1
00:00:06,519 --> 00:00:08,710
Speaker 1: Shiloh is one of the most important sites in the

2
00:00:08,850 --> 00:00:13,070
Speaker 1: history of ancient Israel. A recent dig uncovers some startling

3
00:00:13,150 --> 00:00:17,090
Speaker 1: discoveries that give us insight into this ancient city, but

4
00:00:17,130 --> 00:00:20,960
Speaker 1: also might challenge skeptics to redate its occupation to more

5
00:00:21,040 --> 00:00:25,050
Speaker 1: closely align with the biblical chronology. Our guest today, you

6
00:00:25,120 --> 00:00:26,920
Speaker 1: recognize because he's been on the show a couple of

7
00:00:26,940 --> 00:00:29,980
Speaker 1: times before. Scott Stripling is an author. He is a

8
00:00:30,120 --> 00:00:35,220
Speaker 1: practicing archaeologist and leading the dig at Shiloh here to

9
00:00:35,280 --> 00:00:38,460
Speaker 1: tell us this fascinating story. Scott, thanks for coming on.

10
00:00:39,440 --> 00:00:40,680
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me, Sean.

11
00:00:40,800 --> 00:00:43,559
Speaker 3: And I've been back from Israel about six weeks now

12
00:00:43,620 --> 00:00:46,190
Speaker 3: from the dig. So I'm caught up on sleep and

13
00:00:46,270 --> 00:00:47,470
Speaker 3: should be somewhat coherent.

14
00:00:48,590 --> 00:00:50,310
Speaker 1: I love that. Now, you and your team sent me

15
00:00:50,330 --> 00:00:52,610
Speaker 1: an email and I was actually not aware of some

16
00:00:52,630 --> 00:00:56,050
Speaker 1: of the digs taking place. And about three lines into it,

17
00:00:56,090 --> 00:00:58,210
Speaker 1: immediately it was like, oh man, if Scott would come

18
00:00:58,290 --> 00:01:00,550
Speaker 1: on and talk about this, I think my folks will

19
00:01:00,570 --> 00:01:03,450
Speaker 1: love it. So let's just start. Some people might recognize

20
00:01:03,480 --> 00:01:06,960
Speaker 1: the name Shiloh, but not realize how significant it is.

21
00:01:07,680 --> 00:01:10,740
Speaker 1: Why is Shiloh so significant for ancient Israel in the

22
00:01:10,780 --> 00:01:11,320
Speaker 1: Old Testament?

23
00:01:12,040 --> 00:01:13,240
Speaker 2: Well, let me frame it like this.

24
00:01:13,700 --> 00:01:17,540
Speaker 3: Jerusalem was still a pagan city for three centuries when

25
00:01:17,620 --> 00:01:20,700
Speaker 3: Shiloh was Israel's capital. So just think about that for

26
00:01:20,750 --> 00:01:23,170
Speaker 3: a minute. If you wanted to get right with God,

27
00:01:23,230 --> 00:01:26,390
Speaker 3: Leviticus 17, 11 says, without the shedding of blood, there's

28
00:01:26,450 --> 00:01:28,090
Speaker 3: no forgiveness of sin.

29
00:01:28,370 --> 00:01:30,990
Speaker 2: You went to Shiloh. I mean, that's where the tabernacle was.

30
00:01:31,670 --> 00:01:34,330
Speaker 3: And that's where you went to restore your vertical relationship

31
00:01:34,350 --> 00:01:38,070
Speaker 3: with God or your horizontal relationships with others through that

32
00:01:38,150 --> 00:01:43,270
Speaker 3: sacrificial system. It's the material cultural remains through which we

33
00:01:43,310 --> 00:01:47,810
Speaker 3: are excavating right now at Shiloh since 2017. that have

34
00:01:47,910 --> 00:01:51,110
Speaker 3: illuminated what was going on at that critical point in

35
00:01:51,130 --> 00:01:53,850
Speaker 3: biblical history. So if you want to talk about what

36
00:01:53,930 --> 00:01:57,510
Speaker 3: mattered most in early Israel, it wasn't Jerusalem, it was Shiloh.

37
00:01:58,780 --> 00:02:01,360
Speaker 1: That's really interesting. Now, it turns out, you know this

38
00:02:01,390 --> 00:02:03,720
Speaker 1: better than I do, that you're not the first who

39
00:02:03,780 --> 00:02:07,800
Speaker 1: has dug there. So maybe tell us a little bit

40
00:02:07,840 --> 00:02:11,380
Speaker 1: about what other digs have taken place there and what

41
00:02:11,440 --> 00:02:12,540
Speaker 1: people have found already.

42
00:02:14,100 --> 00:02:15,460
Speaker 2: Really interesting history.

43
00:02:15,620 --> 00:02:19,320
Speaker 3: The great American Orientalist Edward Robinson in 1838 got his

44
00:02:19,380 --> 00:02:21,900
Speaker 3: Bible and thought, I'm going to go find Shiloh.

45
00:02:21,919 --> 00:02:23,080
Speaker 2: And he was on horseback.

46
00:02:23,740 --> 00:02:25,960
Speaker 3: And so he set out on horseback with his Bible.

47
00:02:26,600 --> 00:02:30,040
Speaker 3: And Joshua, I'm sorry, Judges 21 just led him literally

48
00:02:30,100 --> 00:02:33,580
Speaker 3: straight there. It gave three geographical markers. He marked the

49
00:02:33,620 --> 00:02:36,980
Speaker 3: spot as Kermit's Siloam, which now, of course, we all

50
00:02:37,180 --> 00:02:40,870
Speaker 3: know is ancient Shiloh. It was the Danish under the

51
00:02:40,910 --> 00:02:43,410
Speaker 3: National Museum who first broke ground in 1926, 29, 32.

52
00:02:43,389 --> 00:02:52,300
Speaker 3: And then the kind of pre-World War II tensions were about,

53
00:02:52,520 --> 00:02:55,480
Speaker 3: and they came back in 1963 for a final season.

54
00:02:55,919 --> 00:02:59,320
Speaker 3: So that Danish dig was first, did maybe 2% of

55
00:02:59,340 --> 00:03:02,889
Speaker 3: the site, did good work. But of course, by modern standards,

56
00:03:03,150 --> 00:03:07,589
Speaker 3: we would sort of critique it. Bar-Ilan University came from

57
00:03:07,590 --> 00:03:11,960
Speaker 3: 1981 to 1984, back when Israel Finkelstein was at Bar-Ilan

58
00:03:12,000 --> 00:03:14,260
Speaker 3: University and was a bit more conservative also at that

59
00:03:14,300 --> 00:03:18,419
Speaker 3: time in his view of how the Bible and archaeology related.

60
00:03:19,380 --> 00:03:23,000
Speaker 3: They did about 2% of the site, maybe 3% of

61
00:03:23,020 --> 00:03:24,100
Speaker 3: the site, something like that.

62
00:03:25,240 --> 00:03:26,160
Speaker 2: In different areas.

63
00:03:26,300 --> 00:03:32,079
Speaker 3: So the staff officer of archaeology said, beginning in the

64
00:03:32,120 --> 00:03:36,680
Speaker 3: late 1980s, and especially after 93, because the Oslo Accords

65
00:03:37,060 --> 00:03:41,140
Speaker 3: of 1993 and 1995 carved up Judea and Samaria, what

66
00:03:41,160 --> 00:03:44,740
Speaker 3: we call the so-called West Bank, into three zones, A, B,

67
00:03:44,780 --> 00:03:47,760
Speaker 3: and C, with C being under, it's about 60% of

68
00:03:47,820 --> 00:03:50,840
Speaker 3: it is in C, which is under total Israeli control.

69
00:03:51,570 --> 00:03:56,809
Speaker 3: So within Area C, the staff officer of archaeology, for

70
00:03:56,850 --> 00:04:00,710
Speaker 3: the civil administration, was placed in charge of those areas.

71
00:04:01,290 --> 00:04:04,500
Speaker 3: So they began to do some salvage work at Shiloh

72
00:04:05,260 --> 00:04:07,840
Speaker 3: to develop it for tourists and stuff. Like if you

73
00:04:07,860 --> 00:04:10,120
Speaker 3: were going to build a parking lot, well, that had

74
00:04:10,140 --> 00:04:12,460
Speaker 3: to be excavated before the parking lot could be built.

75
00:04:12,520 --> 00:04:15,360
Speaker 3: And if paths were going to be put down, there

76
00:04:15,400 --> 00:04:18,510
Speaker 3: had to be excavation. So we've got three things at work.

77
00:04:18,570 --> 00:04:21,510
Speaker 3: We've got the Danish data, we've got the Bar-Ilan data,

78
00:04:21,970 --> 00:04:25,130
Speaker 3: and then we have the SOA, Staff Officer of Archaeology data.

79
00:04:25,490 --> 00:04:26,839
Speaker 2: And then we come.

80
00:04:26,760 --> 00:04:30,370
Speaker 3: Along in 2016 and we're about to start this dig.

81
00:04:30,430 --> 00:04:33,070
Speaker 3: We have to take all that data, sometimes using different

82
00:04:33,589 --> 00:04:36,930
Speaker 3: wall numbers and locus numbers and true north and magnetic

83
00:04:36,990 --> 00:04:40,270
Speaker 3: north and kind of synthesize it all into our plan

84
00:04:40,370 --> 00:04:43,469
Speaker 3: so that as we excavate and publish, it will make sense.

85
00:04:44,470 --> 00:04:47,570
Speaker 1: Okay, gotcha. Now, some ancient sites like Sodom and Gomorrah,

86
00:04:47,600 --> 00:04:52,460
Speaker 1: there's serious debate even amongst Christian archaeologists where the location is.

87
00:04:52,520 --> 00:04:54,460
Speaker 1: When it comes to Jericho, as far as I understand,

88
00:04:54,500 --> 00:04:57,740
Speaker 1: there's like near universal agreement that we at least know

89
00:04:57,779 --> 00:05:01,090
Speaker 1: where Jericho is. How confident are we that this is

90
00:05:01,130 --> 00:05:02,070
Speaker 1: the biblical Shiloh?

91
00:05:03,529 --> 00:05:04,349
Speaker 2: Extremely.

92
00:05:04,370 --> 00:05:08,089
Speaker 3: I am not personally aware of anyone who disputes that.

93
00:05:08,610 --> 00:05:11,450
Speaker 3: And that's a big deal in archaeology because, you know,

94
00:05:11,480 --> 00:05:14,159
Speaker 3: the maximum where there are two archaeologists, there are three opinions.

95
00:05:14,220 --> 00:05:18,720
Speaker 3: And so everyone's on board probably for that reason that

96
00:05:18,740 --> 00:05:20,880
Speaker 3: I gave you at the beginning, what Edward Robinson did

97
00:05:20,900 --> 00:05:25,190
Speaker 3: taking his Bible. And it was so specific in Judges 21.

98
00:05:25,190 --> 00:05:28,640
Speaker 3: that it led him straight to Shiloh. Since then, we

99
00:05:28,700 --> 00:05:31,560
Speaker 3: have an inscription in one of the churches, because there

100
00:05:31,580 --> 00:05:34,580
Speaker 3: are five Byzantine churches at Shiloh. One of them has

101
00:05:34,640 --> 00:05:38,460
Speaker 3: a beautiful inscription, Lord Jesus bless the people of Shiloh.

102
00:05:39,100 --> 00:05:42,279
Speaker 3: And it just confirmed what I think people already knew.

