"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy."  Just like "don't steal," "don't lie" and "don't covet your neighbor's ox," this is an essential part of the Torah's top ten commandments.  

In honor of the Jewish Shabbat, or holy day of rest, we turn our thoughts today toward ancient Hebrew jewelry.  Just wait until after sunset to buy it!

Pictured above are earrings and a necklace from judaicawebstore.com, all of which sport the word "hallelujah" in Hebrew as it was written around the seventh century B.C.E.  The colored glass is somewhat more recent--which is to say, about 2000 years old.

Coins, seals, short religious texts--we've found a number of examples of ancient Hebrew inscriptions on which to model modern jewelry.  But what about the ten commandments themselves? 

Weeeeeelllllllllllllll...........

The above is an inscription of the Decalogue (Ten Commandments) in archaic Hebrew that some have found to be three thousand years old, a relatively short time after God would have handed them down from Mt. Sinai. 

The problem?

It's carved in a rock in Los Lunas, New Mexico, a place not exactly known for its Shabbat observance in 1000 BCE. 

Is this inscription proof that the lost tribes of Israel migrated to North America?  Was it a subtle dig at an eighteenth century Catholic priest by his educated Jewish translator?  Or could it simply have been a hoax perpetrated by some enterprising college students in the 1930s?

Beats me.  All I want to know is, where's the Petroglyph Decalogue gift shop????