Major Archaelogical Discovery Announced this Week

Archaeologist Dr. Scott Stripling, director of excavations for the Associates for Biblical Research announced an incredibly important archaeological discovery this week. His team was digging near Mt Ebal in 2020 (see Joshua 8), sifting through a dump pile from a previous excavation that had occurred at that site in the 1980s when they found this remarkable, small, folded lead tablet.

They used modern scanning technologies to read the text that is written on the inside of this folded tablet and discovered some remarkable words:

Cursed, cursed, cursed - cursed by the God YHWH.

You will die cursed.

Cursed you will surely die.

Cursed by YHWH – cursed, cursed, cursed.

These words seem to have been etched onto the inside of this small piece of lead with an iron pen or stylus (see Job 19:24) and then the lead tablet was folded in half to essentially seal the text. As remarkable as the words themselves, Dr. Stripling says the text/language/characters which the words are written in contains very clear indications of an extremely early(old) version of Hebrew. Stripling’s team describes the text as “ancient proto-alphabetic Hebrew.” Stripling argues that both the Archaeological context of the discovery and the form of the characters used in the text date the writing in this artifact to the Late Bronze II age, or as early as 1400 BC

Here is the video of the press conference where Dr. Stripling and his team announced the discovery.

It is important to note that Dr. Strippling’s discovery has not yet been peer-reviewed and published. They are in the process of doing so and hope to release the images of the tablet scans near the end of this summer. This discovery is of such importance that it is certain to draw a huge amount of attention, critique, and discussion.

Here are some really important implications of this discovery

  • This tablet - as dated (as dated by Dr. Stripling and his team - a matter that will be the subject of academic discussion for some years) advances the evidence that we have on record of both written Hebrew-language literacy, and the name YHWH by several hundred years. This artifact represents a considerable validation for the theory that the text of the Bible (Pentateuch & Joshua) originated in the manner traditionally maintained by the Church and implied by the text itself.

    • Higher critical scholars have recently contended that Biblical text must come from a much later period than was traditionally maintained (and attested to within the Old Testament itself) because there was no solid archaeological evidence showing that the Hebrews had the skill in written language/literacy to have written and copied it.

    • We actually just talked about this at Madison Church in the first message of our series on God’s word - check out this 1-minute video (above) from our message on January 2nd of this year.

  • This tablet - as dated (as dated by Dr. Stripling and his team - a matter that will be the subject of academic discussion for some years) sides strongly with an early dating of the exodus. There is a debate as to when to place the Biblical exodus of the Hebrew people from Egypt to the promised land. The two major theories are an early exodus which places the event in the 15th century BC, and a late exodus which places the event in the 13th century BC. This artifact - as dated in the announcement - would essentially settle the debate on the side of the early exodus.

  • This tablet - would lend credence to the theory that the altar site discovered at Mt. Ebal is actually Joshua’s altar. Additionally, if you compare the content of the text of the discovered lead tablet with the words of Deuteronomy 27 and the account of Joshua 8. It seems quite likely that the tablet belongs to the occasion being recorded in Joshua 8 which would give just - fantastic - archaeological validation to the reliability of the historical narrative of Scripture.

BONUS - in the announcement press conference video above. Dr. Stripling says that there have been a number of flat-surfaced plasters discovered at this same archaeological site, on which text may have been written! The archaeological team who excavated the site in the 1980s would not have had the technology required to observe the text on these degraded(aged) artifacts, but it is possible that modern techniques may be able to do so; Dr. Stripling says “stay tuned” (in response to a question about these in the press conference video above). Now - consider what we read in Joshua 8:32 “There (at Mt. Ebal), in the presence of the Israelites, Joshua wrote on stones a copy of the law of Moses.” There is a chance, ever so slight, that those plasters could be monumentally important artifacts.

Here are some news articles about the discovery:


Joel Nielsen