Review of Smoak, The Priestly Blessing in Inscription and Scripture

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Smoak, The Priestly Blessing in Inscription and Scripture (Yael Landman Wermuth).

Smoak, Jeremy D. The Priestly Blessing in Inscription and Scripture: The Early History of Numbers 6:24-26. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Jeremy Smoak’s The Priestly Blessing in Inscription and Scripture: The Early History of Numbers 6:24-26 sheds new light on the origins and diverse functions of the Priestly Blessing. Whereas scholars have written extensively about the blessing’s history and uses in early Judaism and Christianity, a dearth of extrabiblical evidence has precluded an understanding of its history during the Iron Age, including its functions in ancient Israelite and Judahite religious practice; the relationship between these functions and the description of the blessing in the book of Numbers; and the blessing’s connection to blessing inscriptions from the epigraphic records of ancient Israel and Judah. The discovery of two silver Iron Age amulets at Ketef Hinnom in Jerusalem, of which the West Semitic Research Project at USC provided new photographs and translations in 2004, allows Smoak to fill this gap in his monograph.

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The book was noted as forthcoming here. And follow the link there for much background on the Ketef Hinnom silver amulets.