Shapira_Scroll

Shapira Scroll

Shapira Scroll

Scroll inscribed with Paleo-Hebrew script

The Shapira Scroll, also known as the Shapira Strips or Shapira Manuscript, was a set of leather strips inscribed in Paleo-Hebrew script. It was presented by Moses Wilhelm Shapira in 1883 as an ancient Bible-related artifact and almost immediately denounced by scholars as a forgery.

Photograph of one of the Shapira Scroll fragments, prepared by Frederick Dangerfield for Christian David Ginsburg

The scroll consisted of fifteen leather strips, which Shapira claimed had been found in Wadi Mujib (biblical Arnon) near the Dead Sea. The Hebrew text hinted at a different version of Deuteronomy, including the addition of a new line to the Ten Commandments: "You shall not hate your brother in your heart: I am God, your god."[lower-alpha 1] The text also lacks all laws except for the ten commandments, which it renders consistently[lower-alpha 2] in the first-person, from the standpoint of the deity. Scholars took little time to reject it as a fake, and the shame brought about by the accusation of forgery drove Shapira to suicide in 1884.

Shapira's widow had at least part of the scroll in 1884, which she sent to Konstantin Schlottmann [de]. The scroll reappeared a couple of years later in a Sotheby's auction, where it was sold for £10 5s to Bernard Quaritch, who later listed it for £25. Contemporary reports show Dr. Philip Brookes Mason displayed the "whole of" the scroll at a public lecture in Burton-on-Trent on March 8, 1889. The current whereabouts of the scroll, if it survives, are unknown.

Discovery of the scroll

Shapira's account of the discovery of the scroll varied at times and the differences between them have been used[1][2] as evidence of forgery. Paul Schröder, the first person Shapira showed the scroll to in person, recalled:

Mr. Shapira did not wish to tell me the provenance of the manuscript. He only told me that it came from a tomb beyond the Jordan.[3]

While in Germany, Shapira told Hermann Guthe that:[1]

At the end of July or the beginning of August a certain Selim of the tribe of Adachaje ... offered in the Shapira shop a blackish stripe of leather for sale. Shapira himself was not present and found the cheaply acquired leather in the store on his return. As Salim was unable to visit Jerusalem, he had asked his friend, the Sheik, Mahmud of Abu Dis near Jerusalem, to arrange a meeting with Salem which, finally, brought all the strips into Shapira's possession.

Another is contained within a handwritten letter from Shapira to Professor Hermann Strack of Berlin on 9 May 1883:[4]

In July 1878 I met several Bedouins in the house of the well-known Sheque Mahmud el Arakat, we came of course to speak of old inscriptions. One Bedouin . . . begins to tell a history to about [sic] the following effect. Several years ago some Arabs had occasion to flee from their enemies & hid themselves in caves high up in a rock facing the Moujib (the neues Arnon [sic]) they discovered there several bundles of very old rugs. Thinking they may [sic] contain gold they peeled away a good deal of Cotton or Linen & found only some black charms & threw them away; but one of them took them up & and [sic] since having the charms in his tent, he became a wealthy man having sheeps [sic] etc.

Shapira wrote a letter to Ginsburg in early August, informing him that:[5]

In July 1878, the Sheik Machmud Arakat, the well-known chief of the guides from Jerusalem to the Jordan, paid me the customary visit ... [as] the Sheik hat Bedouins of the East in his house, he brought them all with him. ... I heard the next day ... some men of his acquaintance had hidden themselves, in the time when Wali of Damascus was fighting the Arabs, in caves hewn high up in a rock ... near the Modjib. They found there several bundles of old black linen. They peeled away the linen and ... there were only some black inscribed strips of leather, which they threw away (or I believe he said threw into the fire, but I am not certain); but one of them picked them up. ... I asked the Sheik to employ him as a messenger to bring me some of the pieces that I might examine them, but the Sheik thought that that man would not do it, but he knew a man who was not superstitious at all. ... In about twelve days I got four or five columns ... in eight days more he brought me about sixteen; in eleven or twelve days more four or five ... I have not seen the man again. The Sheik died soon, and I lost every trace that would enable me to follow the object further.

