The Sean McDowell Show - Mt. Ebal Curse Tablet Defeated? "Nope!" says Scott Stripling (Update!)

Episode Date: December 31, 2023

Has the "curse tablet" discovery at Mt. Ebal been proven false? Recently, three academic journal articles appeared in the Israel Exploration Journal (https://www.israelexplorationsociety.com/israel-exploration-journal) criticizing the legitimacy of the inscription. Dr. Scott Stripling offers his first public response as to why he still believes the tablet is genuine. WATCH: Oldest Hebrew Writing? Mt. Ebal Curse Tablet (w/ Scott Stripling): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEVEKX_0x08 WATCH: Mt. Ebal Curse Tablet: A Response (with Chris Rollston): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBmuNw59AOg&t=2622s *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for $100 off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

has the case for the curse tablet bearing the first old hebrew inscription been officially put to rest our guest today archaeologist dr scott stripling he is one of the members of the team who originally discovered the object that we're going to discuss it comes from a mine in lavrion greece which was in use in the late bronza and normally that would be the end of it. However, three journal articles, professional journal articles, have been critiquing the find and Scott Stripling is back to offer his response. Scott, it's good to have you back.

I've been so looking forward to this since you contacted me. I've been fascinating just following this journey, learning so much myself, eager to dive in. Thanks for coming back and be willing to offer your response. Hey, Sean, thanks for having me on and giving me a chance to speak to this ongoing story. So maybe just kind of remind us somewhat briefly of the find,

what you think it reveals, and why you believe significant before we get into the critique and your response. In December 2019, we sifted the dump piles that Adams Zertal had left behind at Mount Ebal, east and west dump piles. And the east dump is very ashy. It was material that he noted was from the altar. The west dump is very different from that. We recovered through wet sifting a small folded lead item that we believe is a tablet or a defixio. And using tomographic scanning, we were able to penetrate the lead and see what we believe are proto-alphabetic letters on the inside of that.

We published this in Heritage Science and we gave our proposed interpretation with all the nuances that we realized that there's many different ways to read this. It could be read forward, backward, top to bottom and so forth, but a proposed reading of it. And this was responded to recently by a series of scholars that would like to say I admire all of them. OK, Ami Mazar in particular. I'm honored that he would disagree with me. I've been a lifelong fan of his. Aaron Mayer is certainly a senior archeologist in Israel. Naomi Yahlo-Mack, also a professor from Hebrew University

and did a great job on the lead analysis. So I look forward to interacting about those things. I would note that their choice of journals was curious because Aaron Mayer is an editor of IEJ. And so you have the editor assessing his own work here, and that's a little problematic. I would rather that it had been published in a neutral journal where he did not have editorial control or say over it because it makes it difficult then for us in responding and we will academically respond. But, you know, to submit back to IEJ when we're disagreeing with the editor, it's a bit problematic.

Okay, I see. So you plan on an academic response. This is an initial response that you wanted to get out there, but you're skeptical whether IEJ would publish it. Would that be your first option? If not, you go to another similar journal? Well, I'll give you one answer today and a different one tomorrow. I'm really not sure if we'll get a fair hearing there. I would like to publish it there, but still processing that okay fair enough why do these things take so long the rest of us are kind of observing this saying hey we just want to know if this is a cursed tablet if it puts back kind of the writing of old hebrew by 200 years as you claim why can't we just have a big round table discussion here sift through the difference pun intended and settle this thing yeah i mean we have to dot every I and cross every T, and you're talking about very meticulous things, multiple languages, and different time periods, and we're dealing with things like a co-author has cancer, and we've got

a pandemic, and now we've got a war, you know, we've got wars, pandemics, and, you know, cancers, and so it just, life happens, and it takes longer than we would like. That's fair. Okay. So let's jump into each one of these articles. And I apologize in advance if I mispronounce one of the scholars' names. And if I frame this question in a certain way, we're dealing with very nuanced things that in some ways are above my pay grade. Just reframe it for us so we understand where the debate is at and then offer your response. So one of these articles, again, that this appeared in the Israel Exploration Journal is by Nama Yachlom Mack, and it says, it's titled, The Source of the Lead in

the Mount Ebal Tablet. Now, by the way, these first two are important, but really the third one that we get to seems most pressing and consequential for the issues that we're debating, but this kind of lays the groundwork we need to get to. So this is called the source of the lead in the Mount Ebal tablet. Now, Yahalo Mack analyzes the tablet through what's called lead isotope analysis and concludes that the lead can be sourced to the mines in Lavrion in Greece, which as I understand is one of the largest, richest, and oldest in the Mediterranean region, a hundred square miles the size of this mine is. And it dates from the fourth millennium BC until the late Roman period. That is a massive, massive time frame.

