Archaeological find upends secular academia - Pod for Israel

[Music] i want to welcome you to another episode of pod for israel and i have with us today ron silberman he's one of my favorite tour guides here in israel and a great brother in the lord and we were discussing together this whole thing of this new tablet that was discovered and it's all over the news i'm sure you might have heard of it in samaria where joshua's altar is believed to be found they found something that changes kind of the whole historical books tell us a little bit about what they found yeah so they found a very small lead tablet that some people say it's an amulet or not exactly sure but with very ancient hebrew inscription that appeared to be the oldest ever found wow it's amazing and uh it's 200 years earlier than anything found before that in hebrew now we know for sure that it's hebrew you know the letters are not hebrew letters though those are the same letters were used by the canaanites by the israelites by the just like latin is used by in many languages the same those canaanite writing they call it they used how do we know that it's hebrew because there is the name of the lord you de vav hey or actually there it's only the three letters you'd have that's only the israelites use the name of the lord in and there's nobody except the israelite jesus so we know for sure that's hebrew and uh also some of the words that are certainly hebrew um yeah that's quite an amazing and it's a very very small like two centimeters on two centimeters and um and the amazing story is how how they got to find this yeah so multiball is maybe a few words about the mountain yeah it's in the north of samaria one of the highest mountains in samaria um very desolated it's it's quite you don't see a lot of vegetation on the mountain no no springs what you see there if you go there just millions of millions of stones all over stones right and uh and this is very typical to samaria but there specifically because you don't see any ancient villages and very little agriculture local agriculture what you mainly see there are just stones and it's a very big mountain and because of the story that we know from deuteronomy and from joshua a the story about mount ebal people were looking in the past for an altar there it made sense in the uh second half of the 19th century there were some people that were looking for for an altar there well yeah let's give the context of this this is in joshua god commanded them as they enter into the land that they're to pronounce blessings on mount gerizim and curses on mountie ball like if they don't obey the law there's the curse if they obey there's the blessing but when you took me to this place it's amazingly it's amazing because god wrote the gospel on mountains he wrote the story on the actual mountains themselves because these two mountains as close as they are they're like sister mountains right one's full of springs life there's buildings there's like like you said one is desolate there's mountie ball there's nothing on it except for a military base at the top that's current uh current day construction but but nothing on one yes life and everything on the other right and choose this day whom you're gonna serve there's so much to say about this location right right so there's really a lot to say about this but we want to focus today about the the the right what they found there and uh if we you know the term or the expression to look for a needle in a haystack right right this is exactly the story there because if you go to this so as i said people were already looking for an altar there yeah and they didn't found why they didn't found they always looked in this in the location which on the north side of mount abal because north side is the site that is opposing mount gerizim and they expected that the altar will be in the same place where there was this event of blessing and cursing which they stood uh on the two sides of the valley so they looked on mount eval on that side but this no nobody found any altar there and then when did they start looking i mean so in the around the second half of the 19th century dreamers archaeologists treasure seekers were coming to israel you know they looked for the treasures of solomon right and and all these people like indiana jones you know that's concept they they were looking uh especially in jerusalem the temple people until today believe that there are uh some big treasures somewhere because there are caves right yes and also them also the altar of joshua that was also very exciting for some people and not so many people and there was not nothing was found and you know that uh between 1948 and 1967 israelis could not get to that area this was under the jordanian law and uh israel were not allowed there were a few archaeologists that worked in judea and samaria but nobody got really to mount about to check there and the the first person that got there it was well in after 67 israeli started to to look all over and looking for and then they discovered that judea and samaria are full of many many little villages hundreds of them all over judea and samaria and they started from the time of uh the beginning of like the conquest and after the conquest this the 12th century bc more or less right and uh and that was not known before that so uh there's one person that i want to mention here his name is dr adam zertal he's the archaeologist that found the altar he passed away i think several years ago and uh he uh he was not a he was an archaeologist he loved uh the land he loved samaria in 67 after after israel got into samaria he he was born in a kibbutz nearby and he was going and traveling and looking for the archaeology he loved this but he he wrote a book about all this story and uh and he said that he read he learned in academia in the university and he learned that there are many theories about how israel got the israelites got into the land and the theories were not what the bible say but in the end of 19th century started many theories started to emerge about well that's not that the bible doesn't tell us the real story something else happened for example uh there's a very famous uh scholar german scholar albrecht alt that he came with this idea that the 12 tribes did not exist before before the the renewal of the covenant in shechem by joshua so all all the stories that we read earlier did not exist or martin knott uh who was actually a soldier in the in the german army in world war ii he came with other ideas about