Once in a generation archeologists unearth something that is truly a game changer. Recently found material turn much of OT critical scholarship on its head. Join Scott as he discusses this finding with archeologist Scott Stripling—spoiler alert—it’s a very exciting find!!


Scott Stripling, provost and director of the Archaeology Institute at The Bible Seminary, is the director of excavations for the Associates for Biblical Research at ancient Shiloh (2017 to present). He previously directed the excavations at Khirbet el-Maqatir (2014–2016). He serves as president of the Near East Archaeological Society.


Episode Transcript

Scott Rae: Every once in a while we get a game-changing archeological find that changes the way we think about the scriptures and about the reliability of all the New Testament narrative accounts. They only occur once in a generation, but when they do, they're usually very, very significant. And one of those has just recently been published, discovered back initially in 2019. Additional work was done on it in 2021. And one of the leading archeologists on this project, Scott Stripling, is with us. He was one of the key people on the team who excavated this site and then did a lot of the follow-up work on it. Scott is provost and director of the Archaeological Institute at the Bible Seminary in Katy, Texas, and is director of Excavations for the Associates for Biblical Research. He has directed excavations in other places in the Middle East, and is currently president of the Near East Archaeological Society. So when our listeners hear about archeology, let me make sure that they don't tune us out right away. We're not going to get into the weeds in this. We're going to stick to the big picture. But Scott, really, welcome. Thanks so much for being with us. And let's take basic questions first, or the who, what, where, when and why questions. So what was found that is such a game-changing find, first of all?

Scott Stripling: Hey, Scott, thanks for having me on the podcast today. We found a small lead folded tablet, which was two by two centimeters. If it were unfolded, it would be about four by two centimeters. This is the size and the style of what we normally refer to as a defixio or a curse tablet. What made this one unique and sort of shocking was that it came from an altar on Mount Ebal, and Joshua 8:30 says that Joshua built an altar on Mount Ebal. And this tablet came from that altar, which was, according to the biblical text, the mountain of the curse. And we have what's called a curse tablet with an inscription on it.

Scott Rae: Okay, so I mean, clarify for our listeners the context both in Deuteronomy and in Joshua, the significance of Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, where the Mosaic covenant was renewed.

Scott Stripling: Well, right, it's actually probably the Abrahamic covenant that they're renewing because it's right there at Shechem. The next hill over is [inaudible 00:02:35], and this is where the Abrahamic covenant is cut. So it's my view that when Moses in Deuteronomy 11 and in Deuteronomy 27 instructs the Israelites, "Once you have gained a foothold in the land, go to Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal," which is ancient Shechem, "and renew covenant there." And he tells them exactly how to do it. "Put six of the tribes on Mount Gerizim to pronounce blessings and six on Mount Ebal to pronounce curses." And then notably Joshua 8:30 says that, "Joshua built an altar on Mount Ebal unto the Lord."

Scott Rae: Okay. And parts of that altar was also found on Mount Ebal, correct?

Scott Stripling: Well, that's it. Adam Zertal, in his survey of the Manassa hill country in 1980, discovered this large structure that had been intentionally covered, did not know what it was. Once they removed the mantle of stones, Zertal, who was not a believer, he was agnostic, had not even read the Joshua account. When somebody showed it to him, he was in utter shock. And he, from that day on, became a believer in the historicity of the text.

Scott Rae: Okay. So this was originally discovered, the altar was originally discovered a couple decades ago. The finding that you're talking about, the tablet, who found that? Which team found that? And when was that found?

Scott Stripling: Yeah, so just to clarify, the time when Zertal found it in 1980, excavated it from '82 to '89. Unfortunately he died seven years ago, without doing a final publication. I led a team in December of 2019 for an expedition back to Mount Ebal. And what we did is we took his dump pile, his discarded remains from the excavation, and using a new technology that we have perfected, known as wet sifting, we relocated about 30% of that dump pile and we wet sifted it. And it was in that wet sifting process, among many things that we found the most important, was this defixio.

