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- [00:00]
Dinesh D'Souza
Foreign.
- [00:12]
Podcast Announcer/Advertiser
Needs this voice. The times are crazy. In a time of confusion, division and lies, we need a brave voice of reason, understanding and truth.
- [00:21]
Dinesh D'Souza
This is the Dinesh d' Souza Podcast. Coming up, guys, a special episode of the podcast. We're going to be talking biblical archaeology with one of the renowned and in the field practicing archaeologists. I'm referring to the man next to me, Scott Stripling. He's in studio today, which is great. He's director of excavations for the Associates for Biblical Research based in ancient Shiloh in Israel. He's also provost and director of the Archaeology Institute at the Bible Seminary in Katy, Texas. He serves as president of the Board of Directors of the Near East Archaeological Society. He's got innumerable credits which I won't go into, but I will tell you you can follow him on xriplingscott, the website very simple Scott with two T's. Scottstripling.net Scott, welcome. Great to have you in studio and I'm really looking forward to this conversation. As I mentioned, we have a kind of basic introduction to biblical archaeology in my latest film, the Dragon's Prophecy. But I want to get to the fundamentals of what this field is and what it does. And so let's begin really in a very basic way by me asking you, what is archaeology?
- [01:55]
Scott Stripling
Well, first, thanks for having me on the program. I've been looking forward to meeting you. I'm in South Houston, you're in North Houston. Almost like two different worlds. So glad we could connect. Archaeology is a subscience of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of human beings and human behavior. Archaeology studies human remains. And so in that sense, we are limited to the last few thousand years where we have stratified human remains. We study those and we try to apply the hard sciences to archaeology, which is a soft science in itself. We take any texts. In our case, I excavate in the area of Israel and Jordan, what we call the Southern Levant, any texts that pertain to that. And normally the Bible is a go to source for me. We also study Egyptian literature, eucharitic literature, anything that can bear weight on the matter so that we can formulate research questions and inform ourselves of how and where and methodologically how we're going to approach this site. And then we go from the top down, lowering the matrix as we go, noting any changes in color and texture. Features then begin to emerge. And of course, with all of our new technologies, we're documenting as we go, we're flying drones, we're creating photogrammatic images and so forth. Taking soil samples, doing radiocarbon testing, all these things that help us understand what life was like in biblical times.
- [03:27]
Dinesh D'Souza
You made a reference to texts. And when, sometimes when people speak of biblical archaeology, you can get the idea that, wait a minute, we're trying to combine somehow theology and revelation on the one hand with science on the other. How can you possibly do that? But you made, you gave me the hint of an answer. You're saying, look, whether it is Homeric Greece or whether it is the proclamations of the pharaohs, these are texts. And even if their goal is theological or royal boasting or whatever, they contain historical information. And what you're saying is that we can go, you can go, archaeologists can go dig in the ground and look for material, artifacts and objects that throw light on these texts. Is that a good way to think about biblical archaeology?
- [04:25]
Scott Stripling
Yeah, that's perfect. The term I like to use is illuminate. Archaeology doesn't change the ancient text. It says what it says and it's, it's a viewpoint. In the case of the Bible, as a Christian, my view is that it's an inspired text, but it's only giving us that narrow view. Archaeology is going to then illuminate it. It's going to set it into a context so that we can understand it here and now the way that they did then and there.
- [04:53]
Dinesh D'Souza
I mean, let's take an example of this to help people understand what we mean. So there is a very important archaeological stone, sometimes called a stele, called the Moabite stone or the Mesha stele. And this is describing the clashes between ancient Israel and the Moabites, which is described in the Bible, but in the Bible, it's from the Israelite side. What's interesting about the Moabite stone is it reflects the opinions of the King of Moab, and you basically get the other side of the conflict. And so isn't this a good illustration of what you're saying the Moabite stone is? Well, on the one hand it supports what the Bible is saying, but on the other hand, it gives you new information. It's almost like we now get to hear what the other guys were saying and how they viewed the conflict. And as a result, you maybe get a fuller picture.
- [05:51]
Scott Stripling
Right. We look to these sources that are extra biblical for synchronisms. A synchronism is where the archaeological data and the biblical text converge. And as an archaeologist, when I can find like three data points to triangulate those things, then we can really be certain in what our chronology is, what Our geography is. And then later deal with issues of interpretation and meaning and so forth. But first we got to get it in the right time, in the right place.
- [06:23]
Dinesh D'Souza
Interesting. Now, let's talk a little bit about how this discipline of biblical archaeology developed, as I understand it, developed in sort of three phases. And tell me if you. If you think my 20,000 foot view here is correct, all of this kind of got going kind of in the mid to late 19th century. You had some early discoveries. People were, you know, getting to the ancient Babylonian kingdoms and ancient Nineveh and discovering old ruins of palaces. And so you began to get some really good information starting in the late 19th century. But things really pick up in the 20th century and especially after the founding of the state of Israel, because you now have access to all this territory that was actually previously under. Under a lot of it, under either British, the British Mandate, or in some cases the Ottoman Empire. And so archaeology kind of really gets going in the 20th century. And then there's been a kind of explosion of discoveries in the last quarter century, a lot of it in Israel, of course, but not just Israel, Jordan, Syria and elsewhere. So we can speak of these sort of three waves of archeology, all associated with prominent figures and also different types.
