Numbers
The Ketef Hinnom Silver Scrolls
In 1979 Gabriel Barkay's team excavated two tiny rolled silver amulets from a burial cave at Ketef Hinnom, Jerusalem, inscribed in paleo-Hebrew with wording that closely echoes the Priestly Blessing of Numbers 6:24-26 and the divine name YHWH. Paleographically dated to the late 7th/early 6th century BC and confirmed by digital imaging, they are among the earliest known witnesses to a passage later fixed in Scripture -- centuries before the Dead Sea Scrolls.
650 BC – 587 BC
The Star out of Jacob
Balaam, a pagan seer hired by Moab's king to curse Israel, blessed it instead, foretelling a ruler to come: 'A star shall rise out of Jacob and a sceptre shall spring up from Israel.' Dead Sea Scroll fragments (4QTestimonia) and the Damascus Document show Jews already reading this oracle as messianic by the 1st century BC, generations before Christ. The Church, following the Fathers, reads Balaam's star as fulfilled in the star of Bethlehem and in the birth and kingship of Jesus Christ.
1400 BC – AD 33