In Devorim 27:15-26, Moshe Rabbeinu instructs the Leviim of Klal Yisroel to lead the Bnei Yisroel from the top of Har Eival in a series of 11 curses against anyone who participates in various activities, including making an avodah zarah, disgracing their parents, and so on. In Yehoshua 8:30, Yehoshua Bin Nun builds a mizbeiach on Har Eival following his fight with Ai, brings a korban olah to Hashem, and relates the curses of Moshe Rabbeinu once again.
Why is this relevant now?
Because at a press conference today at the Lanier Theological Library in Houston, Texas, the Associates for Biblical Research (ABR) announced that they have found a “formulaic curse inscription” on a small, folded lead tablet on Har Eival. The Jerusalem Post reports that in the 23-word English translation of the inscription, the word “curse” appears 10 times and the Sheim Havayah appears twice.
The text is “Cursed, cursed, cursed—cursed by [Hashem], you will die cursed, cursed you will surely die, cursed by [Hashem]cursed, cursed, cursed.”
The newly-found inscription is centuries older than any known Hebrew inscription found in history from ancient Eretz Yisroel.
“This is a text you find only every 1,000 years,” Haifa University Prof. Gershon Galil told The Times of Israel on Thursday. Galil helped decipher the hidden internal text of the folded lead tablet based on high-tech scans carried out in Prague at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.
The scientists used advanced tomographic scans to recover the hidden text to enable the deciphering of the proto-alphabetic inscription.
Gershon Galil of the University of Haifa said, according to the Jerusalem Post, that he almost immediately recognized the formulaic literary structure in the symmetry of the inscription where phrases are repeated in what is called chiastic parallelism.
{Matzav.com}