- [07:48]
Scott Stripling
Of schools of thought.
- [07:50]
Dinesh D'Souza
Was that a relative? It's a crude. But is that a good overview?
- [07:53]
Scott Stripling
Sounds like you've read my book.
- [07:56]
Dinesh D'Souza
Actually, I have the trowel.
- [07:57]
Podcast Announcer/Advertiser
Yes.
- [07:58]
Scott Stripling
That's a pretty good overview.
- [07:59]
Dinesh D'Souza
Yes.
- [08:00]
Scott Stripling
In those early days, in the 19th century, it was primitive by our standards, but really, guys like Flinders Petrie, who was a genius, later W.F. albright, who we call the founders of biblical archaeology, they went in, they mastered the biblical languages, which was important. Yep. They developed expertise in things like ceramic typology. So which is what my expertise is. Also, I'm a ceramic typologist. That means that I can look at a broken piece of pottery and I can tell you the time period that is associated with that. So as we go deeper in an archaeological tale, that pottery enables us to date the sequences.
- [08:41]
Dinesh D'Souza
Okay, let me pause here because this is a very important idea. So you used two expressions. One is an archaeological tell, which is a kind of hill or mound. And the other thing you said was you recognize pottery types and you can use those. So talk about this whole notion of a tell and a term you haven't used yet. But I'd like you to explain stratigraphy, the idea of how you dig down into these tells, and what is the relevance of pottery to establishing a date?
- [09:17]
Scott Stripling
Okay. Well, it was Flinders Petrie was the first to recognize that these mounds in the biblical lands, many of them were not natural hills, but they were stratified remains of human civilization. And so as they begin to then excavate through them, they recognize that the same sequence of pottery that we see here, like Talbot Mersim, or wherever, we also find at this other site. And so over time, they were, they were able to begin a rudimentary ceramic typology through the stratigraphy. The deeper they went, the older the remains became, even to the very bottom where you were pre pottery Neolithic. So you have civilizations that didn't even have pottery yet developed in those earliest layers.
- [10:03]
Dinesh D'Souza
And you're saying that in that case, the absence of pottery is itself illuminating because it tells you, hey, we may have. And isn't it also true that when you have these mounds, because civilizations built on top of each other. Right. And I think what we're saying here is that the Persians come in, they pulverize the people who were there, but they don't clear the earth, they just build on top. And then the Romans come in and they do the same thing. So the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans. So I think what you're saying is as you dig deeper, you're actually going back in time.
- [10:39]
Scott Stripling
That's right. You're time traveling and they're talking. If you know that material culture, it's speaking to you, if you can understand it, think about this. Why would you build a site at a certain place? Number one is water, right? There was a water source in antiquity, either perennial or seasonal water source. Now here's a, here's a bombshell for your audience. Climate change has been around since the beginning of time.
- [11:08]
Dinesh D'Souza
Wait, surely you just.
- [11:12]
Scott Stripling
And the Earth gets hotter and drier and cooler and wetter cyclically. Normally it's about every 400 years. And I wish in this whole climate change debate, they'd ask an archeologist, we could have actually been very helpful to them. Sites that are established that did not have their own spring once the climate changed. That's what brings about the end of the early Bronze Age. That's what brings about the end of the middle Bronze Age. That's what brings about the end of the late Bronze Age is always. Climate change is a factor. So they, they have a water source or it's a seasonal one. Well, once the weather changes, let's say here in Houston, where we are, if the weather were to shift here, we'd be in big trouble because we don't have natural water sources. We're dependent upon rain. They would abandon these ancient sites that they were built. So then over time, those sites begin to crumble. They're also in a seismic zone. Things are falling apart. You get a sand dune effect, people move. So they return to semi nomadic ways of life. When the climate changes again and people come back to the area, or a conqueror comes in, as you alluded to, then they can still see there's building material lying around. They scavenge what they can, they level everything out and they build on top of it.
- [12:28]
Dinesh D'Souza
Since you mentioned the Bronze Age, the middle Bronze Age, it's very helpful to lay out the sort of phases of human civilization. It seems like the way archaeologists classify things. Again, speaking broadly, there's the kind of what people crudely speak of the Stone Age, but the Neolithic period, where as I understand it, it's not that there weren't metals, there were some medals, but this is the most ancient time. And then you have the Bronze Age, which is divided into sort of late bronze, middle bronze, sort of, I guess, early bronze. Or maybe it's the opposite. Maybe it's early, middle and late. Right. And then you have the Iron Age. Is that the next one?
- [13:10]
Scott Stripling
Correct.
