The Promise of Ebla

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“I agree with practically every point you make,” Ebla excavator Paolo Matthiae told BAR editor Hershel Shanks, referring to the September BAR article (Queries & Comments, BAR 02:03) cautioning against sensationalizing the already famous Ebla Tablets. “Nothing we have found can affect the historicity of the patriarchs,” stated the young Italian excavator who has been working at Tell Mardikh (ancient Ebla) for over 10 years.

Echoing his partner’s monition, Giovanni Pettinato, the expedition’s chief epigrapher, said that nothing found at Ebla either proves or disproves the historical accounts in the Old Testament.