The Sean McDowell Show - The Lost Site of the Tabernacle...Have We Found It? | Big Update

Episode Date: September 4, 2026

Scott Stripling's team put out a press release about their latest season at Shiloh. Roughly 400 news stories followed. What his team actually found is more interesting. Since 2017 they've been excavating a building whose dimensions, orientation, and dating all match what we'd expect of the tabernacle and Scott is careful to say it's a strong candidate, not a confirmed identification. He's running the largest dig team in the Middle East, largely funded by people who want the Bible confirmed. What keeps that from shaping the conclusions? His answer is worth hearing. CHECK OUT: Logos Bible 60 Day Free Trial (https://logos.com/mcdowell) CHECK OUT: Consider Supporting the Ministry! (https://seanmcdowell.org/give) *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [smdcertdisc] for 25% 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://x.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sean_mcdowell?lang=en Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org   Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

What if everything you love about your faith got deeper, richer, more rooted, more alive? El Shaddai Ministries exists to take Torah to the nations, restoring the biblical and historical foundations of the connection between Christians and the Jewish roots of Scripture. Pastor Mark Biltz has taught in 25 nations on five continents, and now he's teaching you. Listen free at one place.com. Just search El Shadai Ministries at one place, Life Audio Shiloh is one of the most important sites in the history of ancient Israel. A recent dig uncovers some startling discoveries that give us insight into this ancient city, but also might challenge skeptics to redate its occupation to more closely align with the biblical

chronology. Our guest today, you recognize because he's been on the show a couple times before. Scott Stripling is an author. He is a practicing archaeologist. and leading the dig at Shiloh here to tell us this fascinating story. Scott, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me, Sean. And I've been back from Istro about six weeks now from the dig. So I'm caught up on sleep and should be somewhat coherent. I love that. Now, you and your team sent me an email and I was actually not aware of some of the digs taking

place. And about three lines into it immediately was like, oh, man, if Scott would come on and talk about this, I think my folks will love it. So let's just start. Some people might recognize the name Shiloh, but not realize how significant it is. Why is Shiloh so significant for ancient Israel in the Old Testament? Well, let me frame it like this. Jerusalem was still a pagan city for three centuries when Shilohel was Israel's capital. So just think about that for a minute. If you wanted to get right with God, Leviticus 1711 says, without the shedding of blood, there's no forgiveness of sin. You went to Shiloh. I mean, that's where the tabernacle was. And that's where you went to restore your vertical relationship with God or your horizontal relationships with others through that sacrificial

system. It's the material cultural remains through which we are excavating right now at Shiloh and since 2017 that have illuminated what was going on at that critical point in biblical history. So if you want to talk about what mattered most in early Israel, it wasn't Jerusalem. It was Shilohlo. That's really interesting. Now, it turns out you know this better than I do that you're not the first who has dug there. So maybe tell us a little bit about what other digs have taken place there and what people have found already. Really interesting history. The great American Orientalist, Edward Robinson, in 1838, got his Bible and thought, I'm going to go find Shiloh. And he was on horseback. And so he sat out on horseback with his Bible. And Joshua, I'm sorry, Judges 21 just led him literally straight there. It gave three geographical markers. He marked the spot as Curbit Sailun, which now, of course, we all know is ancient Shiloh. It was the Danish under the National Museum who first broke. ground in 1926 29 32 and then the kind of pre-world war were two tensions were were about and they came back in 1963 for a final season so that Danish dig was first did maybe two percent of the site did good work but of course by modern standards we would sort of you know critique it barillon university

came from 1981 to 1984 back when it's Rolfinglstine was at barra line university and was a bit more conservative also at that time in his view of how the Bible and archaeology related. They did about 2% of the site, maybe 3% of the site, something like that, in different areas. So the staff officer of archaeology, beginning in the late 1980s, and especially after 93, because the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995 carved up Judea and Samaria, what we called the so-called West bank into three zones, A, B, and C, with C being under, it's about 60% of it is in C, which is under total Israeli control. So within area C, the staff officer of archaeology for the civil administration was placed in charge of those areas. So they begin to do some salvage work at

Shiloh to develop it for tourists and stuff. Like if you were going to build a parking lot, well, that had to be excavated for the parking lot to be built. And if paths were going to be put down, there had to be excavation. So we've got three things that work. We've got the Danish data. We've got the Bariland data. And then we have the SOA, staff officer of archaeology data. And then we come along, you know, in 2016 and we're about to start this dig.