- [13:11]
Dinesh D'Souza
Right. And then after that you're basically now in the 5th to 4th centuries BC and now the periods are classified a little bit more historically. Like this is the, this is the Persian period. So this allows you to get a, a kind of sweeping overview of the. So when does the Bible. Talking about the Bible, it's a very remarkable document to me because it contains so many elements, right? Some of it is just God declares, some of it is theological interpretation. Like this guy was a, was a good king because he, he performed all the sacrifices and all the rights. And this guy built, worshiped idols. And so he's a bad king and disobedient to God. And it also contains history, historical descriptions, sometimes quite detailed descriptions. Do you see the Bible as this kind of a, as being this document of mixed genre? And of course, we also got to remember that we're not talking about a single book, the Bible. The Bible itself is a collection of books written over quite a long period of time, containing both the Jewish or Hebrew scriptures and the Christian scriptures.
- [14:32]
Scott Stripling
The Bible is a library. Biblia means library. Okay? Biblioteca in Spanish is a library. So it is a library with multiple genres within it. And so we have to approach it with genre awareness and ask some basic interpretive questions. Like it cannot mean to me here and now what it could not have possibly meant to them. Then and there. Is this cultural or is this normative? In other words, is this for all people in all places and all times, or was it something that was specifically for a certain place in time? Just because someone does something in the Bible doesn't necessarily mean we're supposed to do it. And it's kind of a unique book in that sense in that it shows the flaws of its protagonists. Also, most holy books don't do that. You know, they're going to hold people up as if they're perfect. The Bible doesn't do that. The benefit for me, Dinesh, is that in the process of reading and understanding that genre and working through it, we see real people, real places and real events. And if people think that, well, the Bible is mythology, well, only in one sense. I mean, the Greek word mythos is stories. So yes, you have narrative literature within the Bible, great stories within it, but embedded within those narratives we have ancient history. And this is what I have found over my many decades of excavations, is that we indeed have real people, real places, real events, and not only dozens, but hundreds of synchronisms between the archaeological data and the biblical text. I've never wanted, like the field slanted in my favor, but I don't want it slanted the other way either. And there's been to some degree an anti biblical bias, like the literature from Mesopotamia or Egypt. That, of course is legit. Oh, it's legit.
- [16:23]
Dinesh D'Souza
You know, even though, I mean, it's worth highlighting this. You know, you can have pharaohs who are known to be over the top boasters. Oh, of course, right. And then you've got a panoply of ancient gods and nobody goes, well, that renders all these ancient texts ridiculous because all these people believed in all these mythical gods and we can't take any of this seriously. No, they take it with the utmost gravity and seriousness. And when it comes to the Bible, suddenly they're saying, well, this text has got to be subjected to a different level of scrutiny, including things like if you aren't able to prove that this happened, it didn't happen. So let's talk about that for a moment. It's because it's a. Years ago when I debated the atheist Christopher Hitchens, not in archaeology, of which I knew very little at that time and still am learning, he made the phrase the absence of evidence is evidence of absence. And I think he wasn't original with him, but he thought this was a big winner. But it is almost known to be a known fallacy in archaeology. But explain why that is, why is it wrong to say that the absence of evidence is evidence of absence?
- [17:36]
Scott Stripling
What's the exact opposite of that? What we would say in archaeology is the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. So just, just because the glove didn't fit didn't mean you had to acquit.
- [17:47]
Dinesh D'Souza
Okay, I see.
- [17:50]
Scott Stripling
There's lots of things that could have happened to the evidence in antiquity. Let's say the Bible says that a site was burned. The Israelites burned Jericho AI and Hazel when they entered the promised land. All right. Will fortunately those destruction I excavated decide to buy. So I know this very well, but we're very fortunate when those destruction layers do survive. Because what if a rain comes along right after the battle and the burn gets washed away? What if somebody comes along and when they rebuild and this is what happens in Jerusalem all the time, they dig back down to bedrock, they build on the fence, so they, they're destroying the evidence in antiquity. So just because we don't find the evidence of something in modernity is not evidence that it didn't happen in antiquity.
- [18:40]
Dinesh D'Souza
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- [22:19]
Scott Stripling
Yes, absolutely. And in fact you have that very thing at Hazor itself. You do have a destruction layer that dates to that time period. That's an important synchronism and we begin to then not deductively. It's not like one data point proves a point, but kind of inductively. We're accumulating data, accumulating information and I think at some point a fair minded person has to look at it and say it takes more faith to believe that this didn't happen than it did happen.
