Short History of the Jews..pt5

Just Who Were the Jews?? First invent your Jew, then invent your Christ…

"Lachish Letters" ? only first hand 'evidence' for the entire corpus of the Old Testament

A Few Bits of Crockery

"They have entered the land to lay waste ... strong is he who has come down. He lays waste."

The Lachish Letters (British Museum) ? a collection of 21 pottery shards or 'ostraca'.

Found in the ruins of Tell ed-Duweir in the 1930s the fragments bear a few words of Hebrew relating to the fall of Judaean cities to the Babylonians in the 580s BC.

The letters are from outposts of Lachish to the city's military commander (a man named Ya'osh) and represent field reports monitoring the situation as the armies of Nebuchadnezzar closed in.

Some writers find confirmation of the biblical 'Jeremiah' in these scraps (Letter XVI to be precise) though the reference could equally well have been to a 'Urijah'.