In an odd turn of events, the oldest Hebrew translation of the Ten Commandments in the world was located somewhere extremely unexpected. The ancient engraving was discovered in none other than the USA.
Within the “Hidden Mountain” of Los Lunas, New Mexico lies a controversial carving of the Ten Commandments. The 80-ton boulder, which is still being called a “mystery stone,” a “Phoenician Inscription Rock,” or “Mystery Rock,” contains the text of the Ten Commandments written in ancient Paleo-Hebrew.
According to Roni Segal, an academic adviser with eTeacher, an online language academy; “This form of Hebrew writing was used for approximately one thousand years and fell into disuse around 500 BC.”
Shockingly, the boulder may have endured in its present-day location since the times of King Solomon.
“The more square-like Hebrew script used today came into common use after King Solomon’s reign. Since the writing on this stone is in Paleo-Hebrew script, archaeologists surmise that this stone dates back to biblical times,” continued Segal.
Translated by Harvard scholar Robert Pfeiffer, an expert in Semitic languages; the text includes “I am the Lord, thy God, who brought you out of the land” and “Thou shalt have no other gods.”
However, some state that the stone is fake, such as Kenneth Feder, professor of archaeology at Central Connecticut State University.
“The stone is almost certainly a fake” because it makes use of some modern Hebrew punctuation and contains numerous stylistic and grammatical errors, he said. Late professor and archaeologist Frank Hibben, who had a reputation for fabricating archaeological data, was the first to bring up the stone in 1933. He said that he was first shown the Decalogue by a guide who claims to have found it in the 1880s.