- [22:50]
Dinesh D'Souza
Yeah. I was struck, you know, reading the. There's a kind of introduction to Biblical archaeology by this guy, Georgetown Eric Klein. I'm sure you have crossed paths and you know, he starts off in a fairly dismissive, I think, maybe even excessively skeptical way with things like, oh, gee, you know, where's the Tower of Babel? And referring particularly to some of the early books of the Bible. But interestingly, once he gets to King David, we're now talking around 1000 BC and then he gives you the history, going all the way to Jesus and he makes the statement which caught my attention, and he goes, basically, in this entire 1000 years there has not been a single significant finding in archaeology that contradicts the Bible. And I was like, wow. Because it's quite true to say we haven't found this and we haven't found that, and maybe quite honestly, we're looking in the wrong place. But it would be interesting to know if you had found something which goes head on against the Bible. I mean, by itself it wouldn't prove the Bible is wrong because there could be other things going on. But you'd have to contend with that. Right. But Klein seems to concede that over this vast amount of time, with thousands of archeologists working in lots of areas, it's pretty telling that you don't. I mean, you sometimes have a mismatch where people are arguing and you know this much better than I do, they argue about like, when did Joshua cross over to the Promised Land? They argue about the dates of the Exodus. So we're not talking about degrees of argument about when something happened, when did Abraham die, for example, we're talking about something where there is an event and as it turns out, that event is proven false. Do you agree with Klein's overview here?
- [24:53]
Scott Stripling
Absolutely. But let me point out that it was only a few years ago that people within that ilk of thought were arguing that there was not proof of the Davidic dynasty. We have won this battle. We engaged in the arena of ideas and, and we have now established this where there's a broad consensus even among secular archaeologists that David was a real historical figure, that he had a real kingdom. So I'll give you the brief version of this. Prior to 1993, when the TEL Dan stele or the House of David inscription was found at Tel Dan in northern Israel, Go back and look at the literature, the battles that we were fighting, it was that David didn't exist he with a fighting giants and killing lions.
- [25:38]
Dinesh D'Souza
King Arthur, he's sort of a legendary.
- [25:40]
Scott Stripling
And he was a musician like Orpheus and Greek mythology and you know, all of this stuff. In other words, the fact that the Bible said it was not enough. We had to have evidence outside the Bible. Okay, major point. We have only excavated about 6% of the land of the Bible. And so I find it laughable when someone says, well, there's no evidence of this. You think it might be in the other 94%. Okay, can you give us a chance? Yeah. Since 1993, we now have three inscriptions validating David outside the Bible. Three. Imagine what we're going to find in in the coming years. Even Davis David's own palace, most archaeologists would now accept, has been excavated in the city of David in Jerusalem. So people like Eric Clyde have had to yield that point. Okay. And yes, now the last thousand years is secure. Now people like me, my primary of research focus, the next battle is back to the period of the Exodus. Can we deal with the historicity going back a few hundred more years?
- [26:43]
Dinesh D'Souza
I want to get into that, but before we do, it seems that in the 19th century, which is when atheism, I won't say was invented, there might have been atheists before that, but they weren't too many explicit atheists. Even in philosophy, it's really hard to.
- [27:00]
Scott Stripling
Find a growing out of the Enlightenment.
- [27:03]
Dinesh D'Souza
Out of the Enlightenment. But even when the Enlightenment, for a hundred years or so, I think Hume was probably an atheist, but he doesn't even say that explicitly. But in the 19th century, starting with Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, you got these sort of brazen atheists. And then you also have this kind of school of biblical higher criticism. And although it's very ingenious because you've got these guys who are doing a close reading of the Bible, it seems to me that a lot of what they do is the argument from personal incredulity. And by that I mean you got some guy sitting in like Germany or England and he's basically saying from my armchair sitting where I am, it doesn't look to me like the Bible was written in ancient times. It looks to me like probably some guys around like 300 BC sat around and cooked the whole thing up, right? This guy's never been out of his armchair. He's never been to Israel, he's never actually looked in the ground. But they make these assertions. And isn't it true that the beauty of biblical archaeology is it comes with this kind of undogmatic all right, The Bible makes a claim. We're not going to say anything about it. We're just going to go out there with some, you know, with some pickaxes and we're going to look inside the ground and we're going to see what we find and we're going to see how all this matches up. And this has been like a devastating blow against these armchair theorists who have made innumerable claims. And in fact, when the early archeological findings came in, like a really good example where you mentioned the Tel Dan Steli, of course, Aylat Mazar's work in the City of David, some of these guys were like so astounded that they like they said this has to be a forgery, this has to be a fake. They even accused the Biran, the archaeologist who made the discovery that maybe he faked it. They couldn't believe it.
- [29:03]
Scott Stripling
Yeah, welcome to my world. Yeah, there is a hyper skepticism that exists. We have a very well known epigrapher also from George Washington University, who with the recent announcement, a peer reviewed article very recently using AI to what we would call hard machine learning and analysis to calibrate the radiocarbon dates of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Because there's a lot of presupposition that goes into things. For example, a skeptic would tell you that the Book of Daniel couldn't have been written before 167 BC because we know that it's talking about Antiochus Epiphanus and there's no such thing as predictive prophecy. We all know that it can't be possible. Okay, okay. So presuppositionally, not based on scientific, not based on handwriting styles or anything else, or radiocarbon. But presuppositionally we know that it has to be after 167. Well, the new peer reviewed research shows that it dates to the third century B.C. and so now you have scholars coming out and literally saying you can't trust the science. Well, because we know there's no such thing as predictive prophecy.
