In Jerusalem, an artifact is found, which seems to prove the historicity of the prophet Isaiah. This is reported by a scientific article published by the Israeli archaeologist Eilat Mazar in the journal Biblical Archaeology Review.
Recall that this prophet is attributed to the authorship of one of the books of the Old Testament, which in this connection is called the Book of the Prophet Isaiah.
Isaiah is known, in particular, for his prophecies about the coming coming of the Messiah (that is, as Christians believe, Christ). In addition, the Bible has an episode associated with the siege of Jerusalem by the Assyrians. Then the prophet gives King Hezekiah not to surrender the city, saying that God will not allow his capture by strangers.
The reality of Isaiah as a historical person has not been established to this day, for science did not know a single mention of it outside the Bible. And now the recently studied archaeological find seems to confirm the historicity of the biblical prophet. This is the so-called bulla.
This is a piece of clay about one centimeter in diameter, on which an impression of papyrus is made. Usually the name of the owner is on the bull. Such items were widely used in the Hebrew document circulation. In all, during the excavations in Jerusalem, which we are talking about, we found 34 bulls of the eighth century BC. One of them preserved the personal seal of King Hezekiah.
Next to it (as the resource phys. org, just three meters away) was discovered another bull, the inscription in which in the English transcription reads: Yesha'yah [u] Nvy [? ]. The question mark marks a place where, perhaps, there was another letter. Precisely this, unfortunately, can not be said, because the edge of the bull is broken off.
Assuming that this was the letter Aleph, the owner's signature of the bull is translated from Hebrew as "the prophet Isaiah". Are other interpretations possible? As it usually happens, yes. The author of the article points out that the word Nvy without the letter Aleph is found on some artifacts stored in private collections. Some of these finds are marked with the inscriptions bn Nvy, which translates as "the son of a man named Nvy".
The indication of "patronymic" is very common in Hebrew inscriptions. In this case, sometimes abbreviated bn ("son"), so that its absence on the bull does not say anything. Thus, the mysterious inscription can also be read as "Isaiah, son of Nvy".
Against the reading of the fragment Nvy as the beginning of the word "prophet" is evidenced by the absence in front of him of a definite article, which the grammar of Hebrew requires. However, the evidence is shaky: as shown by other archaeological findings, the authors of the inscriptions on bulls quite freely treated the articles.
On the other hand, in the Bible there are places where the Nvy fragment is used as an abbreviation for the word "prophet", without an Aleph at the end of the word and without the article. In favor of the "prophetic" reading of the inscription says that the mysterious bull was found next to the "signature" of King Hezekiah. After all, according to the Bible, Isaiah was the approximate of this ruler - close enough for the ruler to obey his advice in a critical situation.