Importance of Biblical Finds Stressed by Times

An editorial supporting the Oxford University appeal for £100,000 for biblical research and stressing the importance of recent discoveries in connection with the Bible appears in today’s New York Times. The editorial follows:

“Oxford University is making an appeal for one hundred thousand pound for the promotion of biblical research. This is thought not to be an excessive sum for Oxford’s part in a work of such magnitude and importance for future biblical scholarship. The appeal springs from the fact that the religion and civilization of the British Empire an of the United States ‘have been founded and reared on the basis of the Bible.’ It is recognized that the opportunities for scholars have till recently been too circumscribed. But now excavators are finding quantities of original documents on stone or on tablets of clay, written by those who lived near or in the days of the Hebrew patriarchs or onward into the very time of Christ.

“The most important recent discovery (reported somewhat more than a year ago but reproduced in color in The Illustrated London News ear in 1956) is that made at Lachish, a Bible city in Southern Palestine where a little red bowl was found with white alphabetical writings painted upon it. These, according to highest authority, form the connecting link between the Sinaitic script, discovered a quarter of a century ago, and the later Phoenician alphabet. The warranted inference is that the Israelites learned the script during the period of their wanderings in the wilderness and brought it with them into Canaan when they conquered the country under Joshua. This allows the abandonment of the theory that the earlier books of the Old Testament were transmitted orally, for the inscription on the bowl in archaic Hebrew (His righteousness is my hand’ suggests, if it does not prove, ‘the existence of written Hebrew documents, of books ascribed to Moses, as early as the thirteenth century (B.C.) and even much earlier.’

“The significance of this “find” must give fresh impetus to a quest in which all the peoples whose civilization as well as religion rests upon the Book should unite.”