- [30:23]
Dinesh D'Souza
So this is fascinating. Let's bring it out a little more explicitly. I think what you're saying is that there is a presumptive philosophical atheism built into a biblical study.
- [30:37]
Scott Stripling
Guilty until proven innocent.
- [30:39]
Dinesh D'Souza
Right. And so let's say for example, you have the book of Isaiah. And the book of Isaiah appears to unmistakably forecast something, that something happens. The scholar goes, there's no way that Isaiah could have written this before it happened because there's no way he could have known it was going to happen. And, and since we all know prediction and prophecy is bogus, therefore we have to date the book of Isaiah later because he must have known it was going to happen and then pretended like he was prophesying it. Isn't this really what we're getting at?
- [31:11]
Scott Stripling
Circular reasoning? That is exactly what it is. And you asked earlier for an example. Let me give you one. I was excavating 10 miles north of Jerusalem for many years at a small site that is perhaps the site of AI, the Old Testament. But on top of it was built a New Testament site, probably Ephraim of John chapter 10, where Jesus spends the last month of his life. Within the site of Ephraim. I was excavating clay roof tiles. Well, you think that's no big deal, right? I'll publish these. Well, the Bible says that in fact Jesus at Capernaum was healing people and they broke through the roof. This is Luke's version of it. They broke through a roof and they lowered their friend down to Jesus. In Greek the word Karamos is used ceramic roof and lowered their friend to Jesus. I'm excavating ceramic roof tiles in a first century context. The New Testament says there were ceramic roofs in the first century. Guess what I was being told when I went to publish it by the peer reviewers. Can't be. Ceramic roof tiles don't exist until the second century. They're introduced by the Romans after the Bar Revolt. You should fix this. Well, I stood my ground and I also found that other sites had been finding them but not publishing them because they're being told that it's not possible. And so it's creating. Now you see what I'm getting at, this circular reasoning. I stood my ground less than a year ago in the Givati parking lot dig right next to the city of David. Guess what? They announced this major breakthrough. Clay roof tiles in Jerusalem from the 2nd century BC. I was right all along. The Bible was right all along. But there was a circular reasoning that was arguing against it. That's the type of arena of ideas into which we have to be willing to engage.
- [33:11]
Dinesh D'Souza
I mean, I think that part of what we see here is that the skeptics are very attentive to what they see as pro biblical bias. And so, for example, when the British archaeologist Garstang was dating the time that Joshua crossed over into the, into the promised land, he basically said, well, look, this occurs at roughly the time that these places got burned, just like the Bible says. And then along comes this British archaeologist, Kathleen Kenyon, and she goes no, that guy is wrong, because when I look for certain types of pottery, I don't see them. And therefore, the burning occurred earlier. And so when Joshua showed up, there was nothing left here. There was no place to burn because it had already been burned, like 150 years earlier. Now, everyone is attentive to the fact that Garstang is. Comes out of a religious background and that. That his wife is very religious and involved in all this missionary activity. And so they go, well, this guy is obviously trying to just prove the Bible. But nobody asks a different question, which is, hey, Kathleen Kenny is coming to this research. She's part of a British archaeological mission. This is the time of the British Mandate. Britain has all kinds of interests in the region. They don't really want to make either the Jews or the Palestinians feel like they own the land completely. The British want to kind of arbitrate the dispute. So in other words, what I'm getting at is, of course there can be bias, but there can be bias on both sides or all sides.
- [34:52]
Scott Stripling
That's right. I think each case has to be evaluated on its own merits. What people don't understand about Garsta is that he was the head of the Department of Antiquities. Garsta, don't make him out as some Bible thumper. He's the number one ceramic typologist of his generation. Kenyon was learning from Garstang. Garstang was the man. Now, I've gone back and Brian Wendell, I was on his dissertation committee recently, and he's just written on this and has reopened this for investigation. I think to a degree, we've given Kenyon a bad rap. There's a lot of things that she wrote and said that she wasn't disagreeing with the biblical date. She's just saying that what we call City 4 at Jericho, in her view, was destroyed earlier than Garstang thought it was. But she went on to say There's a City 5 at Jericho and that there's evidence of destruction within that city.
- [35:46]
Dinesh D'Souza
And.
- [35:47]
Scott Stripling
And she said, you know, the date doesn't fit perfectly, but it's close. It's not going to make either side happy, early date or late date. So it's just. This is what's great about my job. You know, we get to investigate these types of things and think them through, and sometimes it's not over days and weeks, but it's over decades.
- [36:06]
Dinesh D'Souza
Your current work. Let's talk about Biblical Shiloh. In America, for different reasons, we have places called Shiloh, but in Israel, it's.
- [36:16]
Scott Stripling
Shiloh Shiloh and the rest of the world. America is the only place that.
- [36:19]
Dinesh D'Souza
Yeah, yeah. All right. And so the Israelites cross over into the promised land, but they don't go to Jerusalem. They. They go to this place called Shiloh. Talk about the biblical what. What happens in Shiloh?