103
00:05:42,300 --> 00:05:48,300
Speaker 3: And then we have found a verisimilitude, a consistency between

104
00:05:48,320 --> 00:05:51,200
Speaker 3: the material culture and what we would read in the

105
00:05:51,240 --> 00:05:52,820
Speaker 3: Bible that would confirm that as well.

106
00:05:53,610 --> 00:05:54,810
Speaker 1: We're going to get to that. And I love in

107
00:05:54,830 --> 00:05:56,599
Speaker 1: the article you sent me, you described how your team

108
00:05:56,630 --> 00:05:59,580
Speaker 1: was ecstatic. And if people need to realize if you've

109
00:05:59,600 --> 00:06:03,460
Speaker 1: been digging there since 2016, 2017, this is a decade

110
00:06:03,600 --> 00:06:09,119
Speaker 1: of just like painstaking work where those moments you live for,

111
00:06:09,820 --> 00:06:12,290
Speaker 1: we're going to get there. But tell me what your

112
00:06:12,320 --> 00:06:15,830
Speaker 1: team brings uniquely to this dig in the sense of

113
00:06:16,150 --> 00:06:18,030
Speaker 1: what do you bring in that other people didn't do?

114
00:06:18,510 --> 00:06:20,490
Speaker 1: And what are you hoping to find? Like, what are

115
00:06:20,510 --> 00:06:23,860
Speaker 1: your expectations of as you dive into a place like Shiloh?

116
00:06:24,980 --> 00:06:26,859
Speaker 3: Well, one of the things that we bring is the

117
00:06:26,920 --> 00:06:29,539
Speaker 3: size of the team. So it's the largest dig team

118
00:06:29,600 --> 00:06:32,420
Speaker 3: working in the Middle East. And with a big team,

119
00:06:32,460 --> 00:06:35,320
Speaker 3: you can do some things like wet sifting, for example,

120
00:06:35,820 --> 00:06:38,430
Speaker 3: that we have, we didn't invent wet sifting, but I

121
00:06:38,450 --> 00:06:41,109
Speaker 3: would say we perfected wet sifting. And we were the

122
00:06:41,170 --> 00:06:44,330
Speaker 3: first to actually bring it into the field where we

123
00:06:44,350 --> 00:06:47,390
Speaker 3: would do it in situ. So in other words, everything

124
00:06:47,430 --> 00:06:50,289
Speaker 3: that we are excavating is not only checked and then

125
00:06:50,350 --> 00:06:53,760
Speaker 3: dry sieved, but then it's also washed through our wet

126
00:06:53,779 --> 00:06:57,219
Speaker 3: sifting process so that we know exactly where it came from.

127
00:06:57,540 --> 00:07:00,359
Speaker 3: And the value of small finds, be it a bead

128
00:07:00,420 --> 00:07:02,620
Speaker 3: or a scarab or a bula or something like this,

129
00:07:03,200 --> 00:07:04,900
Speaker 3: is that we know where it came from because it

130
00:07:04,940 --> 00:07:07,920
Speaker 3: can help us in the identification and the dating of

131
00:07:07,960 --> 00:07:12,320
Speaker 3: that particular stratum. So our expertise in wet sifting, I

132
00:07:12,340 --> 00:07:14,700
Speaker 3: had worked for two years as a supervisor on the

133
00:07:14,760 --> 00:07:17,700
Speaker 3: Temple Mount Sifting Project in Jerusalem. And it was at

134
00:07:17,740 --> 00:07:20,450
Speaker 3: that time that I made up my mind this is

135
00:07:20,770 --> 00:07:23,520
Speaker 3: really a game changer, but all of that material we

136
00:07:23,560 --> 00:07:26,000
Speaker 3: were working with in Jerusalem, it was out of context.

137
00:07:26,100 --> 00:07:28,860
Speaker 3: It had been disturbed. When I get the chance to

138
00:07:28,880 --> 00:07:31,120
Speaker 3: bring this into the field, I'm going to do it.

139
00:07:31,440 --> 00:07:33,620
Speaker 3: And we're going to see this is going to really

140
00:07:33,660 --> 00:07:35,620
Speaker 3: make a big difference. And so I would say the

141
00:07:35,680 --> 00:07:39,320
Speaker 3: size of our team and the newer technology that we're

142
00:07:39,360 --> 00:07:41,560
Speaker 3: able to bring to bear makes a big difference. And

143
00:07:41,600 --> 00:07:45,120
Speaker 3: then thirdly, Sean, we've been working in that area since 1979.

144
00:07:45,120 --> 00:07:51,400
Speaker 3: I mean, We excavated Curbit Nisir, Psogot, and then Curbit

145
00:07:51,420 --> 00:07:55,440
Speaker 3: el Makatir. We did the project on Manibal and now

146
00:07:55,500 --> 00:07:59,730
Speaker 3: Shiloh for a decade. So we know not only the

147
00:07:59,870 --> 00:08:03,290
Speaker 3: pottery and the physical remains from Shiloh, but we have

148
00:08:03,330 --> 00:08:06,390
Speaker 3: a regional perspective and it takes time to develop that.

149
00:08:06,490 --> 00:08:10,030
Speaker 3: So we know what the pottery is like at the

150
00:08:10,190 --> 00:08:13,930
Speaker 3: surrounding sites and we know what the transitions are not

151
00:08:14,010 --> 00:08:16,610
Speaker 3: only at Shiloh, but we can compare that from a

152
00:08:16,690 --> 00:08:17,800
Speaker 3: larger perspective.

153
00:08:19,080 --> 00:08:23,540
Speaker 1: So one of, I have a colleague, Clint Arnold at

154
00:08:23,580 --> 00:08:26,030
Speaker 1: Talb School of Theology, who's one of the experts on

155
00:08:26,110 --> 00:08:28,810
Speaker 1: Colossians in the world, written a huge commentary on it.

156
00:08:29,170 --> 00:08:32,290
Speaker 1: And they're starting a dig at Colossae and it costs

157
00:08:32,309 --> 00:08:35,660
Speaker 1: them hundreds of thousands of dollars. Like, just give us

158
00:08:35,740 --> 00:08:37,679
Speaker 1: a sense from the outside going, okay, wait a minute.

159
00:08:37,720 --> 00:08:40,569
Speaker 1: You have the biggest team, if I heard you correctly,

160
00:08:41,130 --> 00:08:43,950
Speaker 1: not just at this site ever, but in the Middle

161
00:08:44,030 --> 00:08:47,569
Speaker 1: East doing any archaeological dig. If I heard you correctly,

162
00:08:48,530 --> 00:08:50,470
Speaker 1: it sounds like I did. I mean, how do you

163
00:08:50,530 --> 00:08:52,390
Speaker 1: fund this? How do you get the money? Like, how

164
00:08:52,429 --> 00:08:55,460
Speaker 1: do you even put this thing together of such magnitude?

165
00:08:56,640 --> 00:08:59,430
Speaker 3: Well, now that you asked, the viewers are welcome to

166
00:08:59,470 --> 00:09:03,829
Speaker 3: donate because I do it the old-fashioned way, okay?

167
00:09:04,710 --> 00:09:05,430
Speaker 2: It's by faith.

168
00:09:06,290 --> 00:09:09,160
Speaker 3: I think about Eilat Mazar and her great dig in Jerusalem.

169
00:09:09,260 --> 00:09:12,220
Speaker 3: She thought she knew where David's palace was, and she

170
00:09:12,260 --> 00:09:15,900
Speaker 3: waited 10 years until she had a donor to start digging. We,

171
00:09:15,960 --> 00:09:17,839
Speaker 3: on the other hand, get out there in sort of

172
00:09:17,920 --> 00:09:23,980
Speaker 3: the evangelical way by faith. The provision is going to show. No, seriously,

173
00:09:24,020 --> 00:09:26,560
Speaker 3: we raise money and over time, people who have worked

174
00:09:26,600 --> 00:09:29,500
Speaker 3: with us over these decades have caught our vision and

175
00:09:29,679 --> 00:09:32,490
Speaker 3: they support what we do. And then, of course, the

176
00:09:32,710 --> 00:09:35,030
Speaker 3: volunteers pay a dig fee and that helps as well.

177
00:09:36,050 --> 00:09:42,150
Speaker 3: The site at Ancient Shiloh, they also contribute in some

178
00:09:42,190 --> 00:09:46,350
Speaker 3: ways like with electricity and water and security. I don't

179
00:09:46,370 --> 00:09:49,610
Speaker 3: get charged for those things. And so those are sort

180
00:09:49,650 --> 00:09:53,560
Speaker 3: of in-kind types of contributions. But I sympathize with the

181
00:09:53,580 --> 00:09:56,180
Speaker 3: dig at Colossae, and I've been hoping this would start

182
00:09:56,230 --> 00:10:00,300
Speaker 3: for many years, because when you're starting, you have... to

183
00:10:00,420 --> 00:10:06,840
Speaker 3: create a grid and create protocols and proposals and then

184
00:10:06,960 --> 00:10:12,140
Speaker 3: licensing and then fundraising and then recruit a team, train

185
00:10:12,179 --> 00:10:17,410
Speaker 3: that team and then begin the excavation process and begin

186
00:10:17,450 --> 00:10:20,410
Speaker 3: to then actually publish the Because as you well know,

187
00:10:20,490 --> 00:10:23,650
Speaker 3: the goal of archaeology is not excavation, it's publication.

188
00:10:24,270 --> 00:10:26,510
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, it is really interesting because Clinton is

189
00:10:26,550 --> 00:10:29,370
Speaker 1: not an archaeologist. He doesn't claim to be. He's a theologian,

190
00:10:29,410 --> 00:10:33,860
Speaker 1: New Testament scholar, but has sent these newsletters and updates.

191
00:10:33,929 --> 00:10:36,320
Speaker 1: And I read about what it entails. I think, oh

192
00:10:36,360 --> 00:10:39,000
Speaker 1: my goodness, the hoops you have to jump through. I

193
00:10:39,920 --> 00:10:43,340
Speaker 1: can't imagine for the number of people on this team,

194
00:10:43,860 --> 00:10:47,780
Speaker 1: for the amount of expense that just how significant Shiloh is,

195
00:10:47,840 --> 00:10:52,459
Speaker 1: that it's remarkable that you started digging about a decade ago. So,

196
00:10:52,500 --> 00:10:55,400
Speaker 1: all right, let's get to this moment. And it's your word,

197
00:10:55,480 --> 00:10:57,860
Speaker 1: just for the record, not mine. In the article you

198
00:10:57,900 --> 00:11:00,610
Speaker 1: sent me, you said you made a discovery that made

199
00:11:00,630 --> 00:11:03,810
Speaker 1: your team ecstatic. What did you discover?

200
00:11:05,150 --> 00:11:09,849
Speaker 3: Well, that's what our press release said. What most of

201
00:11:09,890 --> 00:11:12,630
Speaker 3: the media apparently heard, because we had about 400 news

202
00:11:12,720 --> 00:11:15,660
Speaker 3: stories that came off of that, What they heard was,

203
00:11:15,950 --> 00:11:16,689
Speaker 3: we claim to have.

204
00:11:16,650 --> 00:11:17,670
Speaker 2: Found the Ark of the Covenant.

205
00:11:20,730 --> 00:11:23,330
Speaker 3: How they got that from what I sent you, is

206
00:11:23,370 --> 00:11:24,930
Speaker 3: that what you thought when you saw that?

207
00:11:25,309 --> 00:11:26,330
Speaker 1: Not even close.

