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Ebla and the Bible, Giovanni Pettinato, Biblical Archaeology Review (6:6), Nov/Dec 1980.

Ebla Tablet

Ebla Tablet. By Davide Mauro – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57338393

Observations on the New Epigrapher’s Analysis

I would like to provide BAR readers with a response to the article entitled “New Ebla Epigrapher Attacks Conclusions of Ousted Scholar,” BAR 06-03. The BAR article is a summary of an article by Professor Alfonso Archi which appeared in the Italian journal, Biblica (Vol. 60, 1979, pp. 556–566), published by the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. My remarks here are based on a scientific article responding to Archi and published in Oriens Antiquus (Vol. XIX, 1980, p. 49–72). For further details and technical support for much of the following, the interested reader is referred to that article.a

Following my own resignation, mission director Paolo Matthiae appointed Professor Archi to be the new epigrapher of the Italian Mission to Ebla. The conclusions in Archi’s article were reached, he says, after “collecting and checking the data.” “The result,” we were assured, is that the Ebla discussions as it relates to the Bible, will now have “a more precise base.”

Normally, we could assume Professor Archi possesses the professional qualifications and competence to handle the Ebla materials because he holds such an important scholarly position.

Unfortunately, in this instance, we must look more closely.

Read the rest of Ebla and the Bible in the online Biblical Archaeology Society Library.

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