- [36:35]
Scott Stripling
Well, first they go from Shittim to Shiloh. So the conquest is about a six and a half year period. It begins at Shatim, Joshua 2. 1, then it ends up at Shiloh, where Joshua 181 says that Joshua erects the tabernacle there at Shiloh. And I'll say Shiloh and Shiloh interchangeably. Yeah. Why? Why Shiloh? He's from the tribe of Ephraim, number one, and this is Ephraim territory. It's centrally located, number two, number three, I can tell you because I'm there before 5:00am Every morning is there is a cloud that hovers over Shiloh as well. And of course, in the Israelite mind, God dwells in the cloud and so forth. And then Joshua's hometown, Tim Neres, is just a few miles away. And Joshua lives two decades after this point too, so. And his hometown, by the way, is underway under excavation right now as well. Tim Naherez.
- [37:26]
Dinesh D'Souza
And by the tabernacle, you mean not a temple, but kind of. Well, what was originally a portable tent, right. In the desert, the Israelites had a tent. They would construct a kind of a makeshift tabernacle, substitute for a temple worship there. They come to Shiloh, they locate the tabernacle. Did they ever build a temple of any kind in Shiloh?
- [37:49]
Scott Stripling
Well, yeah, interestingly, yes. So it is a tent, which makes sense because they're nomadic people, so to have a mobile shrine makes sense for a mobile people. But now they're coming into the land, they're going to become semi nomadic. And so the original Mishkan or tabernacle is pitched at Shiloh. Over time, yes, they do build a more permanent structure. And most people kind of read over this. But if you look in 1st Samuel chapter 2 and 1st Samuel chapter 3, the language is changing there. You can see it in English, but it's really clear in Hebrew it's going from a temporary structure to a permanent structure. Now it's got doors instead of curtains and so forth. It's also in the Mishnah, so the Seder Alam eh, the Zabayim 14,6 both mention that a permanent structure is built at Shiloh with a tent as a roof. So it's a quasi tabernacle tent structure, and it's within the holy of holies of that where the Ark of the Covenant rests for over three centuries. And spoiler alert, we think we're excavating that building right now.
- [38:55]
Dinesh D'Souza
Imagine exploring Israel where thousands of years of history are on display and embarking on a journey that changes the way you see the world. This is Dinesh d' Souza inviting you to join me and New York Times best selling author Jonathan Cahn for the Dragon's prophecy Israel tour. 12-07-16, 2026 For 10 unforgettable days, you'll discover the best of Israel. You'll walk the stone streets of Jerusalem, pray at the Western walls, sail the Sea of Galilee, stand on the Mount of Olives, visit ancient sites that confirm the biblical prophecies and the Jewish people's deep history. In this land, Jonathan Cahn and I will both be speaking. We'll open the scriptures in the very places you've read about for years, connecting the archaeological record with biblical prophecy and also what's happening in our world today. Come see for yourself what history, archaeology and prophecy reveal in Israel. Join us call 800-247-1899. That's 800-247-1899 or go to inspirationtravel.com dinesh to get information about the Dragon's Prophecy Israel Tour.
- [40:05]
Podcast Announcer/Advertiser
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- [41:07]
Dinesh D'Souza
Let'S talk about the Ark of the Covenant for a moment. Most people's exposure to that comes straight from the Indiana Jones movies. What was the Ark of the Covenant? I understand it was a kind of a box or an ark that contained the remnants of the broken Ten Commandments. Apparently some of the manna that The Israelites consumed in the desert was that.
- [41:38]
Scott Stripling
The contents of the ark and Aaron's rod.
- [41:41]
Dinesh D'Souza
Aaron's rod.
- [41:41]
Scott Stripling
Aaron's rod, which had budded as a miracle. Those three things inside it. So it's a wooden box made of shittim wood, acacia wood, overlaid with gold, with a lid on it, and on top of it are cherubim, so you have depictions of angels. There are holes on the side brackets, if you will, where a pole can go through so that it can be carried without touching, touching the ark itself. God says he's going to dwell there. So let me give you this verse. Jeremiah 7:12. God tells Jeremiah, Jerusalem is about to be destroyed by the Babylonians. As a judgment, he says to Jeremiah, go now to Shiloh, where I first caused my name to dwell. See what I did there? In other words, don't think I won't allow you to be destroyed.
- [42:30]
Dinesh D'Souza
Look.
- [42:31]
Scott Stripling
Look how much I love Sheila and what I allowed them to. Well, we're actually excavating through that destruction. But the point I wanted to bring out is where I first caused my name to dwell. So God says, I'm going to live there. I'm going to come down and dwell there, and you'll have connection with me through the sacrificial system. And it's a means by which you will be able to have connection with God.
- [42:57]
Dinesh D'Souza
What are you looking for in Shiloh?