We have to take all that data, sometimes using different, you know, wall numbers and locust numbers and True North and magnetic north and kind of synthesize it all into, our plan so that as we excavate and publish, it will make sense. Okay, gotcha. Now, some ancient sites like Sodom and Gomorrah, there's serious debate, even amongst Christian archaeologists, where the location is. When it comes to Jericho, as far as I understand, there's like near universal agreement that we at least know where Jericho is.

How confident are we that this is the biblical Shiloh? Extremely. I am not personally aware of anyone who disputes that, and that's a big deal. in archaeology because, you know, the maximum where there are two archaeologists, there are three opinions. And so everyone's on board, probably for that reason that I gave you at the beginning, what Edward Robinson did, taking his Bible. And it was so specific in Judges 21 that it led him straight to Shiloh. Since then, we have an inscription in one of the churches, because there are five Byzantine churches at Shiloh. One of them has a beautiful inscription, Lord Jesus bless the people

of Shiloh. And it just confirmed what I think people already knew. And then we have found a very similitude, a consistency between the material culture and what we would read in the Bible that would confirm that as well. We're going to get to that. And I love in the article you sent me, and you describe how your team was ecstatic. And if people need to realize, if you've been digging there since 2016, 2017, this is a decade of just like painstaking work where those most, you're most moments you live for, we're going to get there. But tell me what your team brings uniquely to this dig in the sense of what do you bring in that other people didn't do and what are you hoping to find?

Like what are your expectations as you dive into a place like Shiloh? Well, one of the things that we bring is the size of the team. So it's the largest dig team working in the Middle East. And with a big team, you can do some things like wet sifting, for example, that we have, We didn't invent wet sifting, but I would say we perfected wet sifting. And we were the first to actually bring it into the field where we would do it in situ. So in other words, everything that we are excavating is not only checked and then dry sived, but then it's also washed through our wet sifting process so that we know exactly where it came from.

And the value of small finds, be it a bead or a scarab or a bula or something like this, is that we know where it came from because it can help us in the identification and the dating of that particular stratum. So our expertise in wet sifting, I had worked for two years as a supervisor on the Temple Mount Sifting project in Jerusalem, and it was at that time that I made it by mind. This is really a game changer,

but all of that material we were working with in Jerusalem, it was out of context. It had been disturbed. When I get the chance to bring this into the field, I'm going to do it. And we're going to see this is going to really make a big difference. And so I would say the size of our, team and the newer technology that we're able to bring to bear makes a big difference.

And then thirdly, Sean, we've been working in that area since 1979. I mean, we excavated Curbit, Nisir, Sogut, and then Kirby of the Makatir. We did the project of Maniwal and now Shiloh for a decade. So we know not only the pottery and the physical remains from Shiloh, but we have a regional perspective. And it takes time to develop that. So we know what the pottery is like at the surrounding sides. And we know what the transitions are not only at Shiloh,

but we can compare that from a larger perspective. So I have a colleague, Clint Arnold, at Talib School Theology, who's one of the experts on Colossians in the world, written a huge commentary on it. And they're starting to dig at Colosset. And it costs them hundreds of thousands of dollars. Like, just give us a sense from the outside going, okay, wait a minute. You have the biggest team, if I heard you correctly, not just at this site ever, but in the Middle East doing any archaeological dig.

If I heard you correctly, it sounds like I did. I mean, how do you fund this? How do you get the money? Like, how do you even put this thing together of such magnitude? Well, now that you asked, the viewers are welcome to donate because I do it the old-fashioned way, okay? It's by faith. I think about Elat Mazar and her great dig in Jerusalem. She thought she knew where David's palace was.

And she waited 10 years until she had a donor to start digging. You know, we on the other hand get out there in sort of the evangelical way by faith. Like, you know, the provision is going to show. No, seriously, we raise money. And over time, people who have worked with us over these decades have caught our vision and they support what we do. And then, of course, the volunteers pay a dig fee, and that helps as well. The site at Ancient Shiloh, they also contribute in some ways, like with electricity and water and security. I don't get charged for those things.

And so those are sort of in-kind types of contributions. But I sympathize with the dig at Colossade. I've been hoping this would start for many years, because when you're starting, you have to create a group. grid and create protocols and proposals and then licensing and then fundraising and then recruit a team, train that team, and then begin the excavation process and begin to then actually publish because, as you well know, the goal of archaeology is not excavation, it's publication. That's right. Yeah, it is really interesting because Clinton is not an archaeologist. He doesn't claim to be. He's a theologian, New Testament scholar.

but has sent these newsletters and updates, and I read about what it entails. I think, oh, my goodness, the hoops you have to jump through. I can't imagine for the number of people on this team, for the amount of expense, just how significant Shiloh is, that it's remarkable that you started digging about a decade ago. So, all right, let's get to this moment. And it's your word, just for the record, not mine. In the article you sent me, you said you made a discovery that made your time. team ecstatic.

