One of the most remarkable archaeological discoveries of last year is the focus of an ongoing controversy. There is much at stake. While the researchers who made the discovery claim the evidence indicates they have found an artifact from the Biblical altar of Joshua, an opposing school of thought maintains that the Bible is not historically accurate, suggesting that archaeologists who are also people of faith are guilty of “seeing the face of Jesus in the burnt bits of their grilled cheese sandwich.”

In 1981, Adam Zertal, a professor of archaeology, carried out an archaeological survey on Mount Ebal in Samaria which involved walking systematically over a given area and recording every surface find.

Zertal discovered the remains of a rectangular structure which he excavated from 1982–1989. Among the stones was a large quantity of ash and more than 3,000 animal bones. These bones had been burnt on an open flame, and many had butcher marks, implying that at least parts of them had been eaten. Zertal, a non-religious Israeli, concluded the site was the altar of Joshua described in the Bible. 

Upon crossing the Yarden, you shall set up these stones, about which I charge you this day, on HarEival, and coat them with plaster. There, too, you shall build a mizbeach to Hashem your God, a mizbeach of stones. Do not wield an iron tool over them; Deuteronomy 27:4-5

Zertal eventually published his findings in Tel Aviv Journal but many archaeologists criticized his conclusions.

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 Zertal’s excavation. 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 ancient Hebrew inscription consists of 48 letters and is centuries older than any known Hebrew inscription from ancient Israel. Stripling, Galil, and van der Veen deciphered the proto-alphabetic inscription, which reads as follows:

Cursed, cursed, cursed – cursed by the God YHW.

You will die cursed.

Cursed you will surely die.

Cursed by YHW – cursed, cursed, cursed.

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 discovery had implications for the study of both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament and was controversial from its announcement. A recent article in the archaeology section of Haaretz written by Ariel David presented the views of skeptics, one of whom claimed the small lead tablet was nothing more than a fishing weight and the inscriptions were random scratches.

David makes his opinion  clear in the second paragraph when he refers to Mount Ebal as “a complex story involving a controversial excavation in a volatile conflict zone and sensational claims about what a single find there could tell us about the historicity of the Bible and the birth of the Hebrew language, all on the background of the political and religious strife engendered by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

It is unclear what the political conflict has to do with the archaeological find. The site is in Samaria and is categorized by the Oslo Accords as Area B, which falls under PA administrative control and joint PA-Israeli security control. The only interest the PA has shown is in destroying the site. For several years, surreptitious actions by the Palestinian Authority (PA) have been slowly destroying the archaeological site.

Dr. Stripling and Pieter van der Veen responded.

“We did not draw conclusions based on a single find,” Dr. Stripling responded. Indeed, the identification of the site as the Biblical altar of Joshua was the result of seven years of research and investigation by  Zertal.

David claims in his article that “an upcoming series of scientific studies is demolishing the initial astounding conclusions by the discoverers of the purported inscription.”

“As we understand it, only the lead analysis article is a scientific study,” Dr. Stripling noted..

David also accused Stripling’s team of claiming that the “discovery confirmed that the structure was indeed that very biblical altar.”

Dr. Stripling denied ever having made such a claim.

“We carefully avoided such language in the Heritage Science article,” Dr. Stripling insisted.. “We did explore that possibility since only the Bible discusses Mt. Ebal.”

One of the criticisms that has been made about the methodology of Stripling’s research was that the tablet was not discovered in situ.  “Rather, they collected piles of waste from Zertal’s excavation and sifted it at a nearby settlement, which makes it nearly impossible to confirm the date of the artifact,” David wrote.

Dr. Stripling acknowledged the wet sifting was not carried out on unexcavated material but emphasized that this did not refute his conclusions.

“There were only two choices based on Zertal’s excavation strata: LB2 and IA I,” Dr. Stripling noted. “Either option is older than previously known Hebrew writing.”

David cited Prof. Aren Maeir, an archaeologist at Bar-Ilan University,  and biblical epigraphist Prof. Christopher Rollston of George Washington University who claimed that “the letters drawn by Stripling and colleagues don’t match the bumps and indentations visible in the photos they published, according to the two researchers.”

Dr. Stripling discounted that claim.

“They are incorrect,” he said. “Bulges on the exterior match discernable letters on the inside.”

