I don't mind being considered "condescending."
First, you haven't shown that you "knew it all."
And second, I don't know it all, and am willing to hear again in that which I've already learned, and love to hear it reinforced, while marveling at the patience of my own instructors.
How about you? Do you rejoice in hearing the depth of the gift of it in the original languages? Especially, despite what the modern scholastic regime insist, GOD's Name is not "Yaweh."
It is "Yeh-Hoe-Va(H)"; or so says Dr. Thomas Strouse. the renowned student and thus teacher of Hebrew linguistics. Were you aware of that vein of thought? That Genesis in the second and third chapters strongly indicate that "Hebrew" was the first earthly spoken and written language, that of GOD (Jehovah Elohim) communicating with the first human Adam? And written down precisely from the LORD by His obedient student-servant Moses?
That puts the language of the Torah further back than that of Joshua, of which age the leaden scrap discussed here indicates.
Incidentally, it was back in the 1980s that the diggings to be pursued by Adam Zertal were discussed in the then popular Biblical Archaelogical magazine, to which I subscribed. In it was announced that Zertal was inviting novices to come and dig with him at Mt. Ebal for a short trip and a special price. From it I had maderplans to send my Dad (a retired Methodist minister) and my son (an engineering student at IIT) for that tour, in which we were all quite interested.
I myself could not go with them, being intensely engaged in developing materials for the microelectric industry, products being marketed by my global corporation.
But I suppose now, that you know all that, too, eh?
(in a FRiendly sense . . . )
I have read that there is some dissention as to when the Moses left Egypt. I think the departure dates are either said to be somewhere in the 1200’s bc/bce or 1400 bc/bce.
Does this settle that debate. Or was it previously settled?