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Thou shalt not covet … unless you are covet the populace ’s oldest known exercise of a stone pad inscribed with the Ten Commandments .
The world ’s previous slab with the Decalogue will be up for auction bridge until Nov. 16 in Beverly Hills , California . The 2 - foundation - tenacious ( 60 centimetre ) , 200 - lb . ( 90 kilograms ) marble slab , dubbed the " Living Torah , " is likely 1,500 to 1,700 years old , concord to Heritage Autions , which is running the auction . [ The Holy Land : 7 Amazing Archaeological Finds ]
The earliest known stone ten commandments is going on auction in Beverly Hills on Nov. 16, 2016. The starting bid is $250,000, and the winner must
" There is nothing more fundamental to our shared heritage than the 10 Commandments , " David Michaels , director of antiquity for Heritage Auctions , said in a statement .
Missing history
The marble slab , which contains 20 carved lines of biblical enjoinment , was discovered in 1913 in Israel , after construction actor began hollow for a railway . An Arab mankind arrange the marble in his courtyard , where decades of groundwork traffic wore down the inscriptions , Michaels said .
In 1943 , the slab was buy by a man named Y. Kaplan , who then brought it to noted biblical scholars , according to Michaels . base on the shape and content of the text , scholars conclude that it was an ancient form of Samaritan , an antiquated mixture of Aramaic and Hebrew , that dated to between A.D. 300 and 500 . The tablets then changed helping hand a few more time , and were last buy in 2005 by Rabbi Saul Deutsch for the Living Torah Museum in Brooklyn , New York , according to the auction house .
Inancient Israel , people exist in Samaria , in the hills north of Jerusalem , belonged to an alternate faction of Judaism . They were persecuted , inhibit and commute by wave of Byzantine Christians , Muslims and Jews . There are still some advanced - daytime Samaritans , who claim they are posterity of two of the lost tribes of Israel .
" Their sect has endured through the one C alongside traditional Jews , pagan , Christians and Muslims , so the Ten Commandments stone is uniquely important to many different faith and cultures , " Michaels enjoin .
Rare example
Whereas theDead Sea Scrollsinclude sheepskin and Egyptian paper reed variant of the Decalogue that see to the first 100 B.C. , the stone tablet versions of the Ten Commandments were make in the few hundred years after the birth of Christ . There are just four such rock tablet known today , but the others are either in fragment or located at less accessible website in the Middle East , Michaels say .
" The Living Torah example is among the early of these Decalogues , and for certain the most ended , " Michaels say . " It is also the only example that can be lawfully receive for private ownership . "
The pad of paper have nine of the most well - do it commandments , but have trade out " Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain , " for an alternate injunction to resurrect up a synagogue on Mount Gerizim , which Samaritans believe was the true topographic point God ordained forthe Temple .
The tablet likely hung over an ancient synagogue that was either destroyed by the Romans between A.D. 400 and 500 , or by the Crusaders five to seven centuries by and by , Michaels say .
Original article onLive skill .
