Dr. Kipp Davis DESTROYS Archaeologist's Claims of a Biblical Tablet: Part II

an expert in the Hebrew Bible, Paleography of the Hebrew Language, and the Dead Sea Scrolls takes Mark Peralta on a deep dive discussing all the research that resulted from Dr. Scott Stripling publishing his article about the Mt. Ebal Tablet alleged inscription on the Journal of Heritage Science claiming many things concerning the 2cm x 2cm lead item. There is so much information that we had to share that the recording had to be split in two episodes. We hope that you enjoy this episode of Apostate of Mind. Please stay tuned for part two of this series.
Timeline of Major Points:
00:00:00 - 00:03:37 Quick intro and discussion of how the Mt. Ebal alleged inscription does not resemble the practice of Boustrophedon.
00:03:37 - 00:09:46 Discussion about Amulets, Filacteries, and other unsupported theories about why the table looks like it does.
00:09:46 - 00:18:57 Dr. Kipp points out various flaws with the proposed alphabet.
00:18:57 - 00:24:40 Discussion about peer reviews and alleged problem to the Documentary Hypothesis.
00:24:40 - 00:40:15 Discussion about patterns in proto-alphabetic script, the origins of paleo-hebrew script, a discussion of what is evident in Sinai 361 and 375a artifacts and how they compare to the alleged Mt. Ebal tablet inscruption.
00:40:15 - 00:46:21 Analysis of the alleged YHW inscription on the object
00:46:21 - 00:48:36 Analysis of the indentations on the object
00:48:36 - 00:52:20 Discussion about ancient Egyptian scarabs
00:52:20 - 01:00:31 Discussion about mater lectionis
01:00:31 - 01:04:44 Discussion about different size of the letters and the alleged strawman argument.
01:04:44 - 01:08:30 Stripling makes a categorical mistake (i.e. he mistakes the difference between referring to a script vs. a language
01:08:30 - 01:15:14 Objections to Stripling's many excuses and further considerations about the location of the Mt. Ebal altar.
01:15:14 - 01:20:00 Discussion about bias, presuppositions, and conclusion.
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[@Cheryllyle]

Bringing down the house @kipp Davis

[@davidjanbaz7728]

LOL 😂 What house ??? the Mount Ebal tablet has already been debunked by a Christian Egyptologist ✝️.

[@DrKippDavis]

​@davidjanbaz7728 You mean the Now Disgraced Egyptologist here on KZbin that no one has heard of, and whom no one watches? The same one who hilariously thought that Mark Smith's discussion of Deut 32:8-9 in "The Early History of God" was based on the Documentary Hypothesis, and who recently embarrassed himself by enthusiastically positing that the Qumran Scrolls were excavated from a garbage dump? That hack? Why would anyone care what he has to say about anything?

[@DrKippDavis]

@@davidjanbaz7728 Again, no one noticed, because no one watches the Now Disgraced Egyptologist's crappy channel. He lives in an echo chamber.

[@hj925]

Appears to me to be superb in terms of being rude, snide and more than a little bumbling about some really basic history of the region. Nothing impressive TBH, except to fans, shame for the lack of a professional ethos from Manchester I think, but, then again, it may just be an assimilation of the Northern lad culture thing.

[@Theprofessorator]

Every time Dr. Kipp Davis says, "Wow, eh?" sarcastically, my skeptic heart flutters. 💗

[@hj925]

Sarcasm does him no credit

[@jamiegallier2106]

Enjoyed round two, excellent stream gentlemen.

[@apostatepodcast]

Glad you enjoyed it

[@davidburroughs2244]

The thought "It will require a PhD from Veritas International Mail-It-In University to make any sense of this ...." should alarm any serious student of ... anything

[@hj925]

Manchester eh

[@hj925]

He and you should be more respectful - the academic industry doesn't really encourage confidence in one more than another and is not really much of an indication of quality. A PhD in Veritas one year could be much better, if independent assessments were possible, than any one churned out anywhere else - mainly to maintain the "system" and quotas. We really have few indicators of real quality from any of them and the subjects chosen are often so obscure and so thin as not to be especially impressive in most cases. I don't doubt Kipps could have had a genuinely good degree - maybe he was exceptional, I won't make the rude errors he did in any case, but it does him and certainly a presumably unqualified you, no credit to make those personal and derogatory slurs. If you understand the industry you'd generally not be so impressed as you seem to be, but the chances of you really knowing the truth of what you just said? Unlikely simply because you said it. Once upon a time a PhD was generally more likely to indicate quality, not any more.