And he says this analysis is inconclusive as to the date in the tablet. So here's his conclusion that I want you to jump in. He says the suggestion of Mozart that the alleged inscribed tablet is in fact a fishing net weight sinker is supported by the results presented here. As additional net sinkers are isotopically consistent

with the Mount Ebal artifact, and were likely made of lead from the same source. Now, our next article, we're going to get to the fishing weight sinker and your thoughts on that. But his analysis is basically that it's kind of inconclusive, and we can't use the lead to date this thing in the way you guys suggest.

First of all, Nama is female. Professor Yahlo-Mack is female. She did a really good job. I'm the one who asked her to do the isotope analysis. She did it, did a fair job on it. She brings up something slightly that Mayer and Rolston go into in depth, which is a straw man argument. And there's a number of these that I'm going to point out while we're talking today, saying that we said things we didn't say. I never said that that was the source of dating. Never said it publicly, never said it in writing, certainly didn't say it in the Heritage Science article. What I said was that

it comes from a mine in Lavrion, Greece, which was in use in the late Bronze Age. And normally, that would be the end of it. It's also in use in many other periods. However, we all agree, and as you know by now, Sean, we don't all agree on very much, but we all agree that around 1200, there was a massive collapse of civilization in the Levant. And so exports from the Aegean into Canaan, Israel, cease or come to a trickle around that time. So therefore, as Rolston and Mayer point out in their article, a different source of lead is used in Iron Age 1. Now, that's very important. Here we have the analysis of our lead. We know that it's in use in LB. We know that a different, according to Rolston and Meyer, and they're right, a different source of lead is being used in Iron Age 1. Well, there's only two choices for dating the tablet, and we'll dig into that a little bit deeper in a minute,

and that's LB2 and Iron Age 1. So if it's from Lavrion and it can't be Iron Age 1, then it must be Iron Age 2. It's implying that, it's suggesting that. I never said on its own that that proves anything. I'm saying that it's plausible. So I think it's a bit of a straw man argument, but that's my response to that. Okay, so let me try to sum this up if I understand it.

We're going to come to another article that offers a proposal for what this lead object is. The discovery of the material behind the lead object where it came from is consistent with your proposal and it's consistent with their proposal. So it cannot be used to favor one over the other. Is that fair? Did I miss anything in that synopsis? Only that Mazara strongly implies that it's Iron Age 1, that this tablet, or as he would call a sinker, is Iron Age 1. And what I'm saying is in their own article, they say that lead from Lavrion is not being used in Iron Age 1.

So I think it does favor my view, but it's not conclusive in and of itself. We based our dating on three things, the epigraphy, the archaeological context, and the source of the land as being an ancillary. Okay. So at best, their challenge doesn't undermine this plausibly being one of the three sources, but this isn't a strong point in your favor. You just said it maybe favors it slightly.

Yeah, and that's all that we ever said. And so it's curious that Rolston and Mayer made a big point and then she brought it up as well, that we use that as a basis, as something that was definitive. And we never did that. Okay. Fair enough. Anything else on that before we shift to the second article that you want to make, you want to draw out or is that sufficient no i appreciate her analysis she did a great job okay awesome thank you okay so here's a suggestion by matzar in his article and this is titled again it's the same journal as before this is in the israel exploration journal it's called the lead object from Mount Ebal as a fishing net sinker. Now Mazar as you said is probably the highest regarded archaeologist of this generation who's written a textbook

on archaeology in Israel during this era known for being just conservative and being careful and he joins Mayer and Rolston in not being convinced by the inscription case, by rejecting it. He offers now a different explanation of what he finds most plausible for this lead object. So to make sure people are following this, we found this ancient lead inscription about 2 centimeters by 2 centimeters roughly. And you're saying it's an ancient cursed habit that matches up with Joshua 8, 200 years earlier than an old Hebrew inscription. They're saying, no, we don't buy that the letters are there. We actually think this is just a fishing net, so to speak.

