The Sean McDowell Show - The Lost Site of the Tabernacle...Have We Found It? | Big Update

0:00Do you ever want to spend more time in God's Word, but the day just gets away from you? Bible League International created a free guide called Nine Tips to Get More of God's Word in Your Life. It's filled with practical ideas to help you build a simple rhythm in Scripture, plus a 30-day Scripture writing challenge to keep you going. Because when we spend time in God's Word, something wonderful happens. Clarity grows and joy deepens. Get your free copy today. Just text more to 948-78. Life Audio Shiloh is one of the most important sites in the history of ancient Israel. A recent dig uncovers some startling discoveries that give us insight into this ancient city but also might challenge skeptics to redate its occupation to more closely align with the biblical chronology. Our guest today, you recognize because he's been on the show a couple of times before. Scott Strypling is an author, he is a practicing archaeologist, and leading the dig at Shiloh.

1:05Here to tell us this fascinating story. Scott, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me, Sean, and I've been back from Israel about six weeks now from the dig. So I'm caught up on sleep and should be somewhat coherent. I love that. Now you and your team sent me an email and I was actually not aware of some of the digs taking place. And about three lines into it, immediately was like, oh man, if Scott would come on and talk about this, I think my folks will love it. So let's just start. Some people might recognize the name Shiloh, but not realize how significant it is. Why is Shiloh so significant for ancient Israel and the Old Testament? Well, let me frame it like this. Jerusalem was still a pagan city for three centuries when Shiloh was Israel's capital. So just think about that for a minute. If you wanted to get right with God, Leviticus 17 of Evans says, without the shedding of blood, there's no forgiveness of sin, you went to Shiloh. I mean, that's where the tabernacle was. And that's where you went to restore your vertical relationship with God or your horizontal relationships with others through that sacrificial system.

2:11It's the material cultural remains through which we are excavating right now at Shiloh since 2017 that have illuminated what was going on at that critical point in biblical history. So if you want to talk about what mattered most in early Israel, it wasn't Jerusalem. It was Shiloh. That's really interesting. Now it turns out, you know, it's better than I do that you're not the first who has dug there. So maybe tell us a little bit about what other digs have taken place there and what people have found already. Really interesting history, the great American Orientalist Edward Robinson in 1838 got his Bible and thought, I'm going to go find Shiloh and he was on horseback. And so he set out on horseback with his Bible and Joshua, I'm sorry, judges, 21, just led him literally straight there. He gave three geographical markers. He marked the spot as curbite, Salloon, which now, of course, we all know is ancient Shiloh. It was the Danish under the National Museum who first broke ground in 1926, 2932, and then the kind of pre-World War II tensions were about.

3:23And they came back in 1963 for a final season. So that Danish dig was first, did maybe 2% of the site did good work. But of course, by modern standards, we would sort of, you know, critique it. Barelon University came from 1981 to 1984 back when his trophicles found was at Barelon University. It was a bit more conservative also at that time in his, in his view of, of how the Bible and archaeology related. They did about 2% of the site, maybe 3% of the site, something like that in different areas. So the staff officer of archaeology beginning in the late 1980s, and especially after 93 because the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995, carved up Judy and Samaria, what we call the so-called West Bay, into three zones, A, B, and C with C being under, it's about 60% of it is in C, which is under total Israeli control. So within areas C, the staff officer of archaeology for the civil administration was placed in charge of those areas.

4:32So they begin to do some salvage work at Shiloh to develop it for tourists and stuff like if you were going to build a parking lot, well, that had to be excavated for the parking lot could be built. And if paths were going to be put down, there had to be excavations. So we've got three things that work. We've got the Danish data, we've got the Barelon data, and then we have the S.O.A. staff officer of archaeology data. And then we come along in 2016 and we're about to start this dig. We have to take all that data, sometimes using different wall numbers and locust numbers and true North and magnetic North and kind of synthesize it all into our plan so that as we excavate and publish, it will make sense. Okay, gotcha. Now some ancient sites like Sodom and Gomorrah, they're serious debate even amongst Christian archaeologists, where the location is. When it comes to Jericho, as far as I understand, there's like near universal agreement that we at least know where Jericho is. How confident are we that this is the biblical Shiloh?