208
00:11:27,480 --> 00:11:31,320
Speaker 3: But, I mean, it just became clickbait. And, you know,

209
00:11:31,480 --> 00:11:34,680
Speaker 3: one story fed to another. And of all those 400

210
00:11:34,679 --> 00:11:38,500
Speaker 3: stories in multiple languages, only two reporters ever actually reached

211
00:11:38,590 --> 00:11:38,990
Speaker 3: out to me.

212
00:11:39,370 --> 00:11:41,559
Speaker 2: And it's not like I'm hard to find. And I

213
00:11:41,600 --> 00:11:42,859
Speaker 2: think that was Fox.

214
00:11:42,620 --> 00:11:48,000
Speaker 3: News and CBN reached out to me to actually check facts.

215
00:11:48,040 --> 00:11:51,530
Speaker 3: And they wrote really good stories. So anyway, I circle

216
00:11:51,570 --> 00:11:55,050
Speaker 3: back around to your original question, what's fascinating. It's not

217
00:11:55,090 --> 00:11:58,790
Speaker 3: that we found the Ark of the Covenant. What we

218
00:11:58,860 --> 00:12:04,500
Speaker 3: have been excavating since 2017 and really beginning into 2018,

219
00:12:04,500 --> 00:12:07,600
Speaker 3: we began to see a building emerge as we lowered

220
00:12:07,640 --> 00:12:11,079
Speaker 3: the matrix of that seemed to match the dimensions of

221
00:12:11,100 --> 00:12:14,290
Speaker 3: the biblical tabernacle. And the dating seemed to work.

222
00:12:14,350 --> 00:12:15,309
Speaker 2: It was east-west.

223
00:12:15,390 --> 00:12:18,590
Speaker 3: It was divided on two-to-one ratios. So it was on

224
00:12:18,670 --> 00:12:22,790
Speaker 3: our radar. I have never said that we have found

225
00:12:22,809 --> 00:12:25,010
Speaker 3: the building of the tabernacle. But what I have said

226
00:12:25,090 --> 00:12:28,510
Speaker 3: increasingly each year is that we have a strong candidate

227
00:12:28,640 --> 00:12:32,700
Speaker 3: for this. And it continues to meet the criteria that

228
00:12:32,740 --> 00:12:35,160
Speaker 3: we would want it to meet. And in the end,

229
00:12:35,200 --> 00:12:38,540
Speaker 3: we will never be able to say definitively that we

230
00:12:38,559 --> 00:12:41,819
Speaker 3: found the tabernacle building because there's not going to be

231
00:12:41,860 --> 00:12:44,680
Speaker 3: a sign that says, you know, Samuel slept here or,

232
00:12:44,950 --> 00:12:47,390
Speaker 3: you know, Eli slept here or something like that. We're

233
00:12:47,429 --> 00:12:49,290
Speaker 3: just going to be able to say, here are the dimensions.

234
00:12:49,429 --> 00:12:52,630
Speaker 3: Here's what the Bible says. Here's the cultic material that

235
00:12:52,650 --> 00:12:56,610
Speaker 3: we're finding. Here's the ceramic profile, the orientation of the building.

236
00:12:57,390 --> 00:12:59,480
Speaker 3: And then what the biblical text says about a permanent

237
00:12:59,520 --> 00:13:03,660
Speaker 3: building being built at Shiloh. So it was that, that,

238
00:13:04,380 --> 00:13:09,160
Speaker 3: we found fascinating and underneath the five visa to the

239
00:13:09,360 --> 00:13:12,699
Speaker 3: east of this building is a very large bone deposit

240
00:13:12,780 --> 00:13:17,679
Speaker 3: over 10,000 bones from the biblical sacrificial system that we

241
00:13:17,700 --> 00:13:21,340
Speaker 3: can get into a little deeper later, but we have

242
00:13:21,400 --> 00:13:25,260
Speaker 3: removed that five visa and underneath it. I wanted to

243
00:13:25,320 --> 00:13:28,000
Speaker 3: see how far it was down to bedrock. Well, it

244
00:13:28,040 --> 00:13:30,640
Speaker 3: went much deeper than I supposed. And after we got

245
00:13:30,660 --> 00:13:33,420
Speaker 3: through a layer of tumble, we came down on three

246
00:13:33,540 --> 00:13:37,390
Speaker 3: large storage jars and we were able to keep them.

247
00:13:37,530 --> 00:13:39,870
Speaker 3: They're broken, but they were intact. And so we were

248
00:13:39,910 --> 00:13:43,150
Speaker 3: able to carefully keep them intact as we continued to

249
00:13:43,250 --> 00:13:44,730
Speaker 3: excavate the surrounding area.

250
00:13:45,450 --> 00:13:47,910
Speaker 2: And funny, I told the area.

251
00:13:47,710 --> 00:13:53,490
Speaker 3: Supervisor, Jordan McClinton, at the beginning of this particular day, Jordan,

252
00:13:53,530 --> 00:13:56,420
Speaker 3: don't even come back for lunch today. unless you bring

253
00:13:56,460 --> 00:13:58,850
Speaker 3: me burned olive pits.

254
00:13:58,450 --> 00:13:59,189
Speaker 2: From that area.

255
00:13:59,210 --> 00:14:01,230
Speaker 3: I want to be able to date that area with

256
00:14:01,290 --> 00:14:04,850
Speaker 3: radiocarbon dating because seeds are the best thing to date

257
00:14:04,910 --> 00:14:09,630
Speaker 3: with because like charcoal, we don't know how old the

258
00:14:09,690 --> 00:14:12,960
Speaker 3: tree was before it was burned, whereas the seed, it's short-lived.

259
00:14:13,000 --> 00:14:16,660
Speaker 3: And so they're perfect for dating. And so Jordan shows

260
00:14:16,760 --> 00:14:20,620
Speaker 3: up at lunchtime that day with about 500 burned olive pits.

261
00:14:21,100 --> 00:14:24,830
Speaker 3: Not only did we find these jars underneath the favisa,

262
00:14:25,250 --> 00:14:28,190
Speaker 3: but they were full of, and we have an archaeobotanist

263
00:14:28,390 --> 00:14:31,270
Speaker 3: on staff on site. So it's not like in the

264
00:14:31,310 --> 00:14:32,790
Speaker 3: old days, I would have to wait a year to

265
00:14:32,850 --> 00:14:36,250
Speaker 3: find out what was in these jars. I knew right away,

266
00:14:36,370 --> 00:14:40,810
Speaker 3: we had olives and we had lentils. And this makes

267
00:14:40,870 --> 00:14:43,200
Speaker 3: a lot of sense when you think about it, but

268
00:14:43,240 --> 00:14:47,000
Speaker 3: they'd all caught on fire. And probably from the olive

269
00:14:47,100 --> 00:14:50,440
Speaker 3: oil that the olives were in was combustible and either

270
00:14:50,520 --> 00:14:54,420
Speaker 3: accidentally or intentionally, if it was an invasion or something

271
00:14:54,460 --> 00:14:57,530
Speaker 3: like this, It caused the whole area to catch on fire,

272
00:14:58,150 --> 00:15:01,320
Speaker 3: which gave us our radiocarbon dates that we needed. So

273
00:15:01,860 --> 00:15:06,420
Speaker 3: the surprise was the jars were from the Middle Bronze Age.

274
00:15:06,460 --> 00:15:10,060
Speaker 3: That's how we dated them. And our ceramic typologist, Lior

275
00:15:10,120 --> 00:15:13,560
Speaker 3: Freud from Tel Aviv University, you know, it just looks

276
00:15:13,580 --> 00:15:16,710
Speaker 3: like what we would typically date as Middle Bronze. But

277
00:15:17,290 --> 00:15:21,010
Speaker 3: last week I got the results back from the radiocarbon

278
00:15:21,310 --> 00:15:24,010
Speaker 3: dating and we got a big surprise.

279
00:15:25,740 --> 00:15:28,840
Speaker 1: Oh, you're not going to leave me hanging on this show,

280
00:15:28,940 --> 00:15:29,260
Speaker 1: are you?

281
00:15:30,710 --> 00:15:33,250
Speaker 2: No, no, I just thought we'd tease that out a

282
00:15:33,250 --> 00:15:34,010
Speaker 2: little bit.

283
00:15:34,030 --> 00:15:36,109
Speaker 1: Okay, I love it. Hey, quick pause. I want to

284
00:15:36,150 --> 00:15:38,150
Speaker 1: tell you about a Bible study tool that I've used

285
00:15:38,190 --> 00:15:42,700
Speaker 1: for 25 years. It is one of only two sponsors

286
00:15:42,780 --> 00:15:46,180
Speaker 1: I have on this channel, along with Talbot School of Theology. Why?

287
00:15:46,280 --> 00:15:49,500
Speaker 1: Because I deeply believe in it, and I've deeply benefited

288
00:15:49,580 --> 00:15:52,100
Speaker 1: from it. And I want you to consider using it.

289
00:15:52,420 --> 00:15:55,060
Speaker 1: It's called Logos, and the tools it offers at your

290
00:15:55,200 --> 00:15:59,280
Speaker 1: fingertips will blow you away. I use it preparing for interviews.

291
00:15:59,730 --> 00:16:01,890
Speaker 1: I use it in my personal Bible study in the morning.

292
00:16:01,910 --> 00:16:04,730
Speaker 1: And I even used it when I was writing my dissertation.

293
00:16:05,170 --> 00:16:07,350
Speaker 1: That means it's a tool that can be used by

294
00:16:07,450 --> 00:16:10,080
Speaker 1: scholars who want to go deep. and lay people who

295
00:16:10,120 --> 00:16:13,100
Speaker 1: just want to get into the scriptures for themselves. If

296
00:16:13,120 --> 00:16:14,820
Speaker 1: you want to learn how to study the Bible for

297
00:16:14,840 --> 00:16:18,600
Speaker 1: yourself and just own and know the scriptures, you will

298
00:16:18,660 --> 00:16:21,800
Speaker 1: not find a better tool than Logos. I'd love for

299
00:16:21,840 --> 00:16:25,109
Speaker 1: you to consider trying it out. Start a free 60-day trial,

300
00:16:25,230 --> 00:16:29,170
Speaker 1: which you can find at logos.com slash McDowell. Link is

301
00:16:29,210 --> 00:16:31,780
Speaker 1: in the description. Now back to the show. Hang on.

302
00:16:31,800 --> 00:16:34,020
Speaker 1: Now let me circle back to that surprise. I just

303
00:16:34,060 --> 00:16:36,360
Speaker 1: want you to know that I got my title for

304
00:16:36,400 --> 00:16:39,740
Speaker 1: this video, given it out of 400 news stories, only

305
00:16:39,800 --> 00:16:42,000
Speaker 1: two checked with you. I'm going to title it, Have

306
00:16:42,040 --> 00:16:45,880
Speaker 1: We Found the Ark of the Covenant? I'm just asking questions.

307
00:16:46,080 --> 00:16:46,500
Speaker 1: That's it.

308
00:16:47,400 --> 00:16:49,240
Speaker 2: That's perfect.

309
00:16:49,720 --> 00:16:55,420
Speaker 1: Kidding aside, what other candidates, you said we could never

310
00:16:55,570 --> 00:16:59,390
Speaker 1: prove definitively, that this is like the seat of the tabernacle.

