The “Isaiah Seal”

Biblical Archaeology Review just published this new, tiny find from the excavations at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem: a clay seal (or bulla) that seems to contain the name Isaiah with (a little more doubtfully) the word “prophet” written underneath.  The top register of the seal seems to depict an animal, perhaps a doe.  The article, “Isaiah’s Signature Uncovered in Jerusalem:  Evidence of the Prophet Isaiah”  can be accessed here and has been picked up quickly by a number of news sites.  Paleojudaica also has a nice write-up about this.

How significant is the find?

Popular media tends to keep rewriting the same story for finds of this sort: they prove the veracity of the Bible.  In this case, however, nobody seriously doubts the existence of Isaiah, who is also attested outside of his own book in the Bible in some of the more historical writings (2 Kings 18).  Finding the a seal of the biblical prophet Isaiah would indeed be interesting but the fact that it would then attest to his actual existence is perhaps the least interesting thing about it.  (The headline, incidentally, is slightly misleading.  It is the seal that is the “signature,” not the writing on it, which was probably carved on the stamp by someone else.)

To my mind, there are instead three things of genuine interest about this seal:

1. It attests to the formal, institutionalized nature of “the prophet.”  Seals tended to go on official correspondence and the fact that Isaiah would have one with his title strongly suggests that he holds some kind of official position, like “court prophet.”  This confirms other evidence from the Bible that prophets were not only, as we tend to think of them, random people who were believed to have received divine communication but that they also could hold official jobs in the court or temple.
2. It suggests that either Isaiah or (probably more likely) his retinue was literate.  Prophecy was usually an oral phenomenon.  Other biblical books contain examples of prophecies being put into writing (e..g, Baruch writes down Jeremiah’s prophecies in Jeremiah 36) or otherwise thematizing writing (Ezekiel 3) but the process by which the prophet’s words became text is enigmatic.  Some time ago, a seal that may have belonged to Jeremiah’s scribe, Baruch, was found (there remain questions about its authenticity).  This seal, if authentic, would show the prophet sending correspondence in his own name, not that of his scribe.  This has potential implications for understanding the interplay of the oral and written in prophetic circles.
3. Finally, I’m intrigued by the iconography.  Why would the prophet Isaiah use a doe?  Is there anything significant about this choice or, for that matter, any of the iconography that appears on ancient Israelite seals (of which we have many)?

The seal is hardly earth shattering, but it is also not insignificant.  If it really is what it is being claimed to be.