Old Testament figure named on 2600-year-old tablet

My ears were burning, but I didn't know why until I found this thread. I have to say I resemble that remark.

While this is a welcome discovery (and apparently very rare), I suggest it would be wrong to make too much of it. Certainly the Telegraph was over the top when it said "Tiny tablet provides proof for Old Testament."

Well, no. It may be exciting to see another bit of the Bible given some verification, but the fact that Jeremiah mentions a now-verified (by secular means) character no more validates the story contained in the Bible than does the mention of Pilate, Herod, Augustus, etc. validate the stories presented in the New Testament.

I see that half of the 100,000 cuneiform tablets in the British Museum are yet to be published; there may be many more goodies in them. Time will tell.

In the meantime, it's wise not to put too much faith in the discoveries of archeology. I hope we remember the boom - and bust - following the "discovery" of the ossuary of James and the stone supposedly mentioning Yehoash. I'm not suggesting that the latest find is a fake, only that such discoveries should not be embraced as proving more than they do.

On a side note, Claude Mariottini, professor of Old Testament at Northern Baptist Seminary, concludes that if the new finding confirms the account in Jeremiah, then the NIV and the NLT got the translation of Jeremiah 39:3 right (the NET also gets an "A," although it's not on his list) based on the Septuagint reading, while the ESV, the NAB and KJV (and the NASB, also not on his list) get it wrong.