Before the Telegraph article on the Nabu-sharrussu-ukin tablet became unavailable (at least to non-subscribers), John Hobbins archived it. Along with the main article, John archived a comment posted to the Telegraph article by Hector Avalos. Get John’s PDF for the whole comment; I wish to interact with just a couple of points therein.

Hector commented:

This tablet an important find, but it does not have the more exaggerated biblical fundamentalist implications that are being assigned to it by some.

First, it is a mistake to assume that because one biblical claim mentioned in the Bible is confirmed by an independent source, then ALL claims in the Bible are true. This tablet certainly would confirm nothing about the supernatural claims in the Bible.

This is exactly right and an important caveat. What the tablet demonstrates, at most, is that the narrative presented in Jeremiah 39 about the Babylonian sack of Jerusalem was written by someone who knew the names and titles of some of the Babylonian officials present. Now, as a matter of inference, one might judge it likely that such a person was an eyewitness, or somehow had access to eyewitness accounts. That would be an unprovable but not unreasonable inference, but an inference nevertheless. But to then try to generalize beyond this particular report to all biblical narratives is by far an unwarranted leap.

Second, if one is going to assume that everything is true in the Bible because one claim is proven true, then one must apply this rationale to all religions, including the Babylonian religion. After all, we could just reverse this rationale and say that the Babylonian records are confirmed by the biblical records, and so Babylonian claims about the supernatural are correct.

This also is quite correct. The claims “Chief Eunuch Rab-saris Nabu-sharrussu-ukin was present when the Babylonian army breached Jerusalem’s defensive wall” is of quite a different order than “God sent the Babylonian army to destroy Jerusalem as punishment for Judah’s sins.” Note also that the Nabu-sharrussu-ukin temple offering tablet does not even actually verify the first claim; it just verifies that such a person existed (nine years earlier than the sack of Jerusalem). But even if the tablet is taken as indirect confirmation of the former claim, it has no bearing whatsoever on the second claim. One might be tempted to argue that “if the author was right about X, s/he must have been right about Y,” but that argument would work only if Y were logically or causally dependent on X.

Third, we are not completely sure that “Nabu-sharrusu-ukin, the chief eunuch” is the very same official mentioned in Jeremiah 39:3, where the name is vocalized (in English transcription) as Sarsechim (or Sarsekim).

But note that Sarsekim lacks the “Nabu” part which we would expect in other names (“Nebuchadnezzar”) has it. Likewise, Nebuzaradan (2 Kings 25:8-11) retains the “Nebu” part of the name, which refers to the god, Nabu (or Nebo).

The issue is further complicated because in Jeremiah 39:13 “The Rabsaris” (“the Chief Eunuch”) is named Nebushazban, which is a different name deriving perhaps from the Babylonian Nebu-shuzibanni (= “Nabu deliver me”).

Because of these problems, it has been proposed that the name prior to Sarsekim in Jeremiah 39:3 be redivided so that the “nebo” of “Samgar-nebo” be joined with Sarsekim, which would now yield Nebo-Sarsekim, a name closer to the name found on the British Museum tablet.

This way of presenting the matter is a little bit misleading. The correct division of the names in Jeremiah 39:3 has long been a matter of (minor) debate. The final paragraph just quoted almost makes it sound like the motive for reading Nebo-sarsekim in Jeremiah 39:3 is because of the Nabu-sharrussu-ukin tablet. Yet that cannot be the case, since the English translations that read “Nebo-sarsekim” were published well before the temple donation tablet came to light. Those translations, by the way, include Wycliffe’s, NIV/TNIV/NIrV, REB, NEB, NLT, and ERV. These are in the minority (see the chart here), but they are not non-existent, nor were the translations prompted by Jursa’s publicization of the tablet. Indeed, the earliest translation to join the “Nebo-” element to “Sarsekim” was the Septuagint.

Please see my earlier treatments (here, here, and here) and follow the links in those posts for a fuller presentation of the issues surrounding the interpretation of Jeremiah 39:3 in light of this tablet.

Professor Michael Jursa, therefore, opted for a re-division of the Hebrew text to get Nebo- Sarsekim (so does the NIV, but not the KJV or RSV).

However, this would mean that the biblical text (or at least the standard Masoretic edition of the Hebrew text) was WRONG in how it transcribed the Babylonian name, or that the text has been corrupted. It would mean that we had to use Babylonian texts to CORRECT the biblical mangling of the Babylonian name. That should not inspire much confidence that biblical scribes were always accurate.

Oh, come on, Hector! We’re talking about a maqqeph sitting where it doesn’t belong. It’s well known that the Masoretic pointings and punctuation, while conservative in their preservation of the tradition of synagogue reading, were a very late addition to the biblical text. Biblical scholars and educated non-professional readers have long known that the Masoretic pointings and punctuations are not 100% trustworthy. But that is not a matter of Jeremiah 39 being “wrong” or “corrupted” in transmission. It’s a matter of the Masoretes, well over 1,000 years after the composition of the text, putting a punctuation mark in the wrong place. Misplaced Masoretic punctuation neither indicts the text as “wrong” nor shows it to be “corrupt.”

What we have here is not an “incorrect” or “corrupt” text, but a limitation in translators’ knowledge of how to render a potentially ambiguous text. The consonantal text is perfectly secure here. We just need to know how to group the words together in the sentence. That’s where the Masoretes seem to have made their mistake.

Note also that the New American Bible omits Sarsechim altogether in Jeremiah 39:3, and substitutes Nebushazban (from Jeremiah 39:13). So now one has to be specific as to WHICH VERSION of “the Bible” one believes is “confirmed.” The NAB would be proven wrong by this tablet.

Again, come on. Give churchgoers some credit. The vast majority understand that their modern-language translations might differ from one another based on translators’ and editors’ decisions. If any text is “confirmed” by the Nabu-sharrussu-ukin tablet, it’s the consonantal Hebrew text.

So, yes, thank goodness for Mesopotamian texts which have helped us immensely to understand how mythological and how textually corrupted biblical texts can be.

This tablet does neither. There’s nothing at all “mythological” about Chief Eunuch Rab-saris Nebu-sharrussu-ukin’s temple donation (per the tablet) or his putative presence at the sack of Jerusalem (per Jeremiah). Nor is there anything “textually corrupt” about the consonantal text of Jeremiah 39:3. “The Nabu-sharrussu-ukin tablet proves the Bible true!” is a ridiculous claim, but “The Nabu-sharrussu-ukin tablet proves the Bible mythological and textually corrupted!” is equally incorrect.