SEVERAL important new archeological discoveries of interest to students of the Bible were announced at the recent annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research and Society of Biblical Literature in St. Louis, Missouri, the last weekend of October, 1976.
Tell Mardikh Tablets
The most sensational find is a whole new archive of third millennium B.C. inscriptions from Syria that promise to rival the famous Dead Sea scrolls in their importance for Biblical studies. Paolo Matthiae, of the University of Rome, director of the archeological expedition that uncovered the tablets, described the find site, Tell Mardikh, ancient Ebla, as lying about halfway between Aleppo and Hamath in Syria. Covering about 140 acres, the 50-foot-high mound has both a lower city and an acropolis where the administrative structures needed to govern 260.000 people were located. Though the Italians have been working there since 1964, it was not until the summer of 1974, when they began the excavation of the royal palace on the acropolis, that the first 42 tablets were found. But that was only a hint of what was to come. The next summer, 15,000 tablets were unearthed! And again in 1976, about 800 more were discovered. Together, these tablets constitute the largest archive ever found at a single Middle Eastern site.
According to Giovanni Pettinato, the expedition's epigrapher, all of the tab lets were written in Mesopotamian cuneiform (wedge-shaped) script. The language of 80 per cent of the documents is Sumerian, a non-Semitic tongue at home in southern Mesopotamia, but the other 20 per cent are in a hitherto unknown Northwest Semitic language now being called Old Canaanite or Eblaite, whose closest relative was classical Hebrew!
There are three bases for dating the archives. Archeologically, their clear context (based on the stratigraphy of the mound's soil layers and the typology of its artifacts) is Early Bronze IV, or about 2400-2250 B.C., according to the usual interpretation of archeological dating. This date is confirmed epigraphically through the science of paleography (a study of the development of scripts) and historically through such synchronisms as one that makes an Eblaite king contemporary with Sargon of Akkad.
The majority of documents found (see page 36) deal with administrative and economic concerns, especially the inter national trade of textiles and finished metals through sophisticated agreements with neighboring states. Lexical texts including scientific lists show cultural exchange on a wide scale. Some of the tablets may be classified as historical and juridical, containing such data as the details of a treaty or covenant between Ebla and Assur; these tablets show that Ebla's influence reached from the Red Sea in the south to Turkey in the north, and from Cyprus in the west to Mesopotamia in the east, with the mention of such specific Biblical cities (in the third millennium B.C.!) as Ur in the territory of Haran, Zoar in the territory of Bela (cf. Genesis 14:2, 8), Sodom, Gomorrah, Lachish, Gaza, Joppa, Megiddo, Hazor, and even Jerusalem. They depict customs familiar to readers of the Old Testament: Eblaite kings were anointed with oil (as were Israelite kings), and when the king of Emar married the daughter of an Eblaite king the latter provided him with a gift of several cities (as did Pharaoh when Solomon married his daughter).
The Eblaite literary texts also provide interesting parallels to the Bible. In addition to collections of proverbs and hymns (with poetic parallelism and rhyme), there are stories with mythological backgrounds (500 gods are attested, including "Dagan of Cannan" and "Asherah"), and even accounts of Creation and the Flood similar to those found in Genesis. Ebla had priests and priestesses who served in temples to which offerings were regularly made, and even prophets are referred to by the same term as that used in Biblical He brew.
Possible Hebrew Ancestor
Among the syllabaries there were 32 bilingual Sumerian/Eblaite vocabulary texts—the oldest such documents known. They contain numerous words that are practically identical to Biblical Hebrew and many personal names borne by Old Testament characters, including Abraham, Ishmael, Esau, Saul, David, and Michal. Furthermore, Ebla's greatest king bore the name of Ebrum, which is cognate to Eber, the Genesis 10:21 (and Genesis 11:14-17) ancestor of the Hebrews. It seems significant that until his reign, personal names contained the theophorous element "II" (related to "El," chief god of the Canaanite pantheon), but from Ebrum's reign on, "II" was in all names substituted for by "Ya" (possibly a shortened form for "Yahweh"). Time (Oct. 18, 1976, p. 63), in commenting on the discussion over these personal names, informs us that they provide "the best evidence to date that some of the people described in the Old Testament actually existed." It quoted David Noel Freedman, editor of the Anchor Bible, as saying, "We always thought of ancestors like Eber as symbolic. Nobody ever regarded them as historic—at least until these tablets were found. Fundamentalists could have a field day with this one." In Newsweek's coverage of the meetings (Nov. 15, 1976, p. 82), William Hallo, an Assyriologist at Yale University, was quoted as saying, "These tablets reopen the whole question of the historical authority of the Book of Genesis."
Scholars came away from the St. Louis meetings convinced that a knowledge of this Eblaite civilization, since it apparently concerned the background of the people of the Old Testament, will be indispensable for any future serious study of the Bible. The publication of the documents from Tell Mardikh in a series of volumes is eagerly awaited.
