Summary: Rare inscription, found on a jug fragment discovered in the Judean foothills, connects a name used for the biblical judge Gideon with historical reality.
Therefore on that day Gideon was called Jerubbaal, that is to say, “Let Baal contend against him,” because he broke down his altar. – Judges 6:32 (ESV)
Inscription Dated to Period of the Book of Judges
A five-letter inscription from biblical times was found at the Khirbet al-Ra’i dig site in central Israel, between Kiryat Gat and Lachish, about 43 miles southwest of Jerusalem. This unique discovery offers us a 3,100-year-old glimpse back in time and ties the Bible with archaeological history.
Excavations at this site began in 2015 by the Israel Antiquities Authority’s (IAA) Sa’ar Ganor, Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Prof. Yossef Garfinkel, and Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia’s Dr. Kyle Keimer and Dr. Gil Davies. The team announced their findings earlier this summer.
“If you’d like a biblical parallel, we’re talking about the days of the judges and King David,” Ganor said in an IAA Hebrew-language film.
The hundreds of artifacts discovered during seven seasons of excavations help piece together the daily lives of people living during the ancient biblical period. Among them, found in one of the site’s 20 storage silos, was this “unimaginable inscription,” said Ganor.
This extremely rare pottery piece originally uncovered in 2019 was dated by Ariel University’s Prof. David Ben-Shlomothrough using a variety of methods: radiocarbon dating which gave a result of 1050 BC, typography of the pottery sherds found and petrographic analysis of the inscribed pottery. It was concluded that the small jug was made locally. (See our article raising questions about the accuracy of radiocarbon dating.)
Early Alphabetic Writing
The inscribed letters on the pottery are classified as Proto-Canaanite by the scholars and could be the missing link in the development of early alphabetic writing used during the 12th _ 10th centuries BC. The five letters inked on the jug spell out the personal name Yrb’l (Jerubba’al). Early alphabetic inscriptions did not include vowels – only consonants.
Deciphered by epigraphic expert Christopher Rolston of George Washington University, the inscription clearly shows the letters yod (broken at the top), resh, bet, ayin, lamed and remnants of other letters, indicating a longer original inscription.
“The alphabetic script was invented by the Canaanites and the Egyptian influence right about 1800 BCE,” Garfinkel explained. “They continued to use this script, which evolved from Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the Late Bronze Age [1500-1200 BC] and Iron Age I [1200-1000 BC]. The Hebrew and Phoenician scripts were developed only in the middle of the tenth century BCE.”
While Garfinkel expresses the standard view for the development of the early alphabet, the film Patterns of Evidence: The Moses Controversy delved into the hot-button idea that the world’s oldest alphabet was actually an early form of Hebrew. This script may have been used by the Israelites in Egypt and the Sinai mines before it came to Canaan and eventually spread to the surrounding cultures.
The Story of Judge Gideon (Jerubbaal)
The name Jerubbaal appears in the Book of Judges as an alternative name for Gideon, a judge of northern Israel. The name was given to him by his father Joash, who in defending Gideon from the men of the city who wanted to kill him because he destroyed an altar of Baal, said: “Let Baal contend against him” (Judges 6:28-31). The literal translation of the name means, Baal be afraid. (Read more about idol worship in biblical times.)
Gideon’s account is told in Judges chapters 6-8. He famously asked God for the sign of a wet and then dry fleece to prove that God was indeed speaking to him. God used timid Gideon to organize a small army of 300 soldiers and attack the Midianites who would cross the Jordan and plunder the Israelite crops, impoverishing them. The surprise night assault resulted in victory for the Israelites.
Midian was subdued before the people of Israel, and they raised their heads no more. And the land had rest forty years in the days of Gideon. – Judges 8:28 (ESV)
Jerubbaal Only Found in the Judges’ Era
Most likely the owner of the jug penned his name on it to assert his ownership. Some have even speculated that this jug may have belonged to Gideon himself. This seems unlikely for two reasons. The site where the jug was found was near Lachish, which is far to the southwest of the region where Gideon was said to be active. Additionally, the date assigned to the jug is about 1100-1050 BC. Since Gideon lived in about the middle of the Judges era, this would put him more than a century before this time – if an early Exodus date (15th century BC) is employed. He would have lived even earlier if a chronicle revision proposed by scholars such as David Rohl and John Bimson is valid.
Notably, the name Jerubbaal only appears in the Bible in the period of the judges and has never been found outside the biblical text until now. People are often named after famous individuals in their era, and at a minimum this inscription now shows that the name Jerubbaal was indeed being used at that time.
“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,” remarked Ganor and Garfinkel referring to a previous discovery they led.
The jug’s inscription “contributes to a better understanding of the distribution of theophoric names with the element Ba’al [a Philistine god] in the 11th – 10th centuries BCE in Judah,” according to Rollston, Ganor, Garfinkel, Keimer, and Davies, the archeologists who studied this artifact and published a paper about it in the Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology.
Inscriptions From This Era Are Extremely Rare
The inscription joins a mere handful of others that were found in Israel from a similar time period. “For decades, there were practically no inscriptions of this era and region. To the point that we were not even sure what the alphabet looked like at that time. There was a gap. Some even argued that the alphabet was unknown in the region, that there were no scribes, and that the Bible must therefore have been written much later,” polymath independent epigrapher and historian Michael Langlois told The Times of Israel. (See more about other ancient inscriptions.)
“These inscriptions are still rare, but they are slowly filling the gap; they not only document the evolution of the alphabet, they show that there was in fact continuity in culture, language and traditions. The implications for our understanding of biblical history are vast — and exciting!” said Langlois, who was not involved in this current excavation.
Conclusion
“As we know, there is considerable debate as to whether biblical tradition reflects reality and whether it is faithful to historical memories from the days of the judges and the days of David,” stated Garfinkel and Ganor.
“The fact that identical names are mentioned in the Bible and also found in inscriptions recovered from archaeological excavations shows that memories were preserved and passed down through the generations,” the archaeologists concluded.
Scholars today often discount the idea that the Bible presents accurate history. Archaeological finds in Israel like the Jerubbaal shard reveal the mistake of this thought. These discoveries cannot prove the details of the biblical account, but they do give archaeological evidence that the Bible is far more reliable than skeptics claim. Keep Thinking!
TOP PHOTO: The ‘Jerubbaal’ inscription, written in ink on a pottery vessel, discovered at Khirbet al-Ra’i. (credit: Dafna Gazit, IAA)