5:34Extremely, I am not personally aware of anyone who disputes that and that's a big deal in archaeology because you know the Mac somewhere there are two archaeologists, there are three opinions. And so everyone's on board, probably for that reason that I gave you at the beginning, what Edward Robinson did taking his Bible, and it was so specific in judges 21 that it led him straight to Shiloh. Shiloh, since then we have an inscription in one of the churches because there are five Byzantine churches at Shiloh. One of them has a beautiful inscription, Lord Jesus bless the people of Shiloh. And it just confirmed what I think people already knew. And then we have found a very similar to a consistency between the material culture and what we would read in the Bible that we confirm that as well. We're going to get to that and I love in the article you sent me to describe how your team was ecstatic. And if people need to realize if you've been digging there since 2016, 2017, this is a decade of just like painstaking work where those moments you live for.

6:41We're going to get there, but tell me what your team brings uniquely to this dig in the sense of what do you bring in that other people didn't do and what are you hoping to find like what are your expectations as you dive into a place like Shiloh. Well, one of the things that we bring is the size of the team. So it's the largest dig team working in the Middle East. And with a big team, you can do some things like wet sifting, for example, that we have we didn't invent wet sifting, but I would say we perfected wet sifting. And we were the first to actually bring it into the field where we would do it in situ. So in other words, everything that we are excavating is not only checked and then dry sift, but then it's also washed through our wet sifting process. So that we know exactly where it came from and the value of small fines, be it a beat or a scarab or a bula or something like this is that we know where it came from because it can help us in the identification and the dating of that particular stratum.

7:41So our expertise in wet sifting I had worked for two years as a supervisor on the tip of about sifting project in Jerusalem and it was at that time that I made it by my mind. This is really a game changer, but all of that material we were working with in Jerusalem, it was out of context, it had been disturbed. When I get the chance to bring this into the field, I'm going to do it and we're going to see this is going to really make a big difference. And so I would say the size of our team and the newer technology that we're able to bring to bear makes a big difference. And then thirdly, Sean, we've been working in that area since 1979, I mean, we excavated curbid nisya so got and then curbid al-Makati, we did the project on medieval and now Shiloh for a decade. So we know not only the pottery and the physical remains from Shiloh, but we have a regional perspective and it takes time to develop that. So we know what the pottery is like at the surrounding sides and we know what the transitions are not only at Shiloh, but we can compare that from a larger perspective.

8:50So one of a, I have a colleague, Clint Arnold at Talb School Theology, who's one of the experts on Colossians in the world written the huge commentary on it. And they're starting a dig at Colossae and it costs them hundreds of thousands of dollars. Like just give us a sense from the outside going, okay, wait a minute, you have the biggest team, if I heard you crackly, not just at this site ever, but in the Middle East doing any archaeological dig. If I heard you correctly, it sounds like I did. I mean, how do you fund this? How do you get the money? Like how do you even put this thing together of such magnitude? Well, now that you asked, the viewers are welcome to donate because I do it the old fashioned way, okay. It's my faith. I think about Elat Masar and her great dig in Jerusalem. She thought she knew where David's palace was and she waited 10 years until she had a donor to start digging. We on the other hand, get out there and sort of the evangelical way by faith. The provision is going to show.

9:54No, seriously, we raise money and over time people who have worked with us over these decades have caught our vision and they support what we do. And then of course the Devolveteers pay a dig fee and that helps as well. The site at ancient Shiloh, they also contribute in some ways, like with electricity and water. And security, I don't get charged with those things. And those are sort of in kind types of contributions. But I sympathize with the dig at Colossate. I've been hoping this would start for many years because when you're starting, you have to create a grid and create protocols and proposals and then licensing and then fundraising and then recruited team, train that team. And then begin the excavation process and begin to then actually publish because as you well know, the goal of archaeology is not excavation. It's publication.

10:55That's right. Yeah, it is really interesting because Clinton is not an archaeologist. He doesn't claim to be he's a theologian, New Testament scholar, but has sent these newsletters and updates. And I read about wet and entails, I think, oh my goodness, the hoops you have to jump through. I can't imagine for the number of people on this team for the amount of expense. Just how significant Shiloh is that it's remarkable that you started digging about a decade ago. So all right, let's get to this moment. And it's your word just for the record not mine in the article. You said you made a discovery that made your team ecstatic. What did you discover? Let's be honest, every to passage and wonder what it really means in its original context true Bible study isn't just casual reading. It's about connecting historical background, cross references and biblical themes. If you've ever felt like navigating all that, it's just too difficult. Please check out logos. It's something I use every day. It's a game changing platform that equips you to explore hard questions with confidence knowing you're drawn from reliable, well respected academic sources.

