“Archaeological” fraud doesn't help prove the historicity of the Bible or the Book of Mormon.

How to Tell the Ohio Moses Stone is Phony!

Ohio Moses Stone

The Ohio Decalogue Stone, rounded at the top and squarer at the bottom in stereotypical stone tablet fashion. The characters are not all standard Hebrew. Telltale substitution blunders reveal what the hoaxer didn’t want you to see. The source of the inscription is contemporary - from a Hebrew Bible.

Messages of foreboding ostensibly in a form of ancient eastern writing are seen at Disneyland’s Indiana Jones attraction - the Temple of the Forbidden Eye. How can you tell the messages in “Marabic” are foreboding? Because they’re actually in English – with a decoder you can read them!

Marabic DECODER

Of course Disney imagineers were not the first to make up an alternate alphabet for an already established language. The Ohio Decalogue Inscription is a 19^th century example.

Suppose you want to engrave the Hebrew Ten Commandments in stone. Carving standard Hebrew print could be challenging. You might think of changing the Hebrew alphabet (aleph-bet) so the characters are easier to carve:

Ohio Decalogue DECODER

From An Annotated Transcription of the Ohio Decalogue Stone, J. Huston McCullough (August, 1992)

On the far right in the table above, are the contrived characters of the Ohio Decalogue Stone. These letters are matched with the long established aleph-bet found in today’s Hebrew Bibles. The standard Hebrew/Aramaic aleph-bet has been in use since the return of the Jewish people from Babylonian exile. Take a look at the standard Hebrew letters heading Psalm 119 (King James translation). These symbols are not the ancient symbols that the psalmists David and Asaph actually used. Standard Hebrew letters have replaced the Phoenician like letters that ancient Hebrew texts were originally written in.

The Hebrew of Lehi’s and Jeremiah’s time was written with Phoenician-like letters - letters like those carved on the rather plain Tennessee Mound Tablet (also known as the Bat Creek Stone). Mormons especially, should pay attention to this fact. The standard Hebrew alphabet used in Bibles today is post Lehi! Standard Hebrew would not have been familiar to the Book of Mormon patriarch, let alone the improvised writing on the Ohio Decalogue Stone.

The 10 Commandments in Paleo Hebrew

Commandments written in plain ancient Hebrew familiar to the Book of Mormon prophet Lehi

The Decalogue of Lehi’s day, and earlier (written in Phoenician like letters) would arguably have been easier to engrave than the post-exilic Hebrew/Aramiac print appearing in today’s Bibles (e.g. Psalm 119).

Evidently, the fabricator of the Ohio Decalogue inscription wasn’t familiar with the ancient and more original Hebrew aleph-bet. Had he known ancient Hebrew he may not have seen a need to make up substitute letters. Memo to charlatans who don’t really know Hebrew: If you’re hell-bent on making a stone inscription of the Ten Commandments in an ancient alphabet, your better off taking the text from a source like the Septuagint (although in Greek you’ll have to carve more letters). Then at least you can make the plausible claim that the stone was crudely carved by Hebrews from a later time period – e.g. Greek speaking Jews from Alexandria, or maybe even Christians.

But the hoaxer decided to concoct a substitute aleph-bet. He proceeded to edit the biblical text of the Ten Commandments, keeping the main parts, and counting the number of letters in the string to be carved. Since the made-up letters conveniently occupied square spaces of about the same size, the hoaxer did a little figuring to determine the size of stone needed to accommodate the whole text. He took into consideration the length of the string of letters, and the standard sized space that he wanted for each letter. He also added in the space needed for a graven image. He wanted to use up all the available surface of the stone; front, back, and sides, so folks would be really impressed with the craftsmanship and the text’s exact fit.

This brings up an important point: If you’re going to plan things so that you use up all the available writing space on the stone, you’d better not leave out important Hebrew characters like “et” (את) which indicates a verb’s direct object, but which has no meaning or translation in English. Sure you can read the Bible in English, but if you leave out something seemingly “meaningless” like את it would be a noticeable mistake in Hebrew. If you plan all the letters to fit perfectly on the stone and you stupidly leave out את or other letters, someone who truly knows Hebrew will probably get suspicious of the inscription. Actually the Ohio Moses Stone does ignore an “et” as well as other letters, and yes the text all too cleverly fits the stone’s writing surface. Oops!

