The Eric Metaxas Show - Scott Stripling

Episode Date: April 26, 2022

Archaeologist Scott Stripling drops by the studio to share his fascinating surrounding amulets that are part the Mt. Ebal curse, the story of which is found in the Bible in Deuteronomy chapter 27 and Joshua chapter 8.

Folks, welcome to the Eric Metaxus show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m.investments.com. That's legacy p.m. Investments.com. Taxis show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Hey, folks, welcome to the Eric Metaxis show. As you know, on this show, I have some pretty exciting guests. And we talk about amazing things. Today is no exception. I am sitting here, right here, in the studio with, I don't know, I never know how to pronounce people's last name. Scott Stripling, stripling, yes, sir. Then I did know how to pronounce it. You, you're an archaeologist,

obviously, but in case people don't know, a recent article came out. This is what made me think I've got to have you on to talk about this. It's about a so-called curse amulet discovered from about 1,200 BC. Big deal stuff, ladies and gentlemen. Big deal excavation, archaeological news. But you, Scott, to be clear, you the provost at the Bible Seminary in Houston,

and you're the Director of Excavations for the Association for Biblical Research currently at Shiloh. Shiloh is one of those names out of the Bible, like, really? Shiloh? Yeah, that's big. So how often, how much time do you spend, being an archaeologist,

spend in Houston, which is your home? And how much time do you spend in the field in Israel? I'm in Israel, Eric, for about three months out of the year, two months in the summer excavating, and then back and forth for, you know, various projects and to speak at conferences and stuff during the year. And the rest of the time I'm in Houston, we have an archaeological institute at our school, and so I oversee that as well. Okay. Well, many people listening to the program know this, but you don't know that I came out with a book a few months ago called Is Atheism? I'm dead. The first part's about science and faith. I talk a lot to, to Dr. Um, forgive me. Dr. Oz. No, no, no, I was going to say, in the book, part of the reason I wrote the book is because of

Dr. James Torr, who's in Houston. So I write a lot about science and faith, but the middle part of the book, I met Dr. Stephen Collins in Albuquerque. And it kind of sucked me into the world of biblical archaeology, and the more I looked into it, the more fascinated I became at how the Bible is flat out being proved as history with every new excavation. It's almost comical to me, how we keep finding things. So when I read the article of what you had found on Mount Ebal, I said, I've got to get you on the program, because I want my audience to understand what's at stake. why, explain why what you discovered is significant. Sure.

Well, for several reasons. Number one, it's the oldest Hebrew script that we've ever recovered. We're talking about older than paleo-Hebrew. This is what we would call proto-alphabetic script, or proto-hiabreic script, if you will. What scholars in the past have called proto-Canaanite, but it's clear now this is not Canaanite, Eric, because we have the name, Yahweh, the covenant name of God. Uh-oh. In the text itself.

Sounds pretty Jewish to me. So it's very important for that reason. Okay, but I want people to understand the timeline. In other words, when you talk about language, when you talk about people write, you talk about Moses writing the Pentateau, you know, that's roughly 15 centuries BC. And so a lot of liberal scholars have said, listen, the Israelites did not have had an Alphiolites. language to where this was even possible, which is how we know it's all baloney. But this and other things keeps giving us evidence that, in fact, yes, what we didn't know a few years ago, we now know that they did have the ability to write. And so what you just found

is a principal piece in this puzzle. Well, congratulations. First of all, you've got your chronology, right, which is more than I can say for most liberal scholars. Yeah. Jesus said Moses wrote the Pentateuch, and I have spent my career investigating conquest sites in the highlands of Israel. So I'm a trained theologian and I'm a trained archaeologist and with a good bit of field experience. Now, excuse me, when you say conquest sites, are we talking about Joshua, the son of Nunn and his conquest of the various cities, I and Jericho? And so this is what you have done? So this is what, 14th century, 15th century, B, Right. It's what I would call the late Bronze 1B to a horizon or around 1400 BC. Okay, so this is obviously before what the liberal scholars say, this is before the Hebrews had written language. But we're now discovering, which we kind of knew all along, that they got that wrong. The problem would have been, Moses was clearly literate, but if he were trying to write the penitiation, in Middle Egyptian with five, six, seven hundred characters, it would have taken a library

