Gibson again: Comments on another 'great' find by this scholar

koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Sangju Campus

Kyungpook National University

South Korea

Conjoint lecturer from Avondale College

Australia

In the Jerusalem Post of July 29, 2009, there is a photo of a newly found inscription that is not easy for  scholars to decipher. It is characterized as cryptic. They somehow, expect it to be Aramaic, but it is not  clear for this reader how they arrived at that conclusion.

The inscription was on a stone cup commonly used for ritual cleansing for purity. It was found during an  excavation on Mount Zion.

The letters are clear, however a number of letters are not so clear.

Looking at the inscription for some time, this investigator came to the following conclusions:

a. The inscription seems to have two registers on the photo, but according to the article there are 10 lines, so that would mean ten and not only two.

b. There was an earlier inscription in Phoenician orthography at the bottom of the upper register which was  then mutiliated with a rewriting.

c. A second writing was done over the Phoenician orthography.

d. Some of the letters are in Greek, some in Hebrew, some in Late Minoan and some in Paleo-Canaanite.

e. Although a number of conclusions can be made about the translation of the inscription, lines 1-2 that were available online, thanks to  Etgar Lefkovits and his photo in the Jerusalem Post, it is better to wait until one can see all 10 lines of the inscription, before conclusions can be made, or even translations suggested.

Similarly to Stephen Pfann's conclusion on the Jesus Inscription, socalled also "discovered" by this  archaeologist, Gibson, one cannot be but skeptical of this new cup inscription. It also seems as if a  number of hands have worked on this new inscription, since the slant of the letters are different.

One can raise the following questions of suspicion about the work of Gibson and his team:

a. How come all their inscriptions are cryptic?

b. How come all their inscriptions are sensational?

c. How come all their inscriptions are multi-layered by various scribes who have written over the text?

I would suggest at this point, that it is essential to first establish the veracity of the marks on the stone  before one proceeds to analize it.

History had examples of scholars who played tricks on other scholars by creating fakes that took scholars  hours and years to solve.

The work of Gibson and Talbot has not met with the strict scientific methodology, that allows for all alternatives to be placed on the table before final decisions are made, and thus are shift to the side by this researcher. It remains to be seen what will come up in this inscription. The translation by this scholar of lines one and two are omitted on purpose.

Source:

http://www.jerusalempost.com   29 July 2009    Etgar Lefkovits, "Know what this says?"

End item.