Let’s say you correctly transfer the Hebrew from the Bible to your improvised alphabet. How will you clue in the curious to the fact that the stone is really inscribed with Hebrew verse - they may not recognize your substitute alphabet? Hey, I have an idea: There could be a big cameo (graven image) of Moses centered on the stone’s face, with his recognizable Hebrew name inscribed like rays above his head! You could even replace the hard to carve standard Hebrew “mem” (מ), beginning the Law givers name, with a character that looks like a Latin “m” (see table above). Someone learned is sure to catch on that the stone is inscribed with holy verse when they plainly discern the name of the Law giver.

In fact, why not make the name of Moses lead into the inscribed verse? Hmmm, there’s a problem here. The Hebrew Bible verse doesn’t begin by recognizing Moses, but by recognizing God. Well that’s easy to fix! Even an amateur with some basic resources like a Hebrew dictionary, could eventually pick out the part that reads “I am the LORD your God” (Shemot (Exodus) 20:2). This part could be cut from the start of the verse and stuck at the end of the verse, so it flows into the verse that follows, “... Thou shalt have no other elohim (gods) before me.” Yep, that works, even if it does seem rather Gentile minded to credit Moses with delivering Israel.

Here then is the intended text behind the Ohio Decalogue inscription, rearranged and edited from available Hebrew Bible verses. [1] Understand that this is the text that the scribe tried to convert into the alternate symbols shown in the table above.

Don’t expect the Hebrew to flow word for word in the same order as the English translation. In what follows, the standard Hebrew syntax is accompanied by portions from the Authorized King James translation (KJV) on the right:

מֹשֶׁה ;מֹשֶׁה Moses

אֲשֶׁר which

הוֹצֵאתִיךָ have brought thee

מֵאֶרֶץ out of the land of

מִצְרַיִם Egypt,

מִבֵּית out of the house of

עֲבָדִים ׃ bondage.

אָנֹכִי אָנֹכִי I

יְהוָה the LORD

אֱלֹהֶיךָ thy God,

OOPS! Commentary on the Ohio Decalogue transcription of verse 2:

When it came to converting the Hebrew expression הוֹצֵאתִיך, which means “have brought thee”, the Moses Stone scribe foolishly mistook the letter ו for ד. These Hebrew letters may look similar to some folk, but someone who actually reads and writes Hebrew would know the difference instantly. The real problem here is that the invented Moses Stone symbol that the scribe substituted for ד doesn’t look at all like the substitute symbol for ו. Do you see the problem? See for yourself. Check out the table above (or recap below) and make the comparison.

So if the substitute alphabet was really used as an archaic writing system, how could the writer possibly have confused the two letters, which were made to look so very different in the Ohio alphabet? Understand that these letters sound very different when spoken. The mess-up here leads to non-sense?

This mistake isn’t just a spelling error mind you. It’s plain to see how the blunder took place: The scribe was trying to convert letters, albeit naively, from a standard Hebrew text (where they look a little similar and might be confused) into a made-up alphabet where the corresponding letters were made to look quite different. Keep your eye out for this type of blunder – it happens again and again in the Moses Stone transcription. See source [2] for the Moses Stone transcription.

Its also important to compare the hoaxer’s rearrangement of Exodus 20:2 with the same portion of Torah recited by the Book of Mormon prophet Abinadi. (Mosiah 12:33-34) The Book of Mormon version follows the order of the biblical text, not the Moses-centric version above. In other words, the Ohio Decalogue does not draw from the Book of Mormon Decalogue. (Mosiah 12:33-36; 13:11-24)

It is regrettable therefore that apostle Orson Pratt publically opined that the Ohio Decalogue, allegedly recovered from a mound, was Nephite scripture written in “ancient Hebrew”. (Journal of Discourses 16:56) Orson Pratt rightly espoused a Mound Builder setting for the Book of Mormon; but the missionary minded church leader greatly exaggerated the setting of the “ancient mounds” (temperate North America), to include “both North and South America.” (Robert Silverberg, THE MOUND BUILDERS, 1970, pp. 72-73 (abridged version of Mound Builders of Ancient America - Archaeology of a Myth, 1968); see also Orson Pratt, Journal of Discourses, 16:47-59)

“... let God be true, but every [mortal] man a liar ...”

Recap on folly:

הוצאתיך ... From a contemporary Hebrew Bible.

הדצאתיך ... Ignorant hoaxer misidentified the letter “vav” (ו) in the Hebrew Bible verse, and carved a poorly contrived “dalet”:(looks too much like a Hebrew “resh”, ר). The hoaxer should have used his poorly contrived “vav”(looks like an upside-down “zayin”, ז).