to hold it. But with a 22-letter phonetic alphabet, then he was able to, in a very truncated way, write the text as the Bible says that he does. What we have now from Mount Eval, the amount of cursing, of course, in the biblical account of this covenant renewal ceremony, we have evidence at that spot where God told Joshua to write, assuming literacy, and that the people would be able to read what he wrote. Now we have a evidence. a text dating from that time with the covenant name of God. Okay. And this was just discovered. I mean, this is pretty big news. December 2019 was when we did the project. And what we did was to go back into wet sift Adam Zertal's dump piles from the 1980s. And in those dump piles. I have no idea what

you just said. Well, let me put it in English for you. Did you use the verb wet sift? You got it right. Is that a verb to wet sift? Well, it is now. Okay. So stuff was discovered in the 1980s, and in 2019, you did this process. Right. So Zertal was a secularist, big time, from Tel Aviv University, grew up on a kibbutz, which was communism, and had no belief at all in God, was a secularly trained archaeologist. But when he found this altar on Maniwal, and it matched the biblical account, he became a believer in the historicity of the text. This was a big crisis back in the 1980s. You know, what are we going to do with Adam? He's off the reservation, so to speak. What my team did, having perfected this wet sifting technology where we first to dry sift,

then we have built a machine with our own water tower, so we have water pressure, where we then wash the matrix. By washing the matrix, we are now finding five times as many small finds as we used to. So for every one scurib we used to find, we now find five. For every one Bula we used to find, we now find five. So this is revolutionary. I don't know that my audience knows what scurbs and bula are, but...

Well, they're impressed remains, okay? They're glyptic or impressed remains that have iconography that dates them to certain pharaohs, and they help us tremendously in the dating process. Okay, now, when you talk about Joshua's altar on Mount Ebal, I'm not familiar. I'm not remembering specifically what took place. Let me give you the real quick chronology.

The Israelites conquer Jericho, Joshua 6. They're defeated in Chapter 7 of Joshua at I, and then they have victory at I or AI in Joshua chapter 8. Now, I spent many, many years along with my team excavating that side of I, 10 miles north of Jerusalem. We finished five years ago. My publications are coming out this year on that dig. What they did was to go north from there, Moses told them when you come into the land and you gain a foothold, you're going to go to Mount Gerasim and Mount Ival.

You're going to pronounce blessings from Mount Gerezim and curses from Mount Eval. and then the text says Joshua 830 that Joshua built an altar on Mani Val. That altar has been found. We have a large rectangular altar, and underneath it at its perfect geometric center is a smaller, earlier, 2 by 2 meter round altar, which is the altar of none other than Joshua bin Nune. None other than Joshua, son of none, other than him.

Honestly, this is big. It really is. This is huge. It's hard to take it in because, you know, I believe these things happened, but it's kind of like with Stephen Collins's work, you know, discovering biblical Sodom. You don't really, you don't assume that anyone would ever be able to discover such a place. So the fact that you've discovered the very spot where Joshua did the very thing that the Lord commanded him to do, that's just flat out amazing. Well, it's very amazing, and you kind of get chill bumps when you're there working.

What we did was we went back through his dump piles using our new technology. And in those dump piles, we recovered material that they had missed, even though they were very thorough. You mean in the 80s? That's right. They missed it in the 80s. So we're going to continue talking to Dr. Scott stripling. It's exciting stuff, folks. Don't go away. 10 4. My 5 mile or so 10, Roger.

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Insight.com. Go there. And welcome back. We are talking to an archaeologist. His name is Dr. Scott Stripling. We're talking about an extraordinary find. And I want to say it again, this is a big deal. If you care whether the Bible is history, you have just discovered more dramatic evidence pushing things way back. I mean, this is now the 15th century BC evidence for Joshua. And this, I mean, the specificity of this is what amazes me. Well, we've been fighting a battle for a long time with scholars who have told us that the Bible wasn't written until the Persian period or redacted into the Persian period or the Hellenistic period, the so-called documentary hypothesis that sadly most scholars get trained in.

They need to be untrained in that. One of the things they argue, Eric, is that the names El-Elemonish. and Yahweh, Jehovah, are not in existence at the same time. They're hundreds of years apart, later they're redacted into the source. We have this inscription juxtaposed El with Yahweh together. Wait, on this tablet, on this inscription. Is this the first time we have archaeological, physical evidence of what you just said? Absolutely. And even the name Yahweh in Israel itself, this is by far the oldest, because we have it down in Egypt at what's called the Solib Hierob the land of the Shasu of Yahweh.

