Archelogy/Bible/Exodus/Israelites/Israel

[ceeboo]

Hey folks,

Hope this finds all of you and yours well.

I thought that some of you might find this interesting and may want to follow this recent archeological find as things begin to unfold. A news conference has been released recently - I will link said news conference at the end of this post - If you wish to skip all of the housekeeping and individual names involved in the press conference, you may want to skip ahead to around the 7:30 mark,

No matter what your personal worldview happens to be (Bible believing Christian, Jew, LDS, agnostic, atheist, Hindu, Muslim, etc) I think it's absolutely fascinating on a number of levels. My understanding is that the peer review process has begun (should be complete and made public by summer 2022) so at least some measure of skepticism seems prudent/wise/reasonable at this relatively early stage, in my opinion.

Anyway, just wanted to share it - so I did.


https://youtu.be/VDD92qp_lfQ

[Jersey Girl]

Hey I might have another link to contribute later today. I think another channel I sometimes watch may have covered this.

[Chap]

Hey folks,

Hope this finds all of you and yours well.

I thought that some of you might find this interesting and may want to follow this recent archeological find as things begin to unfold.

We're more likely to bother if you write a few sentences telling us what the substantive message conveyed by this video is. What, essentially, is the takeaway message?

[Manetho]

We're more likely to bother if you write a few sentences telling us what the substantive message conveyed by this video is. What, essentially, is the takeaway message?

From the video description:

The tablet found at this altar site, which only measures approximately 2 cm., was taken to a lab in the Czech Republic where it was scanned to reveal ancient Hebrew writing.

It was revealed that the writing was a formulaic curse, in ancient Hebrew, consisting of 40 letters. The writing reads:

"Cursed, cursed, cursed - cursed by the God YHW.
You will die cursed.
Cursed you will surely die.
Cursed by YHW - cursed, cursed, cursed."

The tablet and subsequent inscription are believed to be dated to the Late Bronze Age, which would make it the oldest known proto-Hebrew inscription ever discovered in Israel and prove that (contrary to many current historians) that the Israelites were literate when they entered the land of Canaan, and therefore could have written the Bible as some of the events it documents took place.

[ceeboo]

Hey Chap

We're more likely to bother if you write a few sentences telling us what the substantive message conveyed by this video is. What, essentially, is the takeaway message?

I think the "takeaway message" (messages, in my opinion) are countless. At least potentially countless. I also think the "takeaway's" will be all over a wide spectrum of takeaways (depending on who is sharing their personal takeaway) - Additionally, I think we will do our measuring using a preferred scale that includes weights significantly influenced by our individual personal worldview/beliefs (myself certainly included).

Perhaps the beginning portion of an article will provide some additional information pertaining to this recent archeological find? - I will past it in blue below.

Given the ramifications that surround this, I am sure there will be many more folks weighing in over the next several weeks/months.

Article from the Armstrong Institute of Biblical Archeology:


A revolutionary artifact with several lines of text ‘centuries older than any known Hebrew inscription from Israel’—and paralleling several scriptures regarding Israel’s entry into Canaan
By Christopher Eames • March 24

The lead curse tablet
Michael C. Luddeni | Associates for Biblical Research (ABR)
“And it shall come to pass, when the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land wither thou goest to possess it, that thou shalt set the blessing upon mount Gerizim, and the curse upon mount Ebal. … Then Joshua built an altar unto the Lord, the God of Israel in mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of the Lord commanded …” (Deuteronomy 11:29; Joshua 8:30-31).


Dr. Scott Stripling during pottery reading at the Mount Ebal altar site in 2019
Michael C. Luddeni
In a press release today, archaeologist Dr. Scott Stripling and his team of archaeologists and epigraphers announced the stunning discovery of a folded lead “curse tablet” following the wet-sifting of excavation fills at the site of “Joshua’s Altar” on Mount Ebal.

The curse tablet (or defixio), unearthed in 2019 and believed to date to the Late Bronze Age ii period (circa 1400–1200 b.c.e.), contains an ancient Hebrew inscription consisting of 40 thus-far deciphered letters. The discovery is “centuries older than any known Hebrew inscription from ancient Israel,” according to the press release.

