Proof that the Book of Mormon is a fraud!!!

[A New Dawn]

Sorry, perhaps I should have clarified my meaning a little better. "Paleo-Hebrew" is a term used to describe pretty much all ancient Hebrew scripts. Paleo-Hebrew scripts have evolved significantly over the centuries, and we can usually date an inscription by what KIND of Paleo-Hebrew it uses. Square Hebrew falls under the category of Paleo-Hebrew. So yes, it's true that the Decalogue stone was written in Paleo-Hebrew. But it's also true that it's written in Square Hebrew, and that Square Hebrew post-dates the emigration of Lehi's family to the New World.

The Bat Creek Stone is also written in Paleo-Hebrew, but it's an even later form that originated in Judah between 100 BC and 100 AD.

Have I made myself clearer? Basically, here's the stats:

Decalogue:
Paleo-Hebrew (of the Square variety) dating to about 500 BC Judah, with some Greek letters mixed in

Bat Creek Stone:
Paleo-Hebrew dating to about 100 A.D. Judah

Both inscriptions contain a number of mistakes (like a character predating the other letters by 300 years, an Aramaic rather than Hebrew spelling of "Judah", and more) that make them easily identifiable as forgeries.

For more information check out http://www.ramtops.co.uk/bat1.html

-CK

We must be using two different sources of information because mine states that square Hebrew is not paleo-Hebrew. And if you actually look at the pictures of the stone and examples of paleo-Hebrew and square Hebrew, you would see that none of it is written in square Hebrew, which would indicate that the people who wrote it preceeded the Babylonian bondage period, since that is when the Jews started writing in square Hebrew.

 

[jezusfreak]

FB: Because you are limited by not believing in all of the words of God, you would see that not all angels of light are evil spirits. It this was the case then Satan would not try to imitate them for it would be worthless. Because Satan can try to imitate angels of light, he can not be as bright or an exact copy of an angel of light. Now I know you just want to believe that Joseph Smith was visted by Satan as an angel of light. But what would be the reason for Satan to wait until 1820 to appear as an angel of light? Why would others claim that they saw an angel from God to only also be fooled into believing it was from God? Why would God allow this to happen? Why would a living prophet today, who is a good and honest man want to knowingly deceive us? And then there is my own personal witness of being revealed to me. As for what you perceive as lies!!! Tell me how you know that what you believe is more correct than my belief. I want to know how you know what is truth.

As I have stated already....the Spirit of Truth tells me the story...it is found ONLY in the Bible. If you would get past your BoM and the others...and read ONLY the Word of God....you would see. As for your "modern-day" prophet leading you astray...well obviously he too is blinded to the truth. I know what the truth is by reading it...and it alone!!! Not adding to it. Satan has worked for all eternity at decieving people....Joseph wasn't the first and he wasn't the last. If you would read the Bible you would understand why God allows these things to happen...HE IS GOD!! The problem is that man has tried so very hard to bring God down to our level. Did Job deserve what happened to him? NOPE....it happened because God allowed it and that is all there is to it. What has been revealed to you? If it doesn't jive with what the Bible says then you can know that you have been decieved. You must always bring it back to the Bible...the original...not the Joe Smith translation. The KJV or the NKJV would be a great place to start.

I am praying for you FB. I truly do care about you and what happens to you...if it weren't so I wouldn't be a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

[CrownCaster]

i believe there is one eternal truth...this life and universe are so vast in detail and full of vast arrays of science that it cannot make sense that there is no reason for it all...but the thing is, normal christians believe in one eternal truth, mormons believe in a different eternal truth...what is it that determines who's right and wrong, how can we know which is right

Since you claim to be a Baptist, dont you know the answer to this question? The eternal truth lies solely in the Jesus Christ of the Bible.

 

[Serapha]

Sorry, perhaps I should have clarified my meaning a little better. "Paleo-Hebrew" is a term used to describe pretty much all ancient Hebrew scripts. Paleo-Hebrew scripts have evolved significantly over the centuries, and we can usually date an inscription by what KIND of Paleo-Hebrew it uses. Square Hebrew falls under the category of Paleo-Hebrew. So yes, it's true that the Decalogue stone was written in Paleo-Hebrew. But it's also true that it's written in Square Hebrew, and that Square Hebrew post-dates the emigration of Lehi's family to the New World.

The Bat Creek Stone is also written in Paleo-Hebrew, but it's an even later form that originated in Judah between 100 BC and 100 AD.

