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Apparently the forthcoming issue of Israel Exploration Journal has four articles on the tablet, debunking it from all directions. Zerotalk 12:30, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"The result was delete"?

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I don't know exactly how this works, but I'm guessing that since that notice is dated 2022 and it's not been deleted, we're safe... but just in case: I do not think this article needs deleting; I stumbled upon it by chance, and--also by chance--it has turned out to be extremely useful & Relevant To My Interests(TM)!

Himaldrmann (talk) 05:40, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It was deleted and then recreated two months later. Zerotalk 06:00, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It was deleted as a not-yet peer reviewed hypothesis and then recreated after it had received peer review. Largoplazo (talk) 09:58, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Introduction

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User Sinclairian (talk) has made a non-consensus seeking to remove the key disclaimer to this article "he claimed findings were nearly universally rejected by scholarly commentators.", supported by 4 credible sources, and move it to the bottom of the paper, thereby misleading potential readers as to the scholarly consensus regarding the perputed item. It changes the established, stable version, while not providing any rationalisation to this edit. רמרום (talk) 20:27, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

move it to the bottom of the paper
This is incorrect. The sentence was moved down three lines to a place where the findings themselves were discussed.
thereby misleading potential readers as to the scholarly consensus regarding the perputed item.
This is also incorrect, as the content of the sentence which showed the scholarly consensus was not edited, shortened, reworded, or changed in any way, shape, or form. No new or modified information was added in moving the sentence.
while not providing any rationalisation to this edit
This is, unsurprisingly, also incorrect. Rationale was very explicitly provided as simply and concisely as I could possibly have made it. Sinclairian (talk) 20:32, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The main point is that "the claimed findings were nearly universally rejected by scholarly commentators." You may as well move the remaining verbose discussion to the body and thus keep the introduction concise. Anyhow, you preformed a non-consensus edit, and keep reverting it no matter the objections raised here. רמרום (talk) 20:39, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
All reverts were made before you opened the talk discussion and raised objections. The timestamps show that pretty clearly.
As I explained before, minor edits like moving a single sentence do not require consensus – especially when absolutely nothing has been done to challenge that consensus whatsoever. Sinclairian (talk) 20:41, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You started an edit-war and thanks for a well-minded user we were both stopped in time. it is one sentence, but a super crucial one. It is the main counter-stance for this very dubious claim made, so by marginalizing it and sidestepping it you're changing the meaning of the introduction. רמרום (talk) 20:47, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The rationale for moving the sentence to the end of the lead is that it was a "more relevant chronological position". While it works as almost a concluding statement to the lead, I think it may be better in the original position as an immediate counterpart to the statement about the claim of it being the oldest known Jewish inscription. Richard Nevell (talk) 20:41, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. Let's see what other users think working towards improving this article. רמרום (talk) 20:44, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This—The claimed findings were nearly universally rejected by scholarly commentators. The team of its discoverers made sensationalist claims about its contents before the find had undergone the peer review process, and presented little to no evidence for their findings, outside of a single photograph taken of the folded tablet which was unveiled during the initial announcement.— doesn't make sense. "The claimed findings" have no prior referrent and we're left wondering "what claimed findings?". Then it goes on to inform us that the discoverers made sensationalist claims. The sentence beginning "The claimed findings" should logically be after that. It's not just a problem of composition but chronology: Something can't be universally rejected till after it exists. (On the other hand, it makes sense for the note about the editio princeps to go at the end.) Largoplazo (talk) 21:34, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The claimed findings are mentioned in the preceding paragraph " oldest known Hebrew inscription, preceding the Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon by at least two centuries (with the curse tablet dated to around 1200 BC). " רמרום (talk) 21:51, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
When considering the prominence that should be given to the marginalized sentence, please consider the general consensus re: validity which developed here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mount Ebal curse tablet `רמרום (talk) 21:54, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I see a source of confusion then. There appear to be two claims here: one is the claim that it's the oldest known Hebrew description, the other are "sensationalist claims about its contents". The respective impressions I get from these are that the former claim derives from archeological evidence (where it was found, what it's made of, how it was made) and the latter claim is about what the contents say. Perhaps the confusion is purely mine or perhaps it's a problem of wording. Largoplazo (talk) 11:52, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I had already rm the cats (that can easily be undone, though). I will of course not mv it before any discussion. Should we do a formal WP:RM for name-change? Huldra (talk) 23:12, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
How about renaming it the Mount Ebal Lead Tablet . This is as much as the factual consensus (tablet, made of lead). Could anybody add a section regarding its illicit removal from Palestinian controlled area? רמרום (talk) 11:09, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
But are we sure it is a tablet? ie that it is writing on it? It has been suggested that it was a fishing sinker; so what about Mount Ebal lead object? Huldra (talk) 20:43, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, it's not established it's a "tablet."Dan Murphy (talk) 21:32, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. Sounds right. Mount Ebal Lead Object. Any objections from anyone? רמרום (talk) 15:22, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As for "illicit removal": this is obviously hugely important, and an issue which has interested me for years. The problem is the almost total lack of WP:RS. Take the case of the Bull Site figurine. The only place I have noted any RS is for the illicit removal from Herodium -still ongoing, AFAIK. Huldra (talk) 21:48, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We should list it as illicit removal, as it was taken by Israelis from area B in breach of the Oslo Accords רמרום (talk) 15:24, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
True, but I think we need a RS saying that, just as we need a RS saying that the Bull Site figurine was an illicit removal. And I don't know of any such RS, unfortunately, (same for lots of other cases.) Maybe, someday, someone can go through, say the Israel Museum, and note all the items from the West Bank, removed since 1967. Then we could use it... Huldra (talk) 21:15, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Name