[@hurdygurdyguy1]

As part of Professor Jodi Magness's excavation at Huqoq in Galilee (2011 - 2023) a number of objects coming out of the ground (mostly pottery fragments) had to my untrained eye what appeared to be markings of letters, inscriptions. Jodi would look and quickly say, "no, those are natural marks." There was one flat stone I was sure had an inscription but more than one of the specialists said, "sorry, nope!"

[@LexLataDelNorte]

Thanks so much for doing this, gents. Since Stripling seems to avoid fora where he'll undergo expert cross-examination on the Ebal item, this is the next best thing.

[@hj925]

In the end it'll come down to things outside Davis' knowledge and control and although you have clearly enjoyed the hatchet job, wasn't that what you call these direct and snide comments? Stripling will stand or fall by actual final assessments at the end of what looks like a lengthy process. Sorry to state the obvious, but Davis won't. Davis is like a football pundit. He can't win or lose a match so don't get too excited until the end however he claims to be and however the "match" currently looks. These things are historically uncertain and "fixed" scholarly opinions fill many books that are now quite discredited. I don't know about Davis except as a "celebrity" atheists and rolled out expert for Bible haters, but if I'm right about him, I'd guess he's plenty of old statements he's made that he'd rather weren't in print or online? You know, before he realised that last thing. I am not prejudging the issues or the conclusions and maybe Stripling will be completely wrong in terms of his confidence, after all, based on Davis "judgment", Stripling is impressive just to string a coherent string of words together - Davis unprofessional attitude to Stripling's qualifications are still annoying me intensely - as I don't want to hide. Quite likely Davis will be right, but the others he is relying on to support his claims will disappear if anything at all is proved. More incredible things have happened with finds though. But even adopted Mancunians are made of stronger stuff as they say. Shame about United though.

[@derinderruheliegt]

If you read the published paper for yourself, specifically looking at the scans, you quickly see why many of the experts didn’t even assess it worthy of a response…there is no discernible, systematic pattern to the flow of the alleged characters AND it cannot clearly be shown from the images that these are inscribed characters in the first place. This sort of makes the _mater lectionis_ discussion seem unnecessary, because you have to grant so many wild assumptions about inscriptions _actually_ being there. However, it does expose Stripling’s desperation in making this claim and, dare I say, his dishonesty.

[@Cheepchipsable]

Dare, dare!

[@jamierichardson7683]

Very interesting and informative. Thank you both

[@jamesduncan3673]

Always enjoy listening to Dr. Kipp.

[@theoutspokenhumanist]

Dr Kipp is always entertaining in his education. Why would a single author write the aleph in 9 different ways on one small curse tablet? Sadly, biblical archaelogy has always been plagued with people who 'discover' what they want to find,. In exactly the same way as apologists find their own meaning in biblical text. They begin with a preconception and presupposition and seek to prove it, instead of going where the evidence leads.

[@kahlilbt]

Ahh... Reminds me of the time an apologist showed the "earliest known prayer to Yahweh" and me, being a linguist and waning Bible scholar, read the inscription: "muHibb ba'alat" - beloved of Ba'alat (a female goddess)

[@johnbaustian5180]

Curses, foiled again!

[@alexhajnal107]

[@JasonHenderson]

If it weren't for those meddling Hebrew scholars

[@alexhajnal107]

Methinks they see bunnies in clouds.

[@gary_stavropoulos]

More than a little surprised to hear the phrase “honest injun”.

[@bruceblosser384]

If there is no script on this object, Stripling has to go back to being a total backwater NOBODY! :)

[@helenaconstantine]

Where I thought you going at the beginning is towards Greek curse tablets where the victim's name is scrambled (e.g., PIKP) to help activate the curse, but even there the letters are written in line. In any case, these are fundamentalist seminary professors anxious to play scholar dress-up.

[@LetaLorelei]

Thank you for the great analysis and insights, brilliant and love it, although I am not a historian or archeologist, I have big interest in history and archeology and believe they come together to understand the ancient world, civilizations and humans.

[@apostatepodcast]

Thank you

[@ETALAL]

That was a fun one thx 🙏

[@Slum0vsky]

1:13:00 Argumentum ad Ricard Carrier xD

[@kamilgregor]

It is the horseshoe theory of biblical scholarship - Jesus mythicists argue similarly to Christian fundamentalists

[@LetaLorelei]

What they are trying to do is part of a much bigger purpose and that is forcing the creation of a historical culture in a specific geographic area, whether as a whole or as more significant. What ultimately matters is the fact that regular people who are not specialists can’t make the difference, they will believe someone who is a Ph.D degree holder, the technical peer reviews and/or reputable magazines publishing is besides the point in this case.

