The Shapira Scrolls: The Case for Authenticity
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Footnotes
1. For this coauthored article, James Tabor wrote the introductory section “Dead Sea Scroll Similarities,” and Idan Dershowitz contributed the section “Genuine Manuscripts.”
2. André Lemaire, “Paleography’s Verdict: They’re Fakes!” BAR, May/June 1997.
Endnotes
1.
John C. Trever, The Untold Story of Qumran (Westwood, New Jersey: Revell, 1965), p. 25. For more on the skeptical reception of the Dead Sea Scrolls, see Edmund Wilson, “The Scrolls from the Dead Sea,” New Yorker (May 14, 1955).
2.
Hermann Guthe, Fragmente einer Lederhandschrift enthaltend Mose’s letzte Rede an die Kinder Israel, mitgetheilt und geprüft (Leipzig: Brewitkopf Härtzel, 1883), p. 9.
5.
Menahem Mansoor, “The Case of Shapira’s Dead Sea (Deuteronomy) Scrolls of 1883,” Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters 47 (1958); Shlomo Guil, “The Shapira Scroll Was an Authentic Dead Sea Scroll,” Palestine Exploration Quarterly 149.1 (2017), pp. 6–27.
6.
See Christopher Rollston, “Déjà Vu All Over Again: The Antiquities Market, the Shapira Strips, Menahem Mansoor, and Idan Dershowitz,” Rollston Epigraphy (blog: www.rollstonepigraphy.com) and both scholars’ comments there; Ronald Hendel, “Notes on the Orthography of the Shapira Manuscripts: The Forger’s Marks,” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 133.2 (2021), p. 229.
7.
See Idan Dershowitz, The Valediction of Moses: A Proto-Biblical Book, Forschungen zum Alten Testament 145 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021); Idan Dershowitz, “The Valediction of Moses: New Evidence on the Shapira Deuteronomy Fragments,” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 133.1 (2021), pp. 1–22. For an updated account of the Shapira story, see also Ross K. Nichols, The Moses Scroll (St. Francisville, LA: Horeb Press, 2021).
8.
For more on this topic, see Jon D. Levenson, “Who Inserted the Book of the Torah?” Harvard Theological Review 68.3–4 (1975), pp. 203–233.