Free Republic

A group of Palestinian rioters vandalized Joshua’s Altar in the West Bank, a site revered by millions of Jews and Christians. The altar, which is located at Mount Ebal, was damaged after the rioters burned tires on its remains and spray-painted Palestinian flags and Arabic inscriptions on the stones last week, according to a report in the Jerusalem Post. According to a report from TPS, the site is under joint control with the Palestinian Authority and has been the target of vandalism on numerous occasions, part of a larger problem of attacks on Israeli archaeological sites under Palestinian control. “Unfortunately,...

On a site in modern-day Israel, academics believe they’ve found the oldest Hebrew text ever discovered, with an apparent link to a scene described in the Old Testament. The text is described as a “curse tablet” — with an inscription one might expect to find in some of the darker passages of the Old Testament. “You are cursed by the God YHW,” the text reads — using the sacred Hebrew name for God. “You will die cursed—cursed you will surely die. Cursed you are by yhw-cursed,” the tablet reads, according to the Jewish News Syndicate. *** Reference: https://www.jewishpress.com/news/archaeology-news/scholars-expound-on-mount-ebal-curse-tablet-with-oldest-hebrew-text/2023/05/12/

An early Hebrew inscription from Mount Ebal near Nablus that was found on a folded lead tablet during an excavation in the 1980s recently underwent x-ray tomographic measurements to reveal hidden text.Epigraphic analysis of the data revealed a formulaic curse written in a proto-alphabetic script likely dating to Late Bronze Age that predates any previously known Hebrew inscription in Israel by at least 200 years.

A rare archeological find from Mount Ebal: A small, folded 3,200-year-old lead plate sheds new light on biblical study - and was unveiled today (Thursday). Inside it - an ancient curse in ancient Hebrew script ("Proto-Canaanite"), with the God's explicit name [of the Divine]. Prof. Gershon Galil, from the University of Haifa, calls the discovery an "earthquake in biblical studies." He said, "The new find unearthed today is the earliest Hebrew inscription found so far." An inscription was found in Hebrew from the 13th century BC Prof. Galil: "The new finding is a death blow to all biblical deniers" An...