In a joint effort between four scientists from the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and two esteemed epigraphers (Gershon Galil of the University of Haifa and Pieter Gert van der Veen of Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz), the proto-alphabetic inscription was deciphered to read the following:

Cursed, cursed, cursed—cursed by the God yhw

You will die cursed

Cursed you will surely die

Cursed by yhw—cursed, cursed, cursed.

The tablet remarkably parallels the account in Deuteronomy 11, 27 and Joshua 8, which record the construction of an altar on this site at the time of the Israelite conquest of Canaan and the declaration of “curses” from it (as part of a wider address establishing blessings for obedience, curses for disobedience—i.e. Deuteronomy 28, 30:19). Not only that, the inscription is by far the earliest to use the Hebrew name of the God of Israel: yhw (predating the next-earliest inscription by centuries). In the words of Prof. Gershon Galil, the discovery represents “absolutely the most important inscription ever found in Israel.”

The full article can be found here: https://armstronginstitute.org/686-brea ... rse-tablet

[Manetho]

Apparently there are a lot of reasons to be skeptical about these claims, as described in this blog post by an expert in the field, Christopher Rollston: http://www.rollstonepigraphy.com/?p=949&fbclid=IwAR0Zz5lTqhGo3RQkE5aWxmZIBOvDoy7mktMWhHlrgD40Xb8TYqIMZvKwdgQ

The date of the artifact and the reading of the text have not yet been confirmed by other scholars. Even if it does date to the period that its promoters claim and say what they claim it does, a lot of the conclusions they draw from it don't really follow from those facts. Rollston emphasizes that the text really can't be said to be Hebrew, because the words in the curse are the same across all the Canaanite languages (Hebrew being a variety of Canaanite).

For context here, scholars of this period in Near Eastern history already strongly suspect that a form of Yahweh (which eventually became the name of the Abrahamic deity) was one of the gods worshiped by some of the peoples in the ancient Near East. The earliest text that is thought to refer to him is an inscription in a temple built by Amenhotep III in the early 14th century BC, which mentions "Yahu in the land of the Shasu-nomads". It's widely suspected of being a reference to an early form of Yahweh who was a patron deity for some particular group of Shasu-nomads. The Late Bronze Age runs until about 1200 BC, so (in the absence of more detailed evidence, of course) it's entirely possible that even if this curse tablet dates to the Late Bronze Age, it still isn't the oldest known text to refer to Yahweh.

Moreover, the claim that the curse tablet proves that Late Bronze Age people could have written the biblical texts really doesn't hold up. Forerunners of the Canaanite alphabet existed as far back as the Middle Bronze Age, so it's not news that Late Bronze Age people were using the alphabet. But it doesn't follow that they were writing pages and pages' worth of text with it; literacy is a spectrum, and something as simple as a curse tablet doesn't belong very high up on that spectrum. For comparison, the Germanic peoples who first settled in Britain in the fifth century AD were capable of writing gægogæ mægæ medu on a medallion, but they weren't capable of writing the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; before they could write something like that, they needed centuries of exposure to the more sophisticated scribal traditions found in post-Roman institutions like the church. And it is generally thought that the cultural forerunners of Israel and Judah were the Bronze Age equivalent of wandering Germanic peoples (that is, people like the Shasu-nomads). The people in Canaan who were capable of complex writing were in the government of the various city-states that dominated the region, and they were polytheists writing in a variety of cuneiform. The region suffered a major collapse at in the twelfth century, when all those institutions broke down and complex literacy disappeared. Eventually the peoples of the region re-developed complex literacy, using the Canaanite alphabets instead of cuneiform, but the archaeological evidence shows that the process took centuries, with a gap of about a couple of centuries where no complex texts were written. A single curse tablet from before the collapse really doesn't change that picture.

