Saturday, Jul. 21, 2007 By DAVID VAN BIEMABy confirming the historical accuracy of a tiny detail, a two-inch clay tablet long in the possession of the British Museum has given ammunition to those who believe that the Bible — specifically, in this case, the book of the prophet Jeremiah — is history. That, at least, is what the believers are claiming.
The tablet itself is certainly genuine. On July 10 the Museum announced that a Viennese expert working his way through thousands of similar clay documents in its possession translated one dating from 595 B.C that described a gift of 1.7 lbs. of gold to a Babylonian temple by a "chief eunuch" named Nabu-sharrussu-ukin.
A museum official called it "a world-class find." What makes the ancient but seemingly mundane receipt significant is that the book of Jeremiah in the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament) mentions the exact same official — though under a different transliteration, Nebo-Sarsekim, and a different title, chief officer, as accompanying the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar when he marched against Jerusalem in 587.
According to some experts, that proves that whoever wrote Jeremiah wasn't making it up.
It's another chapter in a larger debate between scholars known as biblical "minimalists" and "maximalists." Maximalists, who include most conservative Christian experts, tend to accept that those parts of the Bible that include prolific historical detail are probably historically accurate. Minimalists tend to think that they were completed centuries after their alleged dates as propaganda for a later Jewish government. Jeremiah's story is one of the most vividly rendered lives in the Old Testament. His biography is accepted as fact by pious Jews and Christians, as are the book's details regarding the sack of Jerusalem, in which Nebo-Sarsekim reportedly participated, and the subsequent Jewish exile "by the rivers of Babylon," commemorated by the Book of Psalms and Bob Marley. Minimalists tend to regard it as a polemic, until proven otherwise.
Conservatives are calling the Nebo-Sarsekim tablet, stamped in cuneiform script, such a proof. Lawson Stone, a professor of Old Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky, describes Nebo-Sarsekim's rank as roughly equivalent to Deputy Undersecretary of the Interior. "The logical assumption," he contends, "is that Jeremiah wasn't written by a later writer, but a person writing at the time. I don't know why a later writer trying to create a legendary basis for [a later Jewish regime] would want to make reference to a third-ranked Babylonian clerk. This argues that the document is accurate in its references to the world around it."
However, Robert Coote, an Old Testament professor at the more liberal San Francisco Theological Seminary, disagrees. Most academics who regard Jeremiah as a polemic, he claims, would concede that it makes use of materials originally written in Nebuchadnezzar's age, so there is no reason for it not to include the name of a minor figure in his court. "The logical fallacy," says Coote, "is to say that this one corroboration makes the whole narrative true and accurate."
It will take a lot more cuneiform tablets to convince him. But then, the British Museum still has a lot left to look through.
The Rev. Ann Holmes Redding of Seattle made news in recent weeks by declaring herself to be both a Christian and a practicing Muslim. The Episcopal priest lives in Seattle and is scheduled to teach for the next academic year at Seattle University (a Jesuit institution).