On May 19th, I received an email from the Biblical Archaeology Society that contained a link to a Bible History Daily post with the title, An Early Israelite Curse Inscription from Mt. Ebal? [LINK TO POST]
From the post we read:
In early 2022, a research team led by scholars from the Associates for Biblical Research (ABR) announced the discovery of a lead tablet from Mt. Ebal that they claim contains the oldest extant Hebrew inscription. Now, after more than a year, a peer-reviewed article presenting one part of the inscription has been published in the journal Heritage Science [LINK].
According to the team, the inscription, which they date to the Late Bronze Age II period (c. 1400–1200 BCE), is a legal text and curse that invokes the Israelite deity Yahweh. The team believes the tablet is one of the most important inscriptions ever found in Israel, predating the previously earliest known Hebrew inscription by several hundred years, and one that could drastically alter our reconstruction of ancient Israel’s earliest history…
As translated by the team, the tablet reads:
You are cursed by the god yhw, cursed.
You will die, cursed—cursed, you will surely die.
Cursed you are by yhw—cursed.
The team claims the inscription is written in an archaic script, similar in style to other early alphabetic inscriptions known from the southern Levant, which they term proto-Hebrew alphabetic. Furthermore, they suggest that the use of the name Yhw, a shortened version of the divine name Yahweh (YHWH), is clear evidence that the text is an early Hebrew inscription. If true, this would make the tablet hundreds of years older than previously known early Hebrew inscriptions.
According to the team, the Mt. Ebal tablet is a type of legal text, which threatens curses upon individuals who transgress a covenant. They connect it directly to the covenant renewal ceremony on Mt. Ebal, described in Deuteronomy 27 and Joshua 8. Moreover, the team claims the tablet is evidence that certain books of the Hebrew Bible could have been written down hundreds of years earlier than most biblical scholars previously thought. As stated by the ABR’s Director of Excavations, Scott Stripling, during the initial press conference, “One can no longer argue with a straight face that the biblical text was not written until the Persian period or the Hellenistic period, as many higher critics have done, when we clearly do have the ability to write the entire text [of the Bible] at a much, much earlier date.” One of the project’s epigraphers, Gershon Galil of the University of Haifa reiterated the point, saying, “The scribe that wrote this ancient text, believe me, he could write every chapter in the Bible.”
Skeptics and liberal Biblical scholars who have embraced the theories of higher criticism have wasted no time in attacking the paper, for the evidence and conclusions presented have raised some serious questions concerning a number of the theories promoted by higher critics of the Bible.
Now, the paper itself was published in the Heritage Science journal on May 12, 2023 under the title, “You are Cursed by the God YHW:” an early Hebrew inscription from Mt. Ebal. Six scholars contributed to this peer reviewed paper of 26 pages. The post published by the Biblical Archaeology Society provides an adequate summation of the paper, but the paper itself is a must read for all folk who have an interest in Biblical studies.
Once again, here is THE LINK.
Grace and peace,
David
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