Gemariah Bulla

The House of the Bullae

In the 1982 season of the City of David excavations, part of the campaign that ran from 1978 to 1985, a room in Area G produced fifty-one clay bullae under a thick layer of burning. The archive they had sealed was gone: the papyrus documents burned in the destruction of Jerusalem, and the fire that destroyed them baked the clay tags hard enough to survive. The room has been called the House of the Bullae ever since. No individual finder is recorded — the credit in the literature belongs to the excavation.

This is the best-stratified object in this whole group of articles, and that matters more than any single reading on it. The bullae lay beneath the debris of the Babylonian sack of 587 or 586 BC, in the administrative quarter of the city, in the layer that event created. Nobody has to argue about where they came from or when they were sealed, because the fire dated them. The group was first published by the excavation's own director in the Israel Exploration Journal in 1986, and given its final publication by Y. Shoham in the dig's Qedem volume in 2000; both are credited in full in the sources below.

Two Names, and Both of Them Fit

The bulla reads, in two registers: lgmryhw / bn spn — "belonging to Gemaryahu, son of Shaphan." There is no title. Jeremiah 36:10 places Gemariah son of Shaphan the scribe in the temple in the fifth year of Jehoiakim, with a room in the upper court, and it is from that room that Baruch reads Jeremiah's scroll aloud to all the people. Jeremiah 36:12 has him sitting with the other officials when the scroll is reported to the king, and Jeremiah 36:25 has him among the three who beg Jehoiakim not to burn it. He is one of the prophet's protectors.

The shorter biblical form and the longer epigraphic form are the same name: Gemaryahu contracts to Gemariah exactly as Neriyahu contracts to Neriah. So the match here has both halves — the personal name and the patronymic — plus a findspot in the right quarter of the right city in the right decade. That is the shape of a strong ancient identification, and it is the standard against which the weaker claims in this section should be measured.

Why This One Is Allowed to Stand

This app spends a good deal of this section pulling claims back, so it is worth being clear where the pulling stops. Nobody serious disputes that this bulla is genuine, and it is regularly cited as one of the firm identifications of a biblical person in the epigraphic record. Excavated, stratified, published twice, and matching Scripture on both the name and the father's name: there is nothing here to argue about. The Center for Online Judaic Studies puts it bluntly by contrast — unlike the Baruch and Jerahmeel bullae bought from dealers, no doubt exists as to the authenticity of this one.

The honest limit is a different kind. What the bulla establishes is that a man called Gemaryahu son of Shaphan sealed documents in Jerusalem shortly before the city fell. It does not corroborate the scene in Jeremiah 36 — not the reading in the upper court, not the plea to Jehoiakim, not the king cutting the scroll with a penknife and feeding it to the brazier. It puts a name from that chapter into the physical record of that city at that moment, and it leaves the narrative exactly where it was. That is genuinely something. It is also less than "archaeology confirms Jeremiah 36," and the difference is worth keeping.

One further caution, and it applies to every article in this section. It would be good to be able to say how common the names Gemaryahu and Shaphan were in seventh-century Judah, because the strength of any name match depends on it. No published count was traced for this pair, so this app does not assert that they were rare. What carries the identification here is the combination of two matching names with a sealed archaeological context — not a claim about frequency that nobody has checked.

Scripture references

• Jeremiah 36:10 — Baruch reads the scroll in the room of Gemariah the son of Shaphan
• Jeremiah 36:12 — Gemariah among the officials in the scribe's chamber of the king's house
• Jeremiah 36:25 — Gemariah begs the king not to burn the scroll
• 2 Kings 25:9 — The fire that destroyed the documents and preserved their seals

Sources

• ScholarshipY. Shiloh, "A Group of Hebrew Bullae from the City of David" — Yigal Shiloh, director of the City of David excavations · Israel Exploration Journal 36/1-2 (1986), 16-38. The first publication of the hoard. Print onlySupports: The find, the hoard of fifty-one bullae and the stratigraphy
• Holding institutionY. Shoham, "Hebrew Bullae," in Excavations at the City of David 1978-1985 Directed by Yigal Shiloh, Final Report VI: Inscriptions — Yair Shoham, in the volume edited by D. T. Ariel — the excavation's own final report · Qedem 41, Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2000, pages 29-57. Print onlySupports: The final publication of the bulla and its reading
• Holding institution"The Seal Impression of Gemaryhau Son of Shaphan" — The Megalim Institute and the City of David; photograph by Clara Amit, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority · Confirms the 1982 season, the fifty-one bullae, and the House of the BullaeSupports: The find year, the excavation and the hoard
• Reference"Gemaryahu Son of Shaphan Bulla" — Center for Online Judaic Studies, drawing on T. Schneider, "Six Biblical Signatures," Biblical Archaeology Review 17/4 (1991) · States that, unlike the Baruch and Jerahmeel bullae, no doubt exists as to this one's authenticity, and gives the Gemaryahu/Gemariah contractionSupports: The reading, the secure stratum, and the contrast with the market bullae

Further reading

• City of David: the seal impression of Gemaryahu son of Shaphan

Reflect

Gemariah tried to stop a king from burning a prophet's words, and failed. What has God asked you to do that you may not get to see succeed?