So it's a completely different kind of object. Now they propose that it's a fishing net weight and here's some of the evidence they put forward. So I'll lay it out so people are tracking with this so you can respond they say it's similar to other lead objects from the time and era during the occupation at the site of Mountie Ball these kinds of sinkers were common during that area and matched the material weight and size of the tablet Mazar concedes these kind of weights are rare in the Levant, that it was smashed in antiquity and thus lacks the space for a net's rope seen in most sinkers, that he could not discover them in the major excavation reports from Israel, and he's not sure how or why it would

be in the mountainous region of Mount ebal and it concludes that the markings recall incisions and decorations marked on the lead sheets used to prepare such sinkers before folding but could be secondary yet when it's all said and done he believes the identification as a sinker is adequately secure your thoughts your response okay well let me frame it this way okay we we uh according to mazar's numbers and he is an excellent archaeologist but he's out of his lane here i mean he we've been corresponding i mean he told me he knew nothing about fishing fishing weights until a few months ago and neither did any of the rest of us even though i grew up in a fishing village but so this is not his area of expertise okay nor nor is it mine but um i will point out from reading his own article several things there's what's called an l 2.3 sinker to use his term, which then can be subdivided into A and B. There are 333 of these

L23 sinkers found in the Southern Levant or Israel, if you will, ancient Canaan. Of the 333, are you sitting down, Sean? 331 are type A and two are type B. He says that the Mount Ebal sinker is type B. Interesting. The only two, that's his analysis. He's calling them type B, not the excavator who was Petrie and not Galilei who wrote the article that he continually referenced. That's just his own analysis is that those are B. The truth is there's never been an L23B sinker found in Israel. These two supposed or candidate

ones come from a tomb, what's called the governor's tomb, and it's at a fishing village near Gaza, Tel El Ajud. And so to find fishing weights near that would not be that uncommon. But at an inland site, out of 333, two possibilities, I question those as well. And those two would be on the coast, nothing ever found inland, not by the Sea of Galilee, which is the closest fishing body to Mount Ebal, never found in Israel. Now, let that sink in for a second. The type that he's saying we have has never been found in Israel, with the possible exception of these two at Tel El Adjur. The Mount Ebal tablet has no crease in it where a rope would go through to connect to the net. He concedes that. He said it must have been smashed in antiquity but of course has no proof of that and um the fact that it's inland this is

he offers no explanation for that so those are my problems with this identification i think as shakespeare would say me thinks thou protest us too much okay fair enough did i miss anything else from this it sounds like rolston who also graciously came on just so folks know and offered a response to the original critique which is a lot in his article that we're going to get to anything else from this that gives you pause so it sounds like in some if I'm going to capture this what we have is there are sinkers that are known they match some of the material and some of the size but of the kind that is at uh the Mount Ebal that was discovered there is incredibly rare number one and number two it's never found inland that's a problem and the kind of string that would

go through it is smashed so we don't have the exact structure there's differences in terms of the structure anyways and so it just doesn't match up in your mind of what we would expect to find if this really were a sinker correct okay all right fair enough anything else in that one before we shift to the third which is really where a lot of the the heart of the debate is no let's go for it all right let's do it okay so this is in the third article again same journal and this is written by two scholars aaron mayer and christopher rolston againolston came on this channel before, offered a great analysis. And this is titled, The So-Called Mount Ebal Curse Tablet, A Critical Response. Now this is longer and more in depth and has more details than you and I could go into. So we'll try to put a link

in reference below. Folks could go read that themselves. And these are professional journal articles, but they're very readable to non-specialists in this area, even like myself. And first off, they raised some just kind of methodological concerns for the entire project itself. And one of the things that Rolston Mayer asked is they say that you guys claim there's kind of a text on the outside of the tablet and some that's on the inside of it. And they said, since the inside text requires tomographical analysis, why not begin with analyzing the potential text outside and using what's discovered there to go inside rather than the reverse? That seems easier and more logical.

