Daily Broadside | Astonishing News That Has Nothing to Do with Politics

Daily Verse | 1 Kings 4:31
[Solomon] was wiser than any other man, including Ethan the Ezrahite—wiser than Heman, Calcol and Darda, the sons of Mahol.

Tuesday’s Reading: 1 Kings 5-8

It’s Tuesday and there have been some interesting tidbits that I wanted to call to your attention, especially since tracking the devolution of the United States is like watching a dumpster fire onboard a train jumping the tracks and arcing into the abyss in slow motion. It’s awful, but you want to see what happens.

Except I don’t mind tearing my eyes away for a minute to give them a rest.

308-Year-Old Stradivarius Violin Being Sold at Auction This Summer

A 308-year-old violin that was played on movie music from Hollywood’s Golden Age – including “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz – could fetch as much as $20 million this summer, which would make it the most expensive instrument ever sold at auction.

The violin was handcrafted in Italy in 1714 by Antonio Stradivari, the famed craftsman who made violins for the ultra-rich, including King James II of England, King Charles III of Spain and Ferdinando de’ Medici, Grand Prince of Tuscany.

It’s remarkable that such an instrument still has life in it, and its provenance works on several different levels to make it valuable. The first is its age, the second is its maker, and the third is its link to one of the most iconic American movies ever made and one of that film’s most iconic songs. It’s literally holding a piece of history in your hands.

Speaking of history, the next item is also connected to a well-known historical moment.

Fabric from Actress Laura Keene’s Bloodied Dress For Sale

A blood-stained fabric swatch that’s said to come from a dress worn at the time of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination is going up for sale.

The small rectangular strip reportedly belonged to actress Laura Keene, who starred in an onstage production of “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., on the day of Lincoln’s assassination, April 14, 1865.

While this one is sort of macabre, there’s something compelling about holding a physical object in your hand that “was there” when that moment happened, as though by possession it connects you to the moment. The relic of the tragedy gives us literal color and texture that words or primitive photos could only approximate. “So that’s what it looked like,” we say.

And finally, there’s this, which makes concrete something that up until now, was conceptual and disputed.

Curse Tablet Found on Mount Ebal Suggests Early Literacy Came to Israel

“Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse… thou shalt set the blessing upon Mount Gerizim, and the curse upon Mount Ebal.” (Deuteronomy 11:26, 29)

Now an official curse has been found, engraved on a lead tablet that dates to the biblical age and had sat in the detritus of an excavation of Mt. Ebal for decades, the Associates for Biblical Research of Houston, Texas announced on Thursday.

This is very exciting. What we have here is a tiny piece of folded lead (about the size of a postage stamp) on which is proto-alphabetic writing also known as Sinaitic script or proto-Canaanite script. If it’s dating is confirmed, it will be the earliest-known Hebrew text by several hundred years, and the first to contain the Hebrew name of God, YWH (or YHWH), also known as the tetragrammaton.

Consisting of 40 ancient proto-Sinaitic letters on a lead sheet that was subsequently folded, and could only to be read by tomographic scanning, the inscription reads:

“Cursed, cursed, cursed – cursed by the God YHW.
You will die cursed.
Cursed you will surely die.
Cursed by YHW – cursed, cursed, cursed.”

It’s a warning to those who break the terms of a covenant. The amulet was discovered on top of Mt. Ebal at the site of Joshua’s altar, where scripture reports he built one after entering the Promised Land.

Critics say that the accounts of Joshua and the Israelites were written hundreds of years after the events they claim to report. If the dating holds up, it’s more likely that the accounts in the “Old” Testament were contemporaneous, being written down as the Israelites walked through a parted Red Sea, trudged through the desert and crossed the Jordan.

Archeology always confirms the Bible’s accounts, never contradicts them.