What did you discover? What if everything you love about your faith got deeper? Richer, more rooted, more alive. El Shaddai Ministries exist to take Torah to the nations, restoring the biblical and historical foundations of the connection between Christians and the Jewish roots of Scripture. Pastor Mark Biltz has taught in 25 nations on five continents, and now he's teaching you.

Listen free at one place.com. Just search El Shaddai Ministries at one place.com. Well, that's what our press release said. What most of the media apparently heard, because we had about 400 news stories that came off of that, what they heard was, we claimed to have found the Ark of the Covenant. Oh.

Now, how they got that from what I said, you, is that what you thought when you saw that? Not even close. No. But, I mean, it just became click. clickbait and, you know, one story fed to another. And of all those 400 stories in multiple languages, only two reporters ever actually reached out to me.

And it's not like I'm hard to find. And I think that was Fox News and CBN reached out to me to actually check facts. And they wrote really good stories. So anyway, I circle back around to your original question. What's fascinating. It's not that we found the arc of the covenant. what we have been excavating since 2017 and really beginning into 2018, we began to see a building emerge as we lowered the matrix that seemed to match the dimensions of the biblical tabernacle

and the dating seemed to work. It was east-west. It was divided on two-to-one ratios. So it was on our radar. I have never said that we have found the building of the tabernacle, but what I have said increasingly each year is that we have a strong candidate for this and it continues to to meet the criteria that we would want it to meet and in the end we will never be able to say definitively that we found the the tabernacle building because there's not going to be a sign that says you know samuel slept here or you know eli slipped here or something like that we're just going to be able to say here are the dimensions here's what the bible says yeah here's the cultic material that we're finding, here's the ceramic profile, the orientation of the building. And then what the biblical

text says about a permanent building being built at Shiloh. So it was that that we found fascinating. And underneath the five visa to the east of this building is a very large bone deposit, over 10,000 bones from the biblical sacrificial system that we can get into a little deeper later. but we have removed that Fivisa, and underneath it, I wanted to see how far it was down to bedrock. Well, it went much deeper than I suppose, and after we got through a layer of tumble, we came down on three large storage jars. And we were able to keep them, and they're broken, but they were intact. And so we were able to carefully keep them intact as we continued to excavate the surrounding area. And funny, I told the area supervisor, Jordan McClinton, at the beginning of this particular day,

Jordan, don't even come back for lunch today unless you bring me burned olive pits from that area. I want to be able to date that area with radiocarbon dating because seeds are the best thing to date with, because like charcoal, we don't know how old the tree was before it was burned, whereas the seed, it's short-lived. And so they're perfect for dating. And so Jordan shows up at lunchtime that day with about 500 burned olive fits. Not only did we find these jars underneath the Fabisa, but they were full of. And we have an archaeobotanist on staff on site.

So it's not like in the old days, I would have to wait a year to find out what was in these jars. I knew right away. We had olives and we had lentils. And this, you know, makes a lot of sense when you think about it. But they'd all caught on fire, and probably from the olive oil that the olives were in was combustible and either accidentally or intentionally, if it was an invasion or something like this, it caused the whole area to catch on fire, which gave us our radiocarbon dates that we needed. So the surprise was the jars were from the middle bronze age. That's how we dated them. And our ceramic typologist, Leo Freud from Tel Aviv University, you know, it just looks like what we would typically date is middle bronze.

But last week I got the results back from the radiocarbon dating, and we got a big surprise. Oh, you're not going to leave me hanging on this show, are you? No, no. I just thought we'd tease that out a little bit. Okay, I love it. Hey, quick pause. I want to tell you about a Bible study tool that I've used. use for 25 years. It is one of only two sponsors I have on this channel, along with Talbot School

Theology. Why? Because I deeply believe in it, and I deeply benefited from it. And I want you to consider using it. It's called Logos, and the tools it offers at your fingertips will blow you away. I use it preparing for interviews. I use it in my personal Bible study in the morning. And I even used to when I was writing my dissertation. That means it's a tool that can be used by scholars who want to go deep and lay people who just want to get into the scriptures for themselves. If you want to learn how to study the Bible for yourself and just own and know the scriptures, you will not find a better tool than Logos. I'd love for you to consider trying it out. Start a free 60-day trial, which you can find at Logos.com slash McDowell. Link is in the description.

