The oldest Bible verse ever found

In 1979, a team led by archaeologist Gabriel Barkay was excavating burial caves at Ketef Hinnom, on a ridge just southwest of Jerusalem’s Old City. In a repository beneath one tomb, a young volunteer found two tiny rolled-up silver sheets. They were so fragile that unrolling them took years.

What the scrolls say

When the silver was finally opened, it held faint Hebrew letters. Both amulets contain a version of the priestly blessing from Numbers 6:24–26: “May the LORD bless you and keep you; may the LORD cause His face to shine upon you…” They also contain the divine name, YHWH.

They are the oldest known artifacts to quote a passage from the Hebrew Bible, older than the earliest Dead Sea Scrolls by three to four centuries.

How old are they?

The tomb’s pottery and the style of the letters point to the late seventh or early sixth century BC, the last decades of the kingdom of Judah, just before the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem. Some scholars proposed a later date. In 2004, a team using new imaging techniques published a fresh edition and concluded that the script fits the late First Temple period.¹

Why it matters

Some critical theories once held that much of the Pentateuch, including the priestly material in Numbers, was composed after the exile. The amulets don’t settle when Numbers was written as a whole. They do show that this blessing, in wording close to our Bibles, was known and treasured in Jerusalem before the exile, and that ordinary families carried it with them, even into the grave.