Had the hoaxer known ancient Hebrew he might have chosen the “Y”-like symbol (see table above, or [2]) to represent the Hebrew letter “vav”, not “zayin”. The hoaxer could easily have carved the correct symbol for “zayin”, had he actually know ancient Hebrew.

לֹא no

יִהְיֶה־לְךָ Thou shalt have

אֱלֹהִים gods

אֲחֵרִים other

עַל־פָּנָיַ ׃ before me.

OOPS! Commentary on the Ohio Decalogue transcription of verse 3:

The Hebrew word “elohim” (אֱלֹהִים) in verse 3 (KJV) is badly mutated on the Moses Stone. UNFORGIVABLE! The scribe was apparently insensitive to this very important Hebrew word for “God” or “gods”. It is as if he saw in the Hebrew letters הִי in אֱלֹהִים a single Hebrew letter מִ. Not only that, the scribe confused the Hebrew letter ם in אֱלֹהִים with the Hebrew letter ח. Oblivious to the actual Hebrew word he was attempting to transcribe, the scribe made out “elmh” (אֱלמח) – nonsense! See source [2] for the transcription.

Recap on folly:

אלהים ... From a contemporary Hebrew Bible.

אלמח ... Ignorant hoaxer blended the letters “hey” (ה) and “yod” (י) together as if they formed a “mem” (מ), and so carved his substitute “mem” (that looks suspiciously like a Latin “m”). The hoaxer should have carved (writing right to left) his squared modern Hebrew “hey”, followed by his poorly contrived “yod”on the left (looks too much like a “vav”, ו). The hoaxer then mistook (at the end of the word, on the left) the “final mem” (ם) for a “het” (ח), and so carved a modern Hebrew “het” instead of his all too Latin “mem” .

לֹא not

תַעֲשֶׂה־ Thou shalt make

לְךָ unto thee

פֶסֶל any graven image,

וְכָל־ or any

…

OOPS! Commentary on the Ohio Decalogue transcription of verse 4:

Bad edit job here! The Moses Stone leaves the sentence incomplete, leaving off at וְכָל־. If the intent of the scribe was to abbreviate this commandment, he should have left off at פֶסֶל. The scribe evidently did not understand everything he was copying. He may have gotten confused because the sequence of Hebrew words in the verse does not correspond one to one with the accompanying English translation. He may not have known for sure where to truncate the verse. See source [2] for the transcription.

לֹא־ not

תִשְׁתַּחְוֶה Thou shalt bow down thyself

לָהֶם to them,

וְלֹא nor

תָעָבְדֵם serve them:

…

OOPS! Commentary on the Ohio Decalogue transcription of verse 5:

Here the Moses Stone exhibits more confusion. The scribe saw תִשְׁתַּחְוֶה as חִשׁתַּחְוֶח, which makes no sense. The scribe did not understand the meaning of the composite Hebrew expression that translates, “Thou shalt not bow down thyself” (לֹא־תִשְׁתַּחְוֶה) and made two wrong substitutions. The scribe also mistook the ת in תָעָבְדֵם for a ח – more nonsense! See source [2] for the transcription.

Recap on folly:

תשתחוה ... תעבדם ... From a contemporary Hebrew Bible.

חשתחוח ... חעבדם ... Ignorant hoaxer misidentified the letters “tav” (ת), and “hey” (ה) in the Hebrew Bible verse, and carved “het” instead. He should have used his modern Hebrew looking and in the appropriate places.

…

לֹא not

תִשָּׂ Thou shalt take

אֶת־

שֵׁם־ the name of

יְהוָה the LORD

אֱלֹהֶיךָ thy God

לַשָּׁוְא in vain;

…

OOPS! Commentary on the Ohio Decalogue transcription of verse 7:

Verse 7 vainly puts a י in place of the ו in the Tetragrammaton (the sacred ineffable name of Deity - the Eternal). Did the scribe mistake the divine name in verse 7 for a יִהְיֶה; as in יִהְיֶה־לְךָ that he correctly transcribed in verse 3? Hmmm! What if Israelites in ancient America changed the spelling of the divine name? If that were true, how then do we account for the fact that the divine name from verse 2 was correctly transcribed on the stone? The misspellings are not consistent on the stone. See source [2] for the transcription.

זָכוֹר Remember

אֶת־

יוֹם day,

הַשַּׁבָּת the sabbath

לְקַדְּשׁוֹ ׃ to keep it holy.

