Title: The Los Lunas Stone
Description: Interesting...
Description: Interesting...
Iowahorse - April 10, 2008 07:02 PM (GMT)
The Los Lunas Stone
Have you ever heard of the Los Lunas Stone? Yeah, us neither, until recently. It’s a rock weighing over eighty tons with what could be the oldest inscription of the ten commandments in the world. It’s written in Paleo-Hebrew, and it’s in the middle of the United States of America. Did we mention it predates Columbus?
Who were the first non-American Indians to discover America? Was it Columbus in 1492? Was it the Vikings hundreds of years earlier? Was it the Portuguese, Chinese, or Japanese?
The answer there is that no-one knows. But one thing we do know is that an awful long time ago someone carved a bunch of Hebrew on a rock that weighs more than an 80 ton stack of cars, in Los Lunas, New Mexico.
The Los Lunas Stone Inscription (Books) is an abridged version of the Decalogue or Ten Commandments, carved into the face of a huge stone resting on the side
of a Mountain near Los Lunas, New Mexico - 35 miles south of Albuquerque, New Mexico.
The first recorded mention of the stone is from 1933. A University of New Mexico Archaeologist named Frank Hibben was brought there by an unspecified guide who’d claimed to have seen the stone as a boy sometime in the 1880s. The locals had known about it as far back as the 1850s, and a local tribe of the time claimed it
even predated their people’s arrival into the area.
That’s a pretty old inscription. This is significant, because as
we’d stated earlier, it’s written in Paleo-Hebrew, which was not
discovered until the 1900s, possibly hundreds or thousands of years
after it was first chipped into the stone. This makes a fraud, gag or
joke highly unlikely. One grouping of the etched images is of
particular interest. The four characters are YOD HE WAW HE, in today’s
tongue it means Jehovah. The stone also shares some rare characters
with the Dead Sea Scrolls. Translated, the stone reads:
"I am Jehovah your God who has taken you out of the land of Egypt,
from the house of slaves. There must be no other gods before my face.
You must not make any idol. You must not take the name of Jehovah in
vain. Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy. Honour your father and
your mother so that your days may be long in the land that Jehovah your
God has given to you. You must not murder. You must not commit
adultery. You must not steal. You must not give a false witness against
your neighbour. You must not desire the wife of your neighbour nor
anything that is his."
Of course there have been nay-sayers, claiming that although the
inscription is an ancient form of Hebrew (Which is amazing in and of
itself), it’s not an account of the Ten Commandments. One man claimed
the inscription was a traveller’s tale, but a very vast majority of
scholars agree with the Ten Commandment translation.
An exact age of the characters is impossible to get, as over the
years countless travellers have cleaned the stone using damaging
chemicals and wire brushes to do so. This means, of course, that a
microscope would be no good in dating the engravings.
To decipher an age you could compare it to other objects with similar writing. In 1993 in Israel something called the Tell Dan Inscription was found with almost identical engravings. The Tell Dan Inscription was written in about 1000 years BC, which could indicate the Los Lunas Stone is as old as 3000.
Whoever the writer, and whenever he swung that hammer and chisel,
this stone turns world history as we know it right on it’s ear. How
did a stone with carvings that old, and that Hebrew penetrate all the
way into modern day New Mexico so many years before Columbus? More
than that, why is something of this significance so widely unknown?
Have you ever heard of the Los Lunas Stone? Yeah, us neither, until recently. It’s a rock weighing over eighty tons with what could be the oldest inscription of the ten commandments in the world. It’s written in Paleo-Hebrew, and it’s in the middle of the United States of America. Did we mention it predates Columbus?
Who were the first non-American Indians to discover America? Was it Columbus in 1492? Was it the Vikings hundreds of years earlier? Was it the Portuguese, Chinese, or Japanese?
The answer there is that no-one knows. But one thing we do know is that an awful long time ago someone carved a bunch of Hebrew on a rock that weighs more than an 80 ton stack of cars, in Los Lunas, New Mexico.
The Los Lunas Stone Inscription (Books) is an abridged version of the Decalogue or Ten Commandments, carved into the face of a huge stone resting on the side
of a Mountain near Los Lunas, New Mexico - 35 miles south of Albuquerque, New Mexico.
The first recorded mention of the stone is from 1933. A University of New Mexico Archaeologist named Frank Hibben was brought there by an unspecified guide who’d claimed to have seen the stone as a boy sometime in the 1880s. The locals had known about it as far back as the 1850s, and a local tribe of the time claimed it
even predated their people’s arrival into the area.
That’s a pretty old inscription. This is significant, because as
we’d stated earlier, it’s written in Paleo-Hebrew, which was not
discovered until the 1900s, possibly hundreds or thousands of years
after it was first chipped into the stone. This makes a fraud, gag or
joke highly unlikely. One grouping of the etched images is of
particular interest. The four characters are YOD HE WAW HE, in today’s
tongue it means Jehovah. The stone also shares some rare characters
with the Dead Sea Scrolls. Translated, the stone reads:
"I am Jehovah your God who has taken you out of the land of Egypt,
from the house of slaves. There must be no other gods before my face.
You must not make any idol. You must not take the name of Jehovah in
vain. Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy. Honour your father and
your mother so that your days may be long in the land that Jehovah your
God has given to you. You must not murder. You must not commit
adultery. You must not steal. You must not give a false witness against
your neighbour. You must not desire the wife of your neighbour nor
anything that is his."
Of course there have been nay-sayers, claiming that although the
inscription is an ancient form of Hebrew (Which is amazing in and of
itself), it’s not an account of the Ten Commandments. One man claimed
the inscription was a traveller’s tale, but a very vast majority of
scholars agree with the Ten Commandment translation.
An exact age of the characters is impossible to get, as over the
years countless travellers have cleaned the stone using damaging
chemicals and wire brushes to do so. This means, of course, that a
microscope would be no good in dating the engravings.
To decipher an age you could compare it to other objects with similar writing. In 1993 in Israel something called the Tell Dan Inscription was found with almost identical engravings. The Tell Dan Inscription was written in about 1000 years BC, which could indicate the Los Lunas Stone is as old as 3000.
Whoever the writer, and whenever he swung that hammer and chisel,
this stone turns world history as we know it right on it’s ear. How
did a stone with carvings that old, and that Hebrew penetrate all the
way into modern day New Mexico so many years before Columbus? More
than that, why is something of this significance so widely unknown?