12:03Whether you're at your desk or on the go, logos helps you follow that path of discovery naturally with their new AI tools. You can ask logos any biblical question and get trusted answers from a biblical, reliable library to help you dive into the layers of meaning in the word logos is offering my listeners an exclusive free 60 day trial. Just go to logos.com slash deep. That's logos L O G O S dot com forward slash deep to claim your free 60 day trial. Let's stop guessing and start going deeper together in the word. Well, that's what our press release said. What most of the media apparently heard because we had about 400 news stories that came off of that. What they heard was we claim to have found the arc of the cabinet. How they got that from what I said you just that what you saw what you saw that they not even close. But I mean it just became clickbait and you know one story fed to another and of all those 400 stories in multiple languages only two reporters ever actually reached out to me.

13:11And it's not like I'm hard to find and I think that was Fox News and CBN reached out to me to actually check facts and they wrote really good stories. So anyway that I circle back around to your original Chris and what's what's fascinating is not that we found the the the arc of the cabinet. What we have been excavating since 2017 and really beginning into 2018. We began to see a building emerge as we lowered the matrix that seemed to match the dimensions of the biblical tabernacle and the dating seemed to work. It was east west it was divided on the on two to one ratios. So it was on our radar. I have never said that we have found the building of the tabernacle but what I have said increasingly each year is that we have a strong candidate for this and it continues to to meet the criteria that we would want it to meet. And in the end we will never be able to say definitively that we found the the tabernacle building because there's not going to be a sign that says you know Samuel slept here or you know Eli slept here something like that.

14:19We're just going to be able to say here are the dimensions here's what the Bible says. Yeah here's the cultic material that we're finding here's the ceramic profile the orientation of the building. And then what the biblical text says about a permanent building being built at Shiloh. So it was that that we found fascinating and underneath the five visa to the east of this building is a very large bone deposit over 10,000 bones from the biblical sacrificial system that we can get into a little deeper later. But we have removed that five isa and underneath it I wanted to see how far it was down to bedrock well it went much deeper than I suppose and after we got through a layer of tumble we came down on three large storage jars. And we were able to keep them and they're broken but they were intact and so we were able to carefully keep them intact as we continue to excavate the surrounding area. And funny I told the area supervisor Jordan McClinton at the beginning of this particular day.

15:25Jordan don't even come back from lunch today unless you bring me burned off of pits from from that area. I want to be able to date that area with radio carbon dating because seeds are the best thing to date with because like charcoal we don't know how. Well old the tree was before it was burned whereas the seed it short lived and so they're perfect for for dating and so Jordan shows up at lunchtime that day with about 500 burned olive feds not only did did we find these jars underneath the five isa but they were full of and we have an archaeo botanist on staff on site. So it's not like in the old days I would have to wait a year to find out what was in these jars I knew right away we had olives and we have lentils and this you know makes a lot of sense when you think about it but they'd all caught on fire and probably from the olive oil that the olives were in was combustible and either accidentally or intentionally if it was an invasion or something like this it caused a whole area to catch on fire.

16:30Which gave us our radio carbon dates that we needed so the surprise was the the jars were from the middle bronzer that's how we dated them and our ceramic typologist Leo Freud from some of the university you know it just looks like what we would typically date as middle bronze but last week I got the results back from the radio carbon dating and we got a big surprise. Oh I you're not going to leave me hanging on this show are you. No I'm not just are we pleased that out a little bit okay I love it quick pause I want to tell you about a Bible study tool that I've used for 25 years it is one of only two sponsors I have on this channel along with telescope theology why because I deeply believe in it and I deeply benefited from it and I want you to consider using it it's called logos and the tools that offers at your home. The other thing your tips will blow you away I use it preparing for interviews I use it my personal Bible study in the morning and I even use to how's writing my dissertation that means it's a tool that can be used by scholars who want to go deep and lay people who just want to get into the scriptures for themselves if you want to learn how to study the Bible for yourself and just own and know the scriptures you will not find a better tool than logos I love for you to consider trying it out.

17:56I'm going to be 60 day trial which you can find at logus.com slash McDowell link is in the description now back to the show hang on now let me circle back to that surprise I just want you to know that I got my title for this video given it out of 400 news stories only two check to you I'm going to title it have we found the arc of the covenant I'm just asking questions that's it that's perfect. Getting aside what what other candidates you said we could never prove definitively that this is like the seat of the tabernacle I think that's the language that you use we couldn't prove it definitively what you have seems to line up with it so far what else could it be what other candidates could there be in that place in that time rather than what you think and obviously hope that it is well folks can go to my academia.edu page and get an article of it. I wrote back in 2016 on the candidates for where the tabernacle may have been at Shiloh and what the theories have been either on the summit which is what my view was when the dig started that it when it was a tent originally it could have moved from more than could have been in one location and been moved to another when a permanent building is built and again look at first Samuel chapter three for example where they're calling it now the temple of the Lord at Shiloh and the house of the Lord at Shiloh.

