿAlla Plaster Inscriptions,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 101, no. 2 (April – June 1981): 195-205.

Jacob Hoftijzer, “The Prophet Balaam in a 6th Century Aramaic Inscription,” The Biblical Archaeologist 39, no. 1 (March 1976): 11-17.

André Lemaire, “Fragments From the Book of Balaam Found at Deir Alla,” Biblical Archaeology Review 11, no. 5 (1985): 26–35, 37–39.

The book of Jonah was probably written around 750-725 BC. Jonah prophesied during the reign of Jeroboam II, who ruled the northern kingdom of Israel from 793-753 BC (2 Kings 14:23-25). Jonah warned Nineveh that divine judgment was coming to the city because of Nineveh’s wickedness (Jonah 1:1-2). The ruler of Nineveh repented and commanded his subjects to repent, and God relented (Jonah 3:6-10).

Skeptics claim the book of Jonah has errors. For example, they claim the Bible is wrong in referring to a king of Nineveh (Jonah 3:6). The Assyrian king Sennacherib made Nineveh capital of Assyria in 705 BC. That was many years after the days of Jonah. The previous capital of the Assyrian Empire was Nimrud, not far from Nineveh. Is the Bible wrong in referring to a king of Nineveh in the days of Jonah?

We can address this apparent error by examining archaeological evidence. In 1979, archaeologists discovered a very interesting Assyrian statue from the 10th century BC. It has an inscription known as the Tell el Fakhariya bilingual inscription. On the front side of the statue, the inscription is in Akkadian, the language of several ancient Mesopotamian civilizations. On the back side is a translation of the inscription in Aramaic. The statue has the only known bilingual text in Akkadian and Aramaic. The translation is the earliest known Aramaic inscription. In the days of Jonah, the northwest Semitic word for ‘king’ (mlk) often meant ‘governor’ of a province, especially when associated with a city. The Akkadian word for governor is sakin. The word sakin appears on the Akkadian side of the inscription. However, it is translated as mlk on the Aramaic side, which means ‘king.’

An excerpt from the Akkadian side says

To Adad … the merciful god to whom it is sweet to pray, he who resides in the city Guzana. Hadad-yith’i, the governor of the land Guzana, the son of Sassu-nuri, governor of the land Guzana, has dedicated and given (this statue) to the great lord …

Note the word governor appears in two places on the Akkadian side. On the Aramaic side, it says mlk (king) in the same two places. Apparently, the Aramaic word mlk can mean governor or king, so in translation from Akkadian to Aramaic, ‘governor’ became ‘king.’ This is just a case of a biblical word (mlk) having more than one meaning. In our English Bibles, mlk is translated as ‘king.’ It is not an error in the original wording of the book of Jonah. However, our English translation probably would be more correct to say ‘governor’ instead of ‘king.’

The evidence from the Tell el Fakhariya bilingual inscription is supported by other archaeological discoveries. In 1913, the German archaeologist Walter Andrae (1875-1956) published inscriptions from stone monuments discovered in the Assyrian city of Ashur. Most of the monuments are believed to precede the days of Jonah by a century. Some of the monuments designate the governor of Nineveh with the same Akkadian words as the Tell el Fakhariya bilingual inscription. For example, one monument says ‘governor of the city of Nineveh’ and another monument says ‘governor of the province of Nineveh.’ It looks like our English translation of the book of Jonah should say ‘governor of Nineveh’ instead of ‘king of Nineveh.’

References

Paul Ferguson, “Who was the ‘king of Nineveh’ in Jonah 3:6?,” Tyndale Bulletin 47, no. 2 (November 1996)

Alan Millard and P. Bordreuil, “A Statue from Syria with Assyrian and Aramaic Inscriptions,” The Biblical Archaeologist 45, no. 3 (July 1982)

This monument was discovered in the ruins of Nimrud, capital of the Assyrian Empire (before the era when Nineveh was the capital). The Assyrian king Shalmaneser III (ruled from 859-824 BC) waged war against an alliance of eleven nations that included the northern kingdom of Israel. The monument has scenes of kings delivering tribute to Shalmaneser. The top scene in the illustration shows a pagan ruler bowing to Shalmaneser. The bottom scene shows King Jehu of the northern kingdom of Israel bowing to Shalmaneser. An inscription on the monument says

Tribute of Jehu, son of Omri. Silver, gold, a golden bowl, a golden beaker, golden goblets, pitchers of gold, lead, staves for the hand of the king, javelins, I received from him.

(Note it misidentifies Jehu as a son of Omri.) That is the earliest known reference to a biblical figure, outside the Bible.

Some Assyrian kings required rulers of other nations to worship them. The ruler would be commanded to kiss the feet of the king of Assyria, or to kiss the feet of a statue of the king of Assyria. Notice the pagan king is kissing Shalmaneser’s feet, but Jehu is not. Food for thought: Was Jehu intentionally refusing to commit idolatry, or was this just an error of the sculptor who carved the obelisk? The Bible does say Jehu destroyed the worship of Ba’al in backslidden Israel, but he did not destroy the golden calves that were set up by King Jeroboam I. Jehu tolerated pagan idolatry in Israel, but it appears there were lines he was not willing to cross.