um uh oh okay uh no albert also also spoke about the uh quiet invasion the people didn't conquer the land but those were tribes that came from the east the israelites are just little by little conquered and and they there was no joshua right all this story is not did not exist really and the thing about adam zertal when he read all those people or what they wrote he asked himself why did they read why did they write that did they check the lend what evidence do you have right even such a wild and crazy theory they didn't have any evidence they came with uh they were especially ah alt had his um ideas of social sociology that just started to emerge how nations are founded how they're created the story of of israel doesn't make sense according to what we know about sociology so he came with with other ideas yeah and the same with with the rest of them which are of course it doesn't make sense naturally right the story of israel doesn't make sense at all naturally it's it only makes sense supernaturally i mean look even even today the country we live in today does not make sense according to your geopolitical powers and balances and stuff the story is absolutely only explained supernaturally you can't understand it any other way i agree with you but what happened with with adam zertal and he was he came from a secular environment and he studied in the university and he started to realize that all these theories done do not align with the finding what you find in the land right and this intrigued him because he said well very nice theories but i want to see what exactly let's check the archaeology right and he's and one day in 1980 he got to mount ebal and among all the the tons of stones that you have there he saw one pile of stones and there were some pieces of broken clays that immediately he was very experienced he immediately saw that this this goes back to the israelite period right we call the iron period or even before that and uh he said okay i'll need to come back here and and then a few years later he said i want to have my phd about that site he didn't know anything about site he just saw a pile of stones and then year after year they started to excavate right and in the beginning they discovered that this pile of stone actually is hiding something beneath beneath it someone put the stones on top of something to cover it and once they started to take it off they found underneath something that is not more than 10 or 10 meters that looked like some kind of a construction but nothing similar to anything that we know of yeah it wasn't a house it wasn't but but it was purposefully covered up now that's going to be covered up it's going to be very important for later as you unfold this yeah yes and and he started to now he you know montevall people are talking about what you have a mountable altar so but he wasn't thinking that way because he came from the the academy he didn't think i'm this is what i want to find then i'm finding it no yeah i'm doing i'm doing it properly i found a site i want to excavate i don't know what i'm going to find right and little by little found something very strange they found a stage and they found a ramp going up to the stage and and on two sides of the ramp there were big pits and then in the second later on they found in those pits tons of ashes and bones thousands of bones what kind of bones and then you say okay if you see a village and there are bones then probably this is what people ate or their animals like their horses or whatever right but they found only kosher animals which is sheep goats and surprisingly they also found some deers there which are rare like 20 were deers uh there is not an but but you know so all cause there is kosher animal it's not it's not an animal that you're supposed to sacrifice uh according to the torah but it's a kosher animal and none there was no horse there there was no donkey there there was no pig there and all those animals lived in the country so okay that's immediately you know when when archaeologists find something like this he said okay first of all i know this is israel israelite yeah it's not canaanite it's not philistine it's israelite because of the over the bones but then why all those bones and the ashes they really found and all concentrated in thousands in a very small district there was nothing around it only this place wow so you know and all the time there are these thoughts oh the altar of joshua the author of john i know but he he works he's professional okay yeah so he continued and then they started to to found find these uh little things that look like an egyptian beetle there's stones and scarabs scarabs those represent the egyptians so what influence of egyptians you have here well so in canaan there are many of those carobs there are many places in the in the canaanite cities if but if this is an israelite city israelite city why scarbs here maybe the israelites are connected to egypt in some way who knows maybe just maybe okay so so the story but he still doesn't know and then the whole construction they don't know what it is they never saw anything like that and one day he brings a guy that uh a orthodox jewish guy and he shows them this and he draws adam draws this and like the model of this and he asked him do you know what this is and the guy said wait a minute he goes he come back with a mishna and from the mishnahi he quote how they describe the that the altar in the temple was built yeah and the plan to the plan of the altar in the temple was exactly what they saw right look even if we go back to the torah remember in the torah it prescribed that this you could not have steps going up to the altar right it had to be a ramp right and so a kosher altar had to be a ramp not steps now pagan altars were always steps right so this is huge it's huge it's a ramp up to and you have ash piles of only kosher animals i mean how much on the nose could you be and then for so so that was you know it's it's a huge discovery but people know people here and i grew up in israel people didn't talk about this people didn't know i mean this is probably one of the biggest discoveries in the land and people don't know about it why why people won't know about this because there's so much politics and so much oppression to this and he he speaks about this in his book first of all uh it was with archaeologists if the if the whole science of archaeology and and biblical history say that joshua never existed right and you have they have this deuteronomistic theory