In an account to the Palestine Exploration Fund on July 20, 1883, Shapira said that:[6]

[H]e first heard of the fragments in the middle of July 1878. A Sheikh, with several Arabs of different tribes came to him at his place of business in Jerusalem on other matters. The Sheikh had nothing to do with antiquities. They spoke of some little black fragments of writing in the possession of an Arab. They had been found in the neighborhood of Arnon. One of the Arabs spoke of them as talismans, smelling of asphalte. The day following Shapira was invited to dinner by the Sheikh, and heard more about the fragments. About the year 1865, at a time of persecution, certain Arabs had hid themselves among the rocks. There, on the side of a rocky cavern, they found several bundles wrapped in linen. Peeling off the covering they found only black fragments, which they threw away. They were picked up by one of the Arabs, believing them to be talismans ... Shapira promised the Sheikh a reward if he would bring to him an Arab he spoke of who would be able to get hold of the fragments. This happened on the day of the dinner. The Sheikh fell ill, and afterwards died. About ten or twelve days after the dinner, a man of the Ajayah tribe brought to him a small piece ... a week later, he brought fourteen or fifteen columns ... the next Sunday, fourteen or fifteen more ... ten days after, on Wednesday, he brought three or four columns, very black. Shapira saw nothing more of him.

Claude Reigner Conder received yet another version from Shapira, which attributed the scroll and the Moabite forgeries to the same location and claimed a mummy had been found with the scroll.[6]

Presentation of the scroll

In Germany

On 24 September 1878, Shapira sent copies to Konstantin Schlottmann, who had wrongly authenticated Shapira's Moabite forgeries in 1870. Schlottmann consulted with Franz Delitzsch and then denounced the scroll as a fabrication.[7] Delitzsch published separately in his journal Saat auf Hoffnung in 1880, calling it a fake.[8][9]

On 9 May 1883, Shapira wrote a ten-page letter to Hermann Strack, saying he'd trust Strack's judgement over his own with regard to the scroll's authenticity. Strack replied on 27 May, declaring "that it was not worth [Shapira]'s while to bring such an evident forgery to Europe."[10] Also in May 1883, Shapira showed one piece of the manuscript to Paul Schröder, then the German consul in Beirut, for a short time in poor light; he refused to authenticate it without longer study of all the fragments.[lower-alpha 3][3]

Tracing of four columns including the Decalogue by William St. Chad Boscawen and Miss Tennant, under the strict superintendence of Christian David Ginsburg. Published in The Athenaeum, 8 September 1883
The form of Shapira's strips compared to a synagogue scroll margin.[11]
One fold of the manuscript/One of the leather strips/Wadi Mujib/Specimens of ancient writing/Dolmen near Jabbok.[12]

In June 1883, perhaps having revised the text,[1] Shapira brought the scroll to Germany in an attempt to sell it to the Royal Library of Berlin. Karl Richard Lepsius, then the Library's keeper, convened a symposium of leading Bible scholars in Berlin (Lepsius himself, Eduard Sachau, Eberhard Schrader, August Dillmann, Adolf Erman, and Moritz Steinschneider) to evaluate the scroll on July 10; these unanimously declared it a fake after a 90-minute inspection.[lower-alpha 4] In a separate German analysis in the first week of July, published August 14, Hermann Guthe and Eduard Meyer concluded the scroll was a forgery;[lower-alpha 5] Theodor Nöldeke and Emil Friedrich Kautzsch were said to agree.[13][14] Shapira also showed the scroll to Strack in person, whose view did not change.[10] The Royal Library offered to buy it at a lower price, to enable German students to study the forger's technique;[lower-alpha 6][7] Shapira took it to London instead. The German scholars did not publicize their findings, and other experts' conclusions were reached independently.[7]

In London

On July 20, Shapira informed the secretary of the Palestine Exploration Fund that he had brought the manuscript to London, and on July 24 he showed the manuscript to the Fund's Walter Besant and Claude Reignier Conder. On July 26, he displayed the manuscript to a large number of British scholars at the Fund's offices, even tearing off a portion to demonstrate the parchment's interior; the manuscript was then taken to the British Museum for further inspection.[2][15]

Shapira sought to sell the scroll to the British Museum for a million pounds,[lower-alpha 7] and allowed the Museum to exhibit two of the 15 strips.[16] The Museum designated Christian David Ginsburg to evaluate the strips, and he published transcriptions, translations, and facsimiles over the following weeks. On August 4, 1883, Walter Flight of the British Museum reported that much of the leather looked ancient but the margin of one piece looked brand new;[1] on August 17, Edward Augustus Bond, principal librarian of the British Museum, indicated that he too thought they were fake.[17]

