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Gedaliah’s Bulla

There are five persons named Gedaliah in the Hebrew Bible. In my article on “Gedaliah,” published in The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible D-H (Nashville: Abingdon Press 2007) 2:530, I identified Gedaliah # 3 as the son of Pashhur and one of the officials of Zedekiah who conspired to accuse and imprison the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 38:1).

The Jerusalem Post has announced that Eilat Mazar has discovered a bulla (a seal impression) belonging to Gedalyahu ben Pashhur, the officer who served under Zedekiah. The bulla was found during an archaeological dig in Jerusalem’s City of David.

About her discovery, Eilat Mazar said:

“It is not very often that such a discovery happens in which real figures of the past shake off the dust of history and so vividly revive the stories of the Bible.”

Three years ago, Eilat Mazar discovered another bulla belonging to another officer in Zedekiah’s palace. The first bulla belonged to Jehucal ben Shelemyahu, who also served with Gedaliah (Jeremiah 38:1-4).

I have published two posts on Jehucal. To read my posts on Jehucal, click here and here.

Notwithstanding what people say about the Bible and archaeology, it is evident that archaeological discoveries reveal that the people mentioned in the Bible were historical figures and not people who belonged to an invented history created to justify the possession of the land by a group of people who returned to the same land that once had belonged to their ancestors.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Archaeology, Eilat Mazar, Gedaliah, Jehucal

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