Have I made myself clearer? Basically, here's the stats:

Decalogue:
Paleo-Hebrew (of the Square variety) dating to about 500 BC Judah, with some Greek letters mixed in

Bat Creek Stone:
Paleo-Hebrew dating to about 100 A.D. Judah

Both inscriptions contain a number of mistakes (like a character predating the other letters by 300 years, an Aramaic rather than Hebrew spelling of "Judah", and more) that make them easily identifiable as forgeries.

For more information check out http://www.ramtops.co.uk/bat1.html

-CK

Hi there!



The Bat Creek Stone has been considered a forgery by scholars, and it is "never" used as an evidence to support the bom any more... the fact that the bracelets were found with the stone date it specifically. It's been covered in this forum before, and if I can find the notes, I will post them again.



~serapha~

 

[CrownCaster]

FB: Mea, did you realize that is a fact that people not only came across the Bering straights, but from ships that came across the water. And as you look at these people think about the mixture that is in them.

I am not sure why anyone would be quoting anything from "Dr." Walter Martin. So lets take the Jerusalem problem. If you had read the Book of Mormon for yourself, and not just got this tidbit from an anit mormon website, you would see that it says that Jesus was born in the "Land" of Jerusalem. Bethleham is a suburb of Jerusalem. This was a phrase that was used to discribe an area that could have included several cities. When I tell people where I am from, if they are not familar with my area, I go to the largest landmark they know, and go from there to explain where I live. Does this make sense?

Bethlehem was never referred to as a land of Jerusalem and was its own entity. The Bible made very clear what the fulfillment of this very important prophecy would have to be. It was Bethlehem. Stating that the Messiah would be born in the "land of Jerusalem" sure would leave a lot of interpretatino to be had. God does nto do things this way. He gave very specific signs to watch for. That the Messiah was born in the City of David is absolutely important and had to be fulfilled to the letter. It was, in Bethlehem.

This is the problem with LDS prophecy, there is too much wiggle room. God does not work that way.

 

[Serapha]

Like so many Mormons, you seem to have made the mistake of not realizing that the so-called Decalogue stone is a late-date forgery. Even if it were for real, it (and the so-called "Bat Creek stone," also a forgery) cannot have been a product of Lehi's group of immigrants since the Hebrew script used on both of these stones originated in Judah after 600 B.C. when Lehi's family departed for the New World. The Declaogue is written in Square Hebrew, which developed in Judah post-500 B.C. It's also got some Greek letters mixed in there. The Bat Creek Stone is in a Paleo-Hebrew script that showed up around the time of Christ.

The Decalogue stone was "found" by David Wyrick, who also "found" four other Hebrew inscriptions in Ohio between 1860 and 1867.

-CK

Hi there!




Let me "edit" the previous response to remove those letters that will get me a warning...



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Let's begin here...





Supporters of the LDS and the book of mormon state...





http://www ... .... .. ...... .com/photo-proofs.html



The Bat Creek Stone, discovered in 1889 in an undisturbed burial mound in Eastern Tennessee by the Smithsonian. In 1971, Cyrus Gordon identified the letters as Paleo-Hebrew of the first or second century A.D. translated as: "for Judea." In 1988, Carbon-14 dated to between 32 A.D. and 769 A.D., consistent with the apparent date of the letters. Today the stone is in a back room of the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

but....





http://www . ... .......com/batcreek.shtml







Here's some "hard evidence" about SOME (not necessarily THE) Jews who rafted from the Old World to the New World, as depicted generally in the Book of Mormon. The "hard evidence" is a stone inscription in ancient Hebrew located in Bat Creek Mound #3, Loudon County, Tennessee, and dating to Book of Mormon times. See my oft-posted quotation from Cyrus Gordon on the above dig, which was carbon-14 and scriptographically dated to about 100 A.D.



response:



There are two *major* problems with using the Bat Creek findings to validate the Book of Mormon. First, and most importantly, the bracelets found in the same burial mound date to the 18-19th century--meaning that the stone probably didn't find its way into the mound until then (so it could have easily been brought over after Columbus).



"Recent tests by our Conservation Laboratory on the brass bracelets found in the same grave definitely established that they are 18-19th century trade goods and do not have the chemical composition of brass of the Roman or early Semitic periods." (Statement by the Smithsonian Institution, November 24, 1971)



Second, Gordon himself stated that the script relates to Jewish coins that date to between 70 A.D. and 135 A.D. so the stone couldn't have been brought to America until after then. Last time I checked, the Book of Mormon only speaks of people coming to America more than 600 years before this.





