/ world today news/ A new proof of the Christian nature of the discovered tomb from the time of Jesus Christ in Israel was discovered: the “sign of Jonah” found in it turned out to be not only a drawing, but also an inscription.
In Israel, the development of archaeological history continues with the open burial of one of the first Christians in Judea. Despite the protests of various religious groups, historians found another – if not final, then quite convincing – confirmation of their hypothesis, writes “Znaniya.Tv”. Let us recall that on February 28, archaeologists from the University of North Carolina announced a strange find: with with the help of a robot, they penetrated into one of the sealed tombs discovered in a suburb of Jerusalem, dated from the 1st century, and among the other objects, they also captured an ossuary (vessel for storing bones) with a strange and even impossible inscription at that time. In fact, the four-line inscription was not unexpected: it contained a request to God for the dead to rise. Stranger was the sketchy drawing of a large fish holding a man in its mouth.
This was undoubtedly the “sign of Jonah”, the biblical prophet who spent three days in the whale’s womb. It is believed that this sign was a symbol of the resurrection of Christ for the first Christians in Jerusalem. The whole thing is that according to the Jewish laws of that time it was strictly forbidden to depict people and animals.
The interest in the ossuary was fueled by another circumstance: in 1980, another burial was discovered near this tomb, and one of the ossuary found there had a poorly preserved inscription, which, if desired, can be read as “Jesus, son of Joseph”. . This is a very strange and controversial burial, especially if you take into account the other inscriptions found on the ossuaries found there – “Mariamene”, “Yosef” and “Judas, son of Jesus”.
Continuing to study the pictures of the mysterious inscription, the researchers discovered that some lines of the drawing resemble letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Then they consulted James Carlsworth of Princeton Theological Seminary, director of the Princeton Dead Sea Scrolls Project, an acknowledged expert on Jewish texts of the period. After scrutinizing the drawing, Carlsworth gasped: both the fish and the man it held in its mouth turned out to be cleverly composed of four letters of the Hebrew alphabet, with which the Qumran scrolls were written.
The four letters were Yod, Vav, Nun, and Hei, and if read from right to left, they form the word YONH or YONAH, that is, Jonah.
There is no doubt that this is not a random scribble – each of the 4 cm high letters is also deeply engraved and has a very complex pattern. To rule out doubts about the meaning of the drawing, Carlsworth invited other experts; two of them have already spoken their minds. Robert Deutsch, an Israeli expert on epigraphy, confirmed that the word “Jonah” was written there. Hagai Misgav, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, confirmed that these are indeed letters, but, according to him, they do not make up the word «YONAH», but «ZOLAH». The rest of the experts have not yet given their opinion.
In any case, the discovery is a very serious confirmation that the burial in question is of one of the first Christians in Judea, possibly even of a contemporary of Christ, and also that the first Christians sincerely believed that Jesus was resurrected after his death.
#read #sign #Jonah #View #Info
