Endnote 32 – The Bat Creek Inscription: Did Judean Refugees Escape to Tennessee?
Robert C. Mainfort and Mary L. Kwas, “The Bat Creek Stone: Judeans in Tennessee?” TA 16 (1991), pp. 1–19. An extensive reply by the author is forthcoming in TA, to which the reader is referred for further details.
Another recent comment, also dealt with in the author’s forthcoming reply in TA, comes from Lowell Kirk, a history professor at Hiwassee College in Madisonville, Tennessee. Kirk—who starts from the assumption that the inscription, being Hebrew, must somehow be fake—believes that a Major Luther Blackman may have carved it. Kirk concedes, however, that the evidence for this is entirely circumstantial: Blackman (1) lived near the Bat Creek mound, (2) had experience carving tombstones, (3) may (to judge from his surname) have been Jewish and therefore have known some Hebrew, and (4) was a political enemy of certain friends of Emmert, the Smithsonian assistant who excavated the stone. See Larry Lee, “Mystery of the Bat Creek Stone,” The Knoxville News-Sentinel Feb. 18, 1991, p. B1.