On August 13, Adolf Neubauer, who had earlier exposed Shapira's fake "coffin of Samson", identified the scroll as a forgery;[18][19] on August 19, he published further arguments against its authenticity, as did Archibald Sayce on the same day. Neubauer's identification was later called the scroll's death knell.[1]

The French Ministry of Public Instruction's Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau, who had earlier revealed Shapira's Moabite forgeries, arrived in England on the 15th, already harboring "most serious doubts." He obtained a quick look at some fragments from Ginsburg, but was quickly banned by Shapira from further studying the scroll.[20] However, Clermont-Ganneau closely examined the two strips on display at the public exhibition on August 18 and, on August 21, he declared them to be forgeries.[21] Claude Reignier Conder also declared them fake on the 18th,[lower-alpha 8][22] and Ernest Renan,[23] Albert Löwy,[24] and Charles Henry Waller soon followed.[25] By August 25, the Grantham Journal reported, "The official verdict on the authenticity of Mr. Shapira's manuscripts has not been given but the published evidence of experts who have examined them is unanimous against it."[26]

On August 27, Christian David Ginsburg, who as the designated philological examiner of the British Museum had been given access to the entire scroll, published the same conclusion.[lower-alpha 9] Earlier that week, the British Museum had ceased to display Shapira's strips.[27] Ginsburg also suggested that the shape of the strips, their ruling, and the leather used matched Yemenite scrolls Shapira had sold in 1877, the year before he began shopping the strips.[28] Clermont-Ganneau later made the same assessment.[21] Schlottmann, Delitzch, Strack, and Steinschneider, amazed at the ongoing situation in England, each published their July findings for the British audience in September. Ginsburg and Clermont-Ganneau published their final reports that same month.[citation needed]

Aftermath and scroll's fate

1883 Punch cartoon of Shapira and Ginsburg

Ginsburg's conclusion drove Shapira to despair, and he fled London.[16]

"You have made a fool of me by publishing and exhibiting things you believe to be false. I do not think I shall be able to survive this shame. Although I am not yet convinced that the manuscript is a forgery – unless Monsieur Ganneau did it. I will leave London in a day or two for Berlin.
Yours truly, Moses Wilhelm Shapira"

Shapira's letter to Ginsburg, August 23, 1883[29]

In spite of writing to Ginsburg that he would leave for Berlin, he fled London to Amsterdam instead, leaving the manuscript behind, and from Amsterdam he wrote a letter to Edward Augustus Bond, principal librarian of the British Museum, begging for reconsideration of the manuscript.[30] In both letters, Shapira reaffirmed his belief in the scroll's authenticity. Six months later, on 9 March 1884, he shot himself at the Hotel Willemsbrug in Rotterdam.[31]

Shapira's widow, Anna Magdalena Rosette, had at least part of the scroll in 1884, as evidenced by a note in the Ginsburg file left by Bond.[32] Rosette sent "two small pieces" to Schlottmann for further study in 1884. It later appeared in an auction at Sotheby's in 1885 and it was purchased by Bernard Quaritch, a bookseller, for £10 5s. Two years later, Quaritch listed the scroll for sale for £25 and displayed it at the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition in 1887.[21][33]

In 1970 Professor Alan David Crown, on the basis of a misreading[citation needed] of a letter from Sir Charles Nicholson to Walter Scott wherein Nicholson claimed that "most" of the Shapira manuscripts had fallen into his hands, advanced the hypothesis that Nicholson had acquired the Shapira Scroll itself, with the scroll destroyed in a fire in Nicholson's London study in 1899, along with most of his collection.[21][33] Apart from Nicholson's hyperbole—he is only known to have acquired six Torah scrolls compared to the 167 manuscripts acquired in 1884 by Adolph Sutro—Nicholson never wrote that he acquired the Shapira scroll itself. Crown's hypothesis was widely accepted as the best explanation of the scroll's fate.[citation needed]

In 2011 Australian researcher Matthew Hamilton identified the actual owner of the scroll, the English doctor and natural historian, Dr. Philip Brookes Mason. Contemporary reports show Dr. Philip Brookes Mason displayed the "whole of" the scroll at a public lecture in Burton-on-Trent on March 8, 1889.[34][35][36] Further whereabouts of the scroll, if it survived, are unknown.

