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| Isaiah Seal Photograph by Ouria Tadmor and Eilat Mazar |
THE SEAL OF ISAIAH THE PROPHET
Greetings all you fine people out there! What a great time I had filming a part of my video trailer yesterday. It was hot and sweaty but my friends and family were all so helpful and fun to work with. I thank them all for helping me to get the message of God to you in this form of media!
Speaking of messages, back in the old days, people of importance owned seals. A seal was a small relief made from metal or stone with which they could stamp on a message to make the message authentic. Seals only belonged to the person who owned it and as far as I know, there was only one that the person possessed. “The clay seal, or bulla, was one of 34 found during Mazar's (archaeologist Eilat Mazar) 2009 Ophel excavations at the base of the southern wall of Jerusalem's Temple Mount, or Haram al-Sharif. The seals, or bullae, were recovered from a small Iron Age (1200-586 B.C.) garbage pits, outside the wall…described as a royal bakery leveled in the 586 B.C. Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem.”
The seal is written in Old Hebrew script and contains the Hebrew name for Isaiah; Yesha’yah[u]. The next Hebrew word after the name is nvy. “Because the seal is damaged at the end of the word nvy, Mazar suggests that our reading may be incomplete. If nvy was originally followed by the Hebrew letter aleph, the result would be the word "prophet," rendering the reading of the seal as ‘Belonging to Isaiah the prophet.’ “
Interestingly enough, “In 2015, the announcement that
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| Hezekiah seal Photograph by Ouria Tadmor and Eilat Mazar |
| another clay bulla discovered in the Ophel excavations bore the personal seal of King Hezekiah made international headlines. According to the most recent article, the 'Isaiah' seal was found just 10 feet from the Hezekiah seal during the same 2009 excavation.” |
This 2,700 year old seal found just 10 feet from the seal of King Hezekiah on the same level is of utmost importance as you will see. “Christopher Rollston, professor of Semitic languages at George Washington University, agrees that…without an aleph at the end, nvy is probably just a personal name (often the name of the person's father) or a location (where the person hails from).” In addition, Rollston states that an h is not present. An h in Hebrew is the same as the word “the” in English. And as in English, they would say the prophet instead of; prophet. Mazar does suggest however, “…that the definite article may have originally appeared in a damaged area above the word nvy, or, citing other archaeological and textual examples, was simply left out.”
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Revering to the above photo, “Researchers suggest that the damaged area of the seal may have originally contained the Hebrew characters vav and h in the middle register and aleph in the lower register (reconstructed text in blue). The complete seal impression would then read "Belonging to Isaiah the Prophet.” To me, the evidence is overwhelming that this is the seal of Isaiah the prophet.
Until next time, God bless and take care,
Willow Dressel
References:
1https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/02/prophet-isaiah-jerusalem-seal-archaeology-bible/
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