3,000-year-old inscription bearing name of biblical judge found in Israel
if(window.location.pathname.indexOf(“656089”) != -1){console.log(“hedva connatix”);document.getElementsByClassName(“divConnatix”)[0].style.display =”none”;}“Gideon is first mentioned as combatting idolatry by breaking the altar to Baal and cutting down the Asherah pole,” they explained. “In biblical tradition, he is then remembered as triumphing over the Midianites, who used to cross over the Jordan to plunder agricultural crops. According to the Bible, Gideon organized a small army of 300 soldiers and attacked the Midianites by night near Ma‘ayan Harod.”
Inscriptions from that period are extremely rare. The finding, which was deciphered by the epigraphic expert Christopher Rolston of George Washington University, marks the first time that the name Jerubbaal is mentioned outside the Bible..
Garfinkel and Ganor, who co-direct the excavations at the site with Dr. Kyle Keimer and Dr. Gil Davies from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia – a partner in the dig together with the IAA – stressed that there cannot be any certainty that the inscription refers to the Jerubbaal mentioned in the Bible. But even if this was not the case, the artifact sheds light on the period it describes.
“The name Jerubbaal only appears in the Bible in the period of the judges, yet now it has also been discovered in an archaeological context, in a stratum dating from this period. In a similar manner, the name Ishbaal, which is only mentioned in the Bible during the monarchy of King David, has been found in strata dated to that period at the site of Khirbat Qeiyafa,” they said.
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