[@avi8r66]

Even as a lay person his claims fell very flat when I first heard them. 46:14

[@DoctorBiobrain]

My hot girlfriend in Canada is extremely offended by Dr Kipp’s insinuation of her nonexistence and demands an apology or he’ll be hearing from my unnamed lawyer!

[@apostatepodcast]

😂

[@hj925]

Pathetic joke tired before he said it. Disrespectful and obviously sly up your street. Like silly laddish "humour" as well? How lame.

[@DoctorBiobrain]

@@hj925 You sound like a very humorless person who doesn’t understand why nobody likes you. The references in the video were intended as a cultural reference we’d understand, not as a joke to be laughed at. And I used it as the basis for an original joke that I thought was decently written. But you don’t care. You were apparently offended by the video because Dr Kipp wasn’t respectful to a small child who used his imagination to create a religious artifact out of ancient garbage and are just looking for something negative to post. You should try to lighten up and you’ll find life works better. Or you can just go around insulting people and see if it starts working for you. It’d be one thing if you criticized a mistake, but criticizing jokes is lamer than lame.

[@brendaross9732]

Sooo, are you telling me that finding matres lectiones in 13th century B.C.E. inscriptions could be compared to saying that you have a manuscript showing that Shakespeare used the word "groovy" in his plays . . .

[@apostatepodcast]

Absolutely 100% YES

[@brendaross9732]

Or better yet, Chaucer . . .

[@brianriley5108]

Anyone who lives near Houston knows where Katy is .... Its a massive suburb.

[@MrKreinen]

:15 "Boustrophedon" is the pass between Greece and Anatolia, and at least as of the Hellenic age, represented the Greco-Semitic cultural-union. More over, Boustrophendon is for the back-and forth order in which a gematrtist is supposed to read scripture.

[@ronjohnson4566]

thank both of you guys. very good. I've been listening a lot to Lady Babylon, dr. ammon hillman and it seems to me he knows his stuff, but I have questions. any opinions on him and his interpretations. Im very interested in his opinion that the persians took the educated to Babylon and when some of them returned to the levant there were no copies of the books of Moses. so they started over in greek. a very Hellenized levant.

[@alexhajnal107]

Can you suggest a particular paper or video discussing this? It seems pretty clear to me that Canaanite contact with Mesopotamia and Persia was probably limited or indirect but I haven't come across (secular) scholarly discussion of the topic.

[@DrKippDavis]

Hey, there. I will say this much for Ammon Hillman-he possesses an excellent grasp of the Greek classics, but that is it. Hillman knows nothing about the broader ancient Near Eastern world; he knows nothing about Canaanite, Assyrian, Sumerian or Mesopotamian litertature; he is historically illiterate; most importantly, he DOES NOT read Hebrew, and he is incapable of making philologically accurate and useful comparisons between the Hebrew Bible texts and the Septuagint. I once did a stream on Gnostic Informant's channel with him, and I had to leave because Hillman was being such an obnoxious, insufferably ignorant and arrogant buffoon. It was unfortunately early because the proof for the DIRECTION of translation from the Hebrew into Greek is undeniable to anyone who can read BOTH texts. Since Hillman is only barely competent in one, he fails to grasp this. In short, the biblical texts of the so-called Old Testament were ALL composed in Hebrew and Aramaic-this is an established fact; it is indisputable. They were translated into Greek over time starting in the third century, and in a grass-roots movement throughout the Jewish Diaspora as more and more people were becoming increasingly unfamiliar with the original languages. I can agree that there are Hellenistic cultural and literary influences on *some* of the Hebrew texts, but it remains a thoroughly Semitic document, most closely connected to the older myths and literature of the early Israelite contemporaries-the Canaanites; the Mesopotamians; the Egyptians; the Assyrians.

[@slottibarfast5402]

I would like to say something way off topic. In some way studying biblical writing is about morality how we should live and here i stop to say i am no paragon if anything especialy being a good person. One thing we have inherited is a world filled with suffering. Things are much better than even fifty years ago but still basic needs are not being met for millions upon millions of people. Medical care, food, potable water, shelter from heat cold insects and parasites. We all know the need. If it was a family member or the old guy down the street we would take action but beyond that our own comfort, extravagant in many ways not only comes first but is our only concern. W vcould cook our own food simple, inexpensive foods. We could wear our clothes longer not be embarased by a few lose threads here and there. We dont need these oversized homes. Do we need to haul two tons of metal withus to go to work? Most of us in the west could live on a lot less and not even miss it. Then take that money and together we could end so much suffering in the world yet somehow we seem paralized or in a trance, eager to turn the channel when the suffering wirld intrudes in our lives. I am in this parade of uncaring, probably waving a flag as well. So what is wrong with humanity and what can be done.

