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Tablet
2. Πινακίδιον. A small writing tablet, ordinarily a block of wood covered with wax (
3. Several words tr. as “tablet” in the KJV are rendered differently in the RSV: בָּתֵּ֥י נֶ֖פֶשׁ, “perfume boxes” (
4. גִּלָּיֹ֣ון. A large tablet or board (
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915)
tab’-let: A rigid flat sheet (plate, pad or slab) used to receive writing. Stone, clay, wood and perhaps bronze, gold and lead tablets, at least, are mentioned in the Bible. In the Old English sense of "locket" the word is incorrectly used in the King James Version also of what the Revised Version (British and American) translates as "armlets," margin "necklaces" (
The technical Hebrew word for tablet, luach, is generally translated in both the King James Version and the Revised Version (British and American) as "table." This is used for stone, wood or metal plates or tablets with or without writing. In Isaiah (30:8) where the Revised Version (British and American) translates "tablet," it is contrasted with the "roll" and probably means the wood or waxed tablet. In Habakkuk (2:2, the American Standard Revised Version "tablet," the King James Version and the English Revised Version "table") it perhaps refers to a metal tablet to be erected on a wall, but more likely it refers to the wooden tablet. It is also used in Proverbs (3:3; 7:3, the American Standard Revised Version "tablet," the King James Version and the English Revised Version "table") and in Jeremiah (17:1) figuratively of the writing upon the tablets of the heart, the word being rendered in the Septuagint by the same word (plax) used by Paul (
The word gillayon (
See Roll.
The clay tablet is referred to in Ezekiel (4:1, English Versions of the Bible "tile"), and its use there for a map of the city has been strikingly illustrated in modern excavation by a tablet map discovered at Nippur (Hilprecht, Explorations, 518). Jeremiah (32:14, the Revised Version (British and American) "deeds," the King James Version "evidences") may also refer to clay tablets, but not surely, since roll deeds were also kept in earthen jars. Job (19:24) is thought by some to refer to the writing on leaden tablets, such as were in very common use in antiquity and in the Middle Ages for the writing of charms and especially curses, but more hold that inscriptions filled with lead are meant here. The plate of pure gold (
"Daleth" (daleth or deleth), the Semitic (Phoenician) original from which the generic Greek word for tablet (deltos) is derived (Gardthausen, p. 124, note 1), is perhaps not found strictly in this meaning in the Old Testament. The word is used, however, of two kinds of written documents and in such a way as to suggest that one is the original of, and the other derived from, the "daleth"-tablet. In
pinakis, or pinakidion, is found in
LITERATURE.
Gardthausen, Griechische Palaeog., Leipzig, I (1911), 123-32; compare pp. 24-45.
See also literature under WRITING.
E. C. Richardson