that say that every all those books from deuteronomy uh deuteronomy joshua judges samuel kings all those were written only in the seventh century in the time of josiah so how did they know about in the 7th century how can they talk about joshua in the 13th 14th century bc doesn't make sense right so this didn't exist and it when someone comes with a discovery that this is the altar of joshua yeah you turn the tables you flip the tables on these yeah no no that's that's you're wrong it's you're wrong you cannot tell us this yeah yeah so that's the first thing and he he invited igelia din igaliadin was the icon of archaeology here in israel in the 80s right it was the year before he died he died in 84 i think adam zertal invited him there and he showed them the place he brought with him egalidin brought with him some american archaeologists and they went and he showed them he showed him everything and explained and and all that and then at the end of the day they asked highly dean what what what do you think about this and he says now and adam certainly is so anxious and he want to know what what this my guru what he wants to what he says about what i found here and he galilee just says maybe but it also could be a watchtower why you have piles of ashes of kosher bones a ramp that no one builds ramps unless it's not that high either i mean i've been there so so even on his dying day he still is persistent well i guess in a way you think of the pressure if if this guy's built his entire career his entire life around that belief this site as much as it seems like just a pile of rubble that site up it turns the tables on everything that's been built in the last few hundred years of archaeology and their theories right but but their theories they're not based on fact it's their own wishes right it's their own beliefs right and uh if you talk to archaeologists today they would tell you that as long as archaeology proceeded process the process of archaeology and finding in israel during the years and many of the other secular archaeologists will tell you there's more and more evidence that the story of the bible is is not correct but actually i think it's the other way around yeah that's true they came with these theories before they started to excavate here yeah those theory theories of of negating of of do no not believing the story of the bible came before they were excavating right and when they started to excavate again again yeah sometimes the index could not explain everything but there are more and more evidence and this story of mount valley is really amazing because and and when i spoke about the little this is not the end of the story because adam zertal he finished his work there uh in the end of the 80s right and he he never got to publish his finding but he wrote books and i mean published in the academy is like a proper paper but people visit the place people know the stories and uh and then uh three or two years ago or three years ago there there's a guy archaeologist from texas yeehaw yeah scott and he's very famous he he was uh he's actually excavating many years in shiloh okay and uh he decided you know that uh in the last few couple few years there was a sifting project of soil that came from temple mount and right because it was illegally taken by the by the wax by the arabs there and they threw it away and once they threw it away there was everybody knew that there are treasures there they were taking bulldozers on the temple mount and just you know just doing this huge like just tearing up out all the ground and stuff and they were they were trying to hide it the palestinian the authority that was over the temple mount and the israelis found it so that this is what they were sifting through right so but it's when you sift the problem is that when you find something it's very difficult to tell to which it's not scientifical because you don't have the strata you don't have the reference so for example they found a bulla a little uh seal with the name of hezekiah there but this is very problematic so it might be king hezekiah but it might be someone else because they cannot use this as something scientific because it was found off-site not in the side not in the situ but off-site and that's a big problem this is from the jerusalem sifting they found the seal right right okay but now when you go to bounty ball monty ball is is a side of one period only i mean there are some but it's one period it's not like jerusalem or you know tell a megiddo you have more than 20 different yeah because it was destroyed and rebuilt destroyed rebuilt but mount abal when he did when he excavated there there actually he found the square altar that but the alder is actually on top of a much or more ancient altar which is round and the round probably is the one that is um is the one from the time of joshua the square one is probably a bit later but but that's all there so everything that you find there is either from the 12th century to the 12th century to the 14th century bc that that's that's what you find and then so uh the archaeologists from from texas he said okay there's this project of sifting let's uh take this idea to mount about let's sift what adam zertal left because adam's a tough in his time in his time he didn't have the technology that we have today right of of sifting so they took the soil that was thrown away that was not so much and they started to sift and then in the end of 1998 2019 they found this little lead piece now it took a lot of time to decipher it because it was as they realized it was something that was um folded to close it and inside and outside something was written and they sent it to prague to a laboratory and only recently they published and even this is not final they didn't publish everything but at least they say that what they found inside was those words about cursing and the name of the lord yudhev the god of israel right and so the the they found it two years ago but they only they only were able to decipher it recently and then they published it it's amazing and now when i'm saying about andin anilina haystack yeah think about this huge mountain with tons and tons i don't know how crazy the stones and then they found this little piece of lead how how you know how how we are led to this precise place precisely and then there you find the most ancient hebrew inscription from the time of joshua from the israelites and um it's amazing and then and and the thing here that when you see more and more evidence the the