I agree. In hindsight, that's what i would have done okay fair enough all right next okay mythological they also challenge the reliability of the find stemming from mount ebal itself since it was collected but not sifted until three decades later of the excavation they say say not necessarily probable, but possible. It was brought there after the excavation, and even the sifting material itself could have been corrupted or polluted in some fashion. It's possible, and I have always been open about that. I don't even think that they think that's the case.

They're just pointing out that it's possible. So I can see that it's possible. So we have to rely on probabilities. You can see the possibility. Okay, fair enough. One more methodological critique is they also question the identification of the site as the site of the altar that's mentioned in Joshua. And here's a quote that they say. mount ebal they of course argue is suspect but your findings rely upon that suspect relocation of where the where the site would be your thoughts is this a fair critique well somewhat uh zertal

did come to believe that this was an altar and was in fact very likely joshua's altar but let me remind the listeners there there are two altars, and they never brought that out in the article, although we did in ours. They never responded to this. There's a small round altar that Zertal dated to about 1250 BC. They continually misdated Zertal's dates and said it was the end of the 13th century. It was founded in 1250 and it was in operation, the second altar about 1225, and then that was in use until about 1150.

In my view, it may have been a little earlier. In their view, it may have been a little bit later, but just using Zertal's dates, we're talking about around 1250. Okay. All right. That's what he dates it to. All right, so what about the idea of the site itself being in the wrong place and not matching up with the biblical account? The Bible does, they make an error there. The Bible does not say that it needed to be on the southern slope. I don't know where they got that. It may be implied, or you could read into that, that it was there, but it doesn't state it explicitly. Adam Zertal had a theory that Mount Kabir on the opposite side may have been Mount

Gerizim, and they say, you know, the identification of Mount Gerizim is secure because it goes back to the classical, the identification goes back to the classical period. I agree that the traditional Mount Gerizim is probably the right Mount Gerizim, but traditions dating to the classical period prove nothing. We've got all kinds of Byzantine identifications which are incorrect. So most, I would say when Zertal came out with his original identification, most archaeologists, he got lambasted, and most archaeologists disagreed with him. But the weight of opinion has, over over time swung back to the middle curse tablet you guys are on the outside of mainstream scholarship trying to convince scholarship this is legitimate but in terms of the location of the site this is pretty mainstream accepted that's not where the debate

rests that's correct okay fair enough all right here's where i think the heart of the debate really is when i first talked with rolston here's where he just pushed back as an epigrapher. And I realize you have epigraphers on your team and you're an archaeologist, but if this tablet dates to the right place and to the right time, but there's not actually letters here, then obviously this whole case falls apart. So at the root of the question is, are the letters actually there? Rolston and Mayer say they're not. At least the 48 are not, possibly a handful, but not the 48 letters that you guys have advanced. So make the case why you don't buy their critique that the letters aren't there. Well, Rolston is certainly an expert in this field.

I invited him early on to be a part of the collaboration of the tablet two different times, and he never responded to my emails. But the fact that I reached out to him shows that I respect him, and he's certainly an expert in this field. But both he and Mayer were on the record before our publication ever came out that they were extremely doubtful that there was going to be anything there. And then of course they now published their work. What we said was, I've got three epigraphers on my team, one from Prague, one from Germany, one from Israel, who are all showing me ancient letters through the tomographic scans on the inside. Based upon, I thought I was going overboard having three

epigraphers. Three epigraphers are showing me and telling me that they agree that there are ancient letters on there. Then the question was, what does it say? Can we read it? How does it read? And after studying the complex scans for 18 months, let's say, our eyes became very accustomed because it took me time to be able to see. They would tell me we see an aleph here and we see a resh there. I mean, sometimes I would look and I couldn't see it. And then eventually I could train my eye to see that. So, you know, my team had the advantage of being able to study those 3D scans over a very long period of time. We said in the article, this is what we think it says. OK, one member of my team, Gershon Galil, took a very maximalist approach and said, you know, I'm totally confident this is exactly

what it says. Peter and I took a more conservative approach, and if you've read our article, you can see that. We note where we disagree within there. But we said, to the best of our ability, this is plausibly what it says. It's what we think is the best reading that we can offer. We were not in any way dogmatic, but are there letters of that? I'm 100% confident. What it says, there's no way that we can prove that because we don't know if it reads forward or backward or top to bottom. We just presented our best plausible reading. Okay. So you guys had this for 18 months. We're able to look at it in this depth. Is this now made clear to other scholars to go view the same? Are other images forthcoming? Where does that stand so other people can start weighing in, experts and non-experts,