Scott Rae: So this was material that was probably going to be thrown out?

Scott Stripling: It had already been thrown out back in the 1980s. All archeological sites have dump piles, what's left behind by the archeologist. The problem is that when we archeologists dry sift the material, most of the small finds cannot be seen with the naked eye. A scarab that is covered in dirt looks like a rock. And we knew this from tests that we had done that we had been throwing away about 75% of the evidence in the past.

Scott Rae: Wow.

Scott Stripling: And it was for that reason that I was very interested in examining Zertal's dump pile, hoping we would get something that would give us more insight, since he had never done a final publication, insight into that important structure.

Scott Rae: Okay. So tell us a little bit more, why does this finding matter so much?

Scott Stripling: Well, it matters on a lot of different levels. I mean, number one, the dating of the Exodus and the conquest. We have two different camps basically within evangelicalism, a 15th century or around 1,400 BC early date camp, and then a 13th century camp. I'm an advocate of the early date. I wrote, for Zondervan last year, a chapter in their new book on five views on the Exodus, stating all the reasons why. This weighs in on that, because this text dates to the late bronze two period, or that LB1B, LB2A horizon, which is around 1,400 BC. It's what I call a proto-alphabetic script, when Egyptian hieroglyphs are just morphing into phonetic symbols. And so that's occurring at the time that the Bible places Joshua on Mount Ebal. We have a text that our epigraphers, our paleographers, have also dated to that time. So theologically, historically, archeologically and then theologically, there are huge ramifications that we could talk about.

Scott Rae: Okay, let's do that here. I mean, this essentially reinforces the biblical date of the conquest of the promised land.

Scott Stripling: That's right.

Scott Rae: It also reinforces what I think is the biblically consistent date of the Exodus, a few years before that. And so what does this do to a good bit of critical scholarship in the Old Testament that dated the Exodus and the conquest much, much later?

Scott Stripling: Yeah, it's very problematic for that viewpoint. Here, we have an altar that from the pottery and now from this inscription, we can date to that early date. So that is very consistent with what we would expect from an early date or a biblical date view. So for those who were arguing ... And really, they started doing this 90 years ago or whatever, during the time of Albright, because they did not think they were finding archeological evidence from the 15th century that supported the biblical date. So I guess they thought they would help God and come up with some fancy ... what they called [foreign language 00:07:52] and some fancy German math equation to say that 480 years did not mean 480 years, and whatever. Well, it turns out there was only 1% of the land of the Bible had been excavated at that time. And that was not necessary. God did not need help. And as we have continued to excavate, we've now unearthed tremendous evidence that supports the early date. This reinforces that.

Scott Rae: Now, a big part of the finding was the inscription with the name of God in it.

Scott Stripling: Yes.

Scott Rae: And the date of that inscription was roughly 1,400 BC-

Scott Stripling: That's right.

Scott Rae: ... right around the time of the conquest. What's the significance of finding the Hebrew name of God in that particular inscription?

Scott Stripling: Well, it's huge. Your students at Biola are fortunate. You believe in the Bible, and you're treating it as a reliable historical document. Students at many seminaries and universities are not that fortunate. And I know because I speak at these universities, and this is exactly what I encountered. They've been fed the documentary hypothesis, Wellhausen's theory, and its various versions and variations.

Scott Rae: Don't worry, listeners, we'll talk about that in just a second. Go ahead.

Scott Stripling: Well, the bottom line is they would argue that the biblical text was not redacted, to use their term, until 1,000 years or so later. So how could it be reliable? We have no eyewitnesses. And they would say that there was no alphabet with which Moses and Joshua could have written. We now have proof of literacy at that time and of an alphabetic script, what we would call a proto-alphabetic script that predates paleo Hebrew.

Scott Rae: So maybe Moses was a lot more literate than critical scholars give him credit for?

Scott Stripling: Well, that's right. I mean, as a Chr