A team of archaeologists have found a lead tablet that could be the oldest known sample of Hebrew text. Discovered at Mount Ebal in Israel, the “curse tablet” features proto-alphabetic Hebrew text, including YHWH, the name of God. If the tablet’s presumed age is verified, it would set back the date of Israelite literacy by several centuries to about 1200 B.C. If so, it would show that the Israelites were literate when they entered Israel and therefore could have written biblical stories at the time they are believed to have happened.
The tablet would also be the earliest-known use of the name of God in written materials in Israel. Now that it’s been unearthed, what happens next?