Features of the scroll

Physical appearance

Shapira's scroll was composed of fifteen leather strips, some easy to read and others blackened to the point of near-illegibility. Each complete strip was extremely narrow, about 3.5 inches by 7 inches. Each complete strip had an average of ten lines of writing on one side only. They were folded, not rolled. Each complete strip was folded between one and three times, for a total of 40 folds.[37] They were covered in dark glutinous matter and had a faint odor of funeral spices or asphalt, known in the nineteenth century for their use in Egyptian mummification but not later found on genuine dead sea scrolls.[38] Some of the strips were covered in oil, artificially darkening the parchment, on top of which some had a layer of grey ash, which Shapira said had been applied to absorb the oil.[14] Each segment had one rough edge and one smooth edge, consistent with a top or bottom margin recently cut off an older manuscript. Each segment had vertical creases marked with a hard point as a scribe would mark for columns, but the text of the Shapira scroll has no relation to these lines, weaving in and out of them randomly, suggesting that a forger had taken the blank margin of a marked Torah scroll and written his text ignoring the faint column lines.[6] Ginsburg and Clermont-Ganneau suggested that the material was identical to the leather of the medieval Yemenite Torah scrolls in which Shapira had dealt in the preceding years.[30] The outline of a frame could be seen, perhaps used to administer aging chemicals, and the straight edge of one segment looked new.

Script

The scroll is written scriptio continua except in the Decalogue, a style never discovered in other Hebrew manuscripts but widely assumed by Shapira's contemporaries to have been the original form of the text.[39] In the Decalogue, every word is followed by an interpunct except לא, do not, and nota accusativi. The writing, by multiple hands, more closely resembles that of inscriptions like the Mesha Stele, already published by 1878, than it does the Paleo-Hebrew writing later found on parchment, or even the Siloam inscription, which would be published in 1880; even in the nineteenth century the similarity was thought suspect.[13][40] André Lemaire authored a recent paleographic analysis (1997):

However, the letter shapes do not correspond exactly to any known ancient West Semitic script. It is neither Moabite (although most letters seem like imitations of Moabite writing in the Mesha Stele, which records the ninth-century B.C.E. Moabite king Mesha's victories over Israel. ...) nor "Canaanite" (West Semitic writing from about the 13th to the 11th century B.C.E.). It is neither the Hebrew script used during the First Temple period nor the archaizing paleo-Hebrew script found on coins of the First Jewish Revolt against Rome (66–70 C.E.) and the Second Jewish Revolt (132–135 C.E.) and in several of the Dead Sea Scrolls. In truth, after a simple look at the facsimile, an experienced paleographer can see it is a forgery.[41]

Ginsburg reported that some strips were duplicates in different hands, with very slight differences (noted infra).[citation needed]

Spelling and wording

The text uses Moabite spellings, made famous by the Mesha Stele in 1870 but never attested in any Israelite text or on parchment; some aberrant plene spellings, as of יום and סיחן, further suggested forgery. The text omits some consonantal yods as well, suggesting an erroneous attempt to replicate Moabite spellings. The scroll contains several apparent misspellings, ungrammatical phrases, and words from later Hebrew, which featured prominently in the negative assessments of its authenticity.[13] The scroll often replaces Deuteronomic words with close synonyms, including ירא > פחד, שכב > בעל, קצפ > אנפ, לפנים > מעלם, and more; these synonyms are not always exact, resulting in incongruent grammar, and sometimes rely on later meanings unattested in Biblical Hebrew.[42][43]

Modern scholarship

Despite the unanimous assessment of the 19th century scholars who had access to the manuscripts that they were a forgery,[lower-alpha 11] a few have argued the scroll was genuine since it was lost.[47]

Menahem Mansoor argued in 1956 that re-examination of the case would be justified.[48][7] Mansoor's conclusion was immediately attacked by Moshe H. Goshen-Gottstein and by Oskar K. Rabinowicz.[49] J. L. Teicher and others argued the scroll could be genuine.[50][51][52][53][54][55][56] More recently, Shlomo Guil (2017),[57] Idan Dershowitz [de] (2021),[13][58] Ross Nichols (2021),[59] and others[60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67] have argued that the strips were genuine.

