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Inscriptional Evidence

The Ketef Hinnom Silver Scrolls

Two rolled silver amulets from a sealed burial chamber on the shoulder of the Hinnom Valley in Jerusalem carry the priestly blessing of Numbers 6 and the divine name YHWH, incised in paleo-Hebrew around 600 BC. They are the oldest surviving text of Scripture — four centuries older than any Dead Sea Scroll — and they sit in the Israel Museum.

high confidenceArchaeological

THE CLAIM

Two rolled silver amulets from a sealed burial chamber on the shoulder of the Hinnom Valley in Jerusalem carry the priestly blessing of Numbers 6 and the divine name YHWH

  1. 1Two silver amuletsArtifact
  2. 2Found in 1979 by Gabriel BarkayThe record
  3. 3They carry the priestly blessingWitness
  4. 4Four centuries older than the oldest DeadManuscript
  5. 5The 2004 BASOR edition by BarkayThe record
  6. 6Wellhausen's school dated the Priestly sourceThe record

WHERE IT STANDS

Firmly established

high confidence
The Ketef Hinnom silver amulet (KH2), c. 600 BC, carrying the priestly blessing of Numbers 6:24–26 — the oldest known biblical text.
The Ketef Hinnom silver amulet (KH2), c. 600 BC, carrying the priestly blessing of Numbers 6:24–26 — the oldest known biblical text.Ketef Hinnom Silver Scrolls · Public domain

THE SILVER'S OWN WORDS

KH2, Jerusalem, c. 600 BC

“May h[e]/sh[e] be blessed by YHWH, the warrior and the rebuker of [E]vil: May YHWH bless you, keep you. May YHWH make His face shine upon you and grant you p[ea]ce.”

Translation: Barkay, Vaughn, Lundberg & Zuckerman, BASOR 334 (2004).

THE TEXT IT MEETS

Numbers 6:24-26

“Jehovah bless thee, and keep thee: Jehovah make his face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: Jehovah lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.”

Be precise about the fit. The amulet has “bless and keep,” “make his face shine” and “grant peace” — but not “be gracious unto thee” or “lift up his countenance.” This is a shorter blessing-form of the benediction, not a copy of the received wording. What it proves is that the wording was fixed enough, before the exile, to be worn on the body.

The span, dated

  1. c. 600 BC

    Two silver amulets are incised

    KH1 (27 × 97 mm) and KH2 (11 × 39 mm), letters cut into silver foil with a fine point in paleo-Hebrew — not ink, and not the later square Aramaic script.

  2. 586 BC

    Jerusalem burns

    The burial caves on the shoulder of Hinnom stay in use across the Babylonian destruction, which is part of why the repository accumulated so deeply.

  3. 19th c. onward

    Numbers 6 dated after the exile

    Classical source criticism, following Wellhausen, assigned the Priestly source — which carries the blessing — to the Second Temple period.

  4. 1979

    A thirteen-year-old breaks the floor

    Gabriel Barkay's Cave 24, Chamber 25 looked plundered. A volunteer strikes through into a repository beneath the burial bench, its ceiling collapsed in antiquity — which is why looters had missed it. Over a thousand objects; two rolled cylinders of silver.

  5. 1995

    The challenge

    Renz and Röllig argue in the Handbuch der althebräischen Epigraphik that a third- or second-century date could not be excluded on the readings then published.

  6. 2004

    Re-imaged, and settled

    Zuckerman and Lundberg of the West Semitic Research Project re-photograph both scrolls with fibre-optic and raking light, recovering unread letters. Their edition with Barkay and Vaughn, BASOR 334, confirms the pre-exilic date.

  7. Today

    Israel Museum, Archaeology Wing

    The earliest known appearance of the divine name in a biblical text, and the earliest fragment of biblical text of any kind — four centuries older than any Dead Sea Scroll.

Sources: Barkay, Vaughn, Lundberg & Zuckerman, BASOR 334 (2004), 41-71; Renz & Röllig, Handbuch der althebräischen Epigraphik (1995).

Ketef Hinnom means "the shoulder of Hinnom": a rock terrace southwest of Jerusalem's Old City, above the valley the Bible calls Gehenna, beside the road to Bethlehem. In 1979 Gabriel Barkay was excavating a row of First Temple period burial caves there. Cave 24, Chamber 25, looked plundered like the rest — until a thirteen-year-old volunteer struck the chamber floor and broke through into a repository beneath the burial bench.

The ceiling of that repository had partly collapsed in antiquity, which is why looters had missed it. It held roughly 60 centimetres of accumulated material and more than a thousand objects: pottery, iron and bronze arrowheads, needles and pins, bone and ivory, glass bottles, and gold and silver jewellery. Among them lay two small rolled cylinders of silver.