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What should be the name of this article? (if we don't delete it all together)

We shouldn't delete it. Regardless of whether or not the inscription is legitimate, it is still notable for its coverage. Also, misnomers aren't disqualified from being titles of articles. The title should be whatever it is commonly known as or referred to. I highly doubt "lead object" is the most common term even used among those who refute the claims of its discoverers. EytanMelech (talk) 00:45, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I actually agree (weekly) that this article shouldn't be deleted, as some might only have heard about the "Mount Ebal curse tablet", and actually think it is one. And we will have the present name as a redirect to the new name, Huldra (talk) 21:24, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's a pretty good compromise. It could also be mentioned in the article that it's another colloquial name for the object, although not a technically correct one. EytanMelech (talk) 02:30, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Mount Ebal Artifact? I think I like that one. There is no "common name" for this obscure thing. Might as well call it the Mount Ebal Rorschach Test.Dan Murphy (talk) 02:19, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Mount Ebal Lead Object for my part, supporting your suggestion רמרום (talk) 15:23, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Though Mount Ebal Rorschach Test is tempting (), I will move it to Mount Ebal lead object in a day or two, unless there is some significant objections to that name, Huldra (talk) 21:24, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"Mount Ebal lead object" is ok with me. Zerotalk 01:31, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tardily Registered Compromise Suggestion