And that's mid-14th century. So by the mid-14th century, there's already a land with people who worship a God named Yahweh, and hello, there's only one group of people who does that. And when did we, like I was there, when was that discovered? Solum Pyroglyph has been around for longer than my lifetime. I don't know the exact year. Okay. And when, I guess I want to talk a little bit about the issue of language, written language,

When and where do we suppose human beings created written language? I mean, when I look into the Greeks, obviously, they had this alphabet, and they had 24 letters in the Greek alphabet. But before that, as we now know, there was this thing called linear B and linear A. when did written language come into being that we know of? Because it seems like the candidate is Hebrew. This is this, what you're talking about, what this inscription is on this amulet that you just found, it seems to me that that's kind of a candidate for this sort of thing.

Or I don't know, how back we go with Egypt, how far, you know. Well, the roots are Egyptian. And just 20, 30 years ago, would have been telling people that they were Mesopotamian or Phoenician roots for the alphabet. And now the weight of evidence is suggesting that, no, no, these are Egyptian hieroglyphs. They're morphing into phonetic symbols, which become the alphabet. It is amazing. So, okay, we now have proof, and I'm looking at a photocopy of it.

So this tablet was unearthed in the 1980s, but you identified it recently? it's been lying there in a dump pile since the 1980s. We recovered it in 2019, but because of the pandemic, we were not able to get back into the country for a while. So it wasn't until a few months ago that I was able to get it to a lab in Prague, Czechoslovakia, where they have perfected the technique of tomographic scans, sort of like a cat scan, if you will, where you can penetrate the lead and read what's on the inside.

And so it's only a few months ago that we began to see our first letters, emerging in our first words. And it was terribly exciting because the first letter that I saw was an al-a, an ox-head that was becoming morphing into an al-af. And I thought to myself, well, the first letter of Arrur, the Hebrew word for curse is an al-af. What if the next letter was a rash? And then it was a rash. And so we ended up having the word curse repeatedly in here. So we have a curse tablet from the mountain of the cursing. And this is just phenomenal, okay, because this is, This is how covenant is made in the late Bronze Age. You have blessings and you have curses, 0.4 of a biblical covenant.

So how close to Joshua himself is this tablet? Well, Eric, are you sitting down? Let me see. Yes. Okay. Well, the date range I would give you is this is late bronze 2. So that's from 1,400 to 1,200. If it's at the beginning of late Bronze 2, which I think that's what the epigraphy suggests,

style of the writing of the letters, then you're talking about the primogenial ceremony at Mount Eval. I mean, you're talking about, is this the handwriting of Joshua bin Noon? I mean, God tells him to write at Mountie Ball. It says it in the text. Now, I cannot prove that, of course, that that is his handwriting, but epigraphically, it does suggest that sort of late bronze. When you say epigraphically what you're talking about, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, You say that the way letters are written evolves over time. Now, look, we can all see that. Anybody who sees, you know, Benjamin Franklin's handwriting or printing from previous centuries,

know that they made the S funny and they get this and that. So you can date something even way, way, way back, you know, into this second millennium BC because it changes. So you're telling me that the way these letters are made lets you know when this was written. That's right. And I have a collaborative team of epigraphers who are working with me and scientists who are working with me on this three different continents involved in the collaboration. But it's older than paleo-hebri. So, you know. So explain that to me. Like I was when I was writing in my book about Hezekiah's tunnel and when they discover this plaque, it can sort of. of a proto-Hebraic language. So how does that work? When does Hebrew become what we think of today as Hebrew? Where did it start? How does that, you know? Okay, so the Siloam inscription,

that is Paleo-Hebrew. Okay. Now, when you get into the late Second Temple period, sometimes in synagogue settings, for example, even in some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, they're still using some Paleo-Hebrew because it's venerated. It's a holy script. But now they're using a different script by second temple period times. So I'm talking about older than the paleo-Hebrew, where the letters have not yet standardized, and the readings have not yet standardized, just like Old English. I have a master's degree in English also, in Englishlet. Holy cow. I mean, if you tried to compare like Old English with modern English, only a few people alive know how to do that, but you could very clearly see those differences. Old English, I mean,

