Discovery Of Ancient Hebrew Tablet May Redate The Writing Of The Bible

A very interesting find in Israel that will have some major chronological impact.

Not The Bee: An ancient lead tablet with a 3500-year-old Hebrew curse shows the Bible is “hundreds of years older than scholars previously thought” … or just as old as anyone who actually read the Bible thought

More interesting context at the Houston Chronicle.

An ancient lead tablet was recently found in Israel that dates back to 1,500 BC, the Late Bronze Era, in a Hebrew style matching the Bible.  It is 200 years older than any other known Hebrew inscription. This makes that style much earlier than scholars previously believed that style of Hebrew writing to exist and the Bible to be older than previously believed by scholars.

A really impressive find with some amazing chronological implicaitons, and there may be more of them waiting to be discovered on Mount Ebal.

Oh, the inscription on the tablet?  Someone was really venting:

"Cursed, cursed, cursed - cursed by the God Yahweh. You will die cursed. Cursed you will surely die. Cursed by Yahweh – cursed, cursed, cursed."

This is what happens when you save your curses up and let them all rip at once. 

Whatever the recipient of this curse did to anger the author likely was pretty bad.  But, since its about 250 years later, it likely wasn't due to being ripped off by Ea Nasir, but if the dating gets revised and turns out that the inscription on the tablet happens to go farther back . . .

The Infield Fly Rule, Law Reviews and Biblical Baseball References

While doing some legal research I happened upon this hilarious law review article, suitable for both lawyers and non-lawyers, and most especially for baseball fans of both groups.

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE INFIELD FLY RULE TO WESTERN CIVILIZATION (AND VICE VERSA)
By Professor Anthony D’Amato. (link opens a .pdf version of the article).

Professor D'Amato does make one eggregious error in the article, that of agreeing with previous authors' mistaken conclusion that the Bible does not mention Baseball.

....despite the fact that the authors are technically correct in noting that baseball itself is not mentioned in the Bible, they overlook the more specific biblical reference to the Infield Fly Rule.

In fact, the game of Baseball is the very first thing mentioned in the Bible:

Genesis 1:1 In the Big Inning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Later this event was mistransalated as the Big Bang, instead it should be correctly referred to as it was originally: God throwing out the First Pitch.