to see what they think? Yeah, that's a good question. We have made some available. What I would like to do is get a website up that has all of this information so that, you know, everybody can have access to the same stuff that we had. Now, we have the benefit of having the scientists from Prague also consulting with us about helping us learn how to read tomographic scans as well. But, you know, we had a number of things that have come up. First of all, we separated from Galil as soon as the publication came out, and then Peter got cancer, and so he has been recovering from cancer, and this has put us behind. He's now, I think, sufficiently recovered that we can get back to this.

We would like to get back to the tablet, which is in Israel and do some additional scans and make these available. But of course there's a war going on in Israel right now. So, you know, I, I hesitate to put a date on it, but I know that it's important and we will do our best. That makes sense. Now, when, when Rolston came on, he suggested kind of a team split. Is this Galil that you're referring to? And what was that over? Why did he split? And do you guys view things differently now? Did he retract some of his claims? No, no. Galil believes that he saw everything, all 48 letters, and that he knows exactly what it says. Peter and I were more cautious and said, this is what we think it might say. And we're not sure of all the letters. And there's, it clearly can be read other ways. So once the publication

came out, I just notified Gershon, we remain friends, but that, you know, we're not going to continue our collaborative project working with him. He was very insistent on his reading and his way. And I'd like a more open collaborative approach okay fair enough are there other epigraphers who are convinced are there any other mainstream epigraphers who agree with you and would take a different assessment than say rolston and mayer and if so who are they yeah that's a good question uh yesterday a mainstream epigraph i got an email from someone i don't know if he wants his name out there or not, but I've been contacted by many scholars. The problem is like, are we going to

limit this expertise to epigraphers and paleographers only? Or, you know, what allows us to chime in? Because Meir is not an epigrapher. I'm not an epigrapher. You know, yet we're, Mazar is not an epigrapher. So we're reliant somewhat upon these people. And so I have the three epigraphers on my team, and we have the peer reviewers who reviewed this. We have the scholars mentioned in the article. And yes, lots of people have contacted me expressing support. I haven't asked them for permission to use their names. I'll refrain from doing that right now. We'll let it play out. i haven't asked them for permission to use their names i'll refrain from doing that right now we'll

let it play out okay so are there behind the scenes i guess i somewhat hesitate to to ask this but are there certain political dynamics who comes out and takes sides professionally you don't have to say what they are but when people land on this are there risks professionally that are greater to support it versus critiquing it or is the field just like hey we want to know truth we're putting proposals out there willing we're willing to critique it how does that work in this field as fairly as you can give someone from the outside like myself an assessment of this oh if only it were as you describe it. Yeah, there's always problems with challenging the status quo. I think that Agatha Christie, who was married to an archaeologist, referred to it

as blood on the carpet when you start getting into academia in this field. So yeah, the stakes are high. Okay, so what would you say to evangelical scholars, some of whom I've interacted with just a handful since doing a couple of the interviews, who hold a high view of Scripture but are just critical of the conclusions published in the article? Like they want it to be true. They'd love to support it. It challenges potentially the documentary hypothesis, like you said, but are just holding back and reserved.

What would be your challenge or your thoughts or your message to fellow evangelical scholars? Well, I can understand people being there. I would say keep your powder dry. I think after reading our article fairly, one should come away saying this is plausible, at least. They did have three epigraphers who saw this. This is what they think that it says. And give us a chance to put out more scans, more images to make those things available. So some may already be inclined to not want to agree with us. Others may be inclined the other way. And many might be in the middle. I would say keep your powder dry. These things unfold, and there will be more data that'll be coming out

for them to make a better decision. Okay, so help me understand. As we look at the letters that are on the tablet, they look like there's no discernible pattern. There's different sizes. There's different directions. Why would there be no discernible pattern and are there any other script inscriptions you're aware of that have that kind of non-discernable pattern yeah that's how it is in the late Bronze Age you take this proto-alphabetic script say from set of it and Habim in the Sinai and other places the water on Nas and that's what they're like they they can be read top to bottom or they can meander it can be uh Boustrophedon is the oxadi al-Nasb, and that's what they're like. They can be read top to bottom, or they can meander. It can be Boustrophedon is the ox plows, which Rolston points that out also. So that's how