most people don't realize this. Most people think Shakespeare is Old English. It's like, no, no, no, Shakespeare is modern English. Chaucer, 1,300 BC, is Middle English. That's right. And what we call Old English, Beowulf, it is utterly 100% unreadable to modern English speakers and readers. And so it is fascinating. We still call it old English because our language has evolved. So it's interesting when you're talking about a language like Hebrew and how they, as you're saying here,

it's the very dawn of the written language. That's right. So I wonder when, can you theorize when it began, or did you just say that it comes out of Egyptian hieroglyphs? How did that work? In lacking a better explanation, Eric, let's just go from the known to the unknown, which is an archaeological principle. Here we have Moses and a few others who are fully literate in what we would call. Middle Egyptian, and now they embrace Hebrew, a spoken language, and now we get a transitional alphabet that begins to emerge. So is that the timeline? If so, then you're talking 15th century

BC. Now, the Aleph, which is like an ox head, does that begin in Hebrew, or does that have some kind of a cognate in Egyptian? Is there a hieroglyph in Egyptian from which we get the Alev. Yeah, and that's a great question. We do have cognates in other ancient Near Eastern language, certainly. No doubt about that. What makes this unique is we're talking about Mount Ibal, which is a biblical site. We don't have Egyptian or Eucharitic sources to go to. Eric, in that part of the world, the Bible is our go-to source, okay? Most of these sites are not mentioned elsewhere. We simply have the biblical text. What my career has shown is that the Bible is a reliable historical source. And that's an arena of ideas that we're eager to engage in.

Well, that's what's so funny is that people, because they have an animus against the Bible, they are troubled and they can't deal with the fact that even if you don't like the Bible, historically speaking, you know, you cannot do better than the Gospels. You cannot do better than the Old Testament. It is just history and it's an historical account. I mean, if you're willing to take what the Egyptians wrote as

some kind of an account, you're forced to deal with what the Hebrew Bible says. And then, of course, you realize that it's written in such a way that is much more historical by what we think of as historical standards than what the Egyptians would have written

or any of the groups before them or during that time. So it is interesting that the information is coming out more and more and more to give credence to this and to kind of really just to help us to understand what happened at a time, you know, so long ago. We're going to go to a break, folks. I'm talking to Dr. Scott Stripling. We're talking about the so-called Chris Amulet discovered on Mount Eball. Just amazing. Don't go away.

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Did I get that right? How can there be writing inside the tablet? You're using tomography, I guess, so you're able to read what's in it. But how does somebody write inside a stone tablet? I don't get it. Okay, well, it's made of lead. And so... Oh, it's lead.

It's a lead tablet. And Eric, let me give you a Bible verse. Job 1924, and Job may be the oldest book in the Bible, so it's a very ancient concept. Job 1924, oh, that my words were written on a lead tablet with an iron pen. do you see how that's that's very consistent with what you would expect from that late bronze age sort of a context? I did not know that Job was potentially that old, actually. It's the only book in the Hebrew Bible with no mention of the law of Moses. And so we assume that it's along with Genesis, the oldest book in the Hebrew Bible.

And there's that writing on lead sort of an idea. It's four by two centimeters. They folded it in half, which is what you're looking at. So now it's two by two centimeters. Okay. So you cannot unfold it. No, when we see what happened to the one corner where it's slightly broken. In our lab, when we very, very carefully tried to see if it was malleable, we got a little crumbling in the corner, we stopped.

And then we had to find a place where we could tomographically scan it. Okay, so tomographically means like an x-ray. You can read the inside of it. You can go down deeper and deeper and see what it says. So you're telling me you have read what is inside this fold. thing, which is crazy, but you have not yet determined what is on the outside. Well, we have now determined that we just haven't released it yet. So our peer-reviewed academic article will be out in a few months, and that's when all of the information will be there. Are you able to give us a

sense of what you've discovered? It's similar to what's on the inside. It's similar to what's on the inside. If you're thinking about the curses of Deuteronomy 28 and 29, for example, I think that this tablet is a summary. It's what we call a chiastic parallelism or a literary structure to it, and I think it summarizes those curses that we read at the end of Deuteronomy. And in my perspective, Eric, it's a self-imprecatory oath. I, on behalf of the nation, am binding us to the consequences of sin. All these blessings if we keep the covenant, all these curses if we don't. But here's the most important thing. The tablet is found on the altar on Mount Eval. The altar's not on Mount Garazim, the place of blessing.