KH1 measures 27 by 97 millimetres, KH2 just 11 by 39. Unrolling them without destroying them took the Israel Museum's laboratories three years. The metal is inscribed, not inked — the letters were incised into silver foil with a fine point, in paleo-Hebrew script, not the later square Aramaic characters.

KH1 carries eighteen lines; KH2 carries twelve.

KH2 reads, in the 2004 edition: "May h[e]/sh[e] be blessed by YHWH, the warrior and the rebuker of [E]vil: May YHWH bless you, keep you. May YHWH make His face shine upon you and grant you p[ea]ce." That is Numbers 6:24–26.

KH1 invokes the God who "keeps the covenant and graciousness toward those who love him" — the formula found at Deuteronomy 7:9, Nehemiah 1:5 and Daniel 9:4 — before turning to the same blessing.

Be precise about the fit. The amulets carry "bless and keep" and "make his face shine" and "grant peace," but not "and be gracious unto thee" nor "lift up his countenance upon thee." This is a shorter, blessing-form recension of the priestly benediction, not a copy of the received Masoretic wording.

The date rests on two independent legs: the paleo-Hebrew letterforms, and the datable pottery assemblage sealed in the same chamber. Both point to the late seventh or early sixth century BC — before Nebuchadnezzar burned Jerusalem in 586. Johannes Renz and Wolfgang Röllig argued in their Handbuch der althebräischen Epigraphik (1995) that a third- or second-century date could not be excluded on the readings then published.

That challenge is what produced the definitive edition. Bruce Zuckerman and Marilyn Lundberg of the West Semitic Research Project at the University of Southern California re-photographed both scrolls with computer-enhanced fibre-optic and raking-light imaging, recovering letters no one had been able to read. Their edition with Barkay and Andrew Vaughn — BASOR 334 (2004), pages 41–71 — confirmed the pre-exilic date.

What the amulets establish is narrow and heavy. This is the earliest known appearance of the Tetragrammaton in a biblical text, and the earliest fragment of biblical text of any kind. In pre-exilic Jerusalem, the priestly blessing was fixed enough in wording to be worn on the body as a personal possession — exactly the practice Deuteronomy 6:8 and 11:18 command.

Barkay's own excavation report noted that the burial caves at Ketef Hinnom stayed in use across the Babylonian destruction, which is part of why the chamber accumulated so deeply. The amulets were not a hoard: they were personal objects, worn by named individuals, buried with them.

The critical stakes are real. Classic source criticism, following Wellhausen, assigned the Priestly source — which contains Numbers 6 — to the post-exilic period, making the blessing a product of the Second Temple. The silver scrolls put its language in Jerusalem before the exile.

Both amulets are on display in the Archaeology Wing of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

6 pieces of evidence

What this establishes

  1. 01Artifact

    Two silver amulets, KH1 (27 × 97 mm, 18 lines) and KH2 (11 × 39 mm, 12 lines), incised in paleo-Hebrew and dated by script and sealed pottery to c. 600 BC.

  2. 02The record

    Found in 1979 by Gabriel Barkay in Chamber 25 of Cave 24 at Ketef Hinnom — a repository sealed by an ancient ceiling collapse, which is why looters missed it.

  3. 03Witness

    They carry the priestly blessing of Numbers 6:24–26 and the divine name YHWH: the earliest attested biblical text and the earliest biblical Tetragrammaton.

  4. 04Manuscript

    Four centuries older than the oldest Dead Sea Scroll, and roughly 1,600 years older than the Leningrad Codex.

  5. 05The record

    The 2004 BASOR edition by Barkay, Vaughn, Lundberg and Zuckerman used computer-enhanced imaging to recover unread letters and settle the pre-exilic date against the Renz–Röllig challenge.

  6. 06The record

    Wellhausen's school dated the Priestly source, which contains Numbers 6, to the post-exilic period; the amulets place its language in pre-exilic Jerusalem.

7 passages

Key verses

Berean Standard Bible

THE RECEIPTS

Sources

◈Contested pointscontested
  • Two amulets carrying six lines of blessing are not the Book of Numbers. They show the blessing existed in writing; they do not show that a written Pentateuch existed around it.
  • The priestly blessing may have circulated as an independent liturgical formula long before it was set into Numbers 6. In that case the scrolls date the formula, not the book.
  • The wording is not the received wording. The amulets lack "and be gracious unto thee" and "lift up his countenance upon thee," so they attest a shorter recension rather than the Masoretic text of Numbers 6:24–26.
  • Renz and Röllig's argument for a possible Hellenistic date was never universally withdrawn, and palaeography on incised silver — a medium with very few dated comparanda — carries wider error bars than palaeography on inked papyrus.