Now back to the show. Hang on. Now let me circle back to that surprise. I just want you to know that I got my title for this video, giving it out of 400 news stories, only two checked with you. I'm going to title it. Have we found the arc of the covenant? I'm just asking questions. That's it. That's perfect, yeah.

Kidding aside, what other candidates you said we could never prove definitively that this is like the seat of the tabernacle? I think that's the language that you used. We couldn't prove it definitively. what you have seems to line up with it so far what else could it be what other candidates could there be in that place in that time rather than what you think and obviously hope that it is well folks could go to my academia.edu page and get an article that I wrote back in

2016 on the candidates for where the tabernacle may have been at shiloh and what the theories have been either on the summit which is what my view was when the dig started that it went you know when it was a tent originally it could have moved from more than, could have been in one location and been moved to another. When a permanent building is built, and again, look at 1 Samuel chapter 3,

for example, where they're calling it now the temple of the Lord at Shiloh and the house of the Lord at Shiloh. And we also see in the Mishnah, like the Seder Olam 8, the Zevayim 146, say the same thing, that a permanent building is built at Shiloh

with a tent over the top as a roof. so it becomes a quasi tabernacle tent structure. So that was already on my horizon. We have the northern platform, which back in 1866, Charles Wilson had suggested, because it was a rectangular area that was Shiloh, that could have been where the tabernacle was. Kaufman repopularized that in the 1980s.

The local community, once it started in 1977, they sort of gravitated to that because it's like, okay, this is our heritage. We need a place to go pray. So the summit, the northern platform, the southern approach is where the churches were all built. And so we could say that, you know, the Byzantines like that flat, open area.

I suggested it could have moved around when it was a tent. Those are the other options. And so now I was more surprised than anyone when we began to uncover this building that I now think is the strongest candidate. Okay. I'm going to come. It was like my archaeological acumen that led us to the building, but it really wasn't. I mean, that's where we decided to start digging. There's a picture of me driving the first stake in the excavation, which happens to be right on top of where this building is.

That's incredible. Now, maybe you have some savvy from experience you don't even realize, so I'll give you more credit than you're claiming for yourself. I want to circle back to this big discovery that you hinted for us, but help us understand the chronology here. There's a lot of debate about when you're. the Exodus was, the conquest was when Abraham lived. How do you date this? And is it as significant as other things such as the conquest and the Exodus for which there's real significant debate about where we place it? Well, you're right.

And as you know, I was a co-author in Zonarvitz book, Five Views on the Exodus. So they could have done one on 50 views on the Exodus, probably, because there are a lot. But, you know, got it down to five. So I wrote the chapter on the early date or the biblical date of the Exodus. And so in just a few words, either you're at 1446 as an Exodus date or you're at 1406, depending on whether you're taking the Masoretic text reading or the Septuagint reading. If it's, let's say, 1406 and you subtract 40 years for a wilderness sojourn, then a conquest is beginning around 1366 in archaeology parlance.

That would be late Bronze Age 2A. And so the conquest actually ends at Shiloh. and it starts at Jericho and it ends at Shiloh. And so let's say somewhere in that early 14th century BC is where we're looking for that evidence. Those who hold to a late date would be looking in the 13th century as opposed to the 14th century. It's really not as far apart as you might think. So that's kind of the lay of the land. Okay.

All right. That's helpful. Tell us what you just discovered recently that you hinted at before from dating, I think it relates to. Okay, well, number one, the date that Israel Finkelstein, who was in charge of the Barlawn University excavation, that he had placed on the Favisa, the bone deposit in Area D, was late Bronze Age 1. So let's just look at the late Bronze Age, because regardless of which view is right, it's all going to be in the late Bronze Age. So LB1 is 1550, let's say to 1400, LB2 is 1,400 and 1,200. So Finkelstein had said that the Fibisa dating it on the pottery because he didn't do any radiocarbon dating, but based on the pottery was Iron Age 1 maybe down into the beginning

of Iron Age 2A, so 1 slash 2A, which made it Canaanite. So this is where a century can make a difference, okay, because he thought, okay, well, this is evidence of a Canaanite sacrificial system at Shiloh before the Israelites arrived. And in his view back then, you know, there were Israelites and they would have arrived maybe sometime around 1,200 or something like that. So then he, of course, was able to do the publication. So in the literature, what you would read is that there was a Canaanite sacrificial system at Shiloh. What I said going in is let's test that because my reading of the pottery was that it was a little bit later than that. And so I wanted to go in and finish excavating the fabisa and radiocarbon date the bones.