~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

But let's be fair... what does your referenced site say...





http://www. ...........com/LDSFAQ/FQ_BMEvidence.shtml



One of the most interesting evidences of transoceanic contact between the Old and New Worlds is the Bat Creek Hebrew inscription found by a Smithsonian expedition in Tennessee in 1889. (The Bat Creek Stone and other interesting oddities of archaeology, including pre-Columbian maize in India, can be seen at the Archaeological Outliers site.) Anti-Mormon writers such as the Tanners have spent much effort trying to argue that the Bat Creek inscription was not Hebrew. However, non-LDS scholar J. Huston McCulloch has now shown that the Bat Creek inscription, once thought to be Cherokee, "fits significantly better as Paleo-Hebrew" (J. Huston McCulloch, "The Bat Creek Inscription: Cherokee or Hebrew?" Tennessee Anthropologist , Vol. 13, Fall 1988, p. 116, as cited by Matthew Roper, Review of Books on the Book of Mormon, Vol. 4, 1992, p. 212). McCulloch's recent work confirms Cyrus Gordon's original hypothesis about the inscription, namely, that it was from between 70 A.D. and 135 A.D. and represented Old World writing (Science Vol. 2, May 1971, pp. 14-16, as cited by Paul R. Cheesman, BYU Studies, Vol. 13, No. 1, p. 85). Carbon-14 dated wood and brass bracelets associated with the inscription date to between A.D. 32 and A.D. 769 (Ibid., pp.107-12, 116) - definitely before Columbus. Cyrus Gordon, a respected non-LDS scholar, wrote: "The Bat Creek Inscription is important because it is the first scientifically authenticated pre-Columbian text in an Old World script or language found in America; and, at that, in a flawless archaeological context. It proves that some Old World people not only could, but actually did, cross the Atlantic to America before the Vikings and Columbus....The discredited pre-Columbian inscriptions in Old World scripts or languages will have to be reexamined and reevaluated, each on the merits of the evidence, case by case" (Cyrus Gordon, "A Hebrew Inscription Authenticated," in J.M. Lundquist and S. R. Ricks, eds., By Study and Also by Faith, 1:71,80, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1990; for more on this controversial issue, see also J. Huston McCulloch, "The Bat Creek Inscription: Did Judean Refugees Escape to Tennessee?", Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 1993, pp. 46-53, 82, and the differing view of P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., "Let's Be Serious about the Bat Creek Stone," Biblical Archaeology Review, July







~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now compare the test results of the "undisturbed site" with the accountability that the bracelets in that undisturbed site are dated in the 19th century.







~serapha~

 

[Serapha]

Also... and in two parts...



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


http://www.telliquah.com/Batcreek.htm

The Bat Creek Stone
By Lowell Kirk
​

Not Long after I first came to MonroeCounty in 1969 to work at HiwasseeCollege several people asked me about the Bat Creek Stone, of which I knew nothing. In 1974 I purchased 12 acres of land on Bat Creek and built a house about 500 feet from the creek, where I still reside. As a teacher of history, I have done a great deal of research on the Cherokee Indian. In 1988 I read an article in the local paper that made a reference to the engraved Bat Creek Stone and Cyrus Gordon’s theory that the was evidence that Hebrews were in Monroe County almost two thousand years ago. A few weeks after that, as I was reading Sara Sands’ History of MonroeCounty, I ran across the name of Luther Blackman. Blackman was a stone cutter and engraver who operated a marble quarry and stone monument business on Bat Creek.
Blackman was also the postmaster at Marble Hill on Bat Creek in 1857! Suddenly, I made a connection between the “engraved” Bat Creek Stone and Luther Blackman, the stone “engraver.” Could there have been some connection between the two, I asked myself. My first reaction was that this must just be an interesting coincidence, that most likely Blackman was not around 32 years later when the stone was found. But out of curiosity, I began to research the Bat Creek stone.
The Bat Creek Stone was reported to have been found in February, l889 in an Indian mound near the mouth of Bat Creek. John W. Emmert, a Confederate Civil War veteran, working for the Smithsonian, claimed credit for finding the stone and immediately sent it to the Museum, in the belief that the seven “letters” on the small stone were in the Cherokee language. The stone was catalogued and a picture and small reference to the stone appeared in a publication by Cyrus Thomas by l894. Thomas, from Bristol, Tennessee, was directing the archeological for the Smithsonian. Since l960, Cyrus Gordon, a Hebrew scholar, and several other researchers have attempted to prove the stone is evidence that Jews were in America almost 2000 years ago.
My first interest in the story at that point was to prove to myself that the stone “engraver,” Luther Blackman, could not have engraved that stone and focus my research efforts back to Cherokee history. However, I soon learned that Blackman lived in the area until his death in 1919! My curiosity increased. I began to consider the possibility that there was a connection between the Bat Creek “engraved stone” and the Bat Creek stone “engraver.” For the past ten years I have been on an intellectual journey that has been intriguing, and absolutely fascinating! I have come to know Luther Blackman and his thoughts like an old friend, with much thanks to his grand-daughter, Mrs. Glen Davis. I have trudged through valleys and mountains of history that involve Native Americans, Hebrews, Mormons, Melungeons, and Cherokee. I have waded through Civil War and Reconstruction, Mississippian Mound builders, the early history of the Smithsonian Institute, President Grover Cleveland’s first administration and Benjamin Harrison’s election and inauguration. I delved deeply into the national political controversy between the Republican and Democratic political parties in the late l9th century. I have become familiar with the great disruption caused by the Civil War and Reconstruction in East Tennessee and into and lots of NineteenthCenturyMonroeCounty history. I have uncovered many myths and myth builders, and myth demolishers. I followed many dead-end trails, and had to backtrack to the main trail that led to the solution to the puzzle of the origin of the Bat Creek Stone. And all along the way I made many new friends and acquaintances.