OOPS! Commentary on the Ohio Decalogue transcription of verse 8:

As with other verses, the Moses Stone transcription of verse 8 is definitely based on the Masorah (the available Hebrew text from which the KJV Old Testament was translated). Here the scribe labored to put a ח where there should be a ה in הַשַּׁבָּת, “the Shabbat”. The scribe apparently didn’t know that the attached letter “hey” (ה) means “the” (i.e. “the sabbath day”), whereas attaching a look-alike “het” (ח) to “Shabbat” (instead of a “hey” ה) is meaningless. The scribe also leaves out the ק in לְקַדְּשׁו. The fact that the misspelled and poorly edited text fits the stone’s surface isn’t so remarkable after all. See source [2] for the transcription.

Recap on folly:

השבת ... From a contemporary Hebrew Bible.

חשבת ... Ignorant hoaxer misidentified the letter “hey” (ה) in the Hebrew Bible verse, and carved a “het”instead of .

שֵׁשֶׁת Six

יָמִים days

תַּעֲבֹד shalt thou labour,

וְעָשִׂיתָ and do

כָּל־ all

מְלַאכְתֶּךָ thy work:

OOPS! Commentary on the Ohio Decalogue transcription of verse 9:

The scribe failed to pluralize “day”. The Moses Stone reads, “Six day ….” See source [2] for the transcription.

…

כַּבֵּד Honour

אֶת־

אָבִיךָ thy father

וְאֶת־ and

אִמֶּךָ thy mother:

…

OOPS! Commentary on the Ohio Decalogue transcription of verse 12:

Here the dishonorable transcription leaves out the Hebrew direct object indicator “et” (אֶת־) in “Honor et thy father…” But wouldn’t you know, the transcription keeps the אֶת־ in “…and et thy mother”. In this case there is an “and” (וְ) attached to the “et” like so: וְאֶת־. To the English speaking scribe “and” meant something. Maybe the scribe thought the whole וְאֶת־ indicated “and”. The scribe may have had a hard time understanding the significance of אֶת־ in the first instance, and for that reason left it out. [3] See source [2] for the transcription.

לֹא not

תִּרְצָח Thou shalt kill.

OOPS! Commentary on the Ohio Decalogue transcription of verse 13:

Here the Moses Stone transcription murders the language by confusing the standard Hebrew “tsadi” (צ) in תִּרְצָח for “ayin” (ע). If the scribe had planned better (short of actually learning Hebrew), he could have made these letters look more similar in his phony alphabet – to cover up this potential blunder. As it is, someone who knows Hebrew can tell that the scribe was transcribing from a standard Hebrew text, and that the he didn’t really know the letters very well, much less the words. The transcriber also mistook the ח at the end of תִּרְצָח for a ת. The scribe had a hard time telling the difference between ח, ת, and ה, all of which make different sounds. If Disney imagineers had made comparable transcription errors in “Marabic”, Disneyland guests, passing the time in line would have complained! See source [2] for the transcription.

Recap on folly:

תרצח ... From a contemporary Hebrew Bible.

תרעת ... Ignorant hoaxer misidentified the letter “tsadi” (צ) in the Hebrew Bible verse, and carved an “ayin” (ע), or rather instead. He should have carved his concocted that doesn’t at all resemble . He also mistook the “het” (on the left, at the end of the word) for a “tav” .

לֹא not

תִּנְאָף Thou shalt commit adultery.

OOPS! Commentary on the Ohio Decalogue transcription of verse 14:

Here the transcriber adulterated the transcription by confusing the “nun” (נ) in תִּנְאָף for a “lamed” (ל). See reference [2] for the transcription.

Recap on folly:

תנאף ... From a contemporary Hebrew Bible.

תלאף ... Hoaxer seems to have misidentified the letter “nun” (נ) in the Hebrew Bible verse, and carved a “lamed”(looks like a backwards Latin “L”) instead of a modern looking . Perhaps the hoaxer intended but got his own substitute symbols confused.

לֹא not

תִּגְנֹב Thou shalt steal.

לֹא־ not

תַעֲנֶה Thou shalt bear

בְרֵעֲךָ against thy neighbour.

עֵד witness

שָׁקֶר false

OOPS! Commentary on the Ohio Decalogue transcription of verse 16:

The false inscription confuses the letters נה in תַעֲנֶה for the letters לח. See source [2] for the transcription.