Skeptics claimed that the lead surface displays “random scratches, striations, pitting, and indentions,” which are consistent with the nature of lead and the processes of erosion and weathering the artifact may have undergone over the centuries”.

“For the sake of argument, Maeir and Rollston go into a long exposition to show that even if there were letters there (not that they can see any), their reading by Stripling’s team is questionable,” David wrote in Haaretz.

“We agree,” Dr. Stripling stated. “But we did not identify these marks as letters. We do not insist that our proposed reading is correct or the only possible reading. We merely presented to the best of our ability what we thought it said.”

Dr. Stripling also denied that the tablet contained letters that were not used in Late Bronze or Early Iron Age Canaanite inscriptions, making his reading “anachronistic.”.

“The only proper Hebrew word in the text would be the divine name of Yahweh,” David wrote. “But even then, it should be noted that the biblical God is also mentioned in non-Hebrew texts. In fact, Yahweh’s oldest known extrabiblical mention, aside of course from the contested Mt. Ebal tablet, is found in the ninth century B.C.E. Mesha stele, which is in Moabite.”

Dr. Stripling noted that this claim is inaccurate, adding that the word “Yahweh” appears on the Soleb Hieroglyph in the 14th century B.C.E.

Perhaps the most contentious claim made by the Haaretz article was that the lead tablet found by Dr. Stripling’s team was similar to fishing weights used in the Late Bronze Age made by folding a thin lead sheet around the netting.  Prof. Amihai Mazar, a retired archaeologist from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, notes that the lead artifact has the perfect size, shape and composition to be a “sinker,” an object used to weigh down fishing nets. David claimed the net had decomposed, leaving a tiny metal sandwich.

“In the Late Bronze Age, but also in later periods, these weights were commonly made by folding a thin lead sheet around the netting, which obviously has decomposed with time, leaving archaeologists with these tiny metal sandwiches,” Mazar notes.

Dr. Stripling discounted this claim.

“Professor Mazar notes 333 Type L.2.3 fishing weights from the southern Levant, and divides them into groups a and b,” Dr. Stripling noted. “Only 2 of the 333 were Type L.2.3b, which he claims to be the type of the Mt. Ebal tablet. These two were found in a tomb on the coast near Gaza and are questionable. There is not a single example of Type L.2.3b weights being found at an inland site in the southern Levant. there are many other problems with Professor Mazar’s theory.

Ariel David suggested that because he was a devout Christian, Stripling and his team of epigraphists were guilty of  “pareidolia”, in which scholars see patterns that they would like to see but are not actually there. “Just like when people see the face of Jesus in the burnt bits of their grilled cheese sandwich,” David said.

Dr. Stripling, who has been leading archaeological excavations in Israel for over two decades, chose not to respond to a baseless accusation that effectively discounted all of his research based on an anti-religious bias. 

David cites epigraphers Prof. Benjamin Sass of Tel Aviv University and Dr. Anat Mendel-Geberovich of the Hebrew University, as agreeing that no symbols are discernible on the lead tablet.

“Our three epigraphers detected letters,” Dr. Stripling stated. “It is no surprise that this is perceived in a variety of ways.”

David acknowledged that the isotope analysis confirms the metal came from the Lavrion mine in mainland Greece, which is known to have operated in the Late Bronze. But he went on to contest that this fact could be used to date the artifact, noting that the location was also active in later periods.

“We did not make this case,” Dr. Stripling stated. “We noted that the mine was in use in the Late Bronze Age II and that exports from Greece to Canaan ceased ca. 1200 B.C.E. This suggests a plausible LB date for the artifact, nothing more.”

Dr. Stripling responded to the criticism and skeptics: 

“I am confident that there is writing on the tablet and that the script strongly suggests that it dates the Late Bronze Age II, which according to Adam Zertal, the excavator of the Mt. Ebal Altar, was when the earliest altar there was constructed,” Dr. Stripling said. “In our article, we presented Professor Gershon Galil’s schematic drawings and more conservative drawings by Professor Pieter van der Veen and me.”

“I believe that the latter drawings come close to capturing what the tomographic scans revealed. It is natural for other scholars to reach divergent views, and I look forward to reading the forthcoming articles in IEJ. I have the highest regard for Professor Mazar, but I find it difficult to imagine that lead fishing weights were inscribed with proto-alphabetic letters.”