The earliest artifacts recording Jewish liturgy (or for that matter any Hebrew formulation found in the Torah) are two small silver amulets, discovered in 1979 by Israeli archaeologist Gabriel Barkay. He discovered the amulets in a burial chamber while excavating in Ketef Hinnom, a section of the Hinnom Valley south of Jerusalem’s Old City.

The inscriptions on these amulets conclude with parts of the Birkat Kohanim (Priestly Blessing), the three-part blessing in which the Kohanim are instructed to bless the people of Israel in Numbers 6:22-27. The script in the amulets dates them approximately to the reign of King Yoshiyahu (late 7th or early 6th century BCE) predating the Nash papyrus, and the earliest of the Dead Sea Scrolls by four centuries.

The Birkat Kohanim may have been a well-known liturgical formula in Ancient Israelite religion, and so was recorded both in amulets and in the Torah. Here is the Birkat Kohanim according to the Masoretic text of Book of Numbers 6:22-27:

The wording of the blessings in the amulets is not exactly the wording as found in the Masoretic text of the Torah. Note that the formulation veyichunekha (be gracious towards you) is not present in either of the scrolls below. The formula of the Birkat Kohanim begins on the 5th line:^[1] Gabriel Barkay, “The Priestly Benediction on the Ketef Hinnom Plaques,” Cathedra 52 (1989), p. 58  

[Top line(s) broken: For PN xxxx]
1) -h/hu. May be blessed h/sh-
2) -[e] by YHW[H,]
3) the warrior/helper and
4) the rebuker of
5) [E]vil: May bless you,
6) YHWH,
7) keep you.
8) Make shine, YH-
9) -[W]H, His face
10) [upon] you and g-
11) -rant you p-
12) -[ea]ce.
[Bottom line(s) broken.]

Ketef Hinnom Amulet II recto (collage: Aharon Varady; from image by Ardon Bar Hama, COJS, and drawing by Gabriel Barkay)

The formula of the Birkat Kohanim begins on the 14th line of the first amulet. All of Numbers 6:25-26 may have appeared on KH1 after line 18 where the scroll has disintegrated. ^[2] Gabriel Barkay, “The Priestly Benediction on the Ketef Hinnom Plaques,” Cathedra 52 (1989), p. 52  

[Top line(s) broken]
1) …] YHW …
2) […]
3) the grea[t … who keeps]
4) the covenant and
5) [G]raciousness towards those who love [him] and (alt: [hi]m;)
6) those who keep [his commandments … ^[3] Compare lines 3-6 to:
Exodus 20:6—showing mercy to thousands of them that love Me and keep My commandments
Deuteronomy 5:10—showing mercy to thousands of them that love Me and keep My commandments
Deuteronomy 7:9—keeping covenant and mercy with them that love Him and keep His commandments to a thousand generations
Daniel 9:4—keeping covenant and mercy to them that love Him, and to them that keep His commandments
Nehemiah 1:5—keeping covenant and mercy for them that love Him and observe His commandments  
7) …]. ^[4] The omission of “thousands” may have originally appeared on line 7 as in Deuteronomy 7:9.  
8) the Eternal? […].
9) [the?] blessing more than any
10) [sna]re and more than Evil.
11) For redemption is in him.
12) For YHVH
13) is our restorer [and]
14) rock. May YHVH bles[s]
15) you and
16) [may he] protect you.
17) [May] YHVH make
18) [his face] shine …
[Bottom line(s) broken.]

Ketef Hinnom Amulet I recto (collage: Aharon Varady; from image by Nahum Slapak , Israel Museum, and drawing by Gabriel Barkay)

“Adventures in Ancient Jewish Liturgy: the Birkat Kohanim” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.

Aharon N. Varady

Aharon Varady is the founding director of the Open Siddur Project. A community planner (M.C.P, DAAP/University of Cincinnati.) and Jewish educator (M.A.J.Ed., the William Davidson School of Education), his work in open-source Judaism has been written about in the Yiddish Forverts, the Atlantic Magazine, Tablet, and Haaretz. If you find any egregious mistakes in his work, please let him know. Shgiyot mi yavin; Ministarot naqeni שְׁגִיאוֹת מִי־יָבִין; מִנִּסְתָּרוֹת נַקֵּנִי "Who can know all one's flaws? From hidden errors, correct me" (Psalms 19:13). If you'd like to directly support his work, please consider donating via his Patreon account. (Varady also transcribes and translates prayers, besides serving as the primary shammes of the Open Siddur Project.)

Stable Link:    https://opensiddur.org/?p=5815

Associated Image:   

(This image is set to automatically show as the "featured image" in category lists and in shared links on social media.)

This post, editable:    XML | ODT

Terms of Use:    Be a mentsch (a conscientious, considerate person) and adhere to the following guidelines:

1. Properly attribute the work to Aharon N. Varady.
2. Clearly indicate the date you accessed the work and in what ways, if any, you modified it. (If you have adapted the work, let us know so that the contributor might consider endorsing your revision.)
3. Provide the stable link to this resource: <https://opensiddur.org/?p=5815>.
4. Indicate that the original work was shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license. (To redistribute or remix this work in any format, modified or unmodified, you must refer to the terms of the license under which the work is shared.)

Note:    The views expressed in this work represent the views of their creator(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Open Siddur Project's developers, its diverse community of contributors, patrons, or institutional partners.

Support this work:    The Open Siddur Project is a volunteer-driven, non-profit, non-denominational, non-prescriptive, gratis & libre Open Access archive of contemplative praxes, liturgical readings, and Jewish prayer literature (historic and contemporary, familiar and obscure) composed in every era, region, and language Jews have ever prayed. Our goal is to provide a platform for sharing open-source resources, tools, and content for individuals and communities crafting their own prayerbook (siddur). Through this we hope to empower personal autonomy, preserve customs, and foster creativity in religious culture. If you like what you've found here, please help keep our project alive and online with your financial contribution.

ויהי נעם אדני אלהינו עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננה עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננהו "May the pleasantness of אדֹני our elo’ah be upon us; may our handiwork be established for us — our handiwork, may it be established." –Psalms 90:17

Works of related interest:

 

Dukhening in a Musaf Amidah after a Heykhe Qedushah: a version of the concluding three blessings for Kohanim, by Isaac Gantwerk Mayer

prev next