[Chap]

Apparently there are a lot of reasons to be skeptical about these claims, as described in this blog post by an expert in the field, Christopher Rollston: http://www.rollstonepigraphy.com/?p=949 ... qIMZvKwdgQ

Christopher Rollston

Areas of Expertise

Among the foci of Professor Rollston's research are: Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), religion in the ancient Near East (especially ancient Israel), law and diplomacy in the ancient Near East, Northwest Semitic epigraphy, literacy in the ancient world, ancient writing practices, scribal education, origins and early use of the alphabet, ancient and modern epigraphic forgeries, inscribed ossuaries (“bone boxes”), personal names, prosopography, ancient wisdom literature, prophecy in the ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean context, Septuagint, Dead Sea Scrolls, Greek New Testament, and Early Christianity.

Professor Rollston earned an M.A. (1996) and Ph.D. (1999) at The Johns Hopkins University (Department of Near Eastern Studies) in ancient Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Rollston works in more than a dozen ancient and modern languages, including various ancient Semitic languages (e.g., Hebrew, Phoenician, Aramaic, Palmyrene, Nabataean, Ammonite, Moabite, Edomite, Ugaritic, Akkadian), several ancient and modern Indo-European languages (e.g., Hellenistic Greek, Classical Latin; Modern German, French, Spanish, and Italian), as well as Sahidic Coptic.

Professor Rollston was a full-time faculty member in the Dept. of Near Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins University for two years (as a Post-Doctoral Fellow of Northwest Semitic), where students consistently noted his strong teaching abilities. For around a decade he held the Toyozo Nakarai Professorship of Old Testament and Semitic languages at Emmanuel School of Religion, where he was a popular teacher and mentor, resigning that position in 2012. During the spring semester of 2013, Rollston was the Visiting Professor of Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures at George Washington University. During the fall semester of 2013, he was a National Endowment for the Humanities Research Scholar at the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research (Jerusalem), and during the spring semester of 2014, he was a Visiting Professor of Northwest Semitic Literature at Tel Aviv University. About a decade prior to this, during the spring and summer of 2002, Rollston was a National Endowment for the Humanities Research Scholar at the American Society of Overseas Research (Amman). Rollston has excavated in Syria (Umm el-Marra) and in Israel (Megiddo), and he has conducted research at museums and departments of antiquity in Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, and Syria, as well as various museums in North America and Europe.

Current Research

Dr. Rollston’s volume entitled Pious Forgeries: Forging History in the Ancient World of the Bible and the Modern World of Biblical Studies will be published by Eerdmans Publishing Company in 2021. This volume traces the history of textual forgeries from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, ancient Israel, Early Christianity, the Middle Ages, and the modern period. In addition, Dr. Rollston has recently signed a contract to author a monograph entitled Writing and Scribal Culture in Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity, as part of the Library of New Testament Studies, Bloomsbury. Moreover, he also continues to work on the republication (based on new photographs) of the some sixty Old Hebrew jar inscriptions dating to the 8th century BCE from the biblical site of Gibeon. And during recent months, Dr. Rollston has also been commissioned to publish 19 Aramaic and Greek ostraca (ink inscriptions on broken pieces of pottery) from the site of Macchaeurus, a famous site from the period of the First Jewish Revolt against Rome (ca. 66-73 CE), and also the place where John the Baptist was martyred. Finally, Dr. Rollston is also the lead editor for a Festschrift in honor of Dr. P. Kyle McCarter of Johns Hopkins University, a volume entitled Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honor of P. Kyle McCarter (Society of Biblical Literature Press, 2020).

Is there a 'not very surprised' emoji?

[Marcus]

Apparently there are a lot of reasons to be skeptical about these claims, as described in this blog post by an expert in the field, Christopher Rollston: http://www.rollstonepigraphy.com/?p=949 ... qIMZvKwdgQ

Christopher Rollston

Areas of Expertise

Among the foci of Professor Rollston's research are: Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), religion in the ancient Near East (especially ancient Israel), law and diplomacy in the ancient Near East, Northwest Semitic epigraphy, literacy in the ancient world, ancient writing practices, scribal education, origins and early use of the alphabet, ancient and modern epigraphic forgeries, inscribed ossuaries (“bone boxes”), personal names, prosopography, ancient wisdom literature, prophecy in the ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean context, Septuagint, Dead Sea Scrolls, Greek New Testament, and Early Christianity.

