One of the most remarkable discoveries in Biblical archaeology last year was a slight lead “curse tablet” uncovered on Mount Ebal. However, more than one year after Dr. Scott Stripling announced the discovery, the find still draws criticism from skeptics. A recent article in the Times of Israel (TOI) featured some of those opinions. Dr. Stripling spoke exclusively with Israel365 News to refute those criticisms.

In December 2019, Dr. Scott Stripling, Director of the Archaeological Studies Institute at The Bible Seminary in Katy, Texas, led an expedition from the Associates for Biblical Research (ABR) to Mt. Ebal to wet sift the discarded material from Adam Zertal’s 1982–1989 excavation. Zertal believed that he had found the site of Joshua’s altar as described in Deuteronomy (27:1-8). Stripling’s team discovered a small (2 x 2 centimeter) folded lead tablet. 

They discerned scratches on the surface and believed they were letters but could not decipher what may have been written. The tablet, which the researchers date to 1400-1200 BCE (over 3,200 years ago), could not be opened without damaging it, so a team of experts performed X-ray tomography scanning in Prague and detailed photography. The tomographically reconstructed data were subjected to advanced processing to reveal the hidden text.

Stripling formed a collaboration with four scientists from the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and two epigraphers (specialists in deciphering ancient texts): Pieter Gert van der Veen of Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz and Gershon Galil of the University of Haifa.

The scientists concluded that the inscription contained as many as 48 letters in a proto-alphabetic script likely dating to Late Bronze Age II. 

Furthermore, the writing was a formulaic curse on the tablet’s inside and outside. In collaboration with Stripling, Galil and van der Veen deciphered the proto-alphabetic inscription, which they claim reads: “Cursed, cursed, cursed – cursed by the God YHW. (יהו). In Galil’s opinion, the inscription dates to the end of the thirteenth century BCE—close to the date of the Merneptah Stele (ca. 1208 BCE), but the other authors believe it could be older.

This type of inscription in lead may have been hinted at in the Books of Job (19:24) and Jeremiah (17:1).

The earliest Hebrew writing previously found—the Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon found in the dig at the ancient fortress city near the central Israeli town of Beit Shemesh—was dated from 1000 BCE, making the inscription on this tablet 200 to 400 years older. Its use of the Hebrew word for God also predates the oldest previously found in Israel by 500 to 600 years. If the dating of the tablet is accurate, it may add to the evidence that the exodus from Egypt was earlier than previously believed.

The TOI article comes after Dr. Stripling published an article about the discovery in The Heritage Science Journal. The TOI article was critical of Dr. Stripling for announcing the discovery in popular media before publishing it in a peer-reviewed journal. 

“To be candid, we had reason to be concerned that other scholars would preempt our findings,” Dr. Stripling said. “So we announced before we published, without releasing detailed images.”

Unlike the initial announcement, the peer-reviewed article included high-definition images of the tomographic studies. 

Dr. Stripling was unperturbed by the criticism.

“In my lifetime, I have never seen an inscription that did not generate a firestorm of controversy,” he said. “And I encourage it. Critical thought is an essential part of the scientific process. “We expect a healthy exchange of ideas. All we can do at this point is present the data and our conclusions. Other researchers may come to different conclusions in the future, but the data is here. Future discoveries may lead to different conclusions, but at this point in time, our conclusions stand.”

But he felt the TOI article presented a biased picture.

“The reporter cites scholars who were already on the record as being unfavorably disposed to the inscription before they ever read the article,” Dr. Stripling said. “I could have given the Times a long list of scholars who agree with us.”

One critic cited by TOI was Prof. Christopher Rollston, an expert in Northwest Semitic languages and the chair of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at George Washington University, who claimed that “there are no actual discernible letters.”

“This article is basically a textbook case of the Rorschach Test, and the authors of this article have projected upon a piece of lead the things they want it to say,” Prof. Rollston wrote.

Dr. Stripling contested that claim. 

“The tablet has been exposed to the elements for several thousand years,” Dr. Stripling said. “Since the tablet cannot be unfolded, direct study of the inside inscription is impossible. Some letters are not fully visible on all slices, and a few forms lack certainty. Identifying letters near and within the central fold is especially challenging due to cracks and bends in the lead. Likewise, the letters are minuscule in size and vary between ca. 1.5–4 mm.

“The writing style at that time was not standardized, and the letters are not uniform in their orientation, with some overlapping. Moreover, the scribe was constricted by very limited space, while the lead as a writing surface likely hampered the execution of more uniform letters. Even so, as several interior letters can also be detected on the outside of the tablet, where pressure marks of these letters caused by the stylus appear, we can be certain that they are there and that in most cases, the incisions are undoubtedly man-made. “

The TOI article also cited a recent case in which the Israel Antiquities Authority mistakenly identified an inscription on a potsherd as being 2,500 years old.

“The IAA’s catastrophic handling of the ‘Darius Inscription’ has no relevance with our article or the Ebal site,” Stripling said. “Citing it only misleads the readers.”

The article also criticized the discovery, noting that it was not found in situ (in its original location) but, instead, was found in a pile of Zertal’s previously sifted material. Stripling noted that wet sifting had not been developed when Zertal excavated the site. It has been used in other locations, such as the Temple Mount Sifting Project, to uncover artifacts that dry sifting did not reveal.