Luther Meade Blackman
​

The two primary players in this story of intrigue and mystery are Luther Meade Blackman and John W. Emmert. Blackman was an absolutely brilliant, highly educated man, Civil War officer and prominent Republican who was much molded by his hatred of Rebels and Democrats. Blackman was born in Connecticut and educated in Michigan. He came to Knoxville 1855 as a letterer and engraver for a monument company. In l857 he moved to Bat Creek to operate a monument business. In l890, he was still in the monument business as well as being a Federal Claims Commissioner and leader of MonroeCounty Republicans.
Emmert was a relatively uneducated, obscure former Confederate Army private from Bristol, Tennessee and life-long Democrat who was employed in l884 by the Smithsonian to dig in Indian mounds in what was a successful attempt to prove that the Mound builders were not descendants of the lost Tribe of Israel. That theory was the prevailing belief in the Nineteenth Century. Old myths die hard. There are many, including Mormons, who still cling to it. Some of these believers use the Bat Creek Stone to support their belief.
Those who have believed the Bat Creek Stone to be a forgery of fraud, include Dr. Charles Faulkner, anthropologist at the University of Tennessee and Jefferson Chapman, Director of the U.T. McClungMuseum. They believe that Emmert perpetrated the fraud. My researches indicate that Emmert himself, was a victim of the fraud, set up to send in a fraudulent engraved stone so he would get fired, for the second time.
Supporting players in my story John Wesley Powell, a key founder of the Smithsonian, and Cyrus Thomas, who directed the archaeological work. By l890, Thomas proved that the Mound-builders were Native Americans and not the Lost Tribe of Israel. Like John W. Emmert, Cyrus Thomas was born and raised in Bristol. Other supporting players include John P. Rogan, “scoundrel” and cousin of Cyrus Thomas who lost his job with Thomas in l886 and became a Bristol bookseller. Others include L.C. Houk, from Sevier County, who controlled the Tennessee state Republican political machine in the l880s, Grover Cleveland, President of the United States, who in the spirit of the l883 Pendleton Act, tried to clean up the corruption in the U.S. Postal Service and Pension Claims offices. Blackman worked as a Pension Claims Agent from l870 to l890. However, President Cleveland allowed most Republican’s who held Federal patronage jobs in East Tennessee to be replaced by Democrats by l886. In l889, Republicans in East Tennessee were out to get all Democrats fired from Federal jobs.
As I was engaged in my Bat Creek Stone research, always in the back of my mind was the hope that as I kept pursuing this “mystery,” that I would find some concrete evidence that Blackman was not involved, so that I could get my mind and time back on my Cherokee researches. Not one single piece of concrete evidence has excluded Blackman as the perpetrator of the Bat Creek Stone; and virtually every avenue I have pursued has added evidence that Blackman engraved the stone. He had the knowledge, skill, opportunity and extremely strong motive. by a letter written by his
own hand, has proven himself to have been on the spot when the deed was done. He was intimately familiar with the U.S. Department of the Interior, of which the Smithsonian was a part. The circumstantial evidence pointing to Blackman is overwhelming.
The efforts of J. Justin McCulloch as published in a l988 article in the Tennessee Anthropologist, “The Bat Creek Inscription: Cherokee or Hebrew?” includes a large number of pieces of this puzzle. But McCulloch has not put all of them together in the right place. McCulloch is correct that the inscription is composed of ancient ”Hebrew” letters. But Chapman and Faulkner are correct in that the inscription is a skillful forgery done in the l9th Century! McCulloch wrote, “If one insists on making the Bat Creek inscription a forgery, one could easily find far more plausible culprits than Emmert.” Although it has not been easy, I have done that! What I have added to the puzzle is the man, the motive, the opportunity and the broad and complicated outline or border of the puzzle. it was the intricate and complicated was of a variety of nineteenth century developments that make up this border. When one stands back and looks at all the center of the puzzle of the Bat Creek Stone. And at the center is Major Luther Meade Blackman.
Blackman set John W. Emmert up to get him fired from his job by sending in a fake stone. J. Emmert was a Democrat who had been hired after Grover Cleveland and the Democrats took over the national government in l885. Emmert was an old acquaintance of Cyrus Thomas. Both were from Bristol, Tennessee. Emmert's leg had been badly wounded in the Battle of Drury’s Bluff in May of l864. In l885 he was disabled and badly needed a job. Although Republicans controlled East Tennessee, Democrats controlled the Federal government and fired most Republicans in Federal patronage jobs in East Tennessee after l885. Emmert worked in Monroe county digging in Indian mounds in l886-87 along the Little Tennessee River and at Tellico. He also worked on mounds at Cog Hill and the HiwasseeRiver mounds in McMinnCounty. In l888 East Tennessee Republicans got him fired from his job on the Democratic Senator from Tennessee and his Republican friends in Bristol, President Grover Cleveland himself ordered an investigation in Washington which cleared Emmert. Emmert was rehired in January l889 and began digging again in MonroeCounty at the mouth of Bat Creek. During that time he resided in Morganton, just across the river from the mouth of Bat Creek.
When Emmert showed up in Luther Blackman’s back yard, Blackman was determined to get the old Confederate Democrat fired again, this time young local teenage boys that Emmert had hired to do the actual digging, as he was himself disabled. They gave it to Emmert, who claimed to have found it himself. One of those teenage boys was Jim Lawson, son of Blackman’s neighbor. I suspect that Blackman’s own son, who was a blacksmith, also assisted in the l889 dig in the Bat Creek Mounds.

