Bible could be 4 centuries older than thought

Live Science:

Scientists have discovered the earliest known Hebrew writing - an inscription dating from the 10th century B.C., during the period of King David's reign.

The breakthrough could mean that portions of the Bible were written centuries earlier than previously thought. (The Bible's Old Testament is thought to have been first written down in an ancient form of Hebrew.)

Until now, many scholars have held that the Hebrew Bible originated in the 6th century B.C., because Hebrew writing was thought to stretch back no further. But the newly deciphered Hebrew text is about four centuries older, scientists announced this month.

"It indicates that the Kingdom of Israel already existed in the 10th century BCE and that at least some of the biblical texts were written hundreds of years before the dates presented in current research," said Gershon Galil, a professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Haifa in Israel, who deciphered the ancient text.

BCE stands for "before common era," and is equivalent to B.C., or before Christ.

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The content, which has some missing letters, is similar to some Biblical scriptures, such as Isaiah 1:17, Psalms 72:3, and Exodus 23:3, but does not appear to be copied from any Biblical text.

That is pretty old. It tends to validate the Jewish claim of Israel has their ancient homeland and invalidate the Palestinian claims to the contrary. The Palestinian claims have always looked pretty bogus. While the Romans renamed the area Palestine, they also named Herod "Kind of the Jews." The Israelis point out there has never been a country called Palestine.

The Arabs that occupy the area gravitated there after the Romans defeated an Israeli rebellion and much of the Jewish population dispersed.

The Palestinians also have a bogus claim about the mosque in Jerusalem which was actually built after Mohammad died. The Muslims claim he ascended to Paradise from the location. I think this was made up to deny Jews access to the site of the temple whose ruins are near that location. Muslims did similar buildings on Hindu holy sites in India.