YHWH Archaeology

An incredibly rare archaeological discovery could change everything we know about ancient Israelite literacy. A small lead tablet that was engraved with early proto-alphabetic Hebrew text has been unearthed at Mt. Ebal, dated to the 15th century BC. The find, which predates the Dead Sea Scrolls by more than a millennium, represents the oldest known mention of the Hebrew name of God.

In an interview with the Houston Chronicle, lead archeologist Dr. Scott Stripling argued that the discovery dashes assumptions that the Bible was written long after its events took place. He noted that the author of the tablet would have been highly educated for his time.

“One can no longer argue with a straight face that the biblical text was not written until the Persian period or the Hellenistic period as many higher critics have done, when here we do clearly have the ability to write the entire text at a much, much earlier date,” Stripling said.

This is a major development for our understanding of how the ancient Israelites kept their records. It was previously thought that all biblical accounts were handed down through a vast oral tradition, and later transcribed for preservation. This discovery opens up the possibility that the Israelites kept documents of their own as early as the Late Bronze Age.

(aleteia.org/2022/03/29/archaeologists-just-found-the-oldest-inscription-of-the-hebrew-name-of-god)

An incredibly rare archaeological discovery could change everything we know about ancient Israelite literacy. A small lead tablet that was engraved with early proto-alphabetic Hebrew text has been unearthed at Mt. Ebal, dated to the 15th century BC. The find, which predates the Dead Sea Scrolls by more than a millennium, represents the oldest known mention of the Hebrew name of God.

In an interview with the Houston Chronicle, lead archeologist Dr. Scott Stripling argued that the discovery dashes assumptions that the Bible was written long after its events took place. He noted that the author of the tablet would have been highly educated for his time.

“One can no longer argue with a straight face that the biblical text was not written until the Persian period or the Hellenistic period as many higher critics have done, when here we do clearly have the ability to write the entire text at a much, much earlier date,” Stripling said.

This is a major development for our understanding of how the ancient Israelites kept their records. It was previously thought that all biblical accounts were handed down through a vast oral tradition, and later transcribed for preservation. This discovery opens up the possibility that the Israelites kept documents of their own as early as the Late Bronze Age.

(aleteia.org/2022/03/29/archaeologists-just-found-the-oldest-inscription-of-the-hebrew-name-of-god)

I tend to believe Moses....

This is a major development for our understanding of how the ancient Israelites kept their records. It was previously thought that all biblical accounts were handed down through a vast oral tradition, and later transcribed for preservation. This discovery opens up the possibility that the Israelites kept documents of their own as early as the Late Bronze Age.