O NOME DE DEUS E A MALDIÇÃO BÍBLICA! Novo achado arqueológico que chocou o mundo!

Shalom and welcome back to ‘Israel with Aline!’ Today we are going to talk about a recently found archaeological find, and it is shocking! It is related to the curse of Joshua. It is also the oldest Hebrew text ever found in the world and it also contains the name of God. Let’s talk all about this archaeological find that is revolutionizing the study of Biblical archaeology in just a few days. So if you’re ready, let’s get started! This archaeological find was released last Thursday and I stopped all the programming here on the channel to tell you this news. It is a small tablet of just over 0,78 inches in size, it is made of lead, and it was originally found in December 2019. But why are we only now aware of this? It’s because lead is bent, and that means that when they found it, they could see the letter “Alef”, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. They figured that probably inside, if they opened it, would be a text. But since this is very old, if they opened it, the chance of it breaking and crumbling was very great. So they took this find and sent it to Prague, to the Czech Republic where they used scanners, similar to medical tomography scanners and they were able to create a 3D model of this tablet without opening it, and then they started to read the text that was on the inside. And the text is really shocking! The small text contains 40 Hebrew letters and a total of 16 words. Of these, ten are the word “curse”. Let’s read together now the text in Hebrew and then in Portuguese. Cursed, Cursed, Cursed, Cursed by YHW God, you will die Cursed, Cursed you will surely die. Cursed by YHW, Cursed, Cursed, Cursed. Did you notice that I read God’s name a little differently in Hebrew and in Portuguese? But we’ll get to that in a moment, first I want to tell you where the Tablet of Curse was found. It was found on the Mount of Curses, on Mount Ebal. Let’s remember the Bible story: when Joshua enters the Promised Land, which is the Land of Israel with the people, the twelve tribes are divided into two Mounts: part will stay on Mount Gerizim which is the Mount of Blessing, and the other half will stay on Mount Ebal which is the Mount of Curse. Let’s read a little bit of the original passage in the Bible. “When you have crossed the Jordan, these tribes shall stand on Mount Gerizim to bless the people: Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph and Benjamin. And these tribes shall stand on Mount Ebal to pronounce curses: Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan and Naphtali. The Levites shall recite to all the people of Israel in a loud voice: Cursed is anyone who makes an idol — a thing detestable to the LORD, the work of skilled hands — and sets it up in secret.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!” “Cursed is anyone who dishonors their father or mother.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!” Deuteronomy 27:12- 16 And the biblical text continues with a total of eleven curses and at the end Joshua builds an altar on Mount Ebal. And on this same Mount Ebal was found in archaeological excavations in the year 1982, an altar that fits perfectly the biblical description of Joshua’s passage. Now, in these archaeological excavations they took tons of earth and they could not process all the earth, every single stone by stone. And since the place is so important, instead of taking all the earth that they took and partially analyzed and throwing it all away, they decided to keep it in another place on Mount Ebal itself and say that in the future we will be able to excavate this earth again. And that’s exactly what happened, in 2019 they were excavating the rest of the earth that was taken from the side of the altar, which is called “the Altar of Joshua”, so this little tablet was found in the earth that was on the side of the altar. Folks, the Joshua Altar and the curse text were both found on Mount Ebal, and next to each other. The question is, what is their dating? When are the altar and the tablet from? And the answer: both have been dated to more or less 3,200 years ago! Folks, 1,200 years B.C., which is precisely the dating of the time of the Jews’ exit from Egypt, the 40 years in the desert, and the entrance into the Land of Israel. So the artifacts physically fit the description in the Bible, and also the dating and obviously the text that draws a lot of attention to us of being a curse found on the Mount of Curses. And this archaeological find changes our whole way of studying biblical archaeology, why? Because critics of the Bible said that the people of Israel could not read and write at the time of the Exodus from Egypt and therefore the Bible would have to have been written much later. There were archaeologists, not here from Israel but from other places in the world who said that maybe the Bible was written in the Hellenistic Period, I mean, in the Greek Period or in the Roman Period some parts of it. That it could not have been written at the time of the Exodus and here we have irrefutable proof that the people of Israel could read and write and read and write in Hebrew. It is not exactly the same Hebrew that we speak today because the alphabet is Proto-Hebrew, that is, it is a slightly older Hebrew alphabet but the letters are equivalent. So for people who know ancient Hebrew, they can also read this text until today, showing that the people of Israel could read and write and therefore yes, they could have written the Bible at the time the Bible was written according to the tradition of biblical archeology. It is super important that this tablet is the oldest Hebrew text ever found, and also that it contains the name of God. Until last Thursday, the oldest text with the name of God that we had, was a text called “Mesha Stele” which was from 830 B.C., that is, almost 400 years later than the text we just found. And the Mesha Stele was not written by the people of Israel, it was written by the King of Moab, who is called Mesha, and it tells about the conquest of the region of Moab by King Omri, the King of Israel, and the Moabite revolt that happens after that, we know this passage, I mean, this story also from the Bible itself. The second book of Kings chapter 3 tells us about Omri’s conquest and then also the Moabite revolt that will happen, and in this Stele written by the Moabites they include the name of God, which is the tetragrammaton. Tetra means four, the tetragrammaton is four letters: the Yud, Hei, Waw and Hei. Now, in this text that we found, which is almost 400 years before the Mesha Stele, the oldest version we have ever found, God’s name does not appear as the personal tetragrammaton, only three letters of it appear: the Yud, the Hei and the Waw. The last “Hei” is not written on this little tablet, the question is why? Why don’t they include the full name of God? And the answer is: we don’t know yet, folks! We have no idea, this finding is brand new, it was literally just released a few days ago, and the full research will be released in a few months. All I am telling you guys is the little information we have so far, we will know a lot more in the coming months. And it is really one of the things that calls attention in this text, it is the partial name of God and it appears twice, I mean, it was not a mistake, it was not erased. Whoever wrote it, purposely wrote only the three letters. And when you saw me reading at the beginning of the text, you noticed that I don’t read God’s name, first of all, it is not complete there, and second, because in Judaism we don’t pronounce God’s name, but these three letters, they do appear in Judaism and we do pronounce them. For example the name “Matityahu”, the end of the word Matityahu, is exactly the same letters that appear on this little tablet, so probably the reading could be done that way but we really don’t know, and there is a lot of mystery that is going to be revealed about Mount Ebal, this tablet and the future archaeological excavations that are going to happen. They are a bit limited in that place, because Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim are both in the West Bank, so, for political reasons, there are big problems with archaeological excavations there, and there have also been attacks from the local Palestinian community on the archaeological remains, even in 2020 some of the stones from the altar and the surrounding walls were stolen. So, besides all the biblical archaeology, all the mystery that we have, we still have political tensions in this place that prevent archaeological excavations to be done in a 100% free way. But really this little 0,78 inches tablet is revolutionizing the way we see biblical archeology; the name of God, the dating, knowing that by then the Jews already knew how to read and write, it fits the biblical description of the Deuteronomy narrative and the Book of Joshua, I mean, a lot is yet to be revealed! And everything that comes out with archeological news that is really worthwhile, we will share it with you here on the channel! I hope you have enjoyed this latest news, if you want to know more about biblical archeology here in Israel, tours and history don’t forget to subscribe to our channel, because we are soon to reach 1 million subscribers and we are going to have a party and a very cool celebration here on the channel and a big surprise for you too, my bests regards for everyone, thanks for subscribing and watching and see you next time!