Professor Rollston earned an M.A. (1996) and Ph.D. (1999) at The Johns Hopkins University (Department of Near Eastern Studies) in ancient Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Rollston works in more than a dozen ancient and modern languages, including various ancient Semitic languages (e.g., Hebrew, Phoenician, Aramaic, Palmyrene, Nabataean, Ammonite, Moabite, Edomite, Ugaritic, Akkadian), several ancient and modern Indo-European languages (e.g., Hellenistic Greek, Classical Latin; Modern German, French, Spanish, and Italian), as well as Sahidic Coptic.

Professor Rollston was a full-time faculty member in the Dept. of Near Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins University for two years (as a Post-Doctoral Fellow of Northwest Semitic), where students consistently noted his strong teaching abilities. For around a decade he held the Toyozo Nakarai Professorship of Old Testament and Semitic languages at Emmanuel School of Religion, where he was a popular teacher and mentor, resigning that position in 2012. During the spring semester of 2013, Rollston was the Visiting Professor of Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures at George Washington University. During the fall semester of 2013, he was a National Endowment for the Humanities Research Scholar at the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research (Jerusalem), and during the spring semester of 2014, he was a Visiting Professor of Northwest Semitic Literature at Tel Aviv University. About a decade prior to this, during the spring and summer of 2002, Rollston was a National Endowment for the Humanities Research Scholar at the American Society of Overseas Research (Amman). Rollston has excavated in Syria (Umm el-Marra) and in Israel (Megiddo), and he has conducted research at museums and departments of antiquity in Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, and Syria, as well as various museums in North America and Europe.

Current Research

Dr. Rollston’s volume entitled Pious Forgeries: Forging History in the Ancient World of the Bible and the Modern World of Biblical Studies will be published by Eerdmans Publishing Company in 2021. This volume traces the history of textual forgeries from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, ancient Israel, Early Christianity, the Middle Ages, and the modern period. In addition, Dr. Rollston has recently signed a contract to author a monograph entitled Writing and Scribal Culture in Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity, as part of the Library of New Testament Studies, Bloomsbury. Moreover, he also continues to work on the republication (based on new photographs) of the some sixty Old Hebrew jar inscriptions dating to the 8th century BCE from the biblical site of Gibeon. And during recent months, Dr. Rollston has also been commissioned to publish 19 Aramaic and Greek ostraca (ink inscriptions on broken pieces of pottery) from the site of Macchaeurus, a famous site from the period of the First Jewish Revolt against Rome (ca. 66-73 CE), and also the place where John the Baptist was martyred. Finally, Dr. Rollston is also the lead editor for a Festschrift in honor of Dr. P. Kyle McCarter of Johns Hopkins University, a volume entitled Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honor of P. Kyle McCarter (Society of Biblical Literature Press, 2020).

Is there a 'not very surprised' emoji?

While reading his blog entry, I was reminded of the mopologetic claims about the findings they claim support their Nahom hypothesis.

I’m afraid that I’m too methodologically cautious to embrace the sensational assumptions of Stripling, Galil, and van der Veen.

I doubt we’ll ever hear anything like that from a mopologist.

[Physics Guy]

I'm picturing some ancient person paying more than they could afford to a scribe to scratch these words into a sheet of lead. It's kind of like seeing an ancient love poem, only opposite. Somehow touching.

What's impressive is how well the best part still works. "Cursed, cursed, cursed." Even back then we were damn good at cursing. You just know you're so cursed.

[Res Ipsa]

Hey Ceeboo, interesting stuff. As a dyed in the wool skeptic, my radar always goes up when a dramatic discovery is announced by press conference without a published paper, or at least a finished paper to be submitted. So, while I think it's cool to have learned that "curse tablet" was a historical thing, I'm happy to wait on the peer reviewed and published paper, as well as public review by other archaeologists before drawing any conclusions. If nothing else, if the imaging process they used to see through lead is reliable, that would be cool in and of itself.