The Bat Creek Stone
Courtesy of Tennessee Anthropological Association

Once the engraved stone was in Emmert's hands, local Republicans tried to get Emmert to send the stone to Knoxville to have it “translated.” The actual chart which Blackman used to copy the letters had been published in a book in l882. According to the chart which Blackman used to carve the stone, the translation would have read, reading from right to left as Hebrew was, “QM, LIES.” QM referred to Blackman’s position as Quartermaster of the Fourth Tennessee Union Cavalry in the Civil War. Emmert, of course, immediately sent the stone to Cyrus Thomas, never allowing a local "translation".
​

​

 

[Serapha]

Copy of a Drawing of the Inscription by Emmert

In l889 Blackman was the Monroe County leader of the L.C. Houk political machine in East Tennessee. The Houk machine controlled all Republican patronage in the First, Second and Third Tennessee Congressional Districts. One of the many complications to this puzzle was that the Republicans in the First District (Chattanooga) were in the process of stripping the Houk political machine in Knoxville of appointment power in their districts. The Houk machine was made up of old “Radicals” who were still engaging in “Bloody-Shirt” politics and carrying on the political aims of “Radical Reconstruction” politics. Those First District Republicans had given support to help Emmett get his job back after he had been fired in l887. Blacken, by getting Emmett fired for sending in a “fraudulent” stone, would also help discredit Hook’s enemies in the republican party in East Tennessee. That failed. By l892, the Hook Machine and the old Radicals and their “Bloody Shirt” politics were out of power.
All of this was never exposed at the time for an obvious reason. The stone was reported found February l4, l889. The Republican President Benjamin Harrison was inaugurated president on March 4. (Blacken went to the inauguration.) Harrison immediately began the process of removing all Democrats from Federal patronage jobs. So Emmett was removed from his job, without the stone. Syrups Thomas, who knew that stone was a fraud, simply “stonewalled by putting it in a drawer at the Smithsonian and never mentioning it again. If Thomas had made an issue of it, that could have gotten him fired. And so the stone lay undisturbed in the Smithsonian until about l960, when Hebrew scholars have attempted to prove it a genuine 2000 year old artifact.
The full outline of this story simply cannot be told in a short article. But the primary point to be remembered here, is that the Bat Creek Stone was a clever forgery, perpetrated for political reasons. If there were Hebrews in Monroe county 2000 years ago, they did not engrave the Bat Creek Stone. Luther Blackman did it in l889.