they are. So like Sinai 375a, Sinai 361, the more recent Lachish Lyscomb is meandering. It goes up and down from top to bottom. If they've got the reading right on that, then it's certainly meandering as well. And that's the way they did it in the late Bronze Age. Okay. Interesting. All right. So where this debate rests, just help me kind of frame this for folks, is number one, there's obviously questions about dating. There's obviously questions about location. And then there's questions about, are letters even there? And folks like Rolston, who have been more critical, said they certainly don't buy the 48. You and your team originally differed over exactly how many are there, but took a more larger view that there are letters there.

But then there's the follow-up question. If there are letters there, what do they say? follow-up question. If there are letters there, what do they say and why, in fact, would they even be significant? So I want people to see the layers of the debate that are actually going on. Now, before we get to what the letters allegedly say and what they might mean, did I frame that accurately? Would you add anything else about the debate for people to kind of understand 30,000 foot view what we're looking at? No, that's fine. We're talking about, do we have the oldest example of early Hebrew? Does it have the name Yahweh? Peter Van Der Veen has, as recently as yesterday, said that he thinks that maybe there's something more like 15 to 20

letters he's you know we can't be confident of the 48 but the core of the reading is still there yahweh is there curse is there and those are more clear and so in a follow-up publication i think we will zero in on those because that's really the crux of the matter do we have writing is it proto-alphabetic and do we have uniquely heb Hebrew words like Yahweh? One thing that is brought out, by the way, by Rolston and Mayer is that we're saying that El and Arur and Mot are uniquely Hebrew. We never said that. That's another straw man argument. Go back and read our heritage science article. So there's a number of places where they're saying we said things that we didn't say. The only word we said was uniquely Hebrew was, was Yah Yod He Vav. Okay. So let's, let's take this a little bit further. So if the letters are there, the question is the significance of

what they would mean. For instance, words such as El for God, Yahweh, the argument that Rolston and others have pushed back on is that they're not distinctively Hebrew. And they're common Semitic terms across various Semitic languages and, say, cultures. And the same with the word curse. So if this is a curse tablet from Yahweh and the word Yahweh and the word curse aren't uniquely Hebrew, but are used... No, no. Okay, correct that. No, they're agreeing with us that Yahweh is the only word that is uniquely Hebrew. Okay. But I'm saying that's what we said in the first place. So I don't know what... It's not even a point of discussion. That's what we said in the article. So they're saying know what it's not even a point of discussion that's what we said in the article so they're saying we said something we didn't say that the other words were uniquely hebrew okay so so break this down for us so if the word yahweh is uniquely hebrew and you both agree on that then does it matter if the other words like curse are across different Semitic languages?

It seems like that would be a secondary point because we'd have Yahweh that is there, which is an early kind of old Hebrew. So first off, am I correct on saying that really it's going to hinge on the word Yahweh, not any of the other words when it's all said and done? I would say yes first second would be Arul because if it does relate to Joshua's altar Joshua's ceremony then the Hebrew word curse Arul would be secondary okay all right so is is the debate over whether the word Yahweh is there like can we talk about 48 letters is that one of the debatable ones is

that one that's agreed on that seems like the weight should be on that letter distinctly that word right and uh fortunately that is the more clear part of the inscription um and so in a follow-up publication we will certainly zero in on that okay so yet that case has not been really made publicly and people have not been able to assess it yet. Is that fair in terms of the word Yahweh or are people, at least other scholars outside your team, agreeing that the word Yahweh is there? Oh, some are. Like I said, I don't know if they want their names used or not. That would be up to them. But we presented it letter by letter, for example, yod, he, vav, and rather than showing the combined, where they are together, and it's rather complicated. It's a small area. Some of the

letters overlap. One very important point, Sean, that they ignored and didn't even address in these articles, there are bulges on many of the letters that from the inside out, they bulge through to the outside that reinforced the reading that we were giving to it on the inside. So they never addressed that point. Okay. All right. Did I miss anything in terms of your response? I know this is a lengthy article. They raised a number of points we didn't get into, but are there any before you officially published kind of response back? Any other points that you wanted to make just kind of to get in the record moving forward? Yes. Let me just point out a couple of things. There are a number of