311
00:16:59,430 --> 00:17:01,210
Speaker 1: I think that's the language that you use. We couldn't

312
00:17:01,250 --> 00:17:04,609
Speaker 1: prove it definitively. What you have seems to line up

313
00:17:04,650 --> 00:17:07,350
Speaker 1: with it so far. What else could it be? What

314
00:17:07,410 --> 00:17:10,130
Speaker 1: other candidates could there be in that place in that

315
00:17:10,210 --> 00:17:13,739
Speaker 1: time rather than what you think and obviously hope that

316
00:17:13,760 --> 00:17:14,020
Speaker 1: it is?

317
00:17:15,119 --> 00:17:18,100
Speaker 3: Well, folks can go to my academia.edu page and get

318
00:17:18,140 --> 00:17:20,859
Speaker 3: an article that I wrote back in 2016 on the

319
00:17:21,220 --> 00:17:23,659
Speaker 3: candidates for where the tabernacle may have been at Shiloh

320
00:17:23,680 --> 00:17:26,139
Speaker 3: and what the theories have been. either on the summit,

321
00:17:26,160 --> 00:17:28,340
Speaker 3: which is what my view was when the dig started,

322
00:17:28,359 --> 00:17:33,350
Speaker 3: that when it was a tent originally, it could have

323
00:17:33,369 --> 00:17:37,350
Speaker 3: been in one location and been moved to another. When

324
00:17:37,390 --> 00:17:40,350
Speaker 3: a permanent building is built, and again, look at 1

325
00:17:40,350 --> 00:17:44,740
Speaker 3: Samuel 3, for example, where they're calling it now the

326
00:17:44,840 --> 00:17:47,619
Speaker 3: Temple of the Lord at Shiloh and the House of

327
00:17:47,640 --> 00:17:51,100
Speaker 3: the Lord at Shiloh. And we also see in the Mishnah,

328
00:17:51,140 --> 00:17:55,760
Speaker 3: like the Seder Olam 8, the Zevayim 14.6, say the

329
00:17:55,800 --> 00:17:58,840
Speaker 3: same thing that a permanent building is built at Shiloh

330
00:17:59,220 --> 00:18:02,560
Speaker 3: with a tent over the top as a roof. So

331
00:18:02,619 --> 00:18:06,520
Speaker 3: it becomes a quasi tabernacle tent structure. So that was

332
00:18:06,660 --> 00:18:11,680
Speaker 3: already on my horizon. We have the Northern platform, which

333
00:18:11,780 --> 00:18:17,649
Speaker 3: back in 1866, Charles Wilson had suggested because it was

334
00:18:17,710 --> 00:18:20,649
Speaker 3: a rectangular area that was Shiloh that, you know, that

335
00:18:20,750 --> 00:18:24,520
Speaker 3: could have been where the tabernacle was. Kaufman repopularized that

336
00:18:24,560 --> 00:18:28,540
Speaker 3: in the 1980s. The local community, once it started in 1977,

337
00:18:28,540 --> 00:18:32,040
Speaker 3: they sort of gravitated to that because it's like, okay,

338
00:18:32,080 --> 00:18:33,460
Speaker 3: this is our heritage.

339
00:18:33,510 --> 00:18:34,659
Speaker 2: We need a place to go pray.

340
00:18:36,070 --> 00:18:39,710
Speaker 3: So the summit, the northern platform, the southern approach is

341
00:18:39,750 --> 00:18:41,910
Speaker 3: where the churches were all built. And so we could

342
00:18:41,970 --> 00:18:47,109
Speaker 3: say that the Byzantines liked that flat open area. I

343
00:18:47,150 --> 00:18:49,740
Speaker 3: suggested it could have moved around when it was a tent.

344
00:18:51,140 --> 00:18:53,950
Speaker 3: Those are the other options. And so now I was

345
00:18:53,990 --> 00:18:56,690
Speaker 3: more surprised than anyone when we began to uncover this

346
00:18:56,770 --> 00:19:01,710
Speaker 3: building that I now think is the strongest candidate. It

347
00:19:01,760 --> 00:19:04,679
Speaker 3: was like my archaeological acumen that led us to the building,

348
00:19:04,920 --> 00:19:07,680
Speaker 3: but it really wasn't. I mean, we just that's where

349
00:19:07,700 --> 00:19:09,940
Speaker 3: we decided to start digging. There's a picture of me

350
00:19:10,000 --> 00:19:12,919
Speaker 3: driving the first stake in the excavation, which happens to

351
00:19:12,940 --> 00:19:14,790
Speaker 3: be right on top of where this building is.

352
00:19:15,190 --> 00:19:19,359
Speaker 1: That's incredible. Now, maybe you have some savvy from experience

353
00:19:19,400 --> 00:19:21,379
Speaker 1: you don't even realize, so I'll give you more credit

354
00:19:21,420 --> 00:19:23,960
Speaker 1: than you're claiming for yourself. I want to circle back

355
00:19:24,000 --> 00:19:26,570
Speaker 1: to this big discovery that you hinted for us, but

356
00:19:26,630 --> 00:19:29,770
Speaker 1: help us understand the chronology here. There's a lot of

357
00:19:29,810 --> 00:19:33,010
Speaker 1: debate about when the Exodus was, the conquest was, when

358
00:19:33,150 --> 00:19:36,270
Speaker 1: Abraham lived. How do you date this? And is it

359
00:19:36,590 --> 00:19:40,729
Speaker 1: as significant as other things such as the conquest and

360
00:19:40,770 --> 00:19:44,400
Speaker 1: the Exodus for which there's real significant debate about where

361
00:19:44,440 --> 00:19:44,980
Speaker 1: we place it?

362
00:19:46,010 --> 00:19:46,650
Speaker 2: Well, you're right.

363
00:19:46,720 --> 00:19:49,690
Speaker 3: And as you know, I was a co-author in Zonervitz's book,

364
00:19:49,730 --> 00:19:51,810
Speaker 3: Five Views on the Exodus. So they could have done

365
00:19:51,869 --> 00:19:54,250
Speaker 3: one on 50 views on the Exodus, probably, because there

366
00:19:54,510 --> 00:19:55,810
Speaker 3: are a lot, but.

367
00:19:55,790 --> 00:19:56,530
Speaker 2: Got it down to five.

368
00:19:56,590 --> 00:19:58,710
Speaker 3: So I wrote the chapter on the early date of

369
00:19:58,750 --> 00:20:00,890
Speaker 3: the biblical date of the Exodus. And so in just

370
00:20:00,930 --> 00:20:05,650
Speaker 3: a few words, either you're at 1446 as an Exodus date,

371
00:20:06,590 --> 00:20:09,870
Speaker 3: or you're 1406, depending on whether you're taking the Masoretic

372
00:20:09,930 --> 00:20:14,690
Speaker 3: text reading or the Septuagint reading. If it's, let's say, 1406,

373
00:20:14,690 --> 00:20:17,780
Speaker 3: and you subtract 40 years for a wilderness sojourn, then

374
00:20:17,820 --> 00:20:23,760
Speaker 3: a conquest is beginning around 1366. In archaeology parlance, that

375
00:20:23,800 --> 00:20:28,619
Speaker 3: would be Late Bronze Age 2a. And so the conquest

376
00:20:28,700 --> 00:20:32,700
Speaker 3: actually ends at Shiloh, and it starts at Jericho, and

377
00:20:32,740 --> 00:20:35,899
Speaker 3: it ends at Shiloh. And so let's say Somewhere in

378
00:20:35,940 --> 00:20:39,300
Speaker 3: that early 14th century BC is where we're looking for

379
00:20:39,340 --> 00:20:42,480
Speaker 3: that evidence. Those who hold to a late date would

380
00:20:42,500 --> 00:20:45,050
Speaker 3: be looking in the 13th century as opposed to the

381
00:20:45,290 --> 00:20:47,670
Speaker 3: 14th century. It's really not as far.

382
00:20:47,550 --> 00:20:50,510
Speaker 2: Apart as you might think. So that's kind of the

383
00:20:50,950 --> 00:20:52,510
Speaker 2: lay of the land. Okay.

384
00:20:52,550 --> 00:20:55,210
Speaker 1: All right. That's helpful. Tell us what you just discovered

385
00:20:55,250 --> 00:20:58,770
Speaker 1: recently that you hinted at before from dating I think

386
00:20:58,830 --> 00:20:59,510
Speaker 1: it relates to.

387
00:21:01,150 --> 00:21:06,010
Speaker 3: Okay, well, number one, the date that Israel Finkelstein, who

388
00:21:06,130 --> 00:21:09,770
Speaker 3: was in charge of the Bar-Ilon University excavation, that he

389
00:21:09,830 --> 00:21:14,230
Speaker 3: had placed on the Fabisa, the bone deposit in Area D,

390
00:21:14,850 --> 00:21:18,850
Speaker 3: was Late Bronze Age I. So let's just look at

391
00:21:18,869 --> 00:21:22,080
Speaker 3: the Late Bronze Age, because regardless of which view is right,

392
00:21:22,119 --> 00:21:23,580
Speaker 3: it's all going to be in the Late Bronze Age.

393
00:21:23,650 --> 00:21:26,600
Speaker 3: So LB I is 1550, let's say, to 1400. LB

394
00:21:26,619 --> 00:21:32,750
Speaker 3: II is 1400 to 1200. So Finkelstein had said that

395
00:21:32,790 --> 00:21:36,330
Speaker 3: the Fabissa, dating it on the pottery, because he didn't

396
00:21:36,369 --> 00:21:39,950
Speaker 3: do any radiocarbon dating, but based on the pottery, was

397
00:21:40,150 --> 00:21:43,110
Speaker 3: Iron Age 1, maybe down into the beginning of Iron

398
00:21:43,190 --> 00:21:46,990
Speaker 3: Age 2a. So 1 slash 2a, which made it Canaanite.

399
00:21:48,090 --> 00:21:50,570
Speaker 3: So this is where a century can make a difference, okay?

400
00:21:51,150 --> 00:21:53,889
Speaker 3: Because he thought, okay, well, this is evidence of a

401
00:21:54,030 --> 00:21:58,280
Speaker 3: Canaanite sacrificial system at Shiloh before the Israelites arrived. And

402
00:21:58,300 --> 00:22:01,020
Speaker 3: in his view back then, You know, there were Israelites

403
00:22:01,119 --> 00:22:03,919
Speaker 3: and they would have arrived maybe sometime around 1200 or

404
00:22:04,010 --> 00:22:07,850
Speaker 3: something like that. So then he, of course, was able

405
00:22:07,890 --> 00:22:11,010
Speaker 3: to do the publication. So in the literature, what you

406
00:22:11,030 --> 00:22:13,810
Speaker 3: would read is that there was a Canaanite sacrificial system

407
00:22:14,150 --> 00:22:17,230
Speaker 3: at Shiloh. What I said going in is let's test

408
00:22:17,310 --> 00:22:20,760
Speaker 3: that because my reading of the pottery was that it

409
00:22:20,800 --> 00:22:23,100
Speaker 3: was a little bit later than that. And so I

410
00:22:23,180 --> 00:22:27,780
Speaker 3: wanted to go in and finish excavating the Fabisa and

411
00:22:28,160 --> 00:22:32,510
Speaker 3: radiocarbon date the bones. And let's check. So I brought

412
00:22:32,570 --> 00:22:35,929
Speaker 3: in outside specialists. I added a zoo archaeologist to the team,

413
00:22:37,150 --> 00:22:40,210
Speaker 3: Haskell Greenfield from the University of Manitoba. I brought in

414
00:22:40,260 --> 00:22:43,740
Speaker 3: the top ceramic typologist, Leora Freud, so that it wasn't

415
00:22:43,780 --> 00:22:47,140
Speaker 3: just me saying, you know, well, these bones and the pottery. But,

416
00:22:47,400 --> 00:22:50,979
Speaker 3: you know, these guys are going to collaboratively, we're going

417
00:22:51,000 --> 00:22:55,940
Speaker 3: to arrive at this conclusion. And the radiocarbon dates came

418
00:22:55,980 --> 00:22:58,800
Speaker 3: back from 2023. And now we have a new round

419
00:22:58,880 --> 00:23:02,100
Speaker 3: of them. And it turns out that Finkelstein was indeed

420
00:23:02,260 --> 00:23:04,820
Speaker 3: off by about a century, which is what I had thought.

