Welcome to An Exercise in the Fundamentals of Orthodoxy. If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to the RSS feed to keep up to date with what I'm writing. Alternatively, if you want to contact Peter in relation to issues of human sexuality, please use the contact form here. Thanks for visiting!
Yes he did!! A brilliant archaeological discovery has demonstrated that a minor character in the Bible did actually exist. Nabu-sharrussu-ukin was one of Nebuchadnezzar II’s chief administrators and is mentioned in the Scriptures as being involved in the siege of Jerusalem. Archaeologists have found a clay tablet that is a receipt for gold mentioning him. From this we can conclude that Nabu did exist and as regards the siege of Jerusalem, the butler did really do it!!
The tablet is dated to the 10th year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, 595BC, 12 years before the siege of Jerusalem.
Evidence from non-Biblical sources of people named in the Bible is not unknown, but Nabu-sharrussu-ukin would have been a relatively insignificant figure.
“This is a fantastic discovery, a world-class find,” Dr Finkel said yesterday. “If Nebo-Sarsekim existed, which other lesser figures in the Old Testament existed? A throwaway detail in the Old Testament turns out to be accurate and true. I think that it means that the whole of the narrative [of Jeremiah] takes on a new kind of power.”
“A throwaway detail“. I remember someone once describing to me the last five words of Genesis 1:16 [show]Genesis 1:16
And God made the two great lights--the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night--and the stars. (ESV)
as “the best throwaway line in the Bible. Go and look it up now and see what I mean.
Leave a Reply