Passover Factcheck: The Documentary Hypothesis
A recent archaeological discovery has put an end to the Documentary Hypothesis.
PESACH
Since the Jewish festival Pesach (Passover) began on April 15th, which is also Good Friday this year, I will fact check several claims today about the historicity of the Old Testament that are of great interest both to Jews and to Christians.
The discovery of a curse tablet on Mount Ebal, the oldest Hebrew Inscription ever published in the scientific literature, disproves the Documentary Hypothesis, which was first proposed in the Nineteenth Century by Julius Wellhausen, and confirms the Biblical account of Israel going into the promised land.
CURSE TABLET FOUND ON MOUNT EBAL
The lead tablet was found by archaeologists from the Associates for Biblical Research (ABR) in December 2019. The ABR have made a number of important archaeological discoveries, but this is their most important. They follow a methodology of assuming the Biblical text is historical and then looking in the places where the Bible indicates something ought to be found.
Dr Scott Stripling directed the Mount Ebal Dump Salvage Project, tasked with sifting through discarded materials from a previous 1980s excavation by archaeologist Adam Zertal; the discovery of the tablet was announced in a press conference on March 22, 2022. Whilst the discovery was made in 2019 the announcement was delayed because of the lockdowns.
They knew they had a de fixio or curse tablet from the site of the curse in the Bible, that dates to the late bronze II period, 13th to 14th century BC. The lead tablet is folded over and the inscription is on the interior, probably inscribed with an iron stylus. The other oldest known lead inscription is a Hittite inscription from the 13th to 14th century BC discovered in Anatolia, Turkey.
The earliest biblical book, Job, mentions a lead tablet inscribed with an iron stylus, Job 19:24, and this is also mentioned in Jeremiah 17.
OLDER THAN PALEO-HEBREW
While they could see an aleph and other letters and knew they had an inscription, it required a tomographic scan to decipher the inscription, as the inscription is on the inside of a folded lead tablet that at present cannot be unfolded.
The script is older than paleo-Hebrew, as the Alephs apparently still look like ox-heads, morphing into Alephs.
The shortened version of the divine name, YWH, is mentioned twice in the inscription, which is highly significant, as this appearance of the name of YWH is the earliest example, and proves the presence of the Jews in the promised land at the end of the Late Bronze Age.
The 40-letter ancient Hebrew inscription in proto-alphabetic script is centuries older than any other known ancient Hebrew inscription. It is a chiastic parallelism, a well known literary form in the Hebrew Bible, and is a legal document, which includes an outer document and inner document, which is sealed within the outer document. The inner document reads:
Cursed, cursed, cursed - cursed by the God YHW. You will die cursed. Cursed you will surely die. Cursed by YHW – cursed, cursed, cursed.
Finding the curse tablet on Mount Ebal is highly significant in view of the Deuteronomic blessings and curses associated with the covenant of YHWH with ancient Israel; the curses were to be pronounced on Mount Ebal as they came into the land; this was Israel’s covenant with God, a legal agreement; hence the fact that this tablet is a legal document is significant.
When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess, you are to proclaim the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal. Deuteronomy 11:29 BSB
The tablet is associated with the earlier of two altars found on the mountain, which is a late bronze age altar.
And on the day you cross the Jordan into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, set up large stones and coat them with plaster. Write on them all the words of this law when you have crossed over to enter the land that the LORD your God is giving you, a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the LORD, the God of your fathers, has promised you. And when you have crossed the Jordan, you are to set up these stones on Mount Ebal, as I am commanding you today, and you are to coat them with plaster. Deuteronomy 27:2-6 BSB
Plaster was found with the altar.
IMPLICATIONS
This inscription has major implications.
Many higher critics have claimed it was impossible for the Bible to have been written before the Persian or Hellenistic period because there was supposedly no script to write it with. No one can claim now that the Bible was necessarily written in a later period now. They had writing and were able to write the Bible in the Late Bronze Age II, during the time the events of the Exodus and Conquest occurred.
The presence of Elohim (God) together with YHW in the inscription completely lays to rest Wellhausen’s Documentary Hypothesis and all its later iterations.
Julius Wellhausen , a nineteenth century archaeologist, claimed that the Bible was a collation of various texts with different names for God; the Elohist, the Yahwist and the Priestly text. They were using both names together in the age of Joshua himself; the Documentary Hypothesis is completely dead.
The Exodus and Conquest would have had to have occurred at an earlier date than that claimed by many scholars.
The person who wrote it was not only a scribe, he was a theologian and a leader. It is a theological and legal text, which supports the Deuteronomic context. Mount Ebal was a cultic place, there was an altar there. This tablet confirms the historicity of the Biblical story of Joshua.
The ABR researchers believe this script is concomitant with the time of the writing of the Bible.
See Job 19 and Jeremiah 17 for other accounts of legal documents written with iron tools.
The text correlates with the time of the covenant renewal ceremony enumerated in Joshua 8.
SUMMARY
This discovery of this tablet confirms the historicity of the Biblical account of Joshua’s conquest of the promised land and the origins of the Torah, against the oft-made assertions of the Biblical minimalists, and moreover, lays to rest the Documentary Hypothesis in all its forms.
A lot of Biblical scholars and archaeologists who have built their careers on a minimalist interpretation of the historicity of the Bible have just had the cornerstone of their arguments ripped out from under their scholarly edifices. They will be scrambling right now to make up new excuses as to why their theories are still plausible; but they aren’t. Let us see if they are humble enough to admit they were wrong.