421
00:23:05,380 --> 00:23:10,540
Speaker 3: And so it was very clearly in the mid-14th century,

422
00:23:11,000 --> 00:23:13,699
Speaker 3: what we would call the terminus post quim, the earliest

423
00:23:13,800 --> 00:23:20,630
Speaker 3: possible date is mid-14th century, and then continuing down into

424
00:23:20,710 --> 00:23:23,609
Speaker 3: Iron Age I. So a period of over 200 years

425
00:23:23,970 --> 00:23:27,840
Speaker 3: for a sacrificial system. which means, Sean, if one takes

426
00:23:27,880 --> 00:23:30,500
Speaker 3: an early date for the Exodus, then this is not

427
00:23:30,580 --> 00:23:35,370
Speaker 3: evidence of a Canaanite sacrificial system. It's an Israelite sacrificial system.

428
00:23:35,940 --> 00:23:38,889
Speaker 3: And now this begins to make sense. Why do we

429
00:23:38,950 --> 00:23:42,490
Speaker 3: disproportionately have young male animals? Why do we have more

430
00:23:42,530 --> 00:23:44,570
Speaker 3: bones from the right side of the animal than from

431
00:23:44,890 --> 00:23:47,570
Speaker 3: the left side of the animal and so forth? So

432
00:23:47,670 --> 00:23:50,670
Speaker 3: now that we know that it's possible for ceramic typologists

433
00:23:50,750 --> 00:23:55,220
Speaker 3: and good archaeologists to to misdate something based solely on pottery.

434
00:23:55,420 --> 00:23:57,379
Speaker 3: We all want more than one thing. You know, we

435
00:23:57,400 --> 00:24:00,100
Speaker 3: want to triangulate if we can, but if you're only

436
00:24:00,180 --> 00:24:03,540
Speaker 3: using pottery, it's not like around the year 1400, there

437
00:24:03,560 --> 00:24:06,090
Speaker 3: was a potter's convention and they all said, okay, you know,

438
00:24:06,270 --> 00:24:08,250
Speaker 3: we're not going to make these types of vessels anymore.

439
00:24:08,310 --> 00:24:11,410
Speaker 2: So we like to talk about horizons. Okay.

440
00:24:11,430 --> 00:24:15,970
Speaker 3: This is in the, the late bronze age, 1B to

441
00:24:16,070 --> 00:24:19,909
Speaker 3: a horizon because there's transitions that are taking place in

442
00:24:20,230 --> 00:24:23,639
Speaker 3: ceramic forms. Well, we were able to then, with the

443
00:24:23,680 --> 00:24:27,610
Speaker 3: radiocarbon dating and the other special objects, calibrate that date

444
00:24:27,680 --> 00:24:32,070
Speaker 3: down into the late Bronze Age IIa. That then brings

445
00:24:32,130 --> 00:24:35,850
Speaker 3: me to the big discovery from this last season that

446
00:24:35,890 --> 00:24:39,970
Speaker 3: was fascinating to us were these storage jars. We thought

447
00:24:40,010 --> 00:24:43,010
Speaker 3: we were right above bedrock, but we had another occupational

448
00:24:43,070 --> 00:24:47,880
Speaker 3: level below us. And these storage jars that we initially

449
00:24:47,910 --> 00:24:50,830
Speaker 3: dated to the Middle Bronze Age And I have always

450
00:24:50,869 --> 00:24:54,050
Speaker 3: been skeptical of if we ceramic typologists, and I would

451
00:24:54,090 --> 00:24:58,330
Speaker 3: consider myself a ceramic typologist. I have outside typologists who

452
00:24:58,369 --> 00:25:02,810
Speaker 3: help us as well. But it's a little fuzzy. At

453
00:25:02,850 --> 00:25:05,840
Speaker 3: the end of the Middle Bronze Age and into the

454
00:25:05,880 --> 00:25:09,320
Speaker 3: Late Bronze Age, I've always sensed that maybe we were

455
00:25:09,400 --> 00:25:13,100
Speaker 3: dating things that were Late Bronze Age and we've been

456
00:25:13,119 --> 00:25:16,080
Speaker 3: pushing them into the Middle Bronze Age. Or at the

457
00:25:16,240 --> 00:25:19,409
Speaker 3: other end, things that were late Bronze Age, pushing them

458
00:25:19,430 --> 00:25:22,830
Speaker 3: down to the Iron Age. So unless it's painted pottery,

459
00:25:22,890 --> 00:25:25,649
Speaker 3: it's a form that we know well. And there just

460
00:25:25,750 --> 00:25:28,070
Speaker 3: hasn't been in the Central Hill Country, which is the

461
00:25:28,109 --> 00:25:31,290
Speaker 3: majority of Israel, there haven't been that many digs. And

462
00:25:31,490 --> 00:25:35,550
Speaker 3: of those digs, earlier digs were not doing radiocarbon dating.

463
00:25:36,090 --> 00:25:38,270
Speaker 3: And so like we did at Kervid El Akadar and

464
00:25:38,290 --> 00:25:43,469
Speaker 3: now at Shiloh, and this is extremely helpful. So the

465
00:25:43,630 --> 00:25:53,869
Speaker 3: date of the burned olive pits comes in at around 1530, 1540,

466
00:25:53,869 --> 00:25:57,109
Speaker 3: right around there, give or take 30 years. So it's

467
00:25:57,230 --> 00:26:00,950
Speaker 3: the beginning of Late Bronze Age I, not Middle Bronze

468
00:26:01,010 --> 00:26:05,730
Speaker 3: Age II. So again, we may be off a century.

469
00:26:05,770 --> 00:26:08,550
Speaker 3: So I now have two examples from Area D at

470
00:26:08,650 --> 00:26:13,560
Speaker 3: Shiloh of where we archaeologists are maybe not as smart

471
00:26:13,600 --> 00:26:14,189
Speaker 3: as we thought.

472
00:26:15,180 --> 00:26:16,080
Speaker 2: We try to be careful.

473
00:26:17,160 --> 00:26:20,629
Speaker 3: About this, but it just reminds us that we have

474
00:26:20,670 --> 00:26:24,369
Speaker 3: tentative conclusions and we're always learning and adding more information

475
00:26:24,430 --> 00:26:28,330
Speaker 3: to this. My hope is that if indeed we are

476
00:26:28,470 --> 00:26:32,000
Speaker 3: able to calibrate and better understand the ceramic profile and

477
00:26:32,020 --> 00:26:35,000
Speaker 3: the transitions, it not only helps us at Shiloh, but

478
00:26:35,060 --> 00:26:37,180
Speaker 3: maybe it helps other digs in the future as well.

479
00:26:37,940 --> 00:26:41,920
Speaker 1: Oh, that's really interesting. Okay, so two-part question tied to this.

480
00:26:41,980 --> 00:26:45,030
Speaker 1: Number one, how L... Oh, actually, let me ask you

481
00:26:45,050 --> 00:26:49,409
Speaker 1: something first. In terms of the bones, if it was Jewish,

482
00:26:49,470 --> 00:26:53,169
Speaker 1: we'd expect there not to be pig bones, correct? And

483
00:26:53,210 --> 00:26:55,430
Speaker 1: is that what we find? And would we expect them

484
00:26:55,690 --> 00:26:58,170
Speaker 1: at a Canaanite site?

485
00:26:59,080 --> 00:27:00,140
Speaker 2: It's a great question.

486
00:27:00,580 --> 00:27:06,360
Speaker 3: A typical deposit in Israel, Canaanite deposit, will have about 4%

487
00:27:06,359 --> 00:27:11,260
Speaker 3: pig bone or slightly more than 4%. When you're at

488
00:27:11,300 --> 00:27:14,740
Speaker 3: an Israel site, you're going to have or less than

489
00:27:15,080 --> 00:27:19,510
Speaker 3: half a percent or something because they're usually contamination. Some

490
00:27:19,850 --> 00:27:23,389
Speaker 3: amount of contamination can occur or maybe some poor Israelite

491
00:27:23,430 --> 00:27:26,429
Speaker 3: just smelled bacon frying and it was just more than

492
00:27:26,450 --> 00:27:26,910
Speaker 3: he could stand.

493
00:27:26,950 --> 00:27:27,330
Speaker 2: I don't know.

494
00:27:28,030 --> 00:27:31,040
Speaker 3: But there's usually just a small amount. In the 5E,

495
00:27:31,100 --> 00:27:34,399
Speaker 3: so we have a few stray bones, but less than 1%

496
00:27:34,400 --> 00:27:37,800
Speaker 3: pig bone. And so it indicates to us that it's

497
00:27:37,840 --> 00:27:42,620
Speaker 3: a kosher funnel deposit, mainly sheep and goats and cattle.

498
00:27:43,510 --> 00:27:49,160
Speaker 3: And disproportionately, slightly disproportionately, say 57%, something like that, from

499
00:27:49,220 --> 00:27:52,600
Speaker 3: the right side, 43% from the left side. I bring

500
00:27:52,619 --> 00:27:56,110
Speaker 3: that up because the Bible says in Leviticus 7 that

501
00:27:56,150 --> 00:27:58,990
Speaker 3: the right side of the animal is the priest's portion.

502
00:27:59,410 --> 00:28:01,949
Speaker 3: And there were priests who lived at Shiloh. And so

503
00:28:01,990 --> 00:28:04,810
Speaker 3: when we have 10,000 bones, it can't just be an accident.

504
00:28:04,850 --> 00:28:07,179
Speaker 3: There has to be If that's not the explanation, there

505
00:28:07,200 --> 00:28:11,340
Speaker 3: has to be another one. And then the young, disproportionately

506
00:28:11,500 --> 00:28:15,120
Speaker 3: young male animals and so forth, all suggest to us

507
00:28:15,240 --> 00:28:17,940
Speaker 3: that literally we are looking at the remains of the

508
00:28:17,980 --> 00:28:22,870
Speaker 3: biblical sacrificial system. Mixed in with that are seven gold

509
00:28:23,210 --> 00:28:30,930
Speaker 3: pieces and one silver piece, pendants, earrings, special offerings. Now, Sean,

510
00:28:31,070 --> 00:28:34,419
Speaker 3: most archaeologists that I know have worked their whole career

511
00:28:34,460 --> 00:28:35,300
Speaker 3: and never found gold.

512
00:28:36,030 --> 00:28:36,869
Speaker 2: It's very rare.

513
00:28:37,510 --> 00:28:41,040
Speaker 3: People don't lose gold or silver in the ancient world.

514
00:28:41,780 --> 00:28:42,740
Speaker 2: It's valuable.

515
00:28:43,380 --> 00:28:46,680
Speaker 3: At Shiloh, nowhere else at Shiloh have we found gold,

516
00:28:47,200 --> 00:28:50,300
Speaker 3: except a couple of maybe small Islamic coins on the surface.