[@kahlilbt]

The sad part is we have all that money already, as a society. Our country spends so much of it on war, weapons, advertising, spying, militarizing, supporting billionaire businesses, building walls, etc. We should use that money to actually improve the lives of regular people

[@fordprefect5304]

Dr Kipp love your videos but it is not one of a kind. In the second article of the series, Prof. Amihai Mazar, a retired archaeologist from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, notes that the artifact has the perfect size, shape and composition to be a “sinker,” an object used to weigh down fishing nets. In the Late Bronze Age, but also in later periods, these weights were commonly made by folding a thin lead sheet around the netting, which obviously has decomposed with time, leaving archaeologists with these tiny metal sandwiches, Mazar notes. Hundreds have been found in digs across the Eastern Mediterranean, of different sizes and shapes. The Mt. Ebal one belongs to a subtype that is more commonly found in Greece and less so in the Levant, he writes. This is also consistent with the isotope analysis of the artifact, which is the topic of the third study in the series and identified the lead as having originated in Greece.

[@fordprefect5304]

Since some sinkers were decorated with incisions, it is possible that the marks seen on the Ebal artifact are just such an embellishment, though they may also be the result of centuries of the object being smashed and compressed, Mazar notes. In any case, he agrees that no letters are visible, and cites two other eminent epigraphers, Prof. Benjamin Sass of Tel Aviv University and Dr. Anat Mendel-Geberovich of the Hebrew University, as agreeing that no symbols are discernible. While Mazar acknowledges that most sinkers are found in shipwrecks and at coastal sites, they are not unheard of at sites more inland.

[@apostatepodcast]

I believe Dr. Kipp went over that paper during our first episode. Please check it out 🙏

[@fordprefect5304]

@@apostatepodcast Thanks, will do.

[@DrKippDavis]

You misunderstood. My point was that IF this was a Bronze Age lead curse defixio in Syro-Palestine, THEN it would have been one-of-a-kind. Of course, it is not that.

[@markpanko7732]

Parado lea at its best,

[@michaelsaxton7966]

Dude, Dr. Kill....Katy TX is a stones throw West of Houston. Many many people know where and what Katy TX is lol. Interstate 10 runs right through that bad boy.

[@DrKippDavis]

Leave me alone. I live in Canada.

[@michealomaoldomhnaigh3604]

Agus is as Éireann domsa 😅😅

[@JasonHenderson]

I'm from Kansas City, I've heard of Katy Texas but I have no idea geographically where it's located. I think my sister's cousin lived there or something.

[@jm329]

I’ve never heard of it. I live pretty much straight north of it.

[@alexhajnal107]

The only reason I've heard the name is the Katy railroad whose name is based on the initialism KT, for Kansas-Texas. On reading up on it, the town is named for the railroad.

[@helenaconstantine]

Curse tablets are not apotropaic, Kipp.

[@DrKippDavis]

True!

[@davidschneide5422]

It's always empty assertions & erroneous interpretations by emotional predators.

[@user-on3zi9fo2g]

Where’s your evidence baby boy? Oh that’s right you have none. Jesus is King.

[@alexhajnal107]

Even if Jesus were a king there still wouldn't be any writing on that artifact.

[@user-on3zi9fo2g]

@@alexhajnal107 Wrong. Anything is possible through the power of Christ.

[@terrlaw328]

@@user-on3zi9fo2g. Typical response of an uneducated person who only believes what he learned from an old uneducated preacher in some backwater town.

[@alexhajnal107]

@@user-on3zi9fo2g That's bollocks and you know it.

[@Nymaz]

@@user-on3zi9fo2g Then why are so many apologists like this one so desperate to give scientific "proof" of the early existence of Yahweh, or the Flood, or other Bible stories. Why not just say "It's Jesus magic!" and be done with it? Could it be that they recognize that living your life relying on magic is not conducive to a long and/or healthy life? The Bible says JesusMagic can protect you from drinking poison and handling venomous snakes. Do you do so on a regular basis? Why not, don't you know "Anything is possible through the power of Christ."?

[@fagica]

Good analysis and debunking. One minor point for precision: pronunciation is pU-tative, not pu-TA-tive (stress on third to last, proparoxytone.)