And let's check. So I brought in outside specialist. I added a zoo archaeologist to the team, Haskell Greenfield from the University of Manitoba. I brought in the top ceramic typologist, Leora Freud, so that it wasn't just me saying, you know, well, these bones and the pottery. But, you know, these guys are going to collaboratively, we're going to arrive at this conclusion. And the radiocarbon dates came back from 2023, and now we have a new round of them. And it turns out that Finkelstein was indeed off by about a century, which is what I had thought. And so it was very clearly in the mid-14th century, what we would call the terminus post-quim,

the earliest possible date is mid-14th century, and then continuing down to into Iron Age 1. So a period of over 200 years for a sacrificial system, which means, Sean, if one takes an early date for the Exodus, then this is not evidence of a Canaanite sacrificial system. It's an Israelite sacrificial system. And now this begins to make sense. Why do we disproportionately have young male animals? Why do we have more bones from the right side of the animal than from the left side of the animal and so forth? So now that we know that it's possible for ceramic typologists and good archaeologists, just to misdate something based solely on pottery. We all want more than one thing. We want to triangulate if we can. But if you're only using pottery, it's not like around the year 1400, there was a potter's convention,

and they all said, okay, we're not going to make these types of vessels anymore. So we like to talk about horizons. Okay, this is in the late Bronze Age 1B to a horizon because there's transitions that are taking place in ceramic forms. Well, we were able to then, with the radio carbon dating and the other special objects, calibrate that date down into the late Bronze Age 2A. That then brings me to the big discovery from this last season that was fascinating to us, were these storage jars.

We thought we were right above bedrock, but we had another occupational level below us, and the storage jars that we initially dated to the Middle Bronze Age. and I have always been skeptical of if we ceramic typologist, and I would consider myself a ceramic typologist. I have outside typologists who help us as well. But it's a little fuzzy at the end of the middle Bronze Age and into the late Bronze Age, I've always sensed that maybe we were dating things that were late Bronze Age

and we've been pushing them into the Middle Bronze Age, or at the other end, things that were late Bronze Age, pushing them down to the Iron Age. So unless it's painted pottery, it's a form that we know well. And there just hasn't been in the Central Hill country, which is the majority of Istro, there haven't been that many digs.

And of those digs, earlier digs were not doing radiocarbon dating. And so like we did at Curbit-Ele-Cotta and now at Shiloh, and this is extremely helpful. So the date of the burned olive pits comes in at around 1530, 1540 right around there, give or take 30 years. So it's just the beginning of late Bronze Age 1, not Middle Bronze Age 2. So again, we may be off a century.

So I now have two examples from area D at Shiloh of where we archaeologists are maybe not as smart as we thought. You know, we try to be careful about this, but it just reminds us that, you know, we have tentative conclusions and, you know, we're always learning and adding more information to this. My hope is that if indeed we are able to calibrate and better understand the ceramic profile and the transitions, it not only helps us at Shiloh, but maybe it helps other digs in the future as well. Oh, that's really interesting. Okay, so two-part question tied to this. Number one, how else? Oh, actually, let me ask you something first. In terms of the bones, if it was Jewish, we'd expect there not to be pig bones, correct? And is that what we find? And would we expect them at a Canaanite site?

So, great question. A typical deposit in Israel, Canaanite deposit, will have about 4% pig bones or slightly more than 4%. When you're at an Israel side, you're going to have 1% or less. less than one, you know, half a percent or something because they're usually contamination, you know, some some amount of contamination can occur or maybe some poor Israelite, just smell bacon frying and it was just more than, more than he could stand. I don't know, but there's usually just a small amount in the five, so we have a few stray bones, but less than one percent pig bone. And so it, you know, it indicates to us that it's a

kosher funnel deposit, mainly sheep and goats and cattle, and distrable. And, disproportionately, slightly disproportionately, say 57%, something like that from the right side, 43% from the left side. I bring that up because the Bible says in Leviticus 7 that the right side of the animal is the priest's portion, and there were priests who lived at Shiloh. And so when we have 10,000 bones, it can't just be an accident. There has to be, if that's not the explanation, there has to be another one. And then the young, disproportionately young male animals and so forth, suggest to us that literally we are looking at the remains of the biblical sacrificial system. Mixed in with that are seven gold pieces and one silver piece, pendants, earrings, special offerings.

Now, Sean, most archaeologists that I know have worked their whole career and never found gold. It's very rare. People don't lose gold or silver in the ancient world. It's valuable. at Shiloh, nowhere else at Shiloh, have we found gold, except a couple of maybe small Islamic coins on the surface. But within this small area of this Fabisa, we have seven gold pieces and one silver piece.