517
00:28:51,480 --> 00:28:54,450
Speaker 3: But within this small area of this Fabisa, we have

518
00:28:54,570 --> 00:28:59,510
Speaker 3: seven gold pieces and one silver piece. They are offerings

519
00:29:00,210 --> 00:29:03,070
Speaker 3: that are mixed in with the bones and mixed in

520
00:29:03,110 --> 00:29:06,760
Speaker 3: with the pottery and that someone special like Hannah, who

521
00:29:06,860 --> 00:29:09,980
Speaker 3: out of great empathy came to Shiloh and wanted to

522
00:29:10,020 --> 00:29:12,620
Speaker 3: connect with God, and she gave something of great value,

523
00:29:12,660 --> 00:29:15,560
Speaker 3: so it appears to me. Now, here's another example of

524
00:29:15,600 --> 00:29:21,360
Speaker 3: the power of wet sifting. Bar-Ilan University did not do that.

525
00:29:21,740 --> 00:29:26,790
Speaker 3: They found one gold piece. We found everything else, all

526
00:29:26,810 --> 00:29:29,090
Speaker 3: the others, and they excavated far more of it than

527
00:29:29,130 --> 00:29:32,300
Speaker 3: we did. But in the portion that we did, look

528
00:29:32,320 --> 00:29:34,640
Speaker 3: at all that we found. That means that this stuff

529
00:29:34,660 --> 00:29:36,910
Speaker 3: was being thrown away in the past.

530
00:29:37,790 --> 00:29:40,150
Speaker 1: Okay, so correct me if I'm wrong. The bone features...

531
00:29:40,220 --> 00:29:43,200
Speaker 1: like a very strong reason to believe that it is

532
00:29:43,300 --> 00:29:46,540
Speaker 1: more of a Hebrew Jewish site than it would be

533
00:29:47,180 --> 00:29:50,750
Speaker 1: a Canaanite site. The gold feels like it could fit,

534
00:29:51,070 --> 00:29:54,510
Speaker 1: but less strong for me as a case. And maybe

535
00:29:54,590 --> 00:29:57,830
Speaker 1: I'm missing something, but is there anything about the shape

536
00:29:57,950 --> 00:30:00,870
Speaker 1: of the gold or the amulet that it's put into

537
00:30:00,930 --> 00:30:02,910
Speaker 1: that would fit it as well? Or are these just

538
00:30:03,210 --> 00:30:05,690
Speaker 1: random gold things that were found that could kind of

539
00:30:05,730 --> 00:30:09,130
Speaker 1: match any kind of belief system in ancient times?

540
00:30:10,150 --> 00:30:11,060
Speaker 2: It's a great question.

541
00:30:11,080 --> 00:30:13,520
Speaker 3: We have a peer-reviewed article coming out on this in

542
00:30:13,560 --> 00:30:17,320
Speaker 3: Judaism Area Research Studies soon. That's a collaborative article with

543
00:30:17,840 --> 00:30:20,140
Speaker 3: six authors that are a part of this. And we'll

544
00:30:20,180 --> 00:30:24,270
Speaker 3: go into great detail of explaining why these gold pieces

545
00:30:24,430 --> 00:30:27,440
Speaker 3: typologically fit in the late Bronze Age too. And so

546
00:30:27,480 --> 00:30:30,990
Speaker 3: I would say it suggests that it supports the interpretation

547
00:30:31,010 --> 00:30:34,490
Speaker 3: that it's part of a biblical favisa because they date

548
00:30:34,510 --> 00:30:36,790
Speaker 3: to late Bronze Age 2a, which is the time that

549
00:30:36,870 --> 00:30:41,540
Speaker 3: the Israelite favisa is being formed. The Bible does indicate

550
00:30:41,560 --> 00:30:44,220
Speaker 3: that the Israelites are taking earrings, for example, and giving

551
00:30:44,260 --> 00:30:46,740
Speaker 3: them as offerings to the Lord. And so we do

552
00:30:46,800 --> 00:30:50,500
Speaker 3: have mixed in here earrings as well. Gold and silver

553
00:30:50,600 --> 00:30:52,750
Speaker 3: and then electrum, which is part gold and part silver.

554
00:30:54,010 --> 00:30:57,989
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense. So I assume, like in any

555
00:30:58,050 --> 00:31:01,910
Speaker 1: case like this, you have your evidence convicting somebody, but

556
00:31:01,950 --> 00:31:04,680
Speaker 1: then there's certain outlier facts. It's like, we're not quite

557
00:31:04,780 --> 00:31:07,520
Speaker 1: sure what to do with that. And if it's the

558
00:31:07,560 --> 00:31:11,840
Speaker 1: right person who committed the crime, over time, those facts

559
00:31:12,060 --> 00:31:16,980
Speaker 1: fall into place. What are some of the outlining questions

560
00:31:17,020 --> 00:31:19,760
Speaker 1: you have right now that you've still got to land?

561
00:31:20,420 --> 00:31:23,280
Speaker 1: And how would you triangulate this thing? Because you said

562
00:31:23,320 --> 00:31:26,220
Speaker 1: you want to have three pieces, at least of evidence,

563
00:31:26,260 --> 00:31:30,160
Speaker 1: that point towards the theory that you're putting forward, and

564
00:31:30,180 --> 00:31:32,480
Speaker 1: it sounds like you have at least two. How else

565
00:31:32,500 --> 00:31:34,240
Speaker 1: would you triangulate this, and what are some of the

566
00:31:34,360 --> 00:31:36,460
Speaker 1: outlining questions that are like, we're still working on this,

567
00:31:36,570 --> 00:31:37,450
Speaker 1: we don't have an answer yet?

568
00:31:38,610 --> 00:31:39,550
Speaker 2: Okay, great question.

569
00:31:40,770 --> 00:31:45,570
Speaker 3: Ideally, we'll find something written, something that's glyptic, like an

570
00:31:45,690 --> 00:31:50,060
Speaker 3: inscription of some kind, and then we can paleographically date that,

571
00:31:50,080 --> 00:31:52,090
Speaker 3: and that would be our third piece of the puzzle, okay?

572
00:31:53,110 --> 00:31:57,450
Speaker 3: But poo's pretty good, okay? And we call radiocarbon dating

573
00:31:57,710 --> 00:32:03,170
Speaker 3: absolute dating. We call ceramic typology relative dating. And so

574
00:32:03,470 --> 00:32:04,910
Speaker 3: if you had to choose one or the other, you'd

575
00:32:04,950 --> 00:32:10,209
Speaker 3: rather have the absolute date. We have both, so that's excellent. Now,

576
00:32:10,290 --> 00:32:13,630
Speaker 3: things that are still remaining that we're working through, within

577
00:32:13,670 --> 00:32:18,160
Speaker 3: the monumental building, which if we're right, my hypothesis is

578
00:32:18,200 --> 00:32:22,860
Speaker 3: that that is likely the building of the tabernacle. The

579
00:32:22,900 --> 00:32:26,800
Speaker 3: favisa is due east of that building. The stratigraphy is complicated.

580
00:32:26,820 --> 00:32:31,120
Speaker 3: And I think it's complicated because they kept it clean.

581
00:32:31,700 --> 00:32:32,900
Speaker 2: We don't find much pottery.

582
00:32:33,360 --> 00:32:35,870
Speaker 3: It's not like a regular building or a regular area

583
00:32:35,900 --> 00:32:37,310
Speaker 3: or a market or something like that.

584
00:32:37,670 --> 00:32:40,630
Speaker 2: If something breaks in the tabernacle, you clean it up.

585
00:32:40,710 --> 00:32:41,830
Speaker 2: It's kept pretty tidy.

586
00:32:43,180 --> 00:32:48,340
Speaker 3: And so we're still grappling with the stratigraphy within there.

587
00:32:48,840 --> 00:32:53,000
Speaker 3: We're pretty confident that it was built at the end

588
00:32:53,040 --> 00:32:54,850
Speaker 3: of the Late Bronze Age II and the beginning of

589
00:32:54,930 --> 00:32:58,170
Speaker 3: Iron Age I because you have the tent for a while,

590
00:32:58,250 --> 00:33:01,910
Speaker 3: for two or three generations maybe, you have the tent

591
00:33:01,950 --> 00:33:05,730
Speaker 3: of the tabernacle, the Mishkan, is at Shiloh. And at

592
00:33:05,770 --> 00:33:09,130
Speaker 3: some point, and we don't know why, but the Bible

593
00:33:09,190 --> 00:33:12,000
Speaker 3: shows it and the Mishnah, It shows that somehow they

594
00:33:12,040 --> 00:33:14,940
Speaker 3: feel like they got permission from God to build a

595
00:33:15,020 --> 00:33:18,260
Speaker 3: permanent structure. And I might add that we don't have

596
00:33:18,320 --> 00:33:22,209
Speaker 3: any domestic dwellings at Shiloh, none from the late Bronze

597
00:33:22,310 --> 00:33:25,350
Speaker 3: Age when the period of the Mishkan. But once that

598
00:33:25,410 --> 00:33:28,830
Speaker 3: building is built, now we begin to see domestic structures

599
00:33:29,170 --> 00:33:32,570
Speaker 3: constructed at Shiloh, kind of like that biblical idea that

600
00:33:32,610 --> 00:33:34,790
Speaker 3: we hear from David later. Like, how can I build

601
00:33:34,830 --> 00:33:37,640
Speaker 3: myself a house when God is still in a tent?

602
00:33:38,360 --> 00:33:40,700
Speaker 3: So once they build this house for the Lord, then

603
00:33:40,740 --> 00:33:43,440
Speaker 3: they begin to build their own houses at Shiloh too.

604
00:33:44,480 --> 00:33:46,920
Speaker 3: Now what remains to be investigated? I'll give you one

605
00:33:46,940 --> 00:33:48,380
Speaker 3: thing that comes to mind real quickly.

606
00:33:49,360 --> 00:33:50,320
Speaker 2: Murex shells.

607
00:33:51,060 --> 00:33:54,720
Speaker 3: So we are finding so far 12 Murex shells at Shiloh.

608
00:33:55,580 --> 00:33:59,800
Speaker 3: The Murex shell, you extract the dye, the gland produces

609
00:33:59,860 --> 00:34:03,980
Speaker 3: the dye from which you would make the priestly garments

610
00:34:04,660 --> 00:34:07,620
Speaker 3: and which you would dye the tents of the tabernacle

611
00:34:07,680 --> 00:34:11,870
Speaker 3: as well. Now, 12 Murex shells, of course, does not

612
00:34:12,910 --> 00:34:17,709
Speaker 3: make a dye production facility, but we're just, who knows,

613
00:34:17,750 --> 00:34:19,310
Speaker 3: maybe there's a horde of them that we're about to

614
00:34:19,370 --> 00:34:22,989
Speaker 3: uncover and we're just getting a few right now. Why

615
00:34:23,010 --> 00:34:24,990
Speaker 3: do you have these in the central hill country? Because

616
00:34:25,270 --> 00:34:28,010
Speaker 3: we don't find, down at Door on the coast, there's

617
00:34:28,050 --> 00:34:31,089
Speaker 3: a factory, but we don't have them at other hill

618
00:34:31,140 --> 00:34:34,630
Speaker 3: country sites. Why do we have them at Shiloh? And

619
00:34:34,850 --> 00:34:38,050
Speaker 3: so that's something that I'm really interested in exploring further,

620
00:34:38,320 --> 00:34:40,799
Speaker 3: and I'm hoping that we're able to get clarity. And

621
00:34:40,840 --> 00:34:44,719
Speaker 3: you can see where on the Murex shell where it's

622
00:34:44,760 --> 00:34:48,020
Speaker 3: been punctured so that they can extract from that as well.