William Dever, during a symposium on historical and cultural problems of the Iron Age (1200-500 B.C.), reported on recent archeological work in Israel that has a bearing on the Bible. He showed slides of some striking literary and religious texts written on wall plaster, pottery jars, and stone vessels, dating from the early eighth century B.C., or the time of the Judean monarchy. Found by Zecev Meshel at Kuntilet 'Ajrud some 35 miles south of Kadesh-Barnea on the Negev route between Gaza on the Mediterranean coast and Ezion-geber on the Red Sea, one votive bowl inscription said, "Given by 'Obadiah, son of 'Adanah, may he be blessed by Yahweh." Another inscription painted on plaster beneath a nude feminine figure read, "For Yahweh our guardian and his Asherah." It is tempting to find in this discovery dramatic confirmation of Manasseh's syncretistic religious practices as evidenced, for instance, by the episode described in 2 Kings 21 where Manasseh placed an image of Asherah in the Jerusalem Temple.
Other new discoveries with a bearing on the religion of Israel, also mentioned by Dever, ranged from Dan—where the reign of Ahab now looms larger with the discovery of a monumental "high place" and city gate complex—to Beersheba, where more pieces of the now-famous horned altar were found. Probably dis mantled following the reforms of Hezekiah, the altar appears to have originally measured 5x5 cubits (and not 3 x 3 cubits as was at first thought). Furthermore, the oldest Hebrew inscription yet found was discovered at Isbet Sarte near Aphek, due east of Tel Aviv. The twelfth/eleventh century B.C. text, still unpublished, has 5 lines of 80 characters.
Other participants in the symposium were John S. Holladay, Jr., of the University of Toronto, who analyzed a broad spectrum of tenth-to-sixth-centuries B.C. archeological data with the conclusion that archeology suggests that the north-south split in the kingdom after the reign of Solomon was political but not cultural, and Lawrence T. Geraty, of Andrews University, who contrasted what we knew about Transjordan in the Iron Age only a few years ago (when all we had was the Bible, the Moabite stone, and the archeological surface survey of Nelson Glueck) with the picture that is emerging today after further survey work coupled with the excavation of such Edomite sites as Ezion-geber, Sela, Teman, and Bozrah, such Moabite sites as Aroer and Dibon, such Ammonite sites as Rabbath-Ammon and Sahab, and such Israelite sites as Heshbon, Succoth, Zarethan, and Ramoth-gilead.
Balaam Inscriptions
To take only one example, at Deir 'Alia, identified by many with Biblical Succoth, in 1967 an important discovery was made that has only recently been published: prophecies and curses attributed to the prophet Balaam were found inscribed in a cursive Aramaic script on plaster. Since the script and context date to about 700 B.C., we are probably dealing with an appeal to history as a warning, but it is obvious that the figure of Balaam, called a "seer of the gods" in the text, continued to hold prominent position in at least one specific Transjordanian religious tradition. In the new inscription Balaam cries to get attention (much as Elisha did in 2 Kings 8) and his uncle acts as spokes man for curious bystanders (much as in the case of Saul in 1 Samuel 10).
1976 Dig Reports
As is usual at the annual meeting of ASOR and SBL, directors of the most recent American excavations in the Holy Land were given an opportunity to report on the results of their work. Illustrated reports from Israel for the 1976 season included Caesarea Maritima (by Robert J. Bull, of Drew University), where the magnificent cities of Herod the Great and the church father Eusebius are coming to light with the aid of Loma Linda University's team under Kenneth L. Vine; Tell Halif (by Joe D. Seger, of the University of Nebraska), where a new dig is beginning to uncover what the excavators think may be Biblical Ziklag; and Herodian Jericho (by Eric M. Meyers, of Duke University), where the famous king's palace, reception hall, bath, and swimming pool have all been found. Presentations on the 1976 season in Jordan included Tell Hesban or Biblical Heshbon (by Lawrence T. Geraty, of Andrews University), where at least 23 superimposed cities spanning the period from 1200 B.C. to A.D. 1500 have been uncovered, and two "spin-off" projects directed by Heshbon staff members after the close of the Heshbon dig: Mugharat el-Wardeh (by Robert A. Coughenour, of Western Theological Seminary), where an ancient mine that produced iron ore for Gilead was investigated, and the Amman Airport (by Larry G. Herr, of Harvard University), where a previously discovered Late Bronze Age temple from the time of Moses was endangered by new runway construction. Work at the latter produced evidence that may most plausibly be interpreted as a dramatic illustration of Canaanite human sacrifice.
Though many more details could be given on these new finds and of how they relate to Scripture, it is becoming increasingly evident that whatever editing the books of the Bible under went, it was of minor consequence for their content. Most of the important details such as persons, places, time, and sociological setting are still authentic for the period concerned, and many of them may now be correlated with the archeological data.