Home...The Tellico Plains Mountain Press
​

Copyrighted - All Rights Reserved
​

 

[A New Dawn]

Jenda,

Where you sitting here in my house with me when I typed that post? You must have been for you to be saying that I was typing that in anger. I was actually sitting here with a grin on my face. I would also like to ask you were it is that you get off on judging me and "HOW" I am saying something? I do have a realationship with Christ and I would suggest that you be careful to remove your own plank first. Love is NOT all about tolerance and warm fuzzy feelings. Love is caring and GIVING the truth...and sometimes the truth really hurts.

I never said that love was about tolerance and warm fuzzy feelings.

No matter what you, or anyone says, feelings come through in posts. You can be grinning all you want, but if what you say is very negative in connotation, that will come across, and not your smile.

I wasn't judging you to be judgmental, but to say that if all someone feels from your posts is anger, then they aren't going to read your posts, and then your point is lost.

 

[Serapha]

Hi there!


I don't remember who is discussing "Jerusalem" and "Bethlehem" with FB... but I remember posting the earliest pictures of Jerusalem facing Bethlehem a few months back and showed total desolation between Jerusalem and Bethleham. I will look for those pictures.


~serapha~

 

[A New Dawn]

Hi there!



The Bat Creek Stone has been considered a forgery by scholars, and it is "never" used as an evidence to support the bom any more... the fact that the bracelets were found with the stone date it specifically. It's been covered in this forum before, and if I can find the notes, I will post them again.

~serapha~

No one was suggesting that the Bat Creek Stone was being used to support the BoM. That was brought up by CaliforniaKid as a strawman argument.

 

[Serapha]

and concerning the land of Jerusalem... from previous postings...

~serapha~



If one were to identify the land of the forefathers of Lehi, then it would be, according to the bom and as a descendent of Joseph, to be the Northern Kingdom, and not Jerusalem or Bethlehem at all.

Now, addressing the use of "land of Jerusalem"... the fragment which is identified from the Dead Sea Scrolls is 4Q385. (The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered, New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1992) You may put 4Q385 into your address line and read what the scholars do say about those fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls.

There were two translations of Jeremiah in circulation during the first century. The now canonized version, and the "other" version which was shorter, had a variant Greek text, and included the fragment cited as "proof" for the "land of Jerusalem. It is called "Pseudo-Jeremiah" for a reason.

The "land of Jerusalem" is identified to include the town of Bethlehem, four miles away. However, it should be noted that the purpose of the wall of the city was to protect the inhabitants. The people lived within the walls of the city, and during the day left the city to work, returning at night to the safety of the walled city. Bethlehem was a town in is own right at the birth of Christ, and not a fracture off of the walled city of Jerusalem. The wall around Bethlehem existed before the time of Joshua although today there is no remainder of the wall.




I was reading in Archaeology of the Land of the Bible - 10,000 -586 B.C.E. by Amihai Mazar.




Of interest, on page 336, concerning the "Days of the Judges",

"The phenomenon of many small, one-period sites attributable to the Israelite settlement is almost completely non-existent in the Hebron Hills south of Bethlehem and in the Shephelah of Judah. Here, perhaps the Israelites contented with a smaller number of sites, which later, in the period of the Monarchy, developed into towns. At such sites, Iron Age I remains can be found only by systematic excavation, as indeed occurred at Hebron, Beth-Zur, and Tell Beit Mirsim. The only excavated one-period Iron Age I site in thes region is Giloh, south of Jerusalem....


The chapter continues to discuss the lack of small settlements in the area south of the JezreelValley and Galillean area. In contrast, the northern areas had an abundance of such settlements, the term given is "hundreds of new small sites" in upper and lower Galilee, Samaria, Ephraim, and the northern Negev.





The point is this. Bethlehem existed as a commerce area in its own right well before David conquered and claimed Zion as his capital. As has been pointed out before, Bethlehem was a walled city of its own right (proved by archaeology) , given its own days of celebration according to Ezra, and not a subdivision of Jerusalem, to exist in its shadow. Bethelem (and Jerusalem) were not surrounded by "hundreds" of smaller sites, but each was dominant in their own right.