623
00:34:48,420 --> 00:34:51,719
Speaker 3: So it seems to me that they were making something,

624
00:34:52,219 --> 00:34:55,390
Speaker 3: and perhaps it has to do with the biblical sacrificial system.

625
00:34:55,730 --> 00:34:59,069
Speaker 3: So we've got three more years of excavation, which hopefully

626
00:34:59,090 --> 00:35:01,310
Speaker 3: could bring clarity on things like that.

627
00:35:01,710 --> 00:35:03,850
Speaker 1: Well, we will circle back with my audience for sure

628
00:35:03,950 --> 00:35:05,690
Speaker 1: and see what you find. But I have a few

629
00:35:05,730 --> 00:35:08,270
Speaker 1: last questions for you. Let me play the skeptic here

630
00:35:08,350 --> 00:35:11,240
Speaker 1: and say, all right, you're bringing in this huge team,

631
00:35:11,260 --> 00:35:15,480
Speaker 1: a ton of funding. I presume most, if not, at

632
00:35:15,500 --> 00:35:18,420
Speaker 1: least many of them are evangelicals wanting you to find

633
00:35:18,480 --> 00:35:22,530
Speaker 1: something that proves the Bible. What safeguards do you build

634
00:35:22,590 --> 00:35:24,930
Speaker 1: in place? Because I remember 20, 25 years ago, I

635
00:35:24,969 --> 00:35:27,370
Speaker 1: watched this video on evolution. It was publicly funded and

636
00:35:27,850 --> 00:35:30,140
Speaker 1: it was this huge team. And they were looking for

637
00:35:30,160 --> 00:35:32,219
Speaker 1: this missing link. And what they found, I remember thinking,

638
00:35:32,239 --> 00:35:35,250
Speaker 1: that is so lame. I think they're trying to make

639
00:35:35,290 --> 00:35:39,490
Speaker 1: it seem bigger than it is to justify this huge search.

640
00:35:40,110 --> 00:35:44,050
Speaker 1: And I've seen many even Christians fall into this trap.

641
00:35:44,890 --> 00:35:48,350
Speaker 1: So what safeguards do you build into place where if

642
00:35:48,430 --> 00:35:50,290
Speaker 1: it came out, it was a Shiloh, you'd say, hey,

643
00:35:50,670 --> 00:35:53,030
Speaker 1: here's the reality. Here's what we actually found.

644
00:35:55,050 --> 00:35:58,250
Speaker 2: Well, number one, the team that I put together.

645
00:35:58,270 --> 00:36:02,130
Speaker 3: So I have people who are from Israeli universities who

646
00:36:02,170 --> 00:36:05,049
Speaker 3: are on my staff, from Canadian universities, U.S.

647
00:36:05,130 --> 00:36:05,810
Speaker 2: Universities.

648
00:36:06,230 --> 00:36:11,290
Speaker 3: And so it's a free thinking thing. I hate groupthink, Sean.

649
00:36:13,050 --> 00:36:15,690
Speaker 3: I just can't stand groupthink where there's some sort of

650
00:36:16,050 --> 00:36:18,609
Speaker 3: internal pressure where everyone has to think the same way.

651
00:36:19,489 --> 00:36:22,170
Speaker 3: I've tried to create an environment where we're going to

652
00:36:22,190 --> 00:36:26,069
Speaker 3: explore all possibilities. It just so happens that we're at

653
00:36:26,110 --> 00:36:29,520
Speaker 3: a biblical site and that we have uncovered a building

654
00:36:30,000 --> 00:36:33,340
Speaker 3: that matches the dimensions of the biblical tabernacle. So am

655
00:36:33,420 --> 00:36:38,779
Speaker 3: I to not talk about it? You know, that's what

656
00:36:38,800 --> 00:36:41,150
Speaker 3: it appears. I would say go back and look what

657
00:36:41,190 --> 00:36:44,230
Speaker 3: I published, even that article, the 2016 article that's on

658
00:36:44,270 --> 00:36:48,870
Speaker 3: my academia page about the locations of the tabernacle. I'm

659
00:36:48,930 --> 00:36:51,260
Speaker 3: on record saying that I thought the tabernacle would have

660
00:36:51,280 --> 00:36:52,980
Speaker 3: been on the summit of the site.

661
00:36:53,600 --> 00:36:54,860
Speaker 2: You know, so clearly we.

662
00:36:54,900 --> 00:36:58,149
Speaker 3: Weren't trying to, find it in our excavation areas because

663
00:36:58,210 --> 00:37:00,569
Speaker 3: I'm on record saying, I thought, you know, I can't,

664
00:37:00,750 --> 00:37:02,770
Speaker 3: I can't wait to excavate the summit because I think

665
00:37:02,810 --> 00:37:06,089
Speaker 3: that's where it would have been. So, you know, we

666
00:37:06,140 --> 00:37:09,180
Speaker 3: have a research questions and we try to explore those

667
00:37:09,380 --> 00:37:13,719
Speaker 3: with a criteria screen with some objectivity. Like, you know, if,

668
00:37:14,000 --> 00:37:18,980
Speaker 3: if we find these criteria, this would indicate to us

669
00:37:19,080 --> 00:37:21,740
Speaker 3: a high degree of probability that this equals that.

670
00:37:22,730 --> 00:37:24,650
Speaker 1: Okay, that's fair. And I remember the last time I

671
00:37:24,650 --> 00:37:28,129
Speaker 1: interviewed you on the inscription, you made a point, maybe

672
00:37:28,150 --> 00:37:30,270
Speaker 1: this was off the record, kind of like you put

673
00:37:30,330 --> 00:37:33,089
Speaker 1: your name on a certain discovery and you put the

674
00:37:33,270 --> 00:37:37,489
Speaker 1: evidence out there for peer review examination. And if it

675
00:37:37,570 --> 00:37:40,299
Speaker 1: comes out that you're wrong, you lose a lot of

676
00:37:40,380 --> 00:37:43,759
Speaker 1: credibility moving forward. And that's built into archaeology. It's built

677
00:37:43,820 --> 00:37:46,660
Speaker 1: into my work on the apostles. People have responded and

678
00:37:46,680 --> 00:37:49,580
Speaker 1: I've engaged that. That's a good part of what academia does.

679
00:37:50,070 --> 00:37:53,100
Speaker 1: And I appreciate that this isn't just a private organization

680
00:37:53,420 --> 00:37:57,660
Speaker 1: for Christians. You're bringing in different professors, sometimes with different views,

681
00:37:58,160 --> 00:38:01,680
Speaker 1: and making your arguments public. So a couple last questions.

682
00:38:02,400 --> 00:38:07,129
Speaker 1: If you're right about this, like best case scenario, you

683
00:38:07,230 --> 00:38:11,790
Speaker 1: triangulate this thing, what follows from it do you think?

684
00:38:13,590 --> 00:38:15,610
Speaker 3: Well, I think then we'll hash this. We have a

685
00:38:15,660 --> 00:38:19,320
Speaker 3: number of peer-reviewed publications that are in the works. We

686
00:38:19,340 --> 00:38:23,509
Speaker 3: have a three-year article, and it's hours a day of

687
00:38:23,590 --> 00:38:27,110
Speaker 3: my time goes into the publications because it's really important

688
00:38:27,130 --> 00:38:30,190
Speaker 3: to me that this gets out and that it's done well.

689
00:38:32,469 --> 00:38:34,960
Speaker 3: In this scenario that you propose, let's say that we

690
00:38:35,060 --> 00:38:37,960
Speaker 3: do end up believing that we have found the building

691
00:38:37,980 --> 00:38:41,740
Speaker 3: of the tabernacle and evidence of the sacrificial system at Shiloh,

692
00:38:42,400 --> 00:38:45,910
Speaker 3: and our peer-reviewed publications are out, our books are out there,

693
00:38:46,540 --> 00:38:52,230
Speaker 3: And then people can have at it in academia. I

694
00:38:52,390 --> 00:38:55,850
Speaker 3: think that if it's not the building of the tabernacle,

695
00:38:56,310 --> 00:38:58,719
Speaker 3: then we have to answer the question, how is it

696
00:38:58,780 --> 00:39:02,520
Speaker 3: possible that we have two buildings of the same dimensions

697
00:39:02,940 --> 00:39:05,359
Speaker 3: that date to the same time periods at the same

698
00:39:05,440 --> 00:39:11,440
Speaker 3: place that orient east-west? But I don't have any illusion

699
00:39:11,480 --> 00:39:14,020
Speaker 3: that everyone is going to say, yeah, oh yeah, that

700
00:39:14,080 --> 00:39:16,230
Speaker 3: must be it because that's just not the.

701
00:39:16,200 --> 00:39:20,370
Speaker 1: Way that this works. Yeah. Archaeology and academia basically never

702
00:39:20,510 --> 00:39:22,010
Speaker 1: works that way. That's a fact.

703
00:39:22,670 --> 00:39:22,990
Speaker 2: Okay.

704
00:39:23,030 --> 00:39:25,950
Speaker 1: So what you have so far is fascinating. It's certainly

705
00:39:25,989 --> 00:39:28,129
Speaker 1: enough for me to like pause and be like, wait

706
00:39:28,150 --> 00:39:31,890
Speaker 1: a minute, they're making a case here that this is Shiloh. The,

707
00:39:32,630 --> 00:39:36,370
Speaker 1: the investigation is ongoing and I appreciate that you've nuanced

708
00:39:36,410 --> 00:39:39,239
Speaker 1: things saying we never have certainty. We're still making our arguments,

709
00:39:39,719 --> 00:39:42,700
Speaker 1: but based on what you have so far, what would

710
00:39:42,719 --> 00:39:45,120
Speaker 1: you say just to a lay Christian or even a

711
00:39:45,260 --> 00:39:50,000
Speaker 1: non archaeologist like me, what you think is the significance

712
00:39:50,080 --> 00:39:51,060
Speaker 1: of what you've discovered?

713
00:39:52,980 --> 00:39:55,880
Speaker 3: Well, if let's say that one is a Christian and

714
00:39:55,940 --> 00:40:00,580
Speaker 3: you think about faith connections, I mentioned Leviticus 17, 11 earlier,

715
00:40:00,620 --> 00:40:04,819
Speaker 3: but just think about the incarnation. When John is grappling

716
00:40:05,060 --> 00:40:08,940
Speaker 3: in John chapter one with a way to communicate the

717
00:40:09,000 --> 00:40:12,509
Speaker 3: incarnation to his audience, he says that the word, the

718
00:40:12,570 --> 00:40:17,910
Speaker 3: logos of God, it became flesh and tabernacled among us. Like,

719
00:40:17,950 --> 00:40:20,670
Speaker 3: you know, he pulls that image out of, because the

720
00:40:20,710 --> 00:40:24,730
Speaker 3: tabernacle was made of skin, right? And so here, the

721
00:40:24,790 --> 00:40:26,430
Speaker 3: Ark of the Covenant was in it, which is the

722
00:40:26,469 --> 00:40:28,469
Speaker 3: presence of God. So kind of like God takes on

723
00:40:28,550 --> 00:40:31,850
Speaker 3: skin and he moved among us, he tabernacled among us.