19:21And we also see in the Mishnah like the say to alarm eight the zevayin 146 say the same thing that a permanent building is built at Shiloh with a tent over the top as a roof so it becomes a quasi tabernacle tent structure so that was already on my you know horizon we have the northern platform which back in 1866 Charles Wilson had suggested because it was a rectangular area it was trying to get a Shiloh that you know that could have been where the tabernacle was Kaufman repopularized that in the 1980s the local community once it started in 1977 they sort of gravitated to that because it's like okay this is our our heritage we need a place to go pray. So the summit the northern platform the southern approaches where the churches were all built and so we could say that you know the Byzantines like that flat open area I suggested it could have moved around when it was a tent those are the other options and so now I was more surprised than anyone when we began to uncover this building that I now think is the strongest candidate.

20:32Can I'm gonna come it was like my archaeological acumen that led us to the building but it really wasn't coming we just that's where we decided to start digging there's a picture of me driving the first take of the excavation which happens to be right on top of where this building is that's incredible now maybe you have some savvy from experience you don't even realize so I'll give you more credit than your claim and for yourself I want to circle back to this big discovery that you hinted for us but help us understand the chronology here there's a lot of debate. What's the debate about when the Exodus was the conquest was when Abraham lived how do you date this and is it as significant and other things such as the conquest and the Exodus for which there's real significant debate about where we place it. Well you're right and as you know I was a co-author in Zonervance book five years on the Exodus so they could have done one on 50 views on the Exodus probably because there are a lot but you know got it down to five so I wrote the chapter on the early date or the biblical date of the Exodus and so in just a few words the either you're at 1446 as an Exodus date or you're at 1406 depending on whether you're taking the masquerade text reading or the Septuagint reading if it's let's say 1406 and you subtract 40 years from the Exodus.

21:48So in chakra will and see in ChHey ch说 that in polynomial or the Eve Sy great rsid somewhere in that early 14th century BC is where we're looking for that evidence. Those who hold to a late date would be looking in the 13th century as opposed to the 14th century. This is really not as far apart as you might think. So that's kind of the lay of the land. Okay. All right. That's helpful. Tell us what you just discovered recently that you hinted at before from dating, I think it relates to. Okay. Well, number one, the date that Israel Finkelstein who was in charge of the Burle Long University excavation that he had placed on the Favisa, the bone deposit in area D, was late Bronze Age 1. So let's just look at the late Bronze Age because regardless

22:52of which view is right, it's all going to be in the late Bronze Age. So LB1 is 1550, let's say to 1400, LB2 is 1400 and 1200. So Finkelstein had said that the Favisa dating it on the pottery because he didn't do any radio carbon dating, but based on the pottery was Iron Age 1 maybe down into the beginning of Iron Age 2A. So once, LB2A, which made it Canaanite. So this is where a century can make a difference. Okay. Because he thought, okay, well, this is evidence of a Canaanite sacrificial system at Shiloh before the Israelites arrive. And in his view back then, there were Israelites and they would have arrived maybe sometime around 1200 or something like that. So then he of course was able to do the publication. So in the literature, what you would read is that there was a Canaanite sacrificial system at Shiloh. What I said going in is let's test that because my reading of the pottery was that it was a little bit later than that. And so I wanted to go in and finish excavating

23:58the Favisa and radio carbon date the bones and and let's let's check. So I brought in outside specialist, I added a zoo archaeologist to the team, a Haskell Greenfield from the University of Manitoba. I brought in the top ceramic typologist, Leo Refrouid, so that it wasn't just me saying, you know, well, these bones and the pottery, but you know, these these guys are going to collaboratively. We're going to arrive at this conclusion. And the radio carbon dates came back from 2023 and now we have a new round of them. And it turns out that Finkelstein was indeed off by about a century, which is what I had thought. And so it was very clearly in the mid 14th century, what we would call the terminus post quim, the earliest possible date is mid 14th century. And then continuing down to into our nage one. So a period of over 200 years for a sacrificial system, which means Sean, if one takes an early date for the Exodus, then this is not evidence of a

