In 1725, Professor Johann Bartholomeus Adam Beringer, Dean of the
Faculty of Medicine at the University of Würzburg, found many pieces of
limestone carved into the shapes of lizards, frogs, spiders on their
webs, a fish-faced bird, suns, and stars on Mount Eibelstadt, Germany.
Some of them were bearing inscriptions such as the Hebrew name of God in
Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew characters. These pieces with peculiar forms,
in his opinion, were stones carved by God himself while experimenting
with the types of life that He thought to create.
Beringer also
proposed several possible explanations for the supposed fossils, in
addition to his own preferred interpretation that while some few of
these stones might be dead animals (fossils), most were just “capricious
fabrications of God.” He also considered the possibility that they were
the carvings of prehistoric pagans, but he had to rule this out since
pagans would not know the name of God. However, this evidence of
sculpting only convinced him more strongly that the chisel was wielded
by the hand of God.
In fact, he was the victim of a hoax
perpetrated by his colleagues, the ex-Jesuit J. Ignatz Roderick,
Professor of Geography and Mathematics, and Johann Georg von Eckhart,
privy counselor and university librarian. Upon discovering the truth,
Beringer took his hoaxers to court, and the scandal that followed left
all three of them in disgrace.
Some of the stones are now on display at the Oxford University Museum and Teylers Museum in the Netherlands.
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