Fall Salem Institute Week Six : Letters to the Seven Cities

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3De-76vXmM&list=PLD9o3pQYhVMF2TXItDBjF2-WOro3i93Af&index=18

 

The discovery of the Book of Balaam inscriptions:

1.       "In an unprecedented discovery, an ancient text found at Deir Alla, Jordan, in 1967 tells about the activities of a prophet named Balaam. Could this be the Balaam of the Old Testament? The text makes it clear that it is. Three times in the first four lines he is referred to as “Balaam son of Beor,” exactly as in the Bible. This represents the first Old Testament prophet to be dug up in Bible lands — not his tomb or his skeleton, but a text about him. The text also represents the first prophecy of any scope from the ancient West Semitic world to be found outside the Old Testament, and the first extra-Biblical example of a prophet proclaiming doom to his own people. … The remarkable text found at Deir Alla consists of 119 fragments of plaster inscribed with black and red ink. It was among the rubble of a building destroyed in an earthquake. It seems to have been one long column with at least 50 lines, displayed on a plastered wall. According to the excavators’ dating, the disaster was most likely the severe earthquake which occurred in the time of King Uzziah (Azariah) and the prophet Amos in about 760 BC (Am 1:1; Zec 14:5). The lower part of the text shows signs of wear, indicating that it had been on the wall for some time prior to the earthquake." (Balaam Son of Beor, Bible and Spade, Bryant G. Wood, p114, 1995 AD)

2.        "Deir Alla in the eighth-century B.C. was a large city, perhaps even a center of religious instruction. On the walls of a room in one building that may have stood near a temple, a professional scribe copied the text of an important religious manuscript. First he drew four red frames. Then he filled the frames with text, adding a drawing here and there for adornment. See artist’s reconstruction of how this inscribed wall may have looked. Sometime in the eighth century B.C. Deir Alla was leveled by an earthquake, perhaps the very earthquake mentioned in the Book of Amos, and also spoken of by Zechariah as “the earthquake that stopped up the valley in the days of King Uzziah of Judah.” In the Deir Alla disaster, the inscribed wall fell, crumbling into a myriad of fragments that scattered over an area of more than 20 square feet. The author observes that most of one section of the wall seems to have fallen in a pit, while another section fell at the corner of the original wall (see plan)." (Fragments from the Book of Balaam Found at Deir Alla, André Lemaire, BAR-11:05, Sep/Oct 1985)

3.       "Found at Tell Deir ʿAllā, near the River Zerqa (biblical Jabbok) in the eastern Jordan Valley, these texts were apparently once displayed in a room of a building that is commonly believed to have been a sanctuary. Written in black and red ink on white plaster, fragments of the texts were found on the floor of that room when the building was destroyed by a violent earthquake—one of the many that plagued the region. As a result of that disaster, part of the plaster was burnt and the entire inscription fell to the ground, shattered in pieces, much of which was irretrievably lost. The fragments that remain were found in several groupings." (Deir Alla Plaster Texts, Prophets and prophecy in the ancient Near East, Vol 12, 138, 2003 AD)

4.        "Combination I clearly concerns the vision of Balaam son of Beor, “a seer of the gods,” who is also known in the biblical tradition recorded in Num 22–24. Like the prophets of ancient Israel, Balaam in this account is privy to the deliberations of the divine council. The assembled deities—known in the account alternatively as “gods” and “Shaddayin” (a term related to the biblical divine epithet “Shaddai”)—have ordained a catastrophe, and they charge a certain celestial being to execute the destruction on their behalf. Unfortunately, only the first letter of her name has been preserved (line 6), so her identity can only be a matter of conjecture. Like the deceiving spirit sent forth from the divine council witnessed by the prophet Micaiah the son on Imlah (1 Kgs 22:5–18) and like the adversary in the divine council who was permitted by God to set forth to harm Job (Job 1:6–12; 2:1–8), she plays a destructive role. The impending doom that she is to bring about is in many ways reminiscent of end-of-the-world scenarios that are often found in the Bible, notably in the preaching of the prophets. Creation will apparently be undone as the cosmic floods will be released upon the earth (“the bolts of heaven” will be broken), the dark rain clouds will cover the skies, and there will be pitch darkness and terror on earth." (Deir Alla Plaster Texts, Prophets and prophecy in the ancient Near East, Vol 12, 138, 2003 AD)

Pergamon Museum, Berlin Germany : Altar 

White stone

But in ancient times, particularly in the middle east  and Mediterranean, the white stone represented important details about one’s social status. In some cultures, the trial judges on a panel would each deposit a black stone or a white stone in a bowl or urn, or reveal one from the palm of their hands, to cast their votes on the verdict of the accused. A black stone indicated the judge favoured a guilty verdict and a white stone meant the accused was considered innocent of the charge. If the accused received more white stones than black from the panel, he was acquitted. So, the white stone became a symbol of being judged innocent.

(See Metamorphoses, by Ovid. (A.D. 8) Lib XV, verse 41. Translated by John Dryden, et al [1717]. “A custom was of old, and still remains, Which life or death by suffrages ordains: White stones and black within an urn are cast, The first absolve, but fate is in the last.”)

In Classical Athens, when the decision at hand was to banish or exile a certain member of society, citizen peers would cast their vote by writing the name of the person on the shard of pottery; the vote was counted and, if unfavorable, the person was exiled for a period of ten years from the city, thus giving rise to the term ostracism. 

Similarly, in ancient Rome, before a gladiator match, the gladiators pulled stones from a bag and the ones who drew black stones were to fight while those who pulled white were given a reprieve.

In other situations, a person who carried a white stone with a name of a patron on it, enjoyed the privileges of a modern day credit card, with expenses charged to the patron. Often it was a white tesserae (mosaic stone) that was used to permit charging expenses to another’s account. (See Pliny Natural History, 7.40.131).