Peer Review

History IX

[Ebal, fifteen of thirty]

Despite the brouhaha about his Mt. Ebal Curse Tablet press conference, Stripling pressed on.

The next step was to compile the data–archaeological, digital, photographic, and epigraphic into a paper and then submit that to a peer review journal.

This post is part of my memorandum opposing some views of scholars such as Dr. Aren Maeir. This Bar-Ilan University archaeological professor, as others, declares that the Mt. Ebal Curse Tablet bears no discernible script. Instead, I maintain that it presents sufficient written evidence to warrant posthaste excavation of its discovery site, the proposed Joshua’s Altar of northern Judea / Samaria.

This is the fifteenth post of my memorandum.

To read my entire effort from beginning to conclusion, click here.

Otherwise, proceed below.

Which journal did Stripling petition?

He chose Heritage Science. Why? He wanted one esteemed especially by the scientific community. Interpretation of this archaeological find required complex computer and tomographic analysis in addition to archaeological and epigraphic expertise. A respected scientific journal he felt most appropriate.¹

After Stripling’s team submitted their completed paper, the journal approached three specialist. These it determined possessed appropriate backgrounds to evaluating the material.

The three then assessed the presentation’s credibility, identified where it needed strengthening, and determined questions that needed answering, etc.

Eventually, Stripling received the reviewers’ initial verdicts.

Two of these gave glowing approval. The other reflected considerable disdain and, in fact, vaguely suggested possible criminality.

All three, however, praised the quality of the writing and scholarship. They all had numerous questions and requests for modifications or clarifications–in total seventy-two.

To these Stripling and his team responded.

Afterwards, the glowing remarks from the two previously favorable reviewers continued. They highly recommended that the journal publish the edited paper.

After receiving the Stripling team’s responses, the negativity of the dissenting panel member softened markedly. Likely this resulted from legal clarifications regarding documents from relevant authorities–Palestinian and Israeli. He or she, in fact, in the end recommended the paper’s publication. All three reviewers assessed the paper as warranting further examination by the scholarly community.²

(As an aside, Heritage Science has not released, as of this writing, the names of the peer reviewers they assigned.)

The journal decided to publish the Stripling team’s article.

That publication I will soon examine.

In the next post, however, I want to put events of these days into some perspective. Following that, I will return to Stripling’s published article.

Here is a question: Many archaeologist claim that their primary goal is not excavation, but publication. Why might they say this?

Let me know below in “comments”.

Thank you for engaging this topic with me thus far!

The next post, the tenth of our review of the Curse Tablet’s history, I entitle: “Troubled Waters”.

I look forward to continuing with you there.

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Next post: “Troubled Waters”

1. Melainie Kidman, Academic article on controversial 3,200-year old ‘curse tablet’ fails to sway experts, The Times of Israel, 14 May 2023, paragraphs 3 and 5, https://www.timesofisrael.com/academic-article-on-controversial-3200-year-old-curse-tablet-fails-to-sway-experts/, (7 October 2024). ↩︎
2. Id., paragraph 5. ↩︎