Recap on folly:

תענה ... From a contemporary Hebrew Bible.

תעלח ... Again, the hoaxer seems to have misidentified the letter “nun” (נ) and carved a backwards L for “lamed”instead of . Moreover, the hoaxer again misidentified “hey” (ה), and carved a “het”instead of .

לֹא not

תַחְמֹד Thou shalt covet

בֵּית house,

רֵעֶךָ thy neighbour's

לֹא־ not

תַחְמֹ thou shalt covet

אֵשֶׁת wife,

רֵעֶךָ thy neighbour's

וְעַבְדּוֹ nor his manservant,

וַאֲמָתוֹ nor his maidservant,

וְשׁוֹרוֹ nor his ox,

וַחֲמֹרוֹ nor his ass,

וְכֹל nor any thing

אֲשֶׁר that

לְרֵעֶךָ thy neighbour's.

OOPS! Commentary on the Ohio Decalogue transcription of verse 17:

Blundering his way to the end, the scribe mistook the ד in the first תַחְמֹד for a ך. It’s easy to see how these Hebrew letters could get confused, but the specious Moses Stone replacements for these letters are very different looking. This begs the question, how could this possibly be a simple spelling error? It can’t be.

The next תַחְמֹד appears to be transcribed correctly. At least there is the benefit of a doubt here, because the first and last letters are worn. The biblical expression בֵּית רֵעֶךָ on the Moses Stone is corrupted. The scribe inanely put ביו ועך .

More than once the scribe mistook the “raysh” (ר) in “thy neighbor” (רֵעֶךָ) for a “vav” (ו). Again it is easy to see how someone who is looking at standard Hebrew could confuse these letters – not knowing the language; but the Moses Stone substitutions for these letters look so very different that the blunder cannot be chalked up to a simple writing error. Besides, the scribe isn’t consistent in repeating his mistake. The same expression, “thy neighbor”, is correctly transcribed in the phony alphabet at the end of the verse (as also in verse 16) – proving that this is not some standard spelling change in an ancient language.

The inscription drops the וֹ in the middle of וְשׁוֹרוֹ. At last, here is a plausible spelling error. The missing “vav” (וֹ) makes a vowel sound “ō”. Vowels in general are arguably less important than consonants. Even so, the Ohio Moses Stone was definitely not crafted by one competent in Hebrew. There are egregious, telltale transcription errors in almost every verse. See source [2] for the transcription.

Recap on folly:

לא תחמד בית רעך ... רעך ... From a contemporary Hebrew Bible.

לא תחמך ביו ועך ... ועך ... Ignorant hoaxer misidentified the letter “dalet” (ד) mistaking it for a “final kaph” (ך), and carved his poorly contrived “kaph” instead of his “dalet” (these do not resemble each other). There are no final forms of letters in the simplistic Ohio Decalogue alphabet. There are final forms in the Hebrew/Aramaic aleph-bet that the Ohio Decalogue bastardizes.

Its not clear how the hoaxer mistook “tav” (ת) for “vav” (ו). Maybe he saw the “tav” (ת) as a “vav” (ו) and a diacrtitical mark that he could ignore. He went on to erroneously carve his substitute “vav” instead of “resh”. To the untrained eye, the standard Hebrew “vav” (ו) may look a little like “resh” (ר), but the hoaxers’ symbolic substitutions for these letters don’t resemble each other at all.

Conclusion: The Ohio Decalogue is a 19^th century hoax. It is not the work of an ancient American Israelite. But why on earth would anyone make such an effort? Was the hoaxer trying to set a trap for Mormons? If so, “... wo be unto him that lieth to deceive because he supposeth that another lieth to deceive ...” Actually, the stone fits all too well the American “Mound Builder” mythopoeic interests of the 19^th Century. More than Mormons had an interest in convincing the world that ancient Americans descended from lost tribes of Israel. There were other hoaxes of the Moses Stone sort foisted on the American public. Regrettably, “archaeological” fraud besets the study of the Bible and the Book of Mormon.

References:

[1] LDS Scriptures with Advanced Study Aids CD-ROM, transliterate Hebrew / English of Shemot (Ex.) 20:2 – 17.

[2] J. Huston McCullough, “An Annotated Transcription of the Ohio Decalogue Stone”, August, 1992.

[3] Brown-Driver-Briggs-Gesenius Hebrew-Aramaic Lexicon, אֵת, 853-854, pp. 84-86.

Beware of Mark Hofmann’s Anthon Transcript Forgery!

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