Excavations In the Hinnom Valley in 1979 brought to light two tiny silver amulets ( charms worn to guard against evil) which had been buried there with their owner. The grave has been confidently dated to the first temple period and probably to the seventh century B.C.
Among faint inscriptions scratched on the amulets, the Tetragrammaton (YHVH), the Hebrew name for the Almighty, was the first to be noticed. Experts at the Israel Museum eventually succeeded in opening out the fragile objects, and the other words that were scratched on the silver became a little more obvious. They eventually proved to be part of Numbers 6:24-26 in almost identical words to those of the Masoretic Hebrew text in use today, from which the English Bible has been translated. It is a lovely quotation:
“The Lord bless thee, and keep thee, and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace”.
The very words that are used today to express good wishes, and are set to music in a beautiful anthem, were used 2,700 years ago by an inhabitant of Jerusalem, who was acquainted with Solomon’s temple.
These amulets were evidently intended for wearing, as they had holes by which they could be attached, perhaps to a necklace, or to the clothing. They may have been the forerunners of the phylacteries (tefillin) that have been worn in later centuries. Phylacteries are little leather boxes that contain extracts from Scripture, and they are worn by orthodox Jews on the forehead and the left arm during prayer. Today in Jerusalem there is a small factory where they are still being made. However, the passages that are enclosed in a phylactery today are taken from Exodus 13 and Deuteronomy 6 and 11, written by hand on a tiny piece of parchment.
The brief quotation from Numbers on the silver amulets is now the oldest known Bible text, and predates the oldest of the Dead Sea scrolls by several centuries. Thus the arguments of the higher critics for a late composition of the Bible is steadily being disproved, as such finds as this show that its message was clearly known at ever earlier dates.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One