They are offerings that are mixed in with the bones and mixed in with the pottery that someone special like Hannah, who out of great empathy came to Shiloh and wanted to connect with God, and she gave something of great values. so it appears to me. Now, here's another example of the power of wet sifting. Barlawn University did not do that. They found one gold piece. We found everything else, all the others. And they excavated far more of it than we did. But in the portion that we did, look at all that we found.

That means that this stuff was being thrown away in the past. Okay, so correct me if I'm wrong. The bone feels like a very strong reason to believe that it is more of a Hebrew Jewish site than it would be a Canaanite site. The gold feels like it could fit, but less strong for me as a case. And maybe I'm missing something. But is there anything about the shape of the gold, the amulet that is put into that would fit it as well? Or these just random gold things that were found that could kind of match any kind of belief system in ancient times. What if everything you love about your faith got deeper, richer, more rooted, more alive? El-Shadai Ministries exists to take Torah to the nations, restoring the biblical and historical

foundations of the connection between Christians and the Jewish roots of Scripture. Pastor Mark Biltz has taught in 25 nations on five continents, and now he's teaching you. Listen free at one place.com. Just search El-Shadai Ministries at one-point.com. place.com. It's a great question. We have a peer-reviewed article coming out on this in Judaism area research studies soon. That's a collaborative article with six authors that are a part of this. And we'll go into great detail of explaining why these gold pieces typologically fit in the late bronze age two. And so I would say, suggest that it supports the interpretation that it's part of a biblical Favisa because they date to late Bronze Age 2A, which is the time that

the Israelite vivas as being formed. The Bible does indicate that the Israelites are taking earrings, for example, and giving them as offerings to the Lord. And so we do have mixed in here earrings as well. Gold and silver and then electrum, which is part gold and part silver. Okay, that makes sense. So I assume, like in any case like this, you have your evidence convicting somebody, but then there's certain outlier facts.

It's like we're not quite sure what to do with that. and if it's the right person who committed the crime, over time those facts fall into place. What are some of the outlining questions you have right now that you've still got to land? And how would you triangulate this thing? Because you said you want to have three pieces, at least of evidence, that point towards the theory that you're putting forward. And it sounds like you have at least two. How else would triangulate this? And what are some of the outlining questions that are like,

We're still working in this. We don't have an answer yet. Okay, great question. Ideally, we'll find something written, something that's glyphic, like an inscription of some kind. And then we can paleographically date that. And that would be our third piece of the puzzle, okay? But Poo's pretty good. Okay.

And we call radio carbon dating absolute dating. We call ceramic typology relative dating. And so if you had to choose one or the other, you'd rather have the absolute. absolute day. We have, we have both. So, so that's excellent. Now, things that are still remaining that we're working through within the monumental building, which if we're right is the, my hypothesis is that that is, is likely the building of the tabernacle. It's, uh, the favisa is due east of that building. The stratigraphy is complicated. Um, and I think it's complicated because they kept it clean. Like we're not, we don't find much pottery. It's not like a regular building or

a regular area or a market or something like that. If something breaks in the tabernacle, you clean it up. You know, it's kept pretty, pretty tidy. And so we're still grappling with the, the, the, the, the stratigraphy within there. We're pretty confident that it was built at the end of the late Bronze Age 2 in the beginning of Iron Age 1 because you have the tent for a while for, you know, two or three generations, maybe. You have the, the tent of the tabernacle, the Bishkan is at Shiloh.

And at some point, and we don't know why, but the Bible shows it and the Mishnah shows it, somehow they feel like they got permission from God to build a permanent structure. And I might add that we don't have any domestic dwellings at Shiloh, none from the late Bronze Age when the period of the Mishkan. But once that building is built, now we begin to see domestic structures constructed at Shiloh. Kind of like that biblical idea that we hear from David later, like how can I build my building? myself a house when God is still in a tent. So once they build this house for the Lord, then they begin to build their own houses at Shiloh, too. Now, what remains to be investigated? I'll give you one thing that comes to mind real quickly, Murak's shells. So we are finding, so far, 12 murric shells at Shiloh. The murric shell, you extract the dye, the gland produces the dye by

which you would from which you would make the priestly garments and which you would dye the tenths of the tabernacle as well. Now 12 murrick shells of course does not does not make a dye production facility but you know we're just who knows maybe there's a horde of them that we're about to uncover and we're just getting a getting a few right now. Why do you have these in the central hill country because we don't find down at door on the coast there's a factory but we don't have them at other hill country sites, why do we have them at Shiloh? And so that's something that I'm really interested in exploring further. And I'm hoping that we're able to get clarity. And you can see where on the Murick's shell, where it's been punctured so that they can extract from that as well.

