The Beit Midrash of Shem and Eber

Zeev Erlich, Abla-Beit Midrash of Shem and Eber;
Midrash for Reality
These midrashim reveal an interesting picture: ten generations before Abraham, immediately after the flood, Shem, the son of Noah, founded a “Beit Midrash”. The first Rosh Yeshiva in this beit midrash is Shem ben Noah, while the second Rosh Yeshiva is his great-grandson, Eber ben Shelah. Among their students in the beit midrash, although in different ”mazhzorim”, we find Yitzhak ben Abraham, Rivka his wife who asks Shala, and their son, Yaakov.
We will also add that from the midrashic sources (although not according to all versions) it appears that Yitzhak studied with “Shem and Eber”, and also during the days of Rivka “Shem and Eber” They play a role in the court, while their son Jacob studied only with “Eber”. Examining the lifespans of Shem and Eber, and their correspondence to Isaac's age after the Akida (according to the Sages), of Isaac during Rebecca's pregnancy, and of Jacob when he left Beersheba, shows that when Isaac and Rebecca studied there, Shem and Eber were alive, while when Jacob left Beersheba, Shem had already passed away, while Eber was still alive.
And so, the way of the Midrash, and the way of our sages, is to add to the simple readings, in order to add a conceptual-value dimension and more. It is the right, and in our opinion even the duty, of the Sages to add more and more to the Scriptures for us, in the sense of “enlarging the Torah and making it great”. However, is it possible to see at least the part of the midrashim even with the naked eye, even with ordinary vision, even on the level of the ”simple” and not only on the level of the ”Darsh”?
Is it possible to identify in the field, in a physical, archaeological, contemporary find, what the sages describe in the ”Midrash”? The one who dares to “visit” the beit ha-midrash where Isaac and Jacob studied, where Rebecca was asked and also answered, and where they taught, and where there were yeshiva heads, there Ben Noah and Eber Ben Shelah??
Mourning Finds
The main road leading from Beersheba, via Mount Hamoriah to Haran, descends, somewhere, into the Jordan Valley, ascends the mountain range to the east (Gilead, Golan, eastern Gush Hermon), and continues north to the Euphrates. A little north and east of the Euphrates is Haran. Along the way, travelers pass through important cities such as Damascus, Hamat, Aleppo (Aram-Zoba), and more. Jacob, and his father Isaac, apparently passed along this road. Halfway between Hamat (modern-day Hama) and Aleppo, about 70 km southeast of Aleppo, rises a large mound, about 350 dunams in size, and in its center – a more internal mound, his upper city. The mound is called ‘Tel Mardikh’, and is currently identified with the site of the city ‘Ebla’. This city is known to us from many testimonies as an important city-kingdom throughout the third millennium and until close to the middle of the second millennium BC.
The excavations conducted there, since the mid-1970s, have yielded, in addition to many important material finds, an archive containing over 20,000 clay tablets inscribed in cuneiform and Sumerian’ and in another language, unique to the site. The tablets include administrative and economic documents, legal, historical, and literary writings.
Among the many findings from the archival tablets discovered in Abel, we note the personal names:
Av-r-om (=Abram/Abraham), Is-r-il(-vum) (=Israel), E-s-o (=Esau), Ish-m-il(-vum) (=Ishmael), Sh-o-l(-vum), D-o-d(-vum), Mi-k-il. It is possible that names with the suffix “i-h/i-h-v” also appear in the archive, such as: Mi-k-ya, Eb-du-ya (=Obadiah), P-ter-ya (Peter=Shemer=Shemaria), Shu-m-yeh (=Shem-yeh), and more.
Names of geographical sites known from the Bible also appear in the inscriptions: Canaan, Haran, Gebal, Hazor, Megiddo, Jaffa (which they may have pronounced as Megiddo and Jaffa), Ashdod, Gaza, Shalem (and perhaps also Jerusalem, that is, Shalem separately and Jerusalem separately), Lachish, and more. Perhaps even the names of four, or perhaps even five, cities of the square: Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, and even Bela (or, in the case of the wicked king of Bela), which appear in their order in the Bible.
Another interesting find is two tablets containing a geographical list and a bird list (both of these lists were later included in the ”Great Encyclopedia” of the East, which every civilized person was aware of). According to the researchers, since this find is equal to discoveries at various and distant sites, there is evidence here of a method of learning, education, and training of writers and scholars throughout the East, in which Abla played an important part:
