Dr. Rochelle Altman, a specialist in ancient phonetic-based writing systems, maintains that the Newark Holy Stones are indeed genuine. In her discussion of this topic she notes that “Dr. Arnold Fischel, lecturer at the Sephardic synagogue in New York (founded in 1654, thus with a Sephardic-Dutch connection), a noted scholar and authority, had written a paper, ‘The Hebrew Inscribed Stones Found in Ohio,’ delivered in June of 1861 to The American Ethnological Society. In this paper, he stated he was convinced of the authenticity of the artifact and ascribed it to ‘medieval and European origins’.”Dr. Altman notes that the 1863 report of a committee set up by the Ethnological Society agreed with Dr. Fischel’s conclusions; nonetheless, this report has been ignored by the archaeological world. She writes, “Why was the identification ignored? Because neither the committee’s report nor Fischel’s identification fit the two models erected with regard to these artifacts. On one side, we had a group who maintained that the artifacts were evidence of the presence of the ten lost tribes of Israel in ‘Ancient America.’ On the other side, we had a school who declared the artifacts were ‘modern forgeries.’” Dr. Altman then presents a new and novel explanation of what the five Newark Holy Stones really are.
“There are five pieces, four of which compose a set of ritual artifacts of two types. The fifth item is a case, made-to-order, to house one of the ritual artifacts. The two types are intended for different purposes.
“Type one consists of head (‘rosh’) [which Dr. Altman identifies as the Johnson-Bradner Stone] and hand (‘yad’) phylacteries (tefillin), made of black limestone (black is required for phylacteries). The hand phylactery is 6-7/8” in length by 2-7/8” in width by 1-3/4” in thickness.
“The artifact [the Decalogue Stone] is inscribed in the incantation format and displays a variant of a known condensed version of the ‘decalogue,’ with abbreviations and composite graphs that dates to before the second century BCE. The head phylactery, inscribed with two of the four excerpts of Exodus required by halacha (Laws), is also written in the spirals of an incantation format and is also made of black limestone. Now only a lithograph of the head piece remains. The phylactery was approximately 3” long by 1-3/4” in thickness and tapered from approximately 1” at the top to a rounded “point” at the bottom.
“Type two, made of novaculite, a very hard fine-grained rock, consists of a flow detector [the Keystone], for determining whether water is stagnant or flowing (thus pure), and a bowl for containing the water for ritual purification prior to donning the phylacteries. The flow detector is four-sided and approximately 6” in length by 1-5/8” in thickness and bears a resemblance to a rounded ‘plumb bob.’” Dr. Altman analyzes each of the Holy Stones and the writings on them. In part she writes, “The two phylacteries are made of black material, which is in accord with the rabbinical law that phylacteries must be black in color. Although contrary to Palestinian and Babylonian rabbinic rulings in the second century CE, the use of a condensed ‘decalogue’ is in accord with a known prior tradition. That other traditions continued to exist alongside the Palestinian and Babylonian tradition is known from the Dead Sea Scrolls, papyri from Egypt.”
Based on her analysis she comes to the following conclusions:
“The artifacts could not possibly have been created in the nineteenth century; nobody had the knowledge necessary to do so. Indeed, nobody who previously examined these artifacts has recognized that two of the artifacts are inscribed in the ancient incantation format. Nor has anyone previously realized that the ‘peculiar’ font is a consolidated design or that it is a grid font typical of scripts and fonts used with incantation formats. It is rather clear that no one until today has recognized the Late-Medieval Hebrew script that is the base-script of this consolidated grid font. The ‘Newark’ Ritual artifacts are neither forgeries nor relics of ‘Ancient America.’ They are, however, very important concrete evidence of Ancient and Medieval Israelite practices.”
I sent the information on the stones to Glenn but it is doubtful that it was allowed to be presented to him. He has a very 'protective' staff who appear to be dedicated to aiming him in the directions they want him to go.
The above passage is from the following link, if anyone wishes to dig deeper into this issue:
http://personal.stevens.edu/~llevine/holy_stones_newark_ohio.pdf
Very interesting, thank you.
I tend to agree with you-—I doubt Beck ever saw your article, unfortunately.