Mysterious Carving with Biblical Message Linked to Jesus' Crucifixion Found in America

A mysterious carving with a biblical message related to the crucifixion of Jesus has been found in North America. Archaeologists have cracked a code of 255 mysterious symbols carved into a rock in Canada more than 200 years ago.

The inscription was discovered in 2018 after a fallen tree exposed the square-shaped inscription near the Canadian town of Wawa, located about 155 miles from the nearest US border crossing in Michigan, the Daily Mail reports.

Ryan Primrose, an archaeologist at the Ontario Centre for Archaeological Education, has now discovered that the symbols form the Lord's Prayer, a well-known Christian prayer written in Swedish. The scientist has determined that they are Norse runes, part of an old alphabet once used in Sweden and other parts of Scandinavia.

This, the Daily Mail points out, was initially a surprise to find in central Canada, but researchers later discovered that Swedish workers were hired by the Hudson's Bay Company in the 1800s to work at remote trading posts, and speculated that one of these Swedes may have done the carving. Since no other items were found at the site, Primrose believes it may have been a simple outdoor prayer site.

In the 1800s, the British fur trading enterprise HBC rapidly expanded its operations across North America, from the Pacific Northwest to the Canadian Arctic. To provide work for these trading posts, HBC often hired workers from European countries, including Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. Scandinavian workers primarily worked at trading posts in the Canadian interior or the Pacific Northwest.

The inscriptions that attracted the scientists' interest were written inside a square, also carved into the rock, measuring three by four feet. It also included an image of a boat with 16 people around it, possibly reflecting the Swedes who traveled to Canada hundreds of years ago, writes the Daily Mail.

Primrose believes the slab appears to have been intentionally buried. "There were ruins there, covered with about six inches of soil," he told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). The wear on the stone suggests it could be as old as the 1600s, but experts have evidence that Swedish-speaking people lived in the region about 200 years ago.

Henrik Williams, a professor emeritus at Uppsala University in Sweden who helped solve the mystery, told CBC: "Any runic inscription is rare. Someone put so much effort into creating this text and you wonder why. The mystery is not diminished just because it's old."

Primrose said he did not want to release the information until he was completely sure of the translation of the symbols. "This is certainly one of the least expected finds I have encountered in my career," he said.

The Lord's Prayer occurs in two places in the New Testament, the Daily Mail reports. The first is in Matthew 6:9-13 during the Sermon on the Mount, and the second is in Luke 11:2-4 when a disciple asks Jesus how to pray. The prayer is a short, powerful statement of Christian beliefs and expresses key themes: honouring God's name, asking for God's will to be done, asking for daily bread, asking for forgiveness and being forgiven, and avoiding temptation.

A prayer carved into a stone in Canada has been translated into Swedish, reflecting the Scandinavian linguistic heritage. While the Bible was translated into Swedish in 1541, scholars decided to translate the Lord's Prayer into runic letters to pay tribute to or connect with their Scandinavian past, the Daily Mail reports.