However, such claims have been contested by many scholars.[68][69][70][71][72][73][43][74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81]

In his 2021 book[82] on the Shapira Scroll, The Valediction of Moses: A Proto-Biblical Book, Dershowitz, an Israeli-American professor at Potsdam University in Germany, has argued that linguistic, literary, and archival evidence indicate that the scroll is not only authentic but a precursor to the Book of Deuteronomy. He has termed the contents of the scroll as "The Valediction of Moses", or "V."[83]

Text of the scroll

Table of correspondences between Deuteronomy and the Shapira Scroll
More information Ginsburg's block print transcription, Ginsburg's translation ...
  • Two photographs of Fragment E, columns 1–2, and one unknown fragment. In the top image, Fragment E is folded in half, with column 4 (verso) partially visible behind column 1 (recto). The image of the unknown fragment is cropped at the bottom.
  • Ginsburg's sketch of Fragment E
  • Drawing of Fragment E prepared by Dangerfield Lithography (London, 1883), in consultation with Ginsburg
  • Drawing of Fragment E prepared by Dangerfield Lithography (London, 1883), in consultation with Ginsburg
  • Drawing of Fragment E prepared by Dangerfield Lithography (London, 1883), in consultation with Ginsburg
  • Table by Guthe of letterforms in Fragments D and E
  • Drawings of Fragment E from The Graphic (1883). Column 3 is shown below. The text on top is from Fragment A, column 1
  • Drawing of fragment from The Illustrated London News (1883)
  • Ginsburg's drawing of Fragment E that was analyzed by Lemaire (BL Ms. Add. 41294, 35)
  • Different version of Ginsburg's drawing of the same column (BL Ms. Add. 41294, 34)
  • First page of Shapira's draft transcription
  • Second page of Shapira's draft transcription
  • Third page of Shapira's draft transcription

