See What You Want To See
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You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me…. (v. 5)
Take a piece of aluminum foil and press down on it with a sharp object, creating letters and words. Make sure you can read it clearly. Then fold the foil in half and in half and in half again. Now use your X-Ray Vision to see through the layers of metal and read the original inscription.
Maybe you can’t make sense of it, but others claim they read it clearly. No, you can’t. Yes, I can! Let the argument begin.
That’s basically the problem with what is either an astounding archaeological find or a simple case of confirmation bias -- seeing what you want to see.
The archaeologist Adam Zertal spent the years from 1982 to 1989 excavating the site known as Mt. Ebal, located along the West Bank. Among his finds were two sites he believed were altars from the Late Bronze age and the Iron age. According to Joshua 8, after the fall of Jericho, and the sin and subsequent punishment of Ai for keeping part of the plunder for himself.
Then Joshua built on Mount Ebal an altar to the Lord, the God of Israel, just as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded the Israelites, as it is written in the book of the law of Moses, “an altar of unhewn stones, on which no iron tool has been used,” and they offered on it burnt offerings to the Lord and sacrificed offerings of well-being. (Joshua 8:30-31)
It is unclear if one of these altars corresponds to the one Zertal discovered.
Most archaeological digs unearth material that is considered worthless, and that material is discarded. Sometimes later archaeologists, armed with new technologies and a greater understanding regarding obscure objects, go through that discarded materials. Late in 2019 Scot Stripling, of the Archaeological Studies Institute of The Bible Seminary in Katy, Texas, along with several colleagues, re-examined Zertal’s discarded material.
One object in particular attracted their attention, something they described as “…a small folded lead tablet.” It was not unknown for objects to be inscribed in lead. Indeed, as the authors of the paper describing the discovery pointed out, in Job 19:24 Job laments, “Oh that my words were … inscribed with an iron tool and lead…” The lead object, they found, could not be unfolded without destroying it, which is probably why it had been discarded by Zertal decades earlier. However, when scanned with X-rays the new researchers claimed they could read individual letters on a document they dated to roughly 1200 B.C. The writing was in an ancient version of Hebrew, when the letters were more like pictures. The message was very simple. It was a curse that seems to invoke the God of the Hebrews, known to us by the four Hebrew consonants YHWH. In English translations the four letters are represented by the word LORD in all capitals. However, it also appears in non-Biblical inscriptions and manuscripts as YHW and YHH. In your English translation of the Bible YHWH appears as the word “LORD” in all capitals.
The curse says simply,
You are cursed by the god yhw, cursed.
You will die, cursed — cursed, you will surely die.
Cursed you are by yhw — cursed.
In ancient times, written curses were believed to have great power. And if this object were to be proven authentic it would provide the oldest appearance of the name of God by at least 200 years.
Skeptics, however, did not see the letters the researchers claimed appeared in the photographs. Some claimed it was a clear case of confirmation bias – the term used to describe the fact that people tend to see what they want to see. Witnesses at trials, witnesses of UFOs, writers of history, and those analyzing polling data, for instance, have been shown to commit confirmation bias. So the question of whether this is the oldest appearance of the name of God, or simply a crumbled piece of lead foil, remains to be determined.
Regardless of the authenticity, or lack of it, of this ancient artifact, there’s no question that YHWH, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is portrayed in the Ten Commandments as a God with a long memory, who indeed remembers wrongdoing, and as it says, with regards to serving idols:
You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me …. (Exodus 20:5)
But the same passage continues with the promise that God’s memory is even longer when it comes to those who avoid idols and serve God only. That God will show “…steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.“ (v. 6)
(Want to know more? See “’You are Cursed by the God YHW:’ an early Hebrew inscription from Mt. Ebal,” by Scott Stripling, Ivana Kumpova, Jaroslav Valach, Pieter Gert van der Veen, and Daniel Vavrik. An open access available on the internet. For objections to this article see in particular “Academic article on controversial 3,200-year-old ‘curse tablet’ fails to sway experts,” by Melanie Lidman, also available online.)