“The lexicons, like other texts of a didactic or literary nature, were written by expert writers as part of the school curricula that trained young people from the wealthy to be writers, a profession that was the key to important public positions” (Kutscher 1979).
The geographical list mentions a city called “Kakra” Which corresponds to the crow in the story of Gideon (Judges 8:10), and perhaps to the crow of the sons of Sheth in the blessing of Balaam (Numbers 24:17). Another city is Peleg. Does this city join the cities named after Abraham's ancestors, such as Suruch = Srog, Nachiri = Nahor, Teruhi = Terah? (See our study on Leviticus 13:17). The list of birds mentions doves, ravens, eagles, falcons, sparrows, all of which are birds, but also a bat, which is a mammal and not a bird. Also in the list of unclean birds in Leviticus 11:13-19, the bat is mentioned among the birds (See our study on Leviticus 13:17).
Abla and the Bible
It is true that it is difficult to claim a complete parallel between the find and the Bible, and due to the location being in Syria, in addition to religious sensitivities, political-political and other sensitivities are involved here, which affect the precise publication and interpretation of the find, but it is difficult to disagree with the close proximity between the location of the site, the period of its existence, the fascinating find, and its proximity (with all the reservations) to the Ole from the Bible.
We will try to draw some parallel between the Abla finds and what is known from the Bible, mainly in the stories of the patriarchs, including the Ole from the Midrash.
Admittedly, the city existed in the third millennium BC, and was destroyed around 2280 BC, hundreds of years before the days of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. However, it began to recover quickly (only about 30 years after the destruction), and although it did not return to its days of greatness as an empire, there is already evidence that it functioned as a central and important city on the main road between Egypt and the rivers about 100 years later. During its greatness, various kings ruled it. Some of them are known to us by name, and the most important of them, for our purposes, is “Eb-ri-um” or “Eb-rum”. If indeed, as the researchers are right, in dating the reign of this king to around 2280-2370 BCE, then these were the days of the life of Eber ben Shelah, the great-grandson of Shem ben Noah… And perhaps, years later, in the days of Isaac and Jacob, the days when Ebla existed not as the capital of a mighty kingdom but as a purely important city, Eber himself was no longer a king (and perhaps the name “Eber” here is a dynastic name like “Pharaoh” in Egypt, like “Yavin” in Hazor and like “Abimelech” in Philistia), since his city was destroyed and his kingdom was abolished, but according to the sages, emphasis was placed specifically on the center of learning in Ebla, and the educational system therein (above), and it was called in their language the “Beit Midrash of [the same name and] Eber” (Just as in later periods the city/kingdom is called after the king: ”Eretz Beit Omri” as a nickname for the Kingdom of Israel, “King of the House of David” as a nickname for Jerusalem, and more, many years after the deaths of the individuals mentioned)?
Is Abla truly the “Beit Hamidrash of Shem and Eber”, without quotation marks?

For further reading and expansion:
Barment Chaim and Michael Weizmann, Abla, Jerusalem, 1972.
Bahat Dan, “Excavations at Tel Mardich”, Kadmonition 13, 1971, 32-29.
Kempinski Aharon, “Tel Mardich/Mourning”, Kadmoniyet 48, 1979, 112-98.
Kutsher Raphael, “Mourning Certificates”, Kadmoniyet 48, 1979, 121-113.
Kutsher Raphael, “Corrections and Additions to the Article ‘Mourning Certificates”, Kadmoniyet 52-51, 1980, 127.

1. General Images – Kadmoniyet 48, pp. 121-98.
2. Mourning Tablets – Kadmoniyet 48, pp. 103, 106, 117-116, 120-119.
3. Photos of peuplier on Flickr.
4. Map

On Yeshivah There and Past:
http://forum.otzar.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=7329

See Gemara, Tractate Megillah 17a and in Maharash”a there.

What was taught in this Beit Midrash? The laws of Abaye and Reh? A Torah that has not yet been given? Is it necessary to delve into every nonsense found in the Midrash?