Gemariah

Gemariah the son of Shaphan was only a name in Jeremiah 36. He was a scribe to King Jehoiakim just when the Babylonians were threatening the city and he figured in the political maneouvrings of the time. They used to say that such personalities never had a real existence; the stories in which they figured in the O.T., were dreamed up by pious men of later centuries, on the basis, of old traditions and legends, to invest Israel with a glorious history. Not so. About twenty years ago excavations in the City of David revealed a room deep down below the present city which proved to be some sort of administrative centre in the palace of the Kings at the time of Jehoiakim. There, among a great number of seals bearing the names, of State officials, with which they sealed or "signed" papyrus documents, was one bearing the name of Gemariah the son of Shap-han, royal secretary. Gemariah either perished in the siege or ended his days a captive in Babylon; he left behind his personal signature seal to witness to us, two and a half millenniums later, that he really did live, that the Bible is true.