God told him to build the altar on Mount Yvah, the place of the curse. So that if I will repent and accept responsibility for my actions, then those curses do not come upon me. It's only for those who will not own up to their actions that they have those consequences. I mean, it's like a contract, right? If I don't do this, this happens. Okay, a contract is between equals a covenant has a greater party and a lesser party. So God is the covenant, a greater party here, and the nation is. is the lesser party, and they're coming into this agreement with him, just like Moses told them to.

So have you excavated the Mount of blessings? No, but Mount Garizam has been excavated. You know, that's where, of course, Jesus and the woman at the well had the discussion about... What do you mean, of course? Like, we know this? We don't know. So, if you don't mind, help me. Mount Garizam, you said?

Sure. is where Jesus had the conversation with the woman at the well. He's at the well in Shechem, ancient Shechem. And he discusses with her, she says, our ancestors worship on this mountain. And you worship in Jerusalem, and Jesus makes this famous statement about Spirit and Truth. That's the mountain she's talking about, Mount Gerasim.

The Samaritans venerate that mountain as the Holy Mountain. So there have been excavations done on Mount Gerasim, but we're not expecting to find anything like an altar because the Bible doesn't say that it was there. Interesting. Okay, so the Bible says there's an altar on Eval, and you have found it. Adam Zertal found it,

but he unfortunately died before he was able to do his final publications. What we did was to go back through his trash. Somebody said, don't you feel bad about going through trash? Well, no, we archaeologists love trash, especially when it's like Joshua Ben Noon's trash. and this is when we recovered the Deficcio or Curst Tap. Maybe you'll find some receipts. It is really extraordinary because you're right.

I mean, this is what archaeologists do. They effectively go through trash dumps and things, and you find treasures upon treasures. You just don't know, and that's the hard work of archaeology. When did you grow up and how did you get involved in archaeology? I grew up in Texas, born and reared. I was a Bible reader when into ministry became obsessed with the background of the biblical text. You know, like when the Bible talks about they broke through the roof till over their friend of Jesus. What did a roof look like? And, you know, what were the streets like?

And I thought the hard sayings that we struggled with must have something to do with are not understanding the material culture. And ultimately, that's what led me in this direction. Well, that's probably true, isn't it? There are things that are just, it's hard for us to understand that culture. And the more you understand the culture, the more these things make sense. And so over the decades, what are some of the things that you have worked on or what are some of the digs that you've been involved with? Well, we're excavating at Shiloh right now. And of course, Shiloh is where the tabernacle was for three centuries, the Ark of the Covenant.

And we're excavating an entire complex of the sacrificial system there. And so I've begun to release this already. but in the coming years, people are going to be blown away by what we release from Shiloh. Well, you know, for a lot of people listening to this program aren't familiar or aren't so familiar with what you're talking about right now. So when we come back, I want you to help us understand the chronology of Shiloh and then eventually the building of Solomon's Temple and all that. So we'll be right back, folks, talking to Dr. Scott Stripling. It's the Eric Mataxas show. Don't go away. Hey, folks, if you listen to this program, of course, you've heard me talk at infinitum about my pillow and my friend Mike Lindell.

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50% off. Go to Mypillar.com, click on the radio listeners square and use promo code, Eric. You'll also get deep discounts on all My Pillar products, including some overstock products, such as individual towels, blankets, comforters, and much more. Or call 800, 978, 3057. That's 800, 978. 3057. He used the promo code. Eric. Welcome back, folks. I'm talking to the Director of Excavations for the Association for Biblical

Research at Shiloh. We're talking about Shiloh. For people listening who have no idea what Shiloh is or meant, tell us. Okay, so Shiloh is where, according to Joshua 181, the tabernacle was erected at the end of the conquest period. So right at 1400 B.C., Joshua has the tabernacle erected there. And for three centuries, this is where you went to connect with God. people like Hanna and Elkanah and, you know, that time period, while Jerusalem is still a pagan city at that point. So this is the so-called tabernacle in the wilderness. This is it. It is erected at Shiloh. And God very clearly, meticulously detailed, explains what he wants them to do, what it's supposed to look like.