I am late to this discussion and will wait for a response before touching the title of the article. I think that Dan Murphy's suggestion "Mt. Ebal Lead Artifact" is a more appropriate title of the page.
Whether the artifact is a fish weight or something else, it displays evidence of human craft or manufacture and is therefore more appropriately designated as an artifact (implying that even if it may be a fishing weight, it is of human manufacture) rather than object (which leaves open the question of whether this is chunk of lead untouched by human craft). Maybe its a minor issue but on the other hand, the number of artifacts that could even possibly be interpreted as paleo-hebrew inscriptions are something like 2,000--most illegible, most banal in their contents. The majority of them put together would hardly fill a large chest. Galil allowed the indexed location of the find to overdetermine his interpretation--that is a heuristic error. However if we applied the same standard of interpretation to paleo-zoology or paleo-hominid archaeological interpretation (re: location is meaningless, and each fragment should be interpreted without reference existing records, ignoring suggestive desiderata that opens hypotheses which may or may not be resolved by finding remains in particularly delineated areas)that would equally derange understanding of the past disclosed by archaeology. The counterpoint does not justify the specifics of Gershon Galil interpretation, or redeem the error of autonomous publication in a venue motivated by fundamentalism.
However, most examiners called upon, anecdotally, (my sample is small but they are tenured archaeologists at major universities) apart from Mazar, will admit this much while also conceding that they can't read the inscription whatever it was (and I would include myself in this number, however cannot claim to be a tenured archaeologist--I just read a lot in the territory).
This is especially true in conversation with scholars whose interests and domains of expertise overlap this area without being fully identified with it (or at least that's my available sample:Penn State-Roman archaeology, familiar with classical and hebrew literature; Utah State: native american archaeology, familiar with innovative instruments and techniques for scanning and interpretation, Indiana State: Carribbean archaelogy, rather elderly emeritus professor who thinks this whole conversation is muddled by a divisive politics characteristic of the past decade and would be approached very differently in both past and likely future decades)--most of these will be hesitant to publish on the subject at this point because of the furor of Galil's (admittedly) incautious and imaginative or fanciful interpretation, in addition to the fact that archaelogy in Israel-Palestine is not their subject-matter domain and--as a terrain in archaeological discourse--the territory is roughly as hot and impossible-to-do-anything-right in as the geographical area that its findings are drawn from is politically vexed and gridlocked by a collision of interests global in scope and out of proportion with the actual acreage available or what it might yield apart from this controversy and its compounding and broadly diffusing effects on the geostrategic orders around it that vie within this small patch of land in proxy conflicts.
The response devaluing Galil's interpretation does not call the conversation to a stable equilibrium of carefully adjudicated restraint in discernment but burns the bridges that might lead back to further consideration. This artifact justifies fixation,its location is in fact suggestive, close attention and--indeed--controversy over the artifact is called for. It seems not unlikely that the fidelity of tomography as a scanning technique may improve in the near future, it has use-cases outside of archaeology in (for example) computer hardware forensics that may call for further innovation that would not be too difficult to achieve. The readings into an artifact so corroded by the passage of time since its inscription would likely be probabilistic--but probabilistic evidence can be persuasive, and persuasive probabilities may be validated by consensus in scholarship. In that case, the artifact should be re-examined to confirm or verify what appears--clearly--to be an inscription of *some* sort, however faint.
Thus EytanMelech is right to say that the coverage alone is reason for acknowledgment and attention, though he does not clarify that the character of the coverage is symptomatic of a presently broken epistemology--or that the reason that there's such controversial coverage has to do with the fact that there is probably a 'there-there' in terms of what this artifact might illuminate about the past, but this waits on the system or hierarchy within the literature of archaeology to be somehow reconstructed and it likely waits upon better techniques in tomography. If we could put this in the terms of an older generation of thinkers and theorists of historiography, the historicists in contemporary paleo-epigraphy seem to incline toward an interpretation of the past where no one ever did anything, and nothing ever happened because the standard of evidence is so high it levels every event or intention that seems to protrude into a uniform ambiguity. The historical materialists (a la Walter Benjamin) meanwhile, interpret everything according to the way it communicates to the present (which may lead to anachronism, but also leads to a retention of the past rather than its abandonment and oblivion).


We can't decide that Galil is correct on the basis that it would be more interesting if he was correct. But we shouldn't agree with Mazar's equal and opposite radicalism on the basis of disappointment with Galil either. The cluster of controversial coverage derives from a legitimate tradition of study, in collision with a trainwreck of dynamics associated with publicity in our present environment, whose epistemology is broken. ThomasMikaeltalk 012:40, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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