The "land of Jerusalem" would not be an accurate rendering of anyone who was familiar with the area to include Bethlehem, and the second reference cited is a reference to "land of Jerusalem" and no no specific relationship to "Bethlehem"





If the people in the bom were familiar with the area, they would not use the term "land of Jerusalem" to mean Bethlehem.


~serapha~

 

[Serapha]

Here's one of the pictures... from the Jaffa gate facing towards Bethehem... with no "suburb".

http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~dhershkowitz/index3.html

and from Bethehem to the north...


more desolation.

 

[CaliforniaKid]

Hi there!



The Bat Creek Stone has been considered a forgery by scholars, and it is "never" used as an evidence to support the bom any more... the fact that the bracelets were found with the stone date it specifically. It's been covered in this forum before, and if I can find the notes, I will post them again.



~serapha~

Jeff Lindsay's website discusses the Bat Creek Stone extensively, holding it up as evidence of early transoceanic contact between the Americas and the Old World. I agree that it has long since been considered a forgery in the scientific community, but some people will continue to cling to it all the same.

No one was suggesting that the Bat Creek Stone was being used to support the BoM. That was brought up by CaliforniaKid as a strawman argument.

I brought up the Bat Creek Stone because it falls into essentially the same category as the Decalogue Stone: bad forgeries claiming to be Hebrew artifacts in the New World.

-CK

 

[A New Dawn]

I brought up the Bat Creek Stone because it falls into essentially the same category as the Decalogue Stone: bad forgeries claiming to be Hebrew artifacts in the New World.

-CK

It is only your opinion that it is a forgery. Everthing that I have read indicates that it is real. Maybe you could produce a reference that indicates it is a forgery. The ones I provided showed it to be real.

 

[CaliforniaKid]

We must be using two different sources of information because mine states that square Hebrew is not paleo-Hebrew. And if you actually look at the pictures of the stone and examples of paleo-Hebrew and square Hebrew, you would see that none of it is written in square Hebrew, which would indicate that the people who wrote it preceeded the Babylonian bondage period, since that is when the Jews started writing in square Hebrew.

I don't have any really scholarly books about the stones, so I can't really figure out whether they were written in square Hebrew or not. I browsed the internet and found dozens of websites that dated the Hebrew script used on the stone to anywhere from 1000 BC to 700 AD. I haven't the slightest who's right. When I compared the writing on the stone to some samples of eighth century paleo-Hebrew, it seemed similar but crude. I guess I can't make a judgment until I find something a little more scholarly than all the pseudo-archaeology websites out on the internet.

In any case, there are a few significant points that I will make. The first is that Greek letters are substituted for the more intricate Hebrew letters. I find it hard to believe that any self respecting Hebrew would do this, even if he/she had knowledge of Greek. If the Decalogue Stone is in fact a genuine Hebrew inscription, then it was written down after Alexander the Great conquered the known world in the late 300's BC. That is after Lehi's expedition. That means the inscription post-dates our Nephite and Lamanite friends. There are other problems, too. For example, the author of the inscription makes several errors of spelling, and at one point even loses his place in one of the most well-known passages of the New Testament! He uses a caret to insert a line of text (check it out at http://www.webcom.com/mhc/archaeology/decalogue2.gif) in the second line. But as best I can tell, carets weren't used until at least the Middle Ages in Europe.

Another problem is punctuation. Ancient Hebrew writers didn't use spaces between sentences. Where there might be some confusion about where one word ended and another began, they inserted a vertical line | or a dot. They didn't put punctuation at the end of sentences (as on the decalogue stone) until the second century BC (click here for a history of Hebrew punctuation).

There are other problems, too. Combine them all and you have clear evidence that the Decalogue is a modern forgery.

-CK

 

[A New Dawn]

I don't have any really scholarly books about the stones, so I can't really figure out whether they were written in square Hebrew or not. I browsed the internet and found dozens of websites that dated the Hebrew script used on the stone to anywhere from 1000 BC to 700 AD. I haven't the slightest who's right. When I compared the writing on the stone to some samples of eighth century paleo-Hebrew, it seemed similar but crude. I guess I can't make a judgment until I find something a little more scholarly than all the pseudo-archaeology websites out on the internet.

In any case, there are a few significant points that I will make. The first is that Greek letters are substituted for the more intricate Hebrew letters. I find it hard to believe that any self respecting Hebrew would do this, even if he/she had knowledge of Greek. If the Decalogue Stone is in fact a genuine Hebrew inscription, then it was written down after Alexander the Great conquered the known world in the late 300's BC. That is after Lehi's expedition. That means the inscription post-dates our Nephite and Lamanite friends. There are other problems, too. For example, the author of the inscription makes several errors of spelling, and at one point even loses his place in one of the most well-known passages of the New Testament! He uses a caret to insert a line of text (check it out at http://www.webcom.com/mhc/archaeology/decalogue2.gif) in the second line. But as best I can tell, carets weren't used until at least the Middle Ages in Europe.