I mean, it's really amazing. And the idea that this was a tabernacle, that it wasn't made of statured, stones. Well, okay, this is where it gets interesting, though. Go back to 1 Samuel 3. At the beginning of the chapter, we're reading about like the curtains of the tabernacle, but by the end of the chapter, you're reading about the walls of the tabernacle. Hey, wait a minute. Okay. What happened there? Somebody pulled a switcheroo. Instead of the door, now we're using like Delet, the Hebrew word for door. Instead of curtain, now it's door. We're getting this permanency in language. Well, in the Mishnah, we have two places, one being the Seder alam, the other.

the Zabakhim, you have these references to a stone platform being built at Shiloh. So it's still a tent, but it's on a stone platform that has stub walls, if you will. That's what we're finding, Eric. So here you have the suggestion in the Hebrew text of 1 Samuel 3. You have the confirmation in the Mishnah, and now archaeologically, that's what it appears that we're finding. Okay, so they were sort of leaning temple word. Not quite. It's a quasi-temple, if you will.

But remember the concept of how can we live in houses when God still lives in a tent? So Yahweh, there's a long tradition of him living in a tent. He's comfortable in a tent. And they don't even build houses, even up to David's time, until God himself moves into a house. Wow, I've never heard that. That's extraordinary. It's extraordinary, and we have storage rooms from the period. We have a bone deposit that is massive for.

that period, two-thirds of the bones are from the right side of the animal, one-third are from the left side of the animal, thousands of bones. Can you explain that? Yeah, Levitica 7. Good luck explaining that without the Bible. The right side of the animal is the priest's portion. And these are only kosher sacrificial animals. There is no other explanation outside the text.

And this is why the archaeologist who does not value the Bible is at a big disadvantage. Putting it mildly, I mean, you can't really make sense of any of this. just said. Well, so at Shiloh, for three centuries, you have this sacrificial system going on. And it's hard for us to imagine, I mean, how many people and how many, it really is overwhelming to consider. I mean, it's overwhelming to consider when you're thinking of Herod's Temple. But when you think about this is in the wilderness, so how many people are involved? How many, I mean, it's just how, how, yeah. Well, I mean, you come annually at least, maybe even three times a year to Shiloh, which is in Ephraim territory, by the way, and Joshua was from the tribe of Ephraim, so maybe that's why Shilohyla was chosen. Maybe it was because it was centrally located.

But nonetheless, that's where you go. Leviticus 1711 says, without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin. And so it's through that expiation process, you come bringing your offerings, bringing your sacrifice, being able to vertically and horizontally. reconnect with relationships. And so this goes on and on and on until, of course, we get to David and Solomon, and they decide to build a temple in a different place. That's right. Well, down in the city of David, there is an area where we think we're pretty certain where

David's tabernacle was, but it was from that spot near the Gihon Spring that the tabernacle is brought up to Mount Moriah to the new temple by Solomon. Yes. David has prepared the materials, but it's Sogerman who builds the temple. Right. But I don't, you know, I'm not going to pretend to know more than I do. I didn't know how much David had prepared and how that happened. But so what do we think we're finding at Shiloh? You have been there for a while. Since 2017. What can you, what can you share? Okay, so we have the platform of a building that orientes east-west perfectly, that appears to be the exact dimensions given in the Bible for the tabernacle.

Now, I'll know this summer, we'll get our final corners, and I'll be able to speak with some more authority right now. I've still got to be a little bit guarded. But around that building, we have altar horns from a demolished altar. We have ceramic palm granites, which is the motif of the tabernacle. Remember the high priest on his hem of his garment has bells and palm grats. I know I have read about this here and there that you've discovered some of these ceramic pomegranates. Which is the only fruit that goes into the presence of God, into the Holy of Holies, okay? Only the palm granite does.

Wow. And that's in Solomon's Temple, too. You have 200 palm granites adorning Solomon's temple as well. What is significance, if you can say, of the pomegranate? That's just an amazing. In a nutshell, I think it has to do with fecundity, like the potential for reproduction. You can count the number of seeds in a palm granite, but you can't count the number of palm granite's in a seed. You know, it's God's blessing, his fecundity that he brings upon them.

