Parts of New Testament
verse
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| AP |
Their curiosity
piqued, two Jerusalem scholars uncovered six previously invisible lines of
inscription: a Gospel verse - Luke 2:25.
Archaeological finds confirming biblical narrative or referring to figures
from the Bible are rare, and this is believed to be the first discovery of
a New Testament verse carved onto an ancient Holy Land shrine, said
inscriptions expert Emile Puech, who deciphered the writing.
A few Old Testament phrases have been found on monuments, and a passage
from Paul's Letter to the Romans, Romans 3:13, is laid into a floor mosaic
into the ancient Roman city of Caesarea.
Jim Strange, a New Testament scholar from the
University of South Florida, said the ancients apparently believed
chiseling Scripture into monuments debased sacred words. The widespread use
of Bible verses on shrines began only around 1 000 A.D., in Europe, said
Strange, who was unconnected with the discovery.
The inscription declares the 18m-high monument
is the tomb of Simon, a devout Jew who the Bible says cradled the infant
Jesus and recognized him as the Messiah.
It's actually unlikely Simon is buried there;
the monument is one of several built for
Jerusalem's aristocracy at the time of
Jesus.
However, the inscription does back up what until
now were scant references to a Byzantine-era belief that three biblical
figures - Simon, Zachariah and James, the brother of Jesus - shared the
same tomb.
Earlier this year, an inscription referring to
Zachariah, who was John the Baptist's father, was found on the same facade.
Puech and Joe Zias, a physical anthropologist, continued to study the
monument. Applying a "squeeze" - a simple 19th-century technique of
spreading a kind of papier mache over a surface - they uncovered the Simon
inscription. Now, they hope to complete the trio by finding writing
referring to James.
The Simon and Zachariah inscriptions were carved around the fourth century,
at a time when Byzantine Christians were searching the Holy Land for sacred
sites linked to the Bible and marked them, often relying on local lore,
said Puech.
The monument is in the
Kidron Valley, between Jerusalem's walled
Old City and the Mount of Olives. Eusebius, known as the father of church
history, writes in the "Ecclesiastical History" that James was hurled off
the Jewish Temple, bludgeoned to death in the Kidron Valley below and
buried nearby. The historian Josephus refers to a Temple priest named
Zachariah being slain by zealots in the Temple and thrown into the valley.
There is no word on Simon's death.
There have been historical references to a
Byzantine belief of joint burial of the three, although there is no
evidence they were actually buried together.
The six lines in the Simon inscription run vertically. The letters run together, are of different height, a little crooked and relatively shallow.
They were clearly carved by laymen, said Shimon
Gibson, of the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem,
who was present when Puech and Zias applied the squeeze during the summer,
but who was not connected with their research.
Referring to the carvers, Strange said: "These
were folks who knew their Greek and their Luke, but didn't know how to be
masons."
The inscription says the monument is the tomb of "Simeon who was a very
just man and a very devoted old person and waiting for the consolation of
the people." Simeon is a Greek version of Simon.
The passage is identical to the Gospel verse Luke 2:25, as it appears in a
fourth-century version of the Bible, the Codex Sinaiticus, which was later
revised extensively.
"The inscription shows there were different versions of the Old and New
Testament going around," said Zias, who presented his find on Thursday at
the annual conference of the American Schools of Oriental Research in
Atlanta.
The Zachariah and Simon inscriptions were
chiseled into what is known today as Absalom's Tomb, one of three large
funerary monuments built in the
Kidron Valley for the city's rich.
It is unlikely Absalom, a son of King David, is
buried there; the monument was built several hundred years after his death.
The name was assigned to the tomb in Medieval
times, along with a custom of stoning the facade as a show of disdain for
Absalom, who murdered his half brother for raping their sister and later
incited a rebellion against his father.
Jews, Christians and Muslims participated in the ritual, badly scarring the
facade and all but erasing the inscriptions.
Zias, a member of the Science and Archaeology Group, a team of scholars
affiliated with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, found the Zachariah
inscription by chance - in a photograph of the facade taken just before
sundown.
Had the photograph been taken at any other time of day, he might not have
seen the worn inscription. Using a squeeze, Puech deciphered the words:
"This is the tomb of Zachariah, martyr, very pious priest, father of John."
Strange said he had little doubt the inscriptions were genuine. If fake,
"then it was forged by someone who failed because nobody noticed the
inscriptions," he said.
- Sapa-AP
Originally published at IOL news service
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11.21.2003
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