- [43:00]
Scott Stripling
When I went to Shiloh in 2016, the Danish had done some work there in the 1920s, the Israelis in the 1980s, about 2% of the site here and about 3% of the site there. So 95% was still underground. What I wanted to do was to open up the entire northern slope and to connect the Danish work with the Israeli work, because I think we're subject to misinterpretation when we're drawing large conclusions based on a little bit of evidence. In my perfect world, if you would have asked me, as people did in interviews back in 2016, I would have said, well, in my perfect world, we're going to find evidence of the tabernacle, of the sacrificial system, and of the gate that's mentioned in the Bible. Dinesh, I have to tell you that I'm a very fortunate man because these things can go on for many decades, as Ehud Netzer found out at Herodium. 35 years looking for Herod's tomb. But almost immediately we began to cover, uncover those things. So the area that I chose to excavate turned out to be exactly what I was hoping that it would be.
- [44:00]
Dinesh D'Souza
I mean, that is truly fortunate in the sense that at least I've been reading about the fact that you've had, in fact, you know, quite devout biblical scholars who have gone, for example, in search of Biblical Eye. They've devoted their whole career to looking for it and sort of been forced to say at the end of it, hey, I gave it the good fight, but I never found it. And the reason is that, well, I think most people don't know this because we talk so comfortably about, you know, biblical Jericho and Biblical Eye and Biblical Hazor. These places don't come with, like, name signs, right? All you see is a big mound in the earth, and you've got to go discover, you know, is this Ekron where the Philistines lived? And is this actually biblical? I talk a little bit about how this sort of. There have been some false starts in the search for this place called Biblical Eye, which is one of the three critical sites that the Bible says that Joshua burned and in fact, has given some ammunition to skeptics because they're able to say, hey, you looked over here, you didn't find ash, therefore, what the Bible says is not true.
- [45:05]
Scott Stripling
Okay, well, before I get to that, let me just tell you on a positive side about Shiloh, why there is no controversy there. It's because of the Bible itself. Itself in Judges 21 is very specific. It gives you three data points of where Shiloh is located. And Edward Robinson in the 1830s just took his Bible and got on horseback and went up Highway 60, as it would be known today, and it led him directly to this mound. And now we have found inscriptions and everything else that prove that it's. He knew right away the Bible was very specific. And that's what you don't get from other ancient literature, that level of specificity on places. For example, now back to your question on what we call the problem of AI. That's exactly right. The word in Hebrew means ruin. Cha, the ruin, the destruction. So when Abram Abraham pitches his tents between Bethel and Hai between the ruin, you always get Bethel and AI together. In the Old Testament, they're couplets, if you will. And so the hills between Bethel and I is where they pitch their tents. And we excavated in that area for many, many years. Garstang himself had worked a little bit at a site called Et Tell, thinking that that was the eye of Joshua's day. Here's what happens, and you'll pick up on this, Dinesh, and I think your audience will, too. There's more than one Jericho. There's Old Testament Jericho where the walls fell, and there's New Testament Jericho and they're two miles apart. You can visit both of them when you go there today.
- [46:38]
Dinesh D'Souza
Oh, so Jesus as Jericho was different than.
- [46:40]
Scott Stripling
Bingo.
- [46:41]
Dinesh D'Souza
That's fascinating.
- [46:42]
Scott Stripling
And this explains a seeming discrepancy between Matthew and Mark's account. Is Jesus going toward Jericho or is he going away from Jericho and his encounter with blind Bartimaeus? They're both true. Depends on which Jericho you're talking about. And now today you have three Jericho's. You have modern Jericho. That's there. What My point is that names migrate in antiquity. Why do they migrate? Climate change. Okay. The original site loses its water source and people migrate normally to a nearby site, but they retain the name, just like at Jericho. So New Testament Jericho is not Old Testament Jericho. The same thing I believe happened at AI People move from the ruin. It had already been in ruin since the early Bronze Age, by the way. It's a massive early Bronze Age site. And the site that we excavated about a half a mile away, Kerberodel Maca Theater. For many years. We sort of checked off 15 criteria one by one over the years that these are the things that we think it would need to have if it was a candidate for biblical eye. We can't say with certainty that we know because we didn't get the city limit sign that pointed it out. But we did find verisimilitude between the archaeological data and the biblical text.
- [47:59]
Dinesh D'Souza
We just have a little time. Let's close out by talking a little bit about the New Testament. Now. It's actually appropriate to focus on the Old because The Old covers 2,000 years and the New Testament covers like 40 years. So in other words, it covers the ministry of Jesus, it covers the Acts of the Apostles. It's actually in the biblical span a very short period of time. But I want to highlight how even in the New Testament you have some very sort of specific and in some cases quite minute details that have been stunningly vindicated or confirmed by the findings of archeology. Can you talk a little bit about the Pontius Pilate stone that was found up in the Caesarea, the northern part of Israel, where Pilate had his palace and some temples and so on, because Pontius Pilate is in the Bible. It's not that there were no references to him outside the Bible, but they were from historical sources that were a little questionable. And so people would say we don't really know if there was a guy named Pontius Pilate and moreover, the Bible has his title wrong. He's not really the governor or a prefect. People in those times were called procurator or something else. And then what happens?