Notes

  1. The total number of commandments remains ten because I and II have been combined, as in the masoretic division into paragraphs, the ta'am ha-elyon in some versions, or the modern Catholic tradition.
  2. In the Masoretic version, Deut. 5:11–16 (III–V) describe God in the third person.
  3. In England, Shapira claimed Schröder had pronounced the manuscript genuine and asked to purchase it. Guthe says that Carlo von Landberg authenticated this claim, but Schroder later denied it in a letter to the London Times.
  4. In England, Shapira claimed Lepsius had not reached a definitive conclusion and that Erman believed it authentic.
  5. Shapira stopped in Halle and Leipzig on the way to Berlin, but could not convince Guthe to form a larger symposium. In England, Shapira claimed Guthe had concluded the manuscript was genuine.
  6. According to the Times of London; Hermann Strack wrote on August 31st that "Lepsius ... absolutely refused to purchase the manuscript."
  7. Equivalent to $173 million in 2021.
  8. Conder felt pressure to refute Shapira's claims that Conder had also encountered the story of the scroll in Palestine. He wrote that he had never heard of it there and, upon seeing Shapira's scroll in England, he had not hesitated "in concluding that they were deliberate forgeries". Conder's account is confirmed by Walter Besant (Autobiography, p. 162-3, cf. his General Work of the Society, p. 37-39), who records that Conder "Observe[d] that all the points objected to by German critics have vanished in this new and epoch-making trouvaille. The geography is not confused, and Moses does not record his own death . . . and I know, I believe, all the caves of Moab and they are all damp and earthy", concluding that it was a fake, immediately after inspecting the scroll on July 24.
  9. Ginsburg wrote to his daughter on September 3rd that he "was sure the first week of [his] examination that it was a forgery".
  10. Ebers himself, Meyer's mentor, helped pen a German satire of the forgery.[44]
  11. A possible exception is Eduard Meyer, who wrote to Georg Ebers[lower-alpha 10] on 8 July, saying the paleography of the strips appeared genuine and reporting that Franz Adolf Hofmann's examination of the leather found nothing suspicious.[failed verification] However, Meyer never published this opinion and never contested his partner Guthe's conclusion that the strips were forged based on separate linguistic evidence. Guthe published his and Meyer's transcription and his analysis weeks later and is careful to note several differences between his and Meyer's analysis, which were apparently all minor.[45][46]
  12. Yom is consistently spelled plene. Neubauer, Löwy, and others found this suspicious.
  13. Ginsburg notes: "The compiler of the text, who was a tolerable adept in writing Hebrew, could not have been familiar with the Phoenician characters exhibited in these slips . . . he would have especially noticed the transposition of the two letters in the predicate applied to God, which, instead of saying He was 'angry', declares that He 'committed adultery'".
  14. Ginsburg suggests the author used me'olam instead of the Masoretic lefanim because the word me'olam appears on the Mesha stele. Cf. Mesha's "The men of Gad lived in the land of Ataroth me'olam".
  15. Ungrammatical; ישבו would be expected.
  16. Löwy: "The forger had eliminated from the text nearly all the waws & yods which serve as matres lectionis, in order to bring his work in harmony with the ancient Phoenician inscriptions. But he had forgotten to be consistent. For example, Sihon is written with a yod after the samekh".
  17. Ginsburg suggests that the forger listed Moab, Aroer, Jahaz, and Jabbok because these four locations are mentioned in the Mesha stele, omitting the other Masoretic locations, which are not.
  18. In form apparently a QaTaLTaL reduplication of the second and third radicals, however the root עזמ does not exist. Deut. 2:20 has זמזמים Zamzummim from זממ meaning "to devise" or connected to زَمْزَمَ "talk gibberish". Perhaps the same group as Gen. 14:5's זוזים Zuzzim, from זוז "to move". Cf. Gesenius' reconstruction of Azazel, עזלזל Azalzal.
  19. Original reads לקדאתנו, but this is a clear printing error.
  20. חבל in the MT, suggesting to Ginsburg etc. an author with a modern Ashkenazic accent wherein ח and כ are not distinguished.
  21. Guthe reads מחג[*]הן for the same meaning.
  22. ותאכלו, misspelled.
  23. Another kaph/heth flip reflecting a modern accent. Here מנסכהן is intended.
  24. Guthe parses שביה רבה.
  25. אשר אתם עברם would be expected grammatically.
  26. Also transcribed without the waw.
  27. Intent unclear. MT reads לטטפות. Possibly evidence of a modern accent which did not distinguish between ט and ת.