Another problem is punctuation. Ancient Hebrew writers didn't use spaces between sentences. Where there might be some confusion about where one word ended and another began, they inserted a vertical line | or a dot. They didn't put punctuation at the end of sentences (as on the decalogue stone) until the second century BC (click here for a history of Hebrew punctuation).

There are other problems, too. Combine them all and you have clear evidence that the Decalogue is a modern forgery.

-CK

The things that you are calling problems don't seem to be considered problems by the people that have translated it over the years. That, combined with the fact that the stone is known since at least 1880, long before the new world knew of the ancient Phoenician/paleo-Hebrew language, makes a strong case for the authenticity of the stone.

I guess the jury will be out on this one for a while.

My point of bringing it into the discussion was not to say that Lehi, et al, had anything to do with it, but to point out that the theory of peoples with a Mediterranian heritage coming to this land, amidst all the others who came over, isn't a far-fetched theory.

 

[CaliforniaKid]

The things that you are calling problems don't seem to be considered problems by the people that have translated it over the years.

That's because those people have agendas. The same people who defend the Decalogue stone (McCulloch, Gordon, and others) defended the Bat Creek Stone that you seem now to agree is a forgery. These "scholars" are out to prove their diffusionist theory of Native American origins, whether they're Mormon or not. For that reason they like to ignore glaring problems. Most of the resources on the internet are Mormon websites or pseudo-archaeology websites and use the Decalogue stone to promote their particular agenda. Only a few scholarly or skeptical websites provide any kind of balanced perspective on the debate.

That, combined with the fact that the stone is known since at least 1880, long before the new world knew of the ancient Phoenician/paleo-Hebrew language, makes a strong case for the authenticity of the stone.

I find it very hard to believe that nobody knew about paleo-Hebrew before that date. I do know that paleo-Hebrew inscriptions had been discovered and were being discovered in the 1800's. For example, a search for 1880 and paleo-Hebrew on Google took me here: http://www.ou.org/torah/tt/5764/kiteitzei64/mikdash.htm It mentions a paleo-Hebrew inscription that was discovered in Palestine in 1880. Obviously I have no idea how I could find out just how much access Wyrick and others might have had to paleo-Hebrew studies, so I cannot verify or refute your assertion. But again, I doubt that knowledge of paleo-Hebrew was as limited as you suggest, especially since the punctuation and the use of Greek on the Decalogue Stone are so problematic.

I guess the jury will be out on this one for a while.

I don't think the jury will ever be in. If there was ever patina on the Decalogue stone, it's long since been cleaned off by repeated scrubbing. That means we can't date it scientifically. We have to judge it by the inscription itself. On that basis, I think we can say with some confidence that it (and the other stones Wyrick "found") is a forgery.

-CK

 

[XVII]

(Me) i believe there is one eternal truth...this life and universe are so vast in detail and full of vast arrays of science that it cannot make sense that there is no reason for it all...but the thing is, normal christians believe in one eternal truth, mormons believe in a different eternal truth...what is it that determines who's right and wrong, how can we know which is right

Since you claim to be a Baptist, dont you know the answer to this question? The eternal truth lies solely in the Jesus Christ of the Bible.

i believe that, yes...but what im wondering is how we can all come together (good third day song) without fighting and bickering amongst us christians and find a way to live in peace with other types of christian-based religions such as mormonism and jehovah's witnesses...i do not agree with them, but that gives me no reason to hate them...and all this bickering is sickening to my stomach (no exaggeration)

...as the cliché goes...

Can't we all get along?! (Somehow?)

I guarantee you people see this kind of behavior day to day and they could very well think "I don't want any part of that religion-God stuff if all they do is argue and bicker; I thought Christians were loving people."

i dont want anyone dying and going to hell over us fighting...

(rant over, not a debate statement)

 

[Chrono Traveler]

What is wrong? what is right anyway? I don't really think anyones nailed it yet. But I know one thing that all religions should agree on, and thats accepting and loving humanity. You can't convert people by telling them they will go to hell if they don't accept Christ. Even if you could, people would join your religion for all the wrong reasons. I think as long as you find peace with humanity, and peace with yourself and what ever is up there, I feel everything might just turn out ok.