*4.5. How, If At All, Do the Results—Understood in Context—Relate to the Bible?*

Biblical scholars will be quick to notice the correspondence of a different treatment for right-sided and left-sided portions and the prescriptions in biblical Priestly texts that allot right-sided portions of the "fellowship offerings" to ancient Israelite priests (cf. Exod 29:27–28; Lev 7:32–33). The correspondence is obscured somewhat, however, by evidence of side-preference across the ancient Near East and complicated further by text-critical issues among the extant versions, namely the Masoretic Text, the Qumran texts, and the Greek/Septuagint manuscripts, and even more so by internal differences within each textual tradition concerning which portion is allotted to the priests (cf. Greer forthcoming). That said, when complications are engaged and differences are distilled, what remains is archaeological evidence for a preference for right-sided limb portions discovered in the context of a Yahwistic temple of the 9th–8th c. BCE and a congruence of this discovery with one of the dominant traditions represented in the biblical texts among various versions. This, then, may have significance for the composition, date, and regional orientation of traditions now contained in the Priestly source of the Pentateuch (see, further, Greer forthcoming).
