The Shapira Scrolls: The Case for Forgery - The BAS Library

The Shapira Scrolls: The Case for Forgery - The BAS Library

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In , antiquities dealer Moses Shapira presented to the watching world several scroll fragments that he claimed were an ancient biblical manuscript. Yet the manuscript was quickly decried as a forgery. Although its authenticity has been reappraised recently, biblical scholars Ronald S. Hendel and Matthieu Richelle argue—with old and new evidence—that the Shapira Scrolls are forgeries.

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Footnotes

1. Fred Reiner, “Tracking the Shapira Case: A Biblical Scandal Revisited,” and P. Kyle McCarter Jr., “Why All the Fuss?” BAR, May/June 1997; see also Jonathan Klawans, “The Shapira Fragments: An Artifact of 19th-Century Jewish Christianity,” Bible History Daily (blog), March 18, 2021.

2. Siegfried H. Horn, “Why the Moabite Stone Was Blown to Pieces,” BAR, May/June 1986.

3. André Lemaire, “Paleography’s Verdict: They’re Fakes!” BAR, May/June 1997.

4. See Matthieu Richelle, “A Very Brief History of Old Hebrew Script,” BAR, Summer 2021.

5. Victor Hurowitz, “P—Understanding the Priestly Source,” Bible Review, June 1996; Richard Elliott Friedman, “Taking the Biblical Text Apart,” Bible Review, Fall 2005.

Endnotes

1.
We are summarizing and expanding on Matthieu Richelle, “The Shapira Strips in Light of Paleography: Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast,” Semitica 63 (2021), pp. 243–294; and Ronald Hendel, “Notes on the Orthography of the Shapira Manuscripts: The Forger’s Marks,” Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 133 (2021), pp. 225–230. Our thanks to Idan Dershowitz for alerting us to the British Library script chart.

2.
Frank Moore Cross, “The Phoenician Inscription from Brazil: A Nineteenth-Century Forgery,” in Leaves from an Epigrapher’s Notebook (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003), p. 239.

3.
This Nabatean inscription is no. 195 in Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum II, Tome I (Paris: Klincksieck, 1889), p. 217; see further Albert Socin, “Über Inschrift-enfälschungen,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 27 (1873), 133–34 and fig. I.

4.
Letter from Shapira to Hermann Strack, Jerusalem, May 9, 1883, quoted in Fred N. Reiner, “C. D. Ginsburg and the Shapira Affair: A Nineteenth-Century Dead Sea Scroll Controversy,” British Library Journal 21 (1995), p. 113.

5.
Hermann Guthe, Fragmente einer Lederhandschrift enthaltend Mose’s letzte Rede an die Kinder Israel mitgetheilt und geprüft (Leipzig: Breitkopf Härtel, 1883), p. 77.

6.
“Mr. Shapira’s Manuscript,” The Times, August 27, 1883, p. 6.

7.
Moshe Goshen-Gottstein, “The Shapira Forgery and the Qumran Scrolls,” Journal of Jewish Studies 7 (1956), p. 191.

8.
Idan Dershowitz, The Valediction of Moses: A Proto-Biblical Book (Tubingen: Mohr-Siebech, 2021), p. 97; Idan Dershowitz, “The Valediction of Moses: New Evidence on the Shapira Deuteronomy Fragments,” Zeitschrift fur die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 133 (2021), pp. 1–22.

9.
Shlomo Guil, “The Shapira Scroll Was an Authentic Dead Sea Scroll,” Palestine Exploration Quarterly 149 (2017), pp. 6–27.

10.
See Benjamin D. Suchard, “A Valediction to Moses W. Shapira’s Deuteronomy Document,” Bibliotheca Orientalis, forthcoming; Israel Knohl, “An Early Version of Deuter-onomy, or Not?” (huji.academia.edu/israelknohl); Konrad Schmid, “Is V a Literary Precursor to Deuteronomy?” and Jeffrey Stackert, “Literary Observations on Shapira Deu-teronomy and Idan Dershowitz’s The Valediction of Moses,” both from A Scholarly Webinar on Idan Dershowitz’s Recent Reassessment of the Shapira Documents, June 10, 2021.