Dear Friends,
We are quickly coming down to the end of the fiscal year on June 30th, 2022, and it has been one of the most important years in ABR’s 53 years as a ministry. I am writing to you today to encourage you to consider a generous fiscal year-end gift to help ABR complete many worthy projects and to open the doors for important new opportunities. ABR’s efforts in biblical studies, apologetics, and archaeology are bearing fruit in dramatic ways, and we give God all the glory!
ABR is in a period of extraordinary and important activity as we labor intensely in archaeological fieldwork at Shiloh, in the publication of numerous peer-reviewed texts and articles, in our continuing project surrounding our incredible ancient curse-text discovery at Mt. Ebal, and in the expansion of our radio and TV outreach.
Our fourth season of excavations at Shiloh has begun with work that will carry on throughout the month of June. I’m pleased to tell you that 135 volunteers are involved this summer, making the ABR dig, once again, the largest excavation in Israel. Regarding our publications, we continue to work with Archaeopress in Oxford, England to publish our two-volume final reports on our many years of excavations at Khirbet el-Maqatir (KeM). ABR contends that KeM is the location of ancient Ai, one of the conquest cities of Joshua as Israel entered the promised land under the sovereign direction of God.
The discovery of a postage-stamp sized lead tablet in a wet-sifting operation in 2019 recently became international news after ABR’s announcement that ancient Hebrew (proto-alphabetic) script was identified within the tiny tablet. Through the use of tomographic scanning, our epigraphic team was able to read an imprecatory curse in a chiastic literary structure inscribed within the lead tablet. This discovery from the mountain of the curse (Mt. Ebal) at near the time of Joshua (Late Bronze age) sent shock waves across the archaeological world. The tablet may hold the key for important paradigmatic “dominos” to fall within the Academy, paradigms based upon the biased theories of the unbelieving mind:
- The Documentary Hypothesis - a speculative theory that claims the Pentateuch was formed by multiple authors over hundreds of years
- That Israel was illiterate and did not have an alphabet or ability to write at the time of Moses/Joshua
- That Israel evolved into the worship of Yahweh by acclimating his identity from native Canaanites.
All such theories are called “consensus” today, but all are poorly constructed theories rooted and crafted in unbelief and anti-supernatural bias.
Today, if the Lord lays it upon your heart, would you kindly let us hear from you by June 30? We are grateful for the many ways our friends support and uphold ABR as we contend for “the knowledge of the truth” before the watching world. Thank you for your prayers and financial support for ABR in these extraordinary days.
All for Jesus,
Scott Lanser
Director
Associates for Biblical Research
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