  28. Guthe transcribes without the yod, in keeping with the scroll's defective pattern.
  29. Only some transcriptions contain the final mem.
  30. Neubauer: "The usual verbs employed for liberating from Egypt and from the house of bondage, in the historical as well as in the prophetical books of the Bible, are either yatsa in the Hiphil form (as the received text has it here) or padah. The roots harah or hur are not used as verbs in the Old Testament, but only in the Targum, and in the Talmud, and then not in the Hiphil form, or with the particle min. It is difficult to understand how both texts of the Decalogue, in Exodus as well as in Deuteronomy, should have no trace of such a word, but employ uniformly instead of it the root yatsa," Ginsburg: "[It] is not taken from the Targum, but from ancient Hebrew coins, where חרות, liberty, liberation, is used in the legend."
  31. Neubauer: "In all the other Commandments of the Moabite text, Israel is addressed in the second person singular; why, then, do we find in the First Commandment 'Ye shall not have,' 'Ye shall not bow down'?'"
  32. Neubauer: "[There is a grammatical mistake] in the Second Commandment, which refers to the keeping of the Sabbath. It runs thus: 'Sanctify . . . for in six days I have made the heaven and the earth, and all that is therein, and rested the seventh day, therefore rest thou, also thee, and the cattle, and all that thou hast. 'ושבתי' 'and I rested,' is ungrammatical; it ought to be 'ואשבת'. Evidently the Moabite writer did not make use of Dr. Driver's excellent work on the Hebrew tenses. The root shaboth does not mean 'to rest,' but 'to cease from work,' and in this sense only it is found in the Old Testament. The forger made a blunder in not leaving the root noah as in the received text."
  33. Neubauer: "The word gam ought to be repeated according to classical Hebrew: cf. Exod. [xii], 31, 32, and elsewhere."
  34. Neubauer: "The expressions 'and all thou hast' and 'anything that is his' are not classical Hebrew."
  35. Present in one of two MSS. Ginsburg writes, "This is either due to an omission on the part of the scribe, or indicates that it is intended as a different recension".
  36. Neubauer: "This is not Hebrew, as can be seen from the passage urzaho nefesh (Deut. xxii, 26). Here a clumsy use has been made of the Chaldee paraphrase."
  37. Neubauer: "Hon is not to be found in the Pentateuch, the word hail being employed there instead of it in the sense of 'wealth'."
  38. This is the line in its final form. However, an earlier draft had been struck through, reading: לא . . . מן . מ . . הן . רעך . אנך . אלהם . אלהך . Ginsburg notes, "On maturer consideration the forger was evidently displeased with him Hebrew composition of this commandment. He therefore cancelled it, and substituted for it what is now his sixth commandment. This is one of the strongest of the proofs which brand the document as a forgery".
  39. This is the line in its final form. However, an earlier draft had been struck through, translated: "[Thou shalt] not [steal] aught of . . . the property of thy neighbor. I am God, thy God." Ginsburg notes, "On maturer consideration the forger was evidently displeased with him Hebrew composition of this commandment. He therefore cancelled it, and substituted for it what is now his sixth commandment. This is one of the strongest of the proofs which brand the document as a forgery".
  40. Neubauer calls this use of kana "impossible".
  41. One MS has אבם.
  42. Neubauer: "I have already pointed out the strange—I should rather say the impossible —use of the root kana; but the expression lenosey is rabbinical; in classical Hebrew we would expect laish asher yissa. The word eduth, 'witness,' is equally a rabbinical form. Such is the grammatical and idiomatic character of the new Moabite text of the Decalogue".
  43. Ginsburg "The expression תענו, bear false witness . . . is not the plural from ענה . . . but is intended to be the second person singular from the root ענו, in imitation of the archaic form on the Moabite stone, where it occurs twice."
  44. Neubauer: "The word eduth . . . is a Rabbinical form." Eduth is found Biblically meaning "law" or "testimony (of things)" and not the later "testimony (of people)". Dershowitz suggests the reading adath for "judicial decision" (construct); this word is completely unattested.
  45. Original is misprinted חוה
  46. Misprinted חית
  47. בעל is transitive in Biblical Hebrew and never used with the preposition עם. It is also not used to denote intercourse in Biblical Hebrew, only possession and marriage, though it acquires that meaning in Rabbinic Hebrew. Cf. Deut. 27:20's שכב, which the Bible often uses with the preposition עם and to denote intercourse.