But also, others would point out that there are 613 seeds in a palm granite and that there are 613 commandments in the Hebrew Bible, and perhaps there's a connection there. Sheesh. Well, so you're discovering all of this, and what has been published, what has been written about this? I've published several articles already. We have a three-year report that is about to come out, but specifically peer-reviewed sources already on the palm granites and these types of things. Our provisional three-year report will be out in the next few months, but I've gotten a little sidetracked right now with this Mountie Ball thing. So, you know, I've got publications from several different digs from the past, and we're trying to juggle those.

You were saying earlier to me that you know Dr. Stephen Collins, who discovered biblical Sodom, when I learned of that story, one of the most fascinating things about it is that he was led to that spot from reading Genesis. In other words, he took the Bible at its word and said, it says

that these places are up here someplace, and he looked. And nobody had really looked, or I guess because of the tension with the nation of Jordan for a number of decades. It was not easy to do anything over there. So it's just it's so fascinating to me how

in our own lifetime, the Bible is being proved as history more and more almost every day. We're going to be back final segment talking to Dr. Scott Stripling. Don't go away. Holy cow, Albin. Are you there? Yes. Yes, I'm here. Okay.

Welcome back. We've had some really special guests lately. I want to say that Charlie Duke, the astronaut, I was in tears practically when he was sharing about Apollo 11. It was so moving to me. We've just today been talking to a top, top archaeologist, Scott Stripling. We've just had amazing guests. Actually, you know what I should mention?

We had Dave Rubin on recently, right? I got an email from a woman. I want to say this to my radio audience. Just so I understand where I'm coming from, somebody wrote to me, saying, you know, practically in tears that I would have on Dave Rubin because she says, you know, he's an open, openly gay, living with his husband, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I thought to myself, I need to address this on the air and tell people, ladies and gentlemen, I have on all kinds of guests on this program.

I have people that are politically liberal. I have atheists. I have all kinds of people on the program. The idea that somebody would in this kind of religious way object to me having somebody on whom she disapproves of in this particular way, I want to tell you, folks, almost everyone I have on this program has issues that I can say, well, I shouldn't have them on because of this or this or this or this. So I don't want you to think that if I play Elton John's music, it's because I approve of, you know, the gay lifestyle. I find it funny that in this day and age, people still think of things this way. I am a Christian. I, whatever the Bible says, I'm for that.

And I will have plenty guests on who do not share that view. And that's kind of the point of having a program about everything is to have on all kinds of people. If somebody comes on the program and I find out, oh, he's sleeping with his girlfriend and they're not married, I may still. still have them on the program, folks, okay? All right? I had Mel Gibson on the other day. Mel Gibson is like living with some woman who directed this Father Stu film. He's been with her for like three or four years, living, you know, with her. I can't address, I can't address this on the air every time I have a guest. You all know me. If you've read my books, you know me, you know my heart. You don't ever have to wonder where I'm coming from. but I thought, you know, I need to, I just need to say that.

Now, by the way, speaking of amazing guests tomorrow, Dinesh D'Souza, ladies and gentlemen, I want to be really blunt. Dinesh D'Souza is an American hero. I'm privileged to call him friend. He is someone that has done so much. And in this most recent film, 2000 mules, he has done a public service that I have no words because it, is vital that we understand. And I'm begging you to see the film, 2000 Mules. It is vital we

understand the nightmare of election fraud that has been going on for years, but that in 2020 stole the election from who, the American people. That's the people who vote. In America, we get to vote. The film makes crystal clear. If you don't like it, you don't want to argue on the facts. It makes the case astonishingly powerfully. I have the privilege of being in the film. I want to say to everybody, you owe it to yourself to see the film, to tell your friends about the film. America needs to understand what we're going through right now. And you are a part of it, folks. Nobody's off the hook. We're all, we all have to do our part, get the word out. I say the same thing about another film you can see at SalemNow.com. It's whose children are they?

we have a Marxist coup happening in the United States of America where crazy woke people who don't have the values, put aside biblical values, American values, and they are effectively destroying the country. The teachers union has been at the heart of it. I want you to go to SalemNow.com. Check out whose children are they or whose children are they.com. Whose children are they? Anyway, we'll see you tomorrow with the next. Jesusa. We've got Johns Merak. It's going to be an amazing week. God bless you.