25:03Canaanite sacrificial system. It's an israelite sacrificial system. And now this begins to make sense. Why do we disproportionately have young male animals? Why do we have more bones from the right side of the animal than from the left side of the animal and so forth? So now that we know that it's possible for ceramic typologists and good archaeologists to to misdate something based solely on pottery, we all want more than one thing. You know, we want to triangulate if we can. But if you're only using pottery, it's not like around the year 1400, there was a potter's convention. And they all said, okay, you know, we're not going to make these types of vessels anymore. So we like to talk about horizons. Okay, this is in the the late Bronze Age, one B two A horizon, because there's transitions that are taking place in ceramic forms. Well, we were able to then with the radio carbon dating and the other special objects, calibrate that date down into the late Bronze Age two A. That then brings me to the big discovery from this last season

26:07that was fascinating to us where these storage jars, we thought we were right above bedrock, but we had another occupational level below us. And these storage jars that we initially dated to the Middle Bronze Age. And I have always been skeptical of if we ceramic typologists, and I would consider myself a ceramic typologist, I have outside typologists to help us as well. But it's a little fuzzy at the end of the Middle Bronze Age and into the late Bronze Age. I've always sense that maybe we were dating things that were late Bronze Age and we've been pushing them into the Middle Bronze Age, or at the other end, things that were late Bronze Age, pushing them down to the Iron Age. So unless it's painted pottery, it's a form that we know well, and there just hasn't been in the Central Hill Country, which is the majority of Israel, there haven't been that many digs, and of those digs, earlier digs were not doing radio carbon dating.

27:07And so like we did, Kervet O'Connor, and now at Shrilo, and this is extremely helpful. So the date of the burned olive pits comes in at around 1530, 1540, right around there, give or take 30 years. So it's just the beginning of late Bronze Age 1, not Middle Bronze Age 2. So again, we may be off a century, so now I have two examples from area D at Shrilo, of where we archaeologists are maybe not as smart as we thought. We try to be careful about this, but it just reminds us that we have tentative conclusions, and we're always learning and adding more information to this. My hope is that if indeed we are able to calibrate and better understand the ceramic profile and the transitions, it not only helps us at Shrilo, but maybe it helps other digs in the future as well.

28:09Oh, that's really interesting. Okay, so two-part question tied to this. Number one, how, oh, actually let me ask you something first. In terms of the bones, if it was Jewish, we'd expect there not to be pig bones. Correct, and is that what we find, and would we expect them at a canonite site? So a great question. A typical deposit in Israel, canonite deposit will have about 4% pig bone, or slightly more than 4%. When you're at an Israel site, you're going to have 1% or less than 1, you know, 1,5% or something, because they're usually contamination, you know, some amount of contamination can occur, or maybe some porous or light, just smell bacon-frying, and it was just more than, more than you could stay at, I don't know, but there's usually just a small amount in the five-e, so we have a few stray bones, but less than 1% pig bone. So it indicates to us that it's a kosher funnel deposit, mainly sheep and goats and cattle, and disproportionately,

29:17slightly disproportionately, say, 57% something like that, from the right side, 43% from the left side. I bring that up because the Bible says in Leviticus 7 that the right side of the animal is the priest's portion, and they were priests who lived at Shailah. And so when we have 10,000 bones, it can't just be an accident, there has to be, if that's not the explanation, there has to be another one. And then the young, disproportionately young male animals and so forth all suggest to us that literally we are looking at the remains of the biblical sacrificial system. Mixed in with that are seven gold pieces and one silver piece, pendants, earrings, special offerings. Now, Sean, most archaeologists that I know have worked their whole career and never found gold. It's very rare. People don't lose gold or silver in the ancient world. It's valuable. At Shailah, nowhere else at Shailah have we found gold, except a couple of maybe small Islamic coins on the

30:21surface. But within this small area of this fabisa, we have seven gold pieces and one silver piece. They are offerings that are mixed in with the bones and mixed in with the pottery that someone special like Hannah, who out of great empathy came to Shailah and wanted to connect with God, and she gave something of great value so it appears to me. Now, here's another example of the power of wet sifty. Barra long university did not do that. They found one gold piece. We found everything else, all the others. And they excavated far more of it than we did. But in the portion that we did, we look at all that we found. That means that this stuff was being thrown away in the past. Okay, so correct me if I'm wrong. The bone feels like a very strong reason to believe that it is more of a Hebrew Jewish site than it would be a Canaanite site. The gold feels like it could fit,