ones who negate the ones who say no this is not a true story they need to always need to come with other theories right they will not they will not accept the theory they will not accept joshua they will come with other explanations and always they will always have explanation because that's the beauty about archaeology you find something you can say whatever you want about what you find right of course of course yeah you know and that's that's to me that's the big conflict here is you have you know i would say the atheist community they say that we're living by faith and they're living by science but truthfully they're the ones living with more faith than we are in other words to believe what they believe it has no evidence behind it and in fact you know part of what this disproves is their theory was just ah they were a bunch of illiterate shepherds you know they they were illiterate they were uncivilized you know they're wanting to disprove that the torah was ever even written itself that it was made up fairy tales much later but as you dig you're finding and and not just this there's so many more things we could mention of like the seals you know of of the accusers of jeremiah that they found in the ashes over in ir david there's so many more of these uh things that have come out even in the last few years that have all of a sudden just bursted out of the ground right in the last few years many many ancient inscriptions were found just recently yeah uh like the name of jerubal in the city of tiklak that was found last year and that's from the 11th century bc or in the this the most ancient hebrew inscription until what we found what was found now yeah so and all these in the last few years so before that people always claim israel if maybe the people of israel knew you know writing the the alphabet was there there's an ancient alphabet that was found uh in sinai uh much earlier so we knew that there was an alphabet maybe in the 15th century bc there was an alphabet uh egyptian or sumerian inscription we know from years before that hundreds of years before that so people knew how to write there's no reason to say the israelites could not write or could not use alphabet the only reason they said that is because no nothing was found but that's logical it's because they didn't want to believe they don't they want with all of their heart for it not to be true because i i would say that if it's true there's a there's a huge implication and so that's why you know many of these i guess atheist scholars they're not going by fact they're going by their own belief what is in their heart what they want to believe like like you said these german philosophers that started this whole movement they they weren't working off of fact they were working off their own belief and so even if you were to put that lead tablet back in the dirt i would say that the evidence is overwhelming right of of this place being joshua's altar even if it was to go back in the dirt but they they can't put it back in the dirt right now i want to to give you some references to the bible of uh what we found right the first thing uh and this is actually heard it from scratch scott himself scott stripling he he's the one who excavated and so they found a little tablet made of lead right right so where do we know so okay people knew that in other countries like in turkey they found already tablets of lead it's not something new but in israel probably this is the first one and now if you go to job 19 you you have a reference to that in the bible people were doing that yes writing on lead with a pencil of iron yeah this is job19 it says oh that my words were written oh that they were inscribed in a book that they're engraved on a rock with an iron pin and lead forever so in other words people would write with an iron pin so harder object onto lead tablets that was how books were written back then i guess yeah it's amazing thank god for pens today right that would have been a lot more difficult wow so so we see the whole that's interesting in scripture the backup of this whole idea of writing on lead tablets as an ancient source of writing wow now and another thing from that is from a bible and i think this is a place where adam's dr adam zertal i think he did not interpret correctly the bible this is my my thought okay and uh in one thing uh so i told you in the beginning the people were looking for the altar on the northern side of mount about because the northern side is where it meets the southern side of mount gerizim and because of this ceremony of blessing and curse they were looking for the altar there but he did not find the altar on the northern side he found it on the eastern side and he was challenged by that and that actually was the main reason why he always suspected all the time maybe i'm wrong about the altar he was not so sure that he's other it took him several years to be sure to be sure about this and one of the main reasons was that and now he gave some explanation um but i just recently heard from some uh jews that read the bible and explained why it's actually not on the northern side and i want to take you to uh deuteronomy 27. deuteronomy 27 is um is this is where moses instructs the lord describes through moses the people of israel what to do when they come into the land yeah therefore it shall be when you have crossed over the jordan that on mount ebal you shall set up these stones in other words these stones were written with the blessings and curses which i command you today and you shall whitewash them with lime and there you shall build an altar to the lord your god an altar of stones you shall not use an iron tool on them you shall build with whole stones the altar of the lord your god and offer burnt offerings on it to the lord your god you shall offer peace offerings and shall eat there and rejoice before the lord your god and shall write very plainly on the stones all the words of this law okay so until here everything that we heard is compatible with what they found yeah they found a altar of stones whole stones that are not cut yeah by the way they found plaster there too huh yeah and and and and scorch is going to to check about the to try to date it because adams are totally not get to this but he did find a plaster there and and and and you saw that they sacrificed there so everything goes very well with this story yeah why would you think that it's on the northern side of mount ebal not because what we read until now right because what we're going to