joelr
Well-Known Member
It's not evidence yet. If this said they worshipped Ashera on this sketchy evidence you would be jumping and screaming at how bad this evidence is.This find seems to show the existence of a system of writing a lot earlier than the early monarchy. Moses could have used it to write scripture.
An Early Israelite Curse Inscription from Mt. Ebal?
In early 2022, a team announced the discovery of a lead tablet from Mt. Ebal they claim contains the oldest extant Hebrew inscription.www.biblicalarchaeology.org
They released a drawing and a photo of the outside of the tablet, were not licensed and haven't shown where they actually found it yet?
Scholars Remain Skeptical
Although the team’s claims about the lead tablet have made headlines in Israel, and been the subject of popular biblical archaeology podcasts and social media discussions, some scholars and other observers have questioned the find and remain skeptical about its contents and importance. The main reason is that, until now, the team has provided very little written or visual documentation to support their reading and interpretation of the tablet. At the March press conference, the team released a photo of the outside of the tablet (first image, above) and a schematic drawing of the three letters they read as the divine name Yhw (second image, above), but they did not release any images of the scans that show the tablet’s inscribed interior. Additionally, the team has yet to publish the find or their analysis in a peer-reviewed journal, although they are now preparing an article that they hope will appear later in 2022. This lack of any presentation of the supporting evidence for the team’s claims has raised the suspicions of many scholars. As Christopher Rollston, a noted epigrapher from the George Washington University, wrote on his blog, “I would predict that almost all of the readings posited in the press conference will be vigorously contested, once scholars in the field of epigraphy are allowed to see the image. … I am far from convinced of their readings … especially since they have not even provided so much as a single good image!”Even if the ABR team’s reading holds up under scrutiny, however, Rollston and others caution against making too much of the tablet’s date and significance. Rollston points out, for example, that alphabetic writing was already fairly well known by the late second millennium, likely having been invented sometime around the 18th century B.C.E. Furthermore, even if the team’s reading is accurate, the 40 letters that make up the text were used to write just four unique words: “cursed,” “die,” “god,” and “yhw.” According to Rollston, “To say that based on those four words or roots that somebody could write the whole Bible … well, that’s a bridge (way) too far for me. After all, there are 8500+ words in the Hebrew Bible … and four is a pretty small fraction of the whole, therefore!” Other scholars, like archaeologist Aren Maeir of Bar-Ilan University, note that while the team’s reading of the Mt. Ebal inscription could provide the earliest reference to the divine name Yahweh in ancient Israel, it would not be earliest reference to Yahweh ever found, as possible earlier occurrences have been found in Egypt and elsewhere.
Problems of Provenance
There are also serious questions about where the tablet was found and how it was discovered. As noted above, the tablet was not found during an excavation but rather while the ABR team was sifting the soil dumps from Adam Zertal’s earlier excavations. As such, the find does not come from a datable, stratified context, though the ABR team says it was able to associate the dump material where the tablet was found with Zertal’s excavation of the altar, which he dated to the time of Joshua. This corresponds to the team’s dating of the script, as well as analysis of the tablet’s lead, which originated from a mine in Greece that was in use during the Late Bronze and early Iron Ages.Perhaps even more significant is the fact that Mt. Ebal is located in Area B of the West Bank, just a mile north of the Palestinian city of Nablus, and, as such, its archaeology falls under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority. An investigation by Haaretz found that the ABR team failed to get permission for the Mt. Ebal sifting project from either the Palestinian Authority or Israel’s Staff Officer for Archaeology of the Civil Administration of Judea and Samaria, calling into question the legality of the project and the find. Additionally, the ABR team did not receive an export license to take the tablet out of the country for analysis, as is required by Israeli law.