31:22but less strong for me as a case. And maybe I'm missing something. But is there anything about the shape of the gold, the amulet that is put into that would fit it as well? Or these just random gold things that were found that could kind of match any kind of belief system in ancient times. Let's be honest, every to passage and wonder what it really means in its original context. True Bible study isn't just casual reading. It's about connecting historical background, cross-references, and biblical themes. If you've ever felt like navigating all that, it's just too difficult. Please check out logos. It's something I use every day. It's a game-changing platform that equips you to explore hard questions with confidence, knowing you're drawn from reliable, well-respected academic sources. Whether you're at your desk or on the go, logos helps you follow that path of discovery naturally. With their new AI tools, you can ask logos any biblical question and get trusted answers from a biblical, reliable library. To help you dive into the layers of

32:23meaning in the word, logos is offered by listeners an exclusive free 60-day trial. Just go to logos.com-slashdeep. That's logos-logos.com-ford-slash-deep to claim your free 60-day trial. Let's stop guessing and start going deeper together in the word. It's a great question. We have a peer-reviewed article coming out on this in Judea, Samaria Research Studies soon. It's a collaborative article with six authors that are a part of this. We'll go into great detail of explaining why these gold pieces typologically fit in the late Bronze Age 2. I would suggest that it supports the interpretation that it's part of a biblical favesa because they date to late Bronze Age 2A, which is the time that the Israelite favesa is being formed. The Bible does indicate that the Israelites are taking earrings, for example, and giving them as offerings to the Lord. We do have mixed in here earrings as well. Gold and silver and then Electrum, which is part gold and part silver.

33:26Okay, that makes sense. I assume, like in any case like this, you have your evidence convicting somebody, but then there's certain outlier facts that's like, we're not quite sure what to do with that. And if it's the right person who committed the crime, over time those facts fall into place. What are some of the outlining questions you have right now that you've still got a land? And how would you triangulate this thing? Because you said you want to have three pieces, at least of evidence, that point towards the theory that you're putting forward. And it sounds like you have at least two. How else would you triangulate this? And what are some of the outlining questions that are like, we're still working on this? We don't have an answer yet. Okay, great question. Ideally, we'll find something written, something that's cryptic, like an inscription of some kind. And then we can pay it, pay it leagrathically date that. And that would be the first piece of the puzzle. Okay. But who's pretty good? Okay.

34:26And we call, we call radiocarbon dating, absolute dating, we call ceramic typology relative dating. And so if you had to choose one or the other, you'd rather have the absolute day. We have, we have both. So, so that's excellent. Now things that are still remaining that we're working through within the monumental building, which if we're right is the, my hypothesis is that that is, is likely the building of the tabernacle. It's the Fabisa is due east of that building. The stratigraphy is complicated. And I think it's complicated because they kept it clean. Like, we're not, we don't find much pottery. It's not like a regular building or a regular area or a market or something like that. If something breaks in the tabernacle, you clean it up. You know, it's kept pretty, pretty tidy. And so we're, we're still grappling with the, the, the stratigraphy within there. We're pretty confident that it was built at the end of the late Bronze Age 2 in the beginning of Iron Age 1, because you have the tent for a while for, you know, two or three

35:31generations maybe. You have the, the tent of the tabernacle. The Biscun is at Shiloh. And at some point, and we don't know why, but the Bible shows it and the Mishnah shows it somehow they feel like they got permission from God to build a, a permanent structure. And I might add that we don't have any domestic dwellings at Shiloh, none from the late Bronze Age when the period of the Mishkan. But once that building is built, now we begin to see domestic structures, constructed at Shiloh. Kind of like that biblical idea that we hear from David later, like how can I build myself a house? We got it still in a tent. So once they build this house for the Lord, then they begin to build their own houses at Shiloh too. Now what remains to be investigated, I'll give you one thing that comes to mind real quickly, Mirak's shells. So we are finding so far 12 Mirak shells at Shiloh. The Mirak shell, you extract the dye, the gland produces the dye by which

36:33you would, from which you would make the priestly garments and which you would dye the, the, the tent of the tabernacle as well. Now 12 Mirak shells, of course, does not, does not make a dye production facility, but you know, we're just, who knows, maybe there's a horde of them that we're about to uncover and we're just getting a getting a few right now. Why do you have these in the central hill country? Because we don't find it down at door on the coast. There's a factory, but we don't have them at other hill country sites. Why do we have them at Shiloh? And so that's something that I'm really interested in exploring further and I'm hoping that we're able to get clarity and you can see where on the, the Mirak shell where it's been punctured so that they can extract from that as well. So it seems to me that they were making something and perhaps it has to do with the biblical sacrificial system. So we've got three more years of excavation which hopefully could bring, bring clarity on things like that. Well, we will circle back with my audience for sure and see