read next right if you start if you read from from verse 11 and moses commanded the people on the same day saying these shall stand on mount gerizim to bless the people when you've crossed over jordan simeon levi judah issachar joseph benjamin and these shall stand on mount ebal to curse reuben gad asher zebulun dan and naphtali okay so accord when you read this you think that they came they built an altar and when the altar was they there is the place where they started right yeah but what if these are two different things one is to build the altar yeah and one is to have this ceremony of blessing curse and it doesn't have to be in the same place now adam zertal didn't think this way he thought it must be and although all the people before him that were looking for that on the northern side they thought this should be the place and if but you can read the bible and say well i can see that those are two different topics yeah and they don't both of them are mount ebal yeah by the way mount about appears in the bible only five times three in those chapters in deuteronomy and two in joshua doesn't appear anymore right but here you see the first it appears only the altar of mount ebal and then the story of a ballon grazie and the blessing of the curse so then if you think about this it does make sense that it's not necessarily in the same place it is on the mountain but not exactly on the place of the blessing of the curse you know when we were there i asked you the question why did god say and you know we can only infer we can only guess here but i think we have a pretty educated guess why did god say set up sacrifice on the mount of curse on the mount of cursing this bare cursed mountain why build the altar there it's a big question your sins bring curse that's that's the only 28 right yeah that's actually the next chapter we just read 27 28 it speaks about the blessing and the curse right so the sins bring to [Music] to curse the blessing if you do go all good you you blessed the sins you need to sacrifice for your sins right we need the blood to atone for sin right and so he took the curse so the lamb was sacrificed on the mount of the curse and so what a beautiful picture of the gospel that's being portrayed here and and just it's smack dab in the middle like it's on the it's on the side that's facing where joshua proclaimed that famous statement choose for this day whom you will serve so down below these two mountains is what what do we find that's below in front of those mountains shake him shechem and shechem was the place where that covenant was made where joshua renewed the covenant and asked them choose whom you're going to serve right that's the end of the book of joshua and think about this in the backdrop behind him are two mountains one is full of life the mountain of blessing and the other one was cursed that mountain was desolate but that mountain had the sacrifice on it and so it's like you have this visual picture god created mountains just to illustrate this this whole picture of salvation this picture of sin and choice that we're going to choose are we going to serve god or ourselves and this is what's going to happen you know but we're going to need that sacrifice to redeem it right so beautiful it's beautiful and you know the the commandment in deuteronomy 27 about the the altar on mount ebal is very unique because if you read all the commandments in the bible all talk about something that you did annually monthly weekly there everything is a cycle you repeat every every commandment is something you should not eat that you should every day you should not eat you should do you should sacrifice every day every week everyone so all this is cycle but there's this is probably the only commandment that is one time right this commandment is one time go to the land put this and then you need to choose yeah between good and bad and so this is the story of the of the nation of israel that through for four years they are being led by god in the desert they just like sheep they going they don't choose anything but when they come into the promised land now now you need to decide where you are who you are and where you're going do you choose right or jews do you choose evil now you're now you're mature you enter to the land you're mature now you can choose which person you are going to be so it's kind of i look at shechem as the valley of decision because that's where that's where he was asked choose this day what other famous story do we find so we know yeshua came up he traveled through the samaritan country and he came to this well and here in the middle of the day when no one else would be there he asked this question to the samaritan woman and in the backdrop is the blessing and the curse right how beautiful is this just so exciting just to see how many things are coming out in such fast like action it's happening almost every every every other month we're hearing of this revolutionary discovery but for us who follow the scriptures this is just reinforcing our faith but i would say for the for the atheists for these atheist scholars who've really built their belief on nothing it's crashing those houses of cards that they've built praise the lord praise the lord so father in heaven we just asked that you would just encourage all of us lord that that are listening lord that you are sovereign that you are doing a mighty work today that you're uncovering truth that's been hidden in some cases for thousands and thousands of years you're uncovering it by your mercy you're you're you're cutting out these false idols of atheism your you're revealing the truth of your scripture in these days it's so exciting lord and i just ask that that you would continue to break uh break down the lies of the enemy and reveal your truth to the nations and father god we just ask that you would help ron and many other archaeologists who are digging right now to find more and more of these amazing discoveries that would that would be able to further reinforce the truth of your scripture and lead many to saving salvation in yeshua and pray in yeshua's name amen if this touched your heart will you help pay it forward so that others can hear the same message of life partner with our team to bring the gospel to israel and the nations

Channel: ONE FOR ISRAEL Ministry

Views: 747,273

Keywords: messianic, yeshua, one for israel, messiah, jewish, israel, sermon, podcast

Id: wWlKg9g1IXs

Length: 37min 44sec (2264 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 25 2022