724
00:40:31,950 --> 00:40:33,610
Speaker 3: And so I would just say kind of on a

725
00:40:33,750 --> 00:40:38,260
Speaker 3: faith level that people should find this very inspirational to

726
00:40:38,390 --> 00:40:43,299
Speaker 3: understand the tabernacle better is to understand the Incarnation. Now,

727
00:40:43,340 --> 00:40:46,339
Speaker 3: for those who are maybe of different faiths, Jewish or

728
00:40:46,360 --> 00:40:50,279
Speaker 3: of other faiths, I think from a purely historical perspective,

729
00:40:50,640 --> 00:40:53,520
Speaker 3: they should find it fascinating as well that we were

730
00:40:53,640 --> 00:40:57,580
Speaker 3: able to find verisimilitude between the earliest of the biblical

731
00:40:57,640 --> 00:41:01,620
Speaker 3: texts and what we find in the archaeological record, and

732
00:41:01,660 --> 00:41:03,819
Speaker 3: then just the pure archaeology of it. I mean, the

733
00:41:03,940 --> 00:41:09,020
Speaker 3: methodology that I think we have mastered and hopefully other

734
00:41:09,100 --> 00:41:13,210
Speaker 3: digs will benefit from the research advances that we make

735
00:41:13,870 --> 00:41:15,450
Speaker 3: in the technology in the field.

736
00:41:16,230 --> 00:41:17,830
Speaker 1: This is such a great story. I'm glad we were

737
00:41:17,870 --> 00:41:20,160
Speaker 1: able to talk about this. How can people track if

738
00:41:20,180 --> 00:41:22,580
Speaker 1: they want to know over the next three years kind

739
00:41:22,600 --> 00:41:25,520
Speaker 1: of what you're discovering in the debates? And we'll obviously

740
00:41:25,560 --> 00:41:28,359
Speaker 1: have you back, but tell us how people can kind

741
00:41:28,380 --> 00:41:30,459
Speaker 1: of track this ongoing investigation.

742
00:41:31,969 --> 00:41:32,610
Speaker 2: Thanks, Sean.

743
00:41:32,850 --> 00:41:39,469
Speaker 3: Our website is digshiloh.org, digshiloh.org. And I always joke, don't

744
00:41:39,510 --> 00:41:43,850
Speaker 3: go to digshiloh.com. That's my dog's website. And he's a

745
00:41:43,870 --> 00:41:50,950
Speaker 3: great digger also. But digshiloh.org. My personal website is scottstripling.net.

746
00:41:51,610 --> 00:41:56,759
Speaker 3: And then the school's website is thebibleseminary.edu. And they can

747
00:41:56,800 --> 00:41:57,979
Speaker 3: follow along with us there.

748
00:41:58,980 --> 00:42:01,319
Speaker 1: You didn't ask me to say this. You didn't mention this.

749
00:42:01,420 --> 00:42:04,870
Speaker 1: But obviously, there's a huge expense that's here. And I

750
00:42:05,010 --> 00:42:06,969
Speaker 1: would encourage folks to check it out if you're able

751
00:42:07,010 --> 00:42:09,640
Speaker 1: to support even a little bit. It helps this kind

752
00:42:09,660 --> 00:42:12,800
Speaker 1: of research. For me, in some ways, it doesn't surprise

753
00:42:12,860 --> 00:42:16,279
Speaker 1: me because as a whole, I see archaeology as the

754
00:42:16,380 --> 00:42:20,140
Speaker 1: story of the more technology we have, the more digs

755
00:42:20,180 --> 00:42:22,779
Speaker 1: we find. Although it started with a guy on camelback

756
00:42:22,900 --> 00:42:25,860
Speaker 1: or a horse and a Bible fighting Shiloh, to the

757
00:42:25,920 --> 00:42:29,080
Speaker 1: technology we have now is filling in the gaps of

758
00:42:29,120 --> 00:42:33,029
Speaker 1: the biblical story. and giving us confidence that these things

759
00:42:33,090 --> 00:42:35,870
Speaker 1: are true. So I'm not shocked that you found in

760
00:42:35,890 --> 00:42:39,570
Speaker 1: the place, seemingly in the time, what matches the dimensions

761
00:42:39,700 --> 00:42:43,359
Speaker 1: tied to the tabernacle. Shouldn't shock me, but every time

762
00:42:43,400 --> 00:42:46,200
Speaker 1: we find it, it's like, oh yeah, this is real.

763
00:42:46,660 --> 00:42:49,860
Speaker 1: We're talking about real history here. And if it is

764
00:42:49,900 --> 00:42:53,719
Speaker 1: where the tabernacle sat, that was where God's presence in

765
00:42:53,780 --> 00:42:59,410
Speaker 1: particular came down which is reminiscent of Jesus fully God's

766
00:42:59,530 --> 00:43:04,720
Speaker 1: presence in the flesh tabernacle among us. That connection is really,

767
00:43:04,780 --> 00:43:07,719
Speaker 1: really cool. Last question. You're working on a book on

768
00:43:07,739 --> 00:43:10,900
Speaker 1: the conquest. Now I had Brian Wendel on a colleague

769
00:43:10,920 --> 00:43:14,319
Speaker 1: of yours. We talked about his unique approach to dating

770
00:43:14,340 --> 00:43:16,950
Speaker 1: the conquest. But tell us a little bit about when

771
00:43:16,989 --> 00:43:19,049
Speaker 1: that book is coming out. And folks, if you want

772
00:43:19,070 --> 00:43:20,969
Speaker 1: me to have Scott on to make his case for

773
00:43:20,989 --> 00:43:25,239
Speaker 1: the Joshua Conquest, comment down below. But tell us about

774
00:43:25,260 --> 00:43:26,219
Speaker 1: that one and we'll wrap up.

775
00:43:28,480 --> 00:43:32,299
Speaker 3: Jericho to Shiloh, fresh perspectives on the Conquest. So the

776
00:43:32,340 --> 00:43:34,920
Speaker 3: Conquest begins at Jericho. And of course, that's where Brian

777
00:43:34,940 --> 00:43:38,380
Speaker 3: has done some really good research. And then I'm excavating Shiloh.

778
00:43:38,400 --> 00:43:41,000
Speaker 3: And so just made sense, the beginning of the Conquest

779
00:43:41,020 --> 00:43:43,939
Speaker 3: to the end of the Conquest. A lot has been

780
00:43:44,060 --> 00:43:47,120
Speaker 3: written about the Exodus in the last decades.

781
00:43:47,380 --> 00:43:48,859
Speaker 2: But not much about the conquest.

782
00:43:49,239 --> 00:43:53,420
Speaker 3: And now that we are excavating more of these conquest sites,

783
00:43:54,340 --> 00:43:57,259
Speaker 3: I feel like we have seen enough of that, that

784
00:43:57,280 --> 00:44:00,260
Speaker 3: we can see patterns and we can begin to explore

785
00:44:00,300 --> 00:44:04,370
Speaker 3: those patterns, bring in the latest evidence, juxtapose it with

786
00:44:04,410 --> 00:44:07,150
Speaker 3: a biblical text, bring in other things like the Amarna

787
00:44:07,190 --> 00:44:08,330
Speaker 3: letters and bring.

788
00:44:08,170 --> 00:44:09,290
Speaker 2: That into the discussion.

789
00:44:09,930 --> 00:44:12,840
Speaker 3: And then again, I think even if someone doesn't agree

790
00:44:12,880 --> 00:44:15,040
Speaker 3: with everything that we write, like I may not even

791
00:44:15,080 --> 00:44:19,219
Speaker 3: agree with everything that I write, but I think they'll

792
00:44:19,260 --> 00:44:23,020
Speaker 3: find it engaging. Everybody will learn something. They'll be challenged intellectually,

793
00:44:23,040 --> 00:44:25,480
Speaker 3: and hopefully they'll be motivated.

794
00:44:25,960 --> 00:44:26,839
Speaker 2: Spiritually as well.

795
00:44:27,660 --> 00:44:28,960
Speaker 1: All right, friends, please let me know what you think

796
00:44:29,000 --> 00:44:30,969
Speaker 1: about a show like this. One thing I try to

797
00:44:30,989 --> 00:44:34,609
Speaker 1: do is just kind of bring archaeology and near-death experiences,

798
00:44:34,730 --> 00:44:38,049
Speaker 1: evidence for the Bible, these big topics, especially stories that

799
00:44:38,150 --> 00:44:41,310
Speaker 1: might not be on your radar online. So please comment

800
00:44:41,350 --> 00:44:43,529
Speaker 1: down below. My team will take a look at what

801
00:44:43,550 --> 00:44:45,609
Speaker 1: you thought about this episode. You're like, no, do two

802
00:44:45,710 --> 00:44:48,549
Speaker 1: hours unpacking this more. Give us your thoughts. It'd be

803
00:44:48,590 --> 00:44:51,530
Speaker 1: helpful for the channel moving forward. Make sure you hit subscribe.

804
00:44:51,850 --> 00:44:55,319
Speaker 1: We've got a lot of fascinating topics this fall. You

805
00:44:55,360 --> 00:44:59,120
Speaker 1: will definitely not want to miss. We're revisiting Michael Heiser

806
00:44:59,160 --> 00:45:02,040
Speaker 1: again soon and a whole host of others on near-death

807
00:45:02,080 --> 00:45:06,790
Speaker 1: experiences and beyond. If you thought about studying apologetics, We

808
00:45:06,870 --> 00:45:10,270
Speaker 1: actually have classes we offer on archaeology at times with

809
00:45:10,290 --> 00:45:12,890
Speaker 1: one of your friends, Titus Kennedy. In fact, at some point, Scott,

810
00:45:12,930 --> 00:45:15,250
Speaker 1: we need to get you out of the dig teaching

811
00:45:15,270 --> 00:45:17,210
Speaker 1: a class with us at Biola and Talbot.

812
00:45:17,350 --> 00:45:18,530
Speaker 2: It would be amazing.

813
00:45:18,870 --> 00:45:21,989
Speaker 1: But sign up, folks. Information below. We'd absolutely love to

814
00:45:22,030 --> 00:45:24,359
Speaker 1: have you. Scott, thanks, my friend. We'll do it again.

815
00:45:24,380 --> 00:45:25,430
Speaker 2: Thanks, Sean. All right.

816
00:45:25,550 --> 00:45:28,210
Speaker 1: Hey, friends, if you enjoyed this show, please hit that

817
00:45:28,290 --> 00:45:31,210
Speaker 1: follow button on your podcast app. Most of you tuning

818
00:45:31,270 --> 00:45:33,580
Speaker 1: in haven't done this yet, and it makes a huge

819
00:45:33,660 --> 00:45:36,440
Speaker 1: difference in helping us reach and equip more people and

820
00:45:36,460 --> 00:45:40,810
Speaker 1: build community. And please consider leaving a podcast review. Every

821
00:45:41,030 --> 00:45:44,110
Speaker 1: review helps. Thanks for listening to The Sean McDowell Show,

822
00:45:44,270 --> 00:45:48,070
Speaker 1: brought to you by Talbot School of Theology at Biola University,

823
00:45:48,180 --> 00:45:52,460
Speaker 1: where we have on-campus and online programs in apologetics, spiritual formation,

824
00:45:52,540 --> 00:45:55,100
Speaker 1: marriage and family, Bible, and so much more. We would

825
00:45:55,140 --> 00:45:58,080
Speaker 1: love to train you to more effectively live, teach, and

826
00:45:58,140 --> 00:46:00,920
Speaker 1: defend the Christian faith today. And we will see you

827
00:46:01,040 --> 00:46:02,540
Speaker 1: when the next episode drops.