So it seems to me that they were making something and perhaps it has to do with the biblical sacrificial system. So we've got three more years of excavation, which hopefully can bring bring clarity on things like that. Well, we will circle back with my audience for sure and see what you find. But I have a few last questions for you. Let me play the skeptic here and say, all right, you're bringing in this huge team, a ton of funding. I presume most, if not, at least many of them, are evangelicals wanting you to find something that proves the Bible.

What safeguards do you build in place? Because I remember 20, 25 years ago, I watched this video on Evolution. It was publicly funded. and it was this huge team and they were looking for this missing link and what they found, I remember thinking, that is so lame.

I think they're trying to make it seem bigger than it is to justify this huge search. And I've seen many even Christians fall into this trap. So what safeguards do you build into place where if it came out, it was a Shil, you'd say, hey, here's the reality, here's what we actually found.

Well, number one, the team that I put together. So I have people who are from Israeli universities who are on my staff, from Canadian universities, U.S. universities. And so it's a free thinking thing. I hate group think, Sean. I just can't stand group think where there's some sort of internal pressure where everyone has to think the same way. I've tried to create an environment where we're going to explore all possibilities. It just so happens that we're at a biblical site and that we have uncovered a building that matches the dimensions of the biblical tabernacle. So am I to not talk about it? You know, that that's what it appears. I would say go back and look what I published, even that article,

the 2016 article that's on my academia page about the locations of the tabernacle. I'm on record saying that I thought the tabernacle would have been on the summit of the site. you know so clearly we weren't trying to find it in our excavation areas because I'm on record saying I thought you know I can't I can't wait to excavate the summit because I think that's where it would have been so you know we have a research questions and we try to explore those with a criteria screen with some objectivity like you know if if we find these criteria this would indicate to us a high degree of probability that this equals that. Okay, that's fair. And I remember the last time I interviewed you on the inscription, you made a point, maybe this was off the record, kind of like you put your name on a certain discovery and you put the evidence out there for peer review examination. And if it comes out that you're wrong, you lose a lot of credibility moving forward. And that's built into archaeology. It's built into my work on the apostles. People have responded and I've engaged that. That's a good part of what academia does. And I appreciate that this isn't just a price. organization for Christians, you're bringing in different professors, sometimes with different views, and making your arguments public. So a couple last questions. If you are right about this, like best case scenario, you triangulate this thing, what follows from it do you think? Well, I think then we'll hash this. We have a number of peer-reviewed publications that are in the works.

We have a three-year article, and it's hours a day of my time goes into the publications, because it's really important to me that this gets out and that it's done well. In this scenario that you propose, let's say that we do end up believing that we have found the building of the tabernacle and evidence of the sacrificial system at Shiloh, and our peer-review publications are out, our books are out there, and then people can have at it in academia. I think that if it's not the building of the tabernacle, then we have to answer the question,

how is it possible that we have two buildings of the same dimensions that date to the same time periods at the same place that orient east-west? But I don't have any illusion that everyone is going to say, yeah, oh, yeah, that must be it, because that's just not the way that this works. Yeah, archaeology and academia basically never works that way. That's a fact.

Okay, so what you have so far is fascinating. It's certainly enough for me to like pause and be like, wait a minute, they're making a case here that this is Shiloh. The investigation is ongoing and I appreciate that you've nuanced things saying we never have certainty. We're still making our arguments. But based on what you have so far, what would you say just to a lay Christian or even a non-archologist like me, what you think is the significance of what you've discovered?

Well, if, let's say that one is a Christian, you think about faith connections. I mentioned Leviticus 1711 earlier, but just think about the incarnation. When John is grappling in John Chapter 1 with a way to communicate the incarnation to his audience, he says, and the word, the logos of God, it became flesh and tabernacled among us. He pulls that image out because the tabernacle was made of skin, right? And so here, the arc of the covenant was in it, which is the presence of God. So kind of like God takes on skin and he moved among us, he tabernacled among us. And so I would just say kind of on a faith level that people should find this very inspirational

to understand the tabernacle better is to understand the incarnation. Now, for those who are maybe of different faiths, Jewish or of other faiths, I think from a purely historical perspective, they should find it fascinating as well, that we were able to find verisimilitude between the earliest of the biblical texts and what we find in the archaeological record. And then just the pure archaeology of it. I mean, the methodology that I think we have mastered and hopefully will, other digs will benefit from the advances that we make in the technology in the field. This is such a great story. I'm glad we're able to talk about this. How can people track if they want to know over the next three years, kind of what you're discovering in the debates?