- [49:24]
Scott Stripling
Well, that's. This is a good one. Before the 1993 King David debacle, it was the Pontius Pilate, Right. This, this was settled in 1961, the year before I was born. But if you go back to the old textbooks and the old literature, there it is, this, this argument. It wasn't so much that he didn't exist because we had coins of Pilate. And so.
- [49:43]
Dinesh D'Souza
Right.
- [49:44]
Scott Stripling
But it's the issue of the biblical text. And your English Bible, it says that he was the governor of Judea. The Greek manuscript from which that is translated says prefect. Prefect, us. Okay, well, Cornelius Tacitus, the Roman historian in the second century, said that the title of the rulers of the province were procurated. And so we know that Tacitus has to be right. And therefore the New Testament wasn't written until a century later. It wasn't written in the first century after all. It must have been written later because they got the title wrong. That was the battle. And so at Caesarea Maritima, in secondary usage, when the theater there was excavated, they indeed found the famous Pontius Pilate inscription. The. As Tiberius Caesar is mentioned also, Jesus, of course, dies under Tiberius. So it's a Tiberium dedicated to Tiberius. And then it has not only the name of Pontius Pilatus, but also his title. And guess what? It was prefect. It wasn't procurator. It was prefect. The biblical writers had it right all along. Probably about the second century, they had changed the. The term by which they called them. Maybe they were called procurators, but at the time of the Bible, it's exactly as we read it in the text.
- [51:06]
Dinesh D'Souza
And not only that, but the thing about the Pilate stone is it's not as if the stone comes out of the ground so much per se. Apparently the stone had been discarded and was used as part of a building, of a wall. So you have this. They're obviously not throwing out stones.
- [51:22]
Scott Stripling
So was the tel Dan stubble, by the way. It wasn't secondary usage as well?
- [51:26]
Dinesh D'Souza
Well, right by secondary use, use for something else, just to fill something else. And people go, wait a minute, there's some writing on here. You pull it out and then you discover that this is a priceless artifact that casts important new. All right, let's close out by asking you this. What do you think is the biggest discovery in biblical Archaeology that is waiting to be made. In other words. In other words, what's the. What's the one that will make you jump out of your seat? If they're able to corroborate.
- [52:00]
Scott Stripling
Wow, I'm a little biased, but we are excavating the building at Shiloh that I think is the building of the Tabernacle. And if we, indeed, if it is what we think that it is, then you're talking about the place where God says, I live, and a holy of holies in which we are finding all kinds of cultic material related to the Yahweh stick, worship, and so forth. So give me three more years. And if it is what I think it is, then my answer is the Tabernacle at Shiloh.
- [52:31]
Dinesh D'Souza
And this is the reason this is such a big deal, is that the Israelites wouldn't get to Jerusalem for another 350 years, right? And so later, you have a temple, the Solomonic Temple, and the Ark of the Covenant is relocated there. But for this critical period, somewhere between the 14th and 15th century BC till about almost a thousand, right? That key period, Shiloh was the place.
- [53:01]
Scott Stripling
Well, until about 1075 is when Shiloh is destroyed. Then it, remember, goes among the Philistines for a few months.
- [53:08]
Dinesh D'Souza
That's right.
- [53:08]
Scott Stripling
Then it goes back to the Israelites, Beth Shemesh, Bishop, then to Kiriarim up on the hilltop at Notre Dame. Today at Kire Jearim, David comes and retrieves it from there, brings it then into the City of David for a couple of generations and pitches a tent in what we call the Tabernacle of David. And then finally, yes, around 1,000, it's then brought up to the Temple Mount.
- [53:34]
Dinesh D'Souza
You know, I'll just close out with a thought. And this was my impression. Debbie and I went to Israel for the first time the end of 2022. Our first experience, exposure, really, to a lot of this biblical archaeology. And my immediate reaction was, wow, you know, I'm really amazed that this information is not being shouted from the rooftops of every synagogue and church. You know, a pastor preaches about Jeremiah. Wouldn't it be cool to show a couple of clay seals and point out that, you know, guess what? You know, who would think that one could biblically validate, right? Not just a king, but some prophet who's out in the streets.
- [54:13]
Scott Stripling
Well, in those obscure names of scribes in Jeremiah, Gedaliah or some name, then you find them on the seals, right?
- [54:20]
Dinesh D'Souza
That's what I'm talking about. Where you suddenly go, this little detail tells you that all of this Jeremiah, Zedekiah, you know, Jehukal, son of Shelemiah, Gedaliah, son of Pashur. I mean, all these guys kind of spring in a way. They spring out of the Bible and into the pages of history, but via the pathway of archaeology. Scott Stripling, thank you very much for joining me.
- [54:45]
Scott Stripling
It's been a real joy. Dinesh, thank you. Subscribe to the Dinesh d' Souza podcast.
- [54:49]
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