Jehucal and Gedaliah Bullae

Two Finds, Three Years Apart

The first bulla came out of E. Mazar's City of David excavation in 2005, at the summit of the ridge, in the area of the structure she identified as a royal building. It reads "belonging to Yehuchal son of Shelemyahu." The second was found in August 2008, in First Temple period strata beneath the northern tower, a few metres away from the first. It reads "belonging to Gedalyahu son of Pashhur." Neither publication records an individual finder.

What makes the pair unusual is not either bulla on its own but the fact that there are two of them. Mazar's own comment at the time was that finding the second was in one sense unexpected — a fragile piece of clay surviving hard excavation conditions — and in another sense entirely logical, because the two men are named side by side in Scripture as officials serving together under Zedekiah. Two names from one verse, in one administrative quarter, within a few metres of each other, is a harder coincidence to shrug off than either would be alone.

The Men Who Wanted Jeremiah Dead

Jeremiah 38:1 lists four men who heard what the prophet was telling the people: Shephatiah son of Mattan, Gedaliah son of Pashhur, Jucal son of Shelemiah, and Pashhur son of Malchijah. Two of those four are on these bullae, with their fathers' names matching. Jehucal appears again in Jeremiah 37:3, this time sent by Zedekiah to ask the prophet to pray for the city — the same man, on a different errand, before the mood turned.

What they wanted is in the next verses. They tell the king that Jeremiah weakens the hands of the soldiers and of all the people, that he does not seek the welfare of the nation, and that he should be put to death. Zedekiah gives way, and Jeremiah is lowered into a cistern to sink in the mud. These are not incidental names. They belong to the men who nearly killed the prophet, and two of them sealed documents in the quarter of the city where those documents were kept.

Firm, With Two Things Worth Saying Out Loud

Each identification rests on a name plus a patronymic — the same shape as the Gemariah bulla, and a much stronger shape than a bare name. What makes the pair worth the space is that the specialist who keeps the standard list of biblical figures identified in inscriptions has published his working on them twice, eight years apart, and changed his mind in between. L. Mykytiuk examined both bullae in 2009 and would not make either identification firm. His objection was not to the names; it was to the inference everyone draws from the findspots. The two were found metres apart but not in an archive, so "one must keep in mind the real possibility that one or both bullae could refer to a father-and-son pair besides those to which Jeremiah chapters 37 and 38 refer", and the association of the seal owners that would strengthen each identification "turns out to be quite tenuous". He therefore left them at grade 2 on his own scale — reasonable but uncertain, "strong enough to make reasonable hypotheses but not strong enough to be considered reliable" — and refused to raise them to the grade he keeps for the virtually certain. Then, in 2017, he affirmed them, and said in as many words why: "After cautiously observing publications and withholding judgment for several years, I am now affirming the four identifications... because I am now convinced that this bulla is a remnant from an administrative center in the City of David." What convinced him was setting E. Mazar's published description and photographs of the immediate context beside the excavated administrative contexts of other Judahite bullae. An identification a specialist argued himself out of and then back into is worth more than one nobody examined, and the sequence is worth reporting rather than smoothing over.

The second thing is a distinction that popular coverage routinely loses. There is a genuine, sharp and continuing scholarly argument about E. Mazar's excavations at the summit of the City of David — specifically about whether the Large Stone Structure is what she called it, and about how the whole area is dated. Israel Finkelstein and others have contested it in print for years. That argument is about a building, not about these two lumps of clay, and importing it into an article about the bullae would misrepresent both. The bullae come from First Temple period strata in a destroyed city, and their late-seventh or early-sixth-century date is not what anyone is fighting about.

The limit is the familiar one. Two officials named in Jeremiah's prison narrative left their seals in the city that narrative describes. The bullae do not corroborate the conversation with Zedekiah, the accusation, the cistern, or the Ethiopian who pulled Jeremiah out of it. They put the men in the room. The story is still the text's to tell.

Scripture references

• Jeremiah 38:1 — Gedaliah the son of Pashhur and Jucal the son of Shelemiah, named in one verse
• Jeremiah 37:3 — Jehucal the son of Shelemiah sent by Zedekiah to ask Jeremiah to pray
• Jeremiah 38:4 — The officials tell the king that Jeremiah weakens the hands of the men of war
• Jeremiah 38:6 — Jeremiah lowered into the cistern to sink in the mire

Sources

• Holding institutionE. Mazar, Preliminary Report on the City of David Excavations 2005 at the Visitors Center Area — Eilat Mazar, Hebrew University of Jerusalem — the excavator's own report · Shalem Press, Jerusalem and New York, 2007. The publication of the 2005 season, including the Jehucal bulla. Print onlySupports: The 2005 find and its context
• ScholarshipE. Mazar, The Palace of King David: Excavations at the Summit of the City of David, Preliminary Report of Seasons 2005-2007 — Eilat Mazar — the excavator's own report · Shoham Academic Research and Publication, Jerusalem, 2009. Print only. Note that the volume's title claim about the building is itself contested; the bullae are notSupports: The Gedaliah bulla and the excavation context
• Reference"Jeremiah, Prophet of the Bible, Brought Back to Life" — Biblical Archaeology Society · Gives both readings, both findspots, and the note that the two men are named together as ministers of ZedekiahSupports: The readings and the relationship of the two findspots
• ScholarshipL. J. Mykytiuk, "Corrections and Updates to 'Identifying Biblical Persons in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions of 1200-539 B.C.E.'" — Lawrence J. Mykytiuk, Purdue University · Maarav 16.1 (2009), 49-132; deposited open access in Purdue e-Pubs and read in full there. The two bullae are worked through at pages 85-100, and this is the cautious half of section three: the grade 2 rating, the definition of that grade, the warning that the names could belong to another father and son, and the judgement that the association of the two seal owners "turns out to be quite tenuous". A sentence calling these identifications "very reasonable" and "entirely plausible" circulates in reference works with this article attached to it. It is not in this article. "Very reasonable" appears once in the whole of it, and of something else entirely — M. G. Amadasi Guzzo's suggestion about a stele fragment from Tell Afis — and "entirely plausible" does not appear at allSupports: Mykytiuk's 2009 reasons for withholding judgement, in his own words
• ScholarshipL. J. Mykytiuk, "53 People in the [Hebrew] Bible Confirmed Archaeologically" — Lawrence J. Mykytiuk, Purdue University; the web supplement to his Biblical Archaeology Review articles, 12 April 2017 · Deposited open access in Purdue e-Pubs and read in full there. Jehucal, his father Shelemiah, Gedaliah and his father Pashhur are numbers 31 to 34 on the list, and the endnote to them carries the change of mind quoted in section three, including his own statement that "this article is my first affirmation of four identifications" and his reason for it. The same supplement is on the Biblical Archaeology Society's site with a few slight differences of wordingSupports: Mykytiuk's 2017 affirmation of all four identifications, and what changed his mind
• EncyclopediaGedaliah, son of Pashhur — Wikipedia, quoting E. Mazar in the Jerusalem Post, 31 July 2008 · Carries Mazar's own quoted comment on finding the second bulla metres from the first, and the August 2008 dateSupports: The August 2008 date and Mazar's own framing of the pair

Further reading

• Biblical Archaeology Society: Jeremiah, prophet of the Bible, brought back to life

Reflect

Two of the men who tried to have Jeremiah killed are known to us only because they sealed some letters. What will outlast you, and will it be the part of you that you would choose?