You might have heard how I asked chatGPT to pose as a Jehovah’s Witness, write a “witnessing letter” with 2 or 3 bible scriptures in it, and then translate that letter into an English rap song, Eminem style.  Or you might have missed that news. My point is, I like to play with AI’s. 

I’m more and more stupefied by how much AI models like OpenAI’s chatGPT, Google’s BARD, and Facebooks LLaMMa and others are capable of. 

An Old Karen in a Museum.

I feel the word “Karen” as a derogatory name for a complaining lady is a recent invention. If I had known this name in 2008, I would have used it to describe an elderly lady who ruined my visit to the British Museum. 

You see, I was visiting the museum specifically to see the “Babylon: Myth and Reality” exhibition. In this exhibition I came upon a clay tablet that was on loan from some other museum or private collector. 

To this day I haven’t been able to find this clay tablet again. The reason is that I didn’t take a photograph of this tablet and the label that no doubt would explain its providence and current owner, is because a Karen saw me taking photographs and told me to stop. She might have seen this No Flashlight sign:

 She probably mistook this sign fort this No Photographs sign:

Me, being the shy 20 something year old nerd that I was, didn’t explain to her the difference between these signs. I also didn’t laugh at her. I put my camera away and refocused on the clay tablet in front of me. 

Silly, stupid, me. 

A clay tablet that supports an unlikely Bible account

You see, that particular tablet, it couldn’t have been bigger than my hand, was a very interesting one. It happens to pertain to the Biblical account of King Manasseh of Judah (716–662 B.C.E.). 

The Bible, in the second book of Chronicles 33:10, 11 tells us:

10 Jehovah kept speaking to Manasseh and his people, but they paid no attention. 

11 So Jehovah brought against them the army chiefs of the king of Assyria, and they captured Manasseh with hooks and bound him with two copper fetters and took him to Babylon. 

The city Babylon was at this time also under Assyrian control. The clay tablet that I mentioned earlier is only making an indirect reference to Manasseh. The tablet was written, or more likely, dictated, by an Assyrian prince who happens to be in jail with Manasseh in an adjacent cell.  And this prince is complaining, because he is still in prison while this rebellious has-been king that was in the cell next to his, has now been released from prison and on his way back to his country, back to king-ing again! 

Why is this so interesting to me? 

Second Chronicles chapter 33 continues:

12 In his distress, he begged Jehovah his God for favor and kept humbling himself greatly before the God of his forefathers.

13 He kept praying to Him, and He was moved by his entreaty and heard his request for favor, and He restored him to Jerusalem to his kingship. Then Manasseh came to know that Jehovah is the true God.

So King Manasseh does a remarkable thing while in prison! He feels genuinely sorry for his sins and repents. He keeps praying to his god, till he is restored as king in Judah. 

Assyrians where never that lenient. Never. But this time, they were. And there is evidence in that clay tablet. If o