The Bible Found Unharmed in the Middle of The Destruction of the Pentagon-Reported to Be Truth! but Unproven!
Summary of eRumor:
This brief email says that an unharmed Bible was found in the midst of the wreckage of the terrorist attack on the Pentagon and that anything around it or two floors above it was not damaged..
The Truth:
Updated! This has gotten a lot of attention in the email underground.
There was a book found unharmed on a stool in a second-story office in the damaged portion of the Pentagon. A newspaper article quoted a soldier as saying it was a Bible. There are other reports from people who’ve seen pictures of the book on the stool and who speculate that it was a dictionary. None of the pictures of the book is close enough to tell what it is so, apart from the soldier’s story, there is no information from the scene otherwise.
The original story was published in USA Today on September 14, 2001. Reporter Andrea Stone was interviewing solders on the scene of the Pentagon attack, one of whom was Sgt. Mark Williams who entered the building within four hours of the crash.
Here is the portion of Stone’s article that talks about the Bible:
“Yet, as he looked up into the black chasm torn into the symbol of the mightiest military in the world, Williams saw a sign of hope.
On a second floor, right next to where the jet sheared off a section of the building, was an undisturbed stool. And on it was a thick, open book. Fellow searchers who had gotten a close look said it was a Bible. It was not burned. Nor was anything around it or on the two floors above it. ‘I’m not as religious as some, but that would have me thinking,’ the soldier said. ‘I just can’t explain it.'”
Because of the level of interest in this story, TruthOrFiction.com has tried to find some first-hand information from soldiers or others who were on the scene. We have found other soldiers who were told that the book was a Bible, but we’ve not found any who actually saw it.
There are pictures of the book on the stool and we’ve viewed them, but they are inconclusive. The book is large and it does not seem that there would be a Bible of that size in a Pentagon office, but that was the report from among soldiers on the evening of the crash.
updated 11/25/01