cases where I think they come across, Rolston and Meijer as it is so because I say it is so. For example, on pottery, they say, well, you know, the archaeological context does not point to LB2 when Stripling says that Age I actually does. And then no citation, no parallels. I gave citations. I gave parallels. I made a statement. I backed it up. And I'm sure it's Mayer writing that because Ralston doesn't know pottery, but he just says it's not because I say it's not. And that's not adequate. Secondly, they do the exact same thing with the scarabs. The scarabs cannot date to when stripling is saying that they date. Sean, in our article, I cite the leading scarab expert in the world, Daphne Bintour.

And Daphne agrees with me. And so they just give this cavalier dismissal, don't even address Daphne at all. They just say it can't be so, essentially because we say it can't be so. Because the original reading given by Baruch Randall, he said this, they don't, how can you not address the leading Scarab expert in the world who agrees with me on that point. So again, it is so because we say it is so on this issue of the mater lectianus, which is consonants being used as vowels. We get very much the same thing. It can't be so. And then Rolston cites himself on that. He's the expert. So he says it can't be so because in this book book I said that it can't be so. I don't think that's fair scholarship either. And they're saying that most Ugaritic scholars would not accept our premise. Well, who gets to decide what is most? So in other words, some do,

some don't. You know, is that fair? So I think that was one. The other is the straw man arguments, and I've pointed out a couple of those. And so I'll just leave that there, having already mentioned them. There are some inaccuracies like variation in letter size. They say, you know, you can't have a variation in letter size, but no citations, no parallels. So if you're going to make a statement like that, yeah, I mean, our feet are being held to the fire. I think there should be too. They're making statements that they're not backing up. Scholarly interaction regarding inscriptions normally results in a consensus, they say. Oh, really? What about the Kermit Caiapha ostracon, which everyone thinks is the oldest Hebrew before this, there have been 11 alternate interpretations published since Garfield originally published it. So this is not at all uncommon to have disagreement. In fact, we expected it up front. They use the term old Hebrew a number of times. I think that's a little ambiguous. What is Old Hebrew? Do you mean

Paleo-Hebrew, like the language in which we have the manuscripts of the Old Testament right now? Or are you referring to a proto-alphabetic sort of script? Because the grammar can be different in the two. So I think that's a point that should be thought about as well um and that's it so i appreciate you giving me a chance to to share what some of my objections were and some of the things that i agree with them on by the way okay that's great so i've got a few more questions for you did they push back in any of these three articles in any way you said you know what i need to reassess this our team was wrong here uh We should qualify our statements. In what ways have you guys reassessed

after this public critique, if any? Sure. I wish that we had done the outside before the inside. I wish we had put brackets around some more letters, which are fuzzy to use their term. So I think some of these things that were brought out by them, we certainly would take into account. These are quality scholars and we want to glean from them whatever we can. So moving forward after this, you're working on, I imagine it could take six months, a year, a year and a half,

where you're going to go kind of point by point through some of their critique and try to respond to all three journal articles in some peer-reviewed archaeology kind of journal. Is that the next big step that we could look for as this story moves forward? Yes, we will do that either in IEJ or in another peer-reviewed journal. That will be our goal. Okay, so it sounds like you're as confident as you ever were that the original release that you had about this inscription 200 years earlier still stands. Is that fair? are you still well that the script is

proto-alphabetic which would put it in the 13th or 14th century um lb lb2 in other words yes i am do do we have all 48 letters does it say what what we're suggesting that it might say i i can't know that uh that is the reading I do think the core of it is there and that it isn't a proto-alphabetic script and I do believe that the name Yahweh is there with some kind of curse so the heart of your original claim still stands so given that this is kind of outside scholarship challenging certain assumptions that many people had. If you had to project in 10, 20 years, are you confident that scholars may start looking at this, assess it,

and there could be kind of a monumental shift over time as significant as like the historicity of David, like that scholarship obviously shifted as fines were made. Do you see it as being that significant and potentially as powerful, or do you want to hold back a little bit and maybe not make such grandiose projections moving forward? It's hard to have perspective when you're in the middle of it. And listen, I never even expected to find this. You have to understand. I was doing a boring methodological project on wet sifting to

