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Melek Eretz "King of the Earth"
The Newark, Ohio Decalogue and Keystone
"If you found a US penny in a trench at a dig that was assumed to contain only ancient items, you wouldn't claim the penny was a forgery. First, you would have to recognize that it's a penny." - Rochelle I. Altman
A stone bowl (mikveh) was found with the Decalogue, by one of the persons accompanying Wyrick. By Wyrick's account, it was of the capacity of a teacup, and of the same material as the box. Wyrick believed both the box and the cup had once been bronzed (Alrutz, pp. 21-2), though this has not been confirmed. The bowl was long neglected, but was found recently in the storage rooms of the Johnson- Humrickhouse Museum by Dr. Bradley Lepper of the Ohio Historical Society.
June of 1860 - The Water Flow Detector (keystone) was found in about a mile from Newark in a pit at the edge of the nearby "great stone works." -
November 1, 1860 - The hand-tefillah (magic/phylactery) decalouge, still nested in its case, and the Mikveh (water bowl) were found in close proximity to each other in one of many Indian burial mounds on. Two unusual "eight-square plumb bobs" were also found with the Decalogue stone.
The Decalouge stone, the keystone/flow detector & the stone bowl, appear to form a Mikveh set was meant for use by a Hasidic/Mosaic Jews while traveling.
In 1863, a report, issued by Dr. Arnold Fischel, visiting Rabbi "of Ampsterdam" - (Letter to Arnold, from Abraham Lincoln - 1861)
The committee appointed by the Ethnological Society pf the Smithsonian Institution, stated that Fischel assumed that the artifacts had been stolen from a European settler and that they had been "planted." - Fischel stated this because of the information revealed by the artifacts, particularly with regard to the antiquity of certain Jewish traditions...
The Smithsonian committee accepted Dr. Fischel's assessment ...
The Smithsonian committee accepted Dr. Fischel's assessment ...
officially saying that "they could NOT label the items as "fakes"
officially saying that "they could NOT label the items as "fakes"
An interview in the Jan/Feb 1998 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review ("The Enigma of Qumran," pp. 24 ff) sheds light on the possible significance of the stone bowl. The interviewer, Hershel Shanks, asked how we would know that Qumran, the settlement adjacent to the caves in which the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, was Jewish, if there had been no scrolls. The four archaeologists interviewed gave several reasons -- the presence of ritual baths, numerous Hebrew-inscribed potsherds, and its location in Judea close to Jerusalem. Then Hanan Eshel, senior lecturer in archaeology at Hebrew University and Bar-Ilan University gave a fourth reason:
ESHEL: We also have a lot of stone vessels.
SHANKS: Why is that significant?
ESHEL: Stone vessels are typical of Jews who kept the purity laws. Stone vessels do not become impure.
SHANKS: Why?
ESHEL: Because that is what the Pharisaic law decided. Stone doesn't have the nature of a vessel, and therefore it is always pure.
SHANKS: Is that because you don't do anything to transform the material out of which it is made, in contrast to, say, a clay pot, whose composition is changed by firing?
ESHEL: Yes. Probably. Stone is natural. You don't have to put it in an oven or anything like that. Purity was very important to Jews in the late Second Temple period. (p. 26)
The letters on the lid and base of the Johnson-Bradner stone are in the same peculiar alphabet as the Decalogue inscription, and appear to wrap around in the same manner as on the Decalogue's back platform. However, Dr. James Trimm, whose Ph.D. is in Semitic Languages, reported that the base and lid contain fragments of the Decalogue text.
The independent discovery, in a related context, by reputable citizens, of a third stone bearing the same unique characters as the Decalogue stone, seems to confirm the authenticity of the Decalogue Stone, as well as Wyrick's reliability.
Two unusual "eight-square plumb bobs" were also found with the Decalogue. Their location is unknown
The Johnson-Bradner Stone
The Johnson-Bradner Stone
In 1867, David M. Johnson, a banker who co-founded the Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum, in conjunction with Dr. N. Roe Bradner, M.D., of Pennsylvania, found a fifth stone, in the same mound group south of Newark in which Wyrick had located the Decalogue. The original of this small stone is now lost, but a lithograph, published in France, survives.
Notes
Notes
David Wyrick, found two of the artifacts in 1860, but was "convicted" by rumor-consensus of forgery AFTER the Gienburg reports were published... Both Wyrick's reputation and finances were ruined; he committed suicide in 1864.
In 1872, Charles Whittlesey published his Archaeological Frauds: Inscriptions Attributed to the Mound Builders. Three Remarkable Forgeries. And there matters rested until 1980.
In 1980, Robert Alrutz carefully investigated the available data and re-opened the subject with his article, "The Newark Holy Stones: The History of an Archaeological Tragedy."
In 1982, in his Mysteries of the Holy Stones, (Pheasant Run Publications, St. Louis), Joseph Schenck cleared Wyrick of the forgery charges.
However, these artifacts have been the subject of dispute between the two extremes ever since.
- in 1991, Stephen Williams included these artifacts in his Fantastic Archaeology and still treats the artifacts as forgeries.
+ Cyrus Gordon entered the fray in 1995; deciding that the "decalog" was a Samaritan mezzuzah.
- In 1996, David A. Deal, published his article, "The Ohio Decalog: A Case of Fraudulent Archaeology," in Ancient American.
1997 => Pro. Robert Alrutz, passed away
- in 2000, Bradley T. Lepper and Jeff Gill, in an article entitled "The Newark Holy Stones," decided that the artifact in the shape of "The" Law is a forgery made for political purposes by someone else [not David Wyrick]...
+ J. Huston McCulloch opened a web site devoted to proving that the artifacts are pre-Colombian.
SRC - https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/Altman_Newark
Native American Plumb bob (Lenape, Proto-Munsee), Prehistoric, Harrisburg, PA. ( Source : American Decorative Arts Curator”s Fund)
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