37:36what you find, but I have a few last questions for you. Let me play the skeptic here and say, all right, you're bringing in this huge team, a ton of funding, I presume, most if not at least many of them are evangelicals wanting you to find something that proves the Bible. What safeguards do you build in place? Because I remember 20, 25 years ago, I watched this video on evolution, it was publicly funded and it was this huge team and they were looking for this missing link and what they found I remember thinking that is so lame. I think they're trying to make it seem bigger than it is to justify this huge search and I've seen many even Christians fall into this trap. So what safeguards do you build in the place where you if it came out at once, the shyly you'd say, hey, here's the reality, here's what we actually found. Well, number one, the team that I put together. So I have people who are from Israeli universities, who are on my staff from Canadian universities, US universities. And so it's a free thinking thing.

38:40I hate groupthink, Sean. I just can't stand groupthink where there's some sort of internal pressure where everyone has to think the same way. I've tried to create an environment where we're going explore all possibilities. It just so happens that we're at a biblical site and that we have uncovered a building that matches the dimensions of the biblical tabernacles. So am I to not talk about it? That's what it appears. I would say go back and look what I published. Even that article, the 2016 article that's on my academia page about the locations of the tabernacle, I'm on record saying that I thought the tabernacle would have been on the summit of the site. Clearly, we weren't trying to find it in our excavation areas because I'm on record saying I thought I can't wait to excavate the summit because I think that's where it would have been. We have research questions and we try to explore those with a criteria screen with some objectivity.

39:45If we find these criteria, this would indicate to us a high degree of probability that this equals that. That's fair. I remember in the last time I interviewed you on the inscription, you made a point, maybe this was off the record, kind of like you put your name on a certain discovery and you put the evidence out there for peer review examination. If it comes out that you're wrong, you lose a lot of credibility moving forward. That's built into archaeology. It's built into my work on the apostles. People have responded and I've engaged that. That's a good part of what academia does. And I appreciate that this isn't just a private organization for Christians. You're bringing in different professors, sometimes with different views and making your arguments public. So a couple last questions. If you're right about this, like best case scenario, you triangulate this thing. What follows from it? Do you think? Well, I think then we'll hash this. We have a number of peer-reviewed

40:49publications that are in the works. We have a three year article and it's hours the day of my time. It goes into the publications because it's really important to me that this gets out and that it's done well. In the scenario that you propose, let's say that we do end up believing that we have found the building of the tabernacle and evidence of the sacrificial system at Shiloh and our peer-reviewed publications are out, our books are out there and then people can have added in academia. I think that if it's not the building of the tabernacle, then we have to answer the question, how is it possible that we have two buildings of the same dimensions that date to the same time periods at the same place that you know, orient east west? But I don't have any illusion that everyone is going to say, yeah, we have that must be it because that's just not the way that this works.

41:50Yeah, archaeology and academia basically never works that way. That's a fact. Okay, so what you have so far is fascinating. It's certainly enough for me to like pause and by, wait a minute, they're making a case here that this is Shiloh. The investigation is ongoing and I appreciate that you've nuanced things saying we never have certainty we're still making our arguments. But based on what you have so far, what would you say just to a lay Christian or even a non-archaeologist like me, what you think is the significance of what you've discovered? Well, if let's say that one is a Christian that you think about faith connections, I mentioned Leviticus 17, Leviticus earlier, but just think about the incarnation when John is grappling in John chapter one with the way to to communicate the incarnation to his audience. He says, and the word the Logos of God, it became flesh and tabernacle de Mungus. He pulls that

42:51image out because the tabernacle was made of skin. Right. And so here the the the arc of the covenant was in it, which is the presence of God. So kind of like God takes on skin and he moved among us, he tabernacle de Mungus. And so I would just say kind of on a faith level that people should find this very inspirational to understand the tabernacle better is to understand the incarnation. Now for those who are maybe of different faiths Jewish or of other faiths, I think from a purely historical perspective, they should find it fascinating as well that we were able to find various amelitude between the earliest of the biblical texts and what we find in the archaeological record. And then just the per archaeology of it. I mean the methodology that I think we have mastered and hopefully will other digs will benefit from the the advances that we make in the technology in the field. This is such a great story. I'm glad we're able to talk about this.