Take a piece of aluminum foil and press down on it with a sharp object, creating letters and words. Make sure you can read it clearly. Then fold the foil in half and in half and in half again. Now use your X-Ray Vision to see through the layers of metal and read the original inscription.
Maybe you can’t make sense of it, but others claim they read it clearly. No, you can’t. Yes, I can! Let the argument begin.
That’s basically the problem with what is either an astounding archaeological find or a simple case of confirmation bias -- seeing what you want to see.
The archaeologist Adam Zertal spent the years from 1982 to 1989 excavating the site known as Mt. Ebal, located along the West Bank. Among his finds were two sites he believed were altars from the Late Bronze age and the Iron age. According to Joshua 8, after the fall of Jericho, and the sin and subsequent punishment of Ai for keeping part of the plunder for himself.
Then Joshua built on Mount Ebal an altar to the Lord, the God of Israel, just as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded the Israelites, as it is written in the book of the law of Moses, “an altar of unhewn stones, on which no iron tool has been used,” and they offered on it burnt offerings to the Lord and sacrificed offerings of well-being. (Joshua 8:30-31)
It is unclear if one of these altars corresponds to the one Zertal discovered.
Most archaeological digs unearth material that is considered worthless, and that material is discarded. Sometimes later archaeologists, armed with new technologies and a greater understanding regarding obscure objects, go through that discarded materials. Late in 2019 Scot Stripling, of the Archaeological Studies Institute of The Bible Seminary in Katy, Texas, along with several colleagues, re-examined Zertal’s discarded material.
One object in particular attracted their attention, something they described as “…a small folded lead tablet.” It was not unknown for objects to be inscribed in lead. Indeed, as the authors of the paper describing the discovery pointed out, in Job 19:24 Job laments, “Oh that my words were … inscribed with an iron tool and lead…” The lead object, they found, could not be unfolded without destroying it, which is probably why it had been discarded by Zertal decades earlier. However, when scanned with X-rays the new researchers claimed they could read individual letters on a document they dated to roughly 1200 B.C. The writing was in an ancient version of Hebrew, when the letters were more like pictures. The message was very simple. It was a curse that seems to invoke the God of the Hebrews, known to us by the four Hebrew consonants YHWH. In English translations the four letters are represented by the word LORD in all capitals. However, it also appears in non-Biblical inscriptions and manuscripts as YHW and YHH. In your English translation of the Bible YHWH appears as the word “LORD” in all capitals.
The curse says simply,
You are cursed by the god yhw, cursed.
You will die, cursed — cursed, you will surely die.
Cursed you are by yhw — cursed.
In ancient times, written curses were believed to have great power. And if this object were to be proven authentic it would provide the oldest appearance of the name of God by at least 200 years.
Skeptics, however, did not see the letters the researchers claimed appeared in the photographs. Some claimed it was a clear case of confirmation bias – the term used to describe the fact that people tend to see what they want to see. Witnesses at trials, witnesses of UFOs, writers of history, and those analyzing polling data, for instance, have been shown to commit confirmation bias. So the question of whether this is the oldest appearance of the name of God, or simply a crumbled piece of lead foil, remains to be determined.
Regardless of the authenticity, or lack of it, of this ancient artifact, there’s no question that YHWH, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is portrayed in the Ten Commandments as a God with a long memory, who indeed remembers wrongdoing, and as it says, with regards to serving idols:
You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me …. (Exodus 20:5)
But the same passage continues with the promise that God’s memory is even longer when it comes to those who avoid idols and serve God only. That God will show “…steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.“ (v. 6)
(Want to know more? See “’You are Cursed by the God YHW:’ an early Hebrew inscription from Mt. Ebal,” by Scott Stripling, Ivana Kumpova, Jaroslav Valach, Pieter Gert van der Veen, and Daniel Vavrik. An open access available on the internet. For objections to this article see in particular “Academic article on controversial 3,200-year-old ‘curse tablet’ fails to sway experts,” by Melanie Lidman, also available online.)