show what's being missed in dump piles from the past. Once we recovered this, we had a responsibility to process it and to publish it to the best of our ability. So that's what we've tried to do. I think our future might be like Zertal's past in that you have an initial strong reaction. with time the pendulum will probably swing more toward the middle. There are some people who will never accept this because you can't see. I understand it's a tomographic scan. You can't see it. It's hard to accept. And I believe there will be many who will. I talked with Bill Deaver not long ago and Deaver was very critical of Zertal. He said it wasn't an altar and so forth. Now, you know, these years later, he's come around more to the

middle and has said it very well could be. And so, anyway, that's my opinion of what the future might look like. Okay, so two last questions. You raised concern about one of the editors for, at the beginning, the Israel Exploration Journal. Some people might say, Scott, you have publicly come out for this. You were drinking from a mug that had the curse tablet on it. Someone sent you a hat. You've been known for this. So now you have skin in the game, so to speak. And so now you would be biased towards accepting this and pushing it forward. How do you protect from that? Or would you say in archaeology, you're supposed to kind of plant your flag and just keep making the arguments until they've been drawn out.

And then at some point you just go, all right, I've done my best to defend this thing. This is a worthy pursuit. But truth ultimately went out at the end of the day. No skin is lost. We all have presuppositions, Sean. So let's not, and Mayer and Rolston sort of say, maybe Stripling and Van Der Veen are trying to support their view of something that's older.

Maybe they're trying to support the bible uh in some way hey let's not make it like stripling and vanderbilt are the only ones everyone comes to this with presuppositions and lenses and then we're doing our best to be open-minded and deal with with the evidence that exists so um i i think i'm certainly capable of of looking at all the evidence just like anyone else would be. Fair enough. Really appreciate you coming on. Appreciate this story. It's fascinating to me.

I've learned stuff about epigraphy and archaeology and ancient fishing weights I never gave a second thought about before. So it's just such an interesting educational journey, however this thing plays itself out. Now, apart from this journal article that's coming out sometime in the future, are there regular updates where people kind of follow what you are doing, broadly speaking, or specifically on this topic for people who just kind of want to gauge it? Where should people go for that? Well, people, I'm connected with a lot of people on social media. I expect hundreds of thousands of people will watch your podcast today. It'll be a source of information. I spoke at the University of Texas last Saturday about this. So, you know, I'm talking and interacting and people who follow me should be able to keep up with the dialogue. All right, Scott, this is fun. You're always an interesting, engaging guest. Appreciate what you're doing. Thanks for coming on. Give me the chance to have your response here. Did I miss anything you want to add or tweak about this story or we covered it? Well, let me just say in closing that this is an issue. It is an archaeological issue. It is not

the issue. I published a lot of things in 2023. I published a 400-page volume on final publications of my previous dig with ArcheoPress. I published in Jerusalem Journal of Archaeological Research another peer-reviewed article. I have several peer-reviewed articles on a variety of topics. And so, you know, this isn't that I am the curse tablet guy okay this is just this is some little side side project okay okay and it's fine it's fine with me if people other people have different you know views and opinions on this okay let let it breathe and hopefully we'll all come to a consensus one day fair enough but you're not spending your time living and dying, somewhat pun intended, on the curse tablet.

This is one issue you're probing, following up best as you can, given the war that's taking place, given all these other issues to move forward. And you will stick with this issue and keep us informed as this debate unfolds. Again, pun intended. And we will look for that debate as as it goes on further scott really

appreciate you coming on this is always fun to track with folks before you click away make sure you hit subscribe we cover archaeology regularly on here and if you've ever thought you know what i want to probe a little more deeply we have a master's in apologetics and we specifically have one of our professors john bloom has a ph PhD in physics and in ancient Near Eastern studies in archaeology and teaches regular classes on this. We have Titus Kennedy come in someday. Scott, we need to have you come in and do a weekend class for us. That would be awesome. Make sure you look below. We would love to have you in our program, fully distanced in the realm of apologetics. And I teach class on resurrection biblical sexuality problem of evil would love to

have you in class scott you're good man always fun thanks for taking the time to update us on this story thanks john all the best to you and your viewers