43:51How can people track if they want to know over the next three years kind of what you're discovering in the debates and we'll obviously have you back. But tell us how people can kind of track this ongoing investigation. Thanks Sean. Our website is digshylo.org digshylo.org. And I always joked don't go to digshylo.com. That's my dog's website. And he's he's a great digger also. But digshylo.org, my personal website is gotstripling.net. And then the school's website is dbibosiminary.edu. And they can follow along with us there. You didn't ask me to say this. You didn't mention this. But obviously there's a huge expense that's here. And I would encourage folks to check it out. If you're able to support even a little bit, it helps this kind of research. For me, in some ways, it doesn't surprise me because as a whole IC archaeology as the story of the more technology we have,

44:51the more digs we find, although it started with a guy on camelback or a horse and a bible finding Shiloh to the technology we have now is filling in the gaps of the biblical story and giving us confidence that these things are true. So I'm not shocked that you found in the place, seemingly in the time, what matches the dimensions tied to the tabernacle shouldn't shock me. But every time we find it's like, oh yeah, this is real. We're talking about real history here. And if it is where the tabernacle sat, that was where God's presence in particular came down, which is reminiscent of Jesus fully God's presence in the flesh, tabernacle among us. That connection is really, really cool. Last question. You're working on a book on the conquest. Now I had Brian Windelon, a colleague of yours, we talked about his unique approach to dating the conquest. But tell us a little bit about when that book is coming out and folks, if you want to have Scott on to make his case for the Joshua Conquest, comment down below. But tell us about that

45:57when it will wrap up. Let's be honest, every to passage and wonder what it really means in its original context. True Bible study isn't just casual reading. It's about connecting historical background, cross-references, and biblical themes. If you've ever felt like navigating all that, it's just too difficult. Please check out logos. It's something I use every day. It's a game-changing platform that equips you to explore hard questions with confidence, knowing you're drawn from reliable, well-respected academic sources. Whether you're at your desk or on the go, logos helps you follow that path of discovery naturally. With our new AI tools, you can ask logos any biblical question and get trusted answers from a biblical, reliable library. To help you dive into the layers of meaning in the word, logos is offered in my listeners an exclusive free 60-day trial. Just go to logos.com slash deep. That's logos L-O-G-O-S dot com forward slash deep. To claim your free 60-day trial, let's stop guessing and start going deeper together in the word.

47:01Jericho to Shiloh fresh perspectives on the conquest. The conquest begins at Jericho and of course that's where Brian has done some really good research. Then I'm excavating Shiloh. It just made sense. The beginning of the conquest to the end of the conquest, a lot has been written about the Exodus in the last decades, but not much about the conquest. Now that we are excavating more of these conquest sites, I feel like we have seen enough of that we can see patterns and we can begin to explore those patterns, bring in the latest evidence, juxtapose it with a biblical text, bring in other things like the Amarna letters and bring that into the discussion. I think even if someone doesn't agree with everything that we write, I may not even agree with everything that I write, but I think they'll find it engaging. Everybody will learn something that will be traveling to actually and hopefully they'll be motivated spiritually as well. All right friends, please let me know what you think about a show like this. One thing I try to

48:03do is just kind of bring archaeology and near-death experiences, evidence for the Bible, these big topics, especially stories that might not be on your radar. So please comment down below. My team will take a look at what you thought about this episode. You're like no, do two hours unpack in this more. Give us your thoughts and be helpful for the channel and boom forward. Make sure you hit subscribe. We've got a lot of fascinating topics this fall. You will definitely not want to miss where you're visiting Michael Heizer again soon and a whole host of others on near-death experiences and beyond. If you thought about studying apologetics, we actually have classes we offer on archaeology at times with one of your friends, Titus Kennedy. In fact, some points got, we need to get you out of the dig teaching a class with us at Bialentalbit. It would be amazing, but sign up folks information below. We'd absolutely love to have you. Scott, thanks my friend. We'll do it again. Hey friends, if you enjoyed this show, please hit that follow button on your podcast app. Most of you tuning in haven't done this yet and it makes a huge difference in help

49:07on us reach and equip more people and build community and please consider leaving a podcast review. Every review helps. Thanks for listening to the Sean McDowell show brought to you by Talbot School of Theology at Biola University, where we have on campus and online programs in a polygetic spiritual formation, marriage and family Bible and so much more. We would love to train you to more effectively live, teach and defend the Christian faith today. And we will see you when the next episode drops. Hey there, it's Nicole Unis from The How To Stay, the Bible podcast, and I'd love to invite you to join us as we weekly discover a passage of God's Word together from beginning to end, from principles to practicals. We are here to make sure that God's Word is powerful and relevant to your life. If that sounds like something you're looking for, I would love to invite you to subscribe. You can go to lifeaudio.com and search how to study the Bible and we'll see you there.