And we'll obviously have you back. But tell us how people can kind of track this ongoing investigation. Thank, Sean. Our website is digshiloh.org. Digshiloh.org. And I always joke, don't go to digshyllo.com. That's my dog's website. And he's a great digger also. But digshiloh.org. My personal website is gotstripling.net. And then the school's website is the bible seminary.org. And they can follow along with us there. You didn't ask me to say this. You didn't mention this. But obviously there's a huge expense that's here. And I would encourage folks to check it out. If you're able to support even a little bit, it helps this kind of research.

For me, in some ways, it doesn't surprise me because as a whole, icy archaeology as the story of the more technology we have, the more digs we find. Although it started with a guy on camelback or a horse and a Bible fighting Shiloh to the technology we have now is filling. in the gaps of the biblical story and giving us confidence that these things are true. So I'm not shocked that you found in the place seemingly at the time. What matches the dimensions tied to the tabernacle shouldn't shock me. But every time we find it's like, oh yeah, this is real. We're talking about real history here. And if it is where the tabernacle sat, that was where God's presence in particular came down, which is reminiscent of Jesus fully God's presence in the flesh, tabernacle among us. That connection is really, really cool. Last question,

you're working on a book on The Conquest. Now, I had Brian Windelaw, a colleague of yours. We talked about his unique approach to dating the Conquest. But tell us a little bit about when that book is coming out. And folks, if you want me to have Scott on to make his case for the Joshua Conquest, Conquest, comment down below. But tell us about that one, and we'll wrap up. What if everything you love about your faith got deeper, richer, more rooted, more alive. El-Shadai Ministries exist to take Torah to the nations, restoring the biblical and historical foundations of the connection between Christians and the Jewish roots of Scripture. Pastor Mark Biltz has taught in 25 nations on five continents, and now he's teaching you.

Listen free at one place.com. Just search El Shaddai Ministries at one place.com. Jericho to Shiloh, fresh perspectives on the conquest. So the conquest begins at Jericho. And of course, that's where Brian has done some really good research. And then I'm excavating Shiloh. And so just made sense, the beginning of the conquest to the end of the conquest. A lot has been written about the Exodus in the last decades, but not much about the conquest.

And now that we are excavating more of these conquest sites, I feel like we have seen enough of that we can see patterns. And we can begin to explore those patterns, bring in the latest evidence, juxtapose it with the biblical text, bringing other things like the Amarna letters and bring that into the discussion. And then I think even if someone doesn't agree with everything that we write, like I may not even agree with everything that I write. But I think they'll find it engaging. Everybody will learn something. They'll be challenged intellectually. And hopefully they'll be motivated spiritually as well.

All right, friends, please let me know what you think about a show like this. One thing I try to do is just kind of bring archaeology and near-death experiences, evidence for the Bible, these big topics, especially stories that might not be on your radar. So please comment down below. My team will take a look at what you thought about this episode. Do you like, no, do two hours unpacking this more. Give us your thoughts. It would be helpful for the channel moving forward.

Make sure you hit subscribe. We've got a lot of fascinating topics this fall. You will definitely not want to miss. We're revisiting Michael Heiser again soon and a whole host of others on near-death experiences and beyond. If you thought about studying apologetics, we actually have classes we offer on archaeology at times with one of your friends, Titus Kennedy. In fact, some point, Scott, we need to get you out of the dig. Teaching a class with us at Bailantalbett would be amazing. But sign up folks, information below.

We'd absolutely love to have you. Scott, thanks, my friend. We'll do it again. Thanks, Sean. All right. Hey, friends, if you enjoyed this show, please hit that follow button on your podcast app. Most of you tuning in haven't done this yet.

And it makes a huge difference in helping us reach and equip more people and build community. And please consider leaving a podcast review. Every review helps. Thanks for listening to the Sean McDowell Show, brought to you by Talbot School of Theology at Biola University, where we have on campus and online programs in apologetic, spiritual information, marriage and family, Bible, and so much more. We would love to train you to more effectively live, teach, and defend the Christian faith today.

And we will see you when the next episode drops. You're fearfully and wonderfully made. God looks at your heart, not your jeans eyes. Do you know the verses yet still stress over your body? Oh, I get it. I was raised in church, but I struggled with food, eating disorders. and my body for decades. I'm Heather Creekmore, host of the Compared to You podcast, where we talk about all things body image and comparison from a biblical perspective. We get real about the pressure to

focus on appearance in a culture where looks seem to matter most. Whether you're wrestling wrinkles or battling the scale compared to who is the show for you, you'll laugh a little and be encouraged a lot. If you're ready to stop comparing and start living, visit life audio.com to listen and subscribe.