References

  1. [1]
    Rabinowicz, Oskar K. "The Shapira Forgery Mystery". Jewish Quarterly Review. New Series (47 [1956–7]): 170–183.
  2. [2]
    Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement for 1883
  3. [3]
    Schroeder, Paul (20 September 1883). "The Shapira Manuscript". Times of London.
  4. [4]
    Guil 2017, p. 9.
  5. [5]
    "HOW THE MOST RECENT BIBLICAL DISCOVERY WAS MADE". Western Mail (Cardiff, Wales). 15 August 1883.
  6. [6]
    The Shapira Manuscripts. Palestine Exploration Fund. October 1883. pp. 195–209 [195–198]. Archived from the original on 19 March 2021. Retrieved 13 March 2021. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  7. [7]
    Mansoor 1958, p. 225.
  8. [8]
    Saat auf Hoffnung: organ der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Missionsvereine für Israel in Sachsen und Bayern (in German). In Commission von Justus Naumann's Buchhandlung. 1880.
  9. [9]
    Delitzch, Franz (1883). "Schapira's Pseudo-Deuteronomium" in Allgemeine Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirchenzeitung vol. XVI (in German). Leipzig: Dörffling u. Franke. pp. 844–6, 869–71, 893–4, 914–6.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  10. [10]
    Reiner, Fred N. (28 June 2011). Standing at Sinai: Sermons and Writings. AuthorHouse. p. 302. ISBN 978-1-4567-6507-1. Archived from the original on 19 March 2021. Retrieved 13 March 2021.
  11. [11]
    Clermont-Ganneau, Revue politique et littéraire, 29 September 1883
  12. [12]
    William St. Chad Boscawen, Scientific American Supplement, October 27, 1883.
  13. [13]
    Dershowitz, Idan (2021). "The Valediction of Moses: New Evidence on the Shapira Deuteronomy Fragments". Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft. 133 (1): 1–22. doi:10.1515/zaw-2021-0001. ISSN 1613-0103.
  14. [14]
    Guthe, Hermann (1883). Fragmente einer Lederhandschrift enthaltend Mose's letzte Rede an die Kinder Israel (in German). Breitkopf & Härtel. Archived from the original on 19 March 2021. Retrieved 13 March 2021.
  15. [15]
    Besant, Walter (1902). Autobiography of Sir Walter Besant. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. pp. 161–163. ISBN 9780598674418. Archived from the original on 19 March 2021. Retrieved 13 March 2021.
  16. [16]
    Reiner 1995, pp. 109, 115, 116.
  17. [17]
    Guil, Shlomo (2017). "The Shapira Scroll was an Authentic Dead Sea Scroll". Palestine Exploration Quarterly. 149 (1): 6–27. doi:10.1080/00310328.2016.1185895. S2CID 165114970.
  18. [18]
    Neubauer, Adolf (18 August 1883). The Shapira MSS. of Deuteronomy. Vol. 589. London: J. Murray. p. 116. Archived from the original on 19 March 2021. Retrieved 13 March 2021. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  19. [19]
    Neubauer, Adolf (25 August 1883). The Shapira MSS. of Deuteronomy. Vol. 590. London: J. Murray. pp. 130–131. Archived from the original on 19 March 2021. Retrieved 13 March 2021. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  20. [20]
    Browne, Rev. G. F. (1885). Archaeological Frauds in Palestine. Vol. No. 26–April, 1885. London: W. H. Allen & Co. pp. 190–206 [204–5]. Archived from the original on 19 March 2021. Retrieved 13 March 2021. {{cite book}}: |volume= has extra text (help); |work= ignored (help)
  21. [21]
    Press, Michael (11 September 2014). "'The Lying Pen of the Scribes': A Nineteenth-Century Dead Sea Scroll". The Appendix. Archived from the original on 19 March 2021. Retrieved 4 April 2018.
  22. [22]
    "Miscellaneous". Leed's Times (Leeds, England). 25 August 1883.
  23. [23]
    "From Our Paris Correspondent". Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser. 31 August 1883.
  24. [24]
    Löwy, Rev. A. (1884). Proceedings, 6 November 1883. London: Society of Biblical Archæology. Archived from the original on 19 March 2021. Retrieved 13 March 2021. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  25. [25]
    "Multiple News Items". Bury and Norwich Post. 28 August 1883.
  26. [26]
    "The New Deuteronomy". Grantham Journal. 25 August 1883.
  27. [27]
    "OUR LONDON CORRESPONDENCE". Glasgow Herald. 27 August 1883.
  28. [28]
    Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement for 1883, pp. 207–208
  29. [29]
    Reiner 1995, p. 110.
  30. [30]
    Reiner 1995.
  31. [31]
    Newspaper "Het Vaderland", March 12, 1884.
  32. [32]
    Moshe Goshen-Gottstein "Dead Sea Scrolls and Shapira Forgery." Jewish Advocate (1909–1990), Apr 11 1957, p. 1. ProQuest. Web. 16 Mar. 2021 .
  33. [33]
    Crown 1970, pp. 421–423.
  34. [34]
    Tigay, Chanan. "Was this the first Dead Sea Scroll?". BBC. Retrieved 4 March 2018.
  35. [35]
    Guil 2017, p. 25: "Surprisingly, contrary to the belief held for the last forty five years, the Shapira scroll was not destroyed in a fire that erupted in the house of Sir Charles Nicholson, near London. We presently know that it was Dr. Philip Brookes Mason of Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, who acquired the Shapira scroll in 1888 or beginning of 1889 and probably held it until his death in 1903. There are indications that, after his death, his wife sold his life's collection at an auction. Some good detective work might lead to the rediscovery of the Shapira scroll."
  36. [36]
    OBITUARY NOTICE OF PHILIP BROOKES MASON, by The Rev. CHAS. F. THORNEWILL; Read before the Society, September 14, 1904, Journal of Conchology, VOL XI, 1904 — 1906, p.105 "It is not generally known that Mr. Mason became the eventual possessor of the notorious 'Shapira' manuscript, which for a time deceived some of the most experienced authorities on such matters, but was at length discovered to be a remarkably clever forgery."
  37. [37]
    "THE SHAPIRA LEATHERS." The American Hebrew (1879-1902), Aug 24 1883, p. 16. ProQuest. Web. 16 Mar. 2021 .
  38. [38]
    Chemical tests of the originals by Dr. Walter Flight at the British Museum suggested that the black stuff was not in fact asphalt: The black colouring matter, taken from the back and front of the skins, does not appear to be asphaltum but rather wax, like bees-wax, of a very impure dirty kind. It leaves an ash amounting to 10 to 15 percent. It readily melts and, when destroyed by further heating, does not emit the smell of asphaltum (Nichols, p. 97).
  39. [39]
    Millard, A. R. (1 March 1970). ""Scriptio Continua" in Early Hebrew: Ancient Practice or Modern Surmise?". Journal of Semitic Studies. 15 (1): 2–15. doi:10.1093/jss/15.1.2. ISSN 0022-4480.
  40. [40]
    "Scientific American. v.16 1883". HathiTrust. Archived from the original on 19 March 2021. Retrieved 16 March 2021.
  41. [41]
    "Paleography's Verdict: They're Fakes!". The BAS Library. 24 August 2015. Retrieved 21 March 2021.
  42. [42]
    The Athenæum: A Journal of Literature, Science, the Fine Arts, Music, and the Drama. J. Francis. 1883. Archived from the original on 19 March 2021. Retrieved 16 March 2021.
  43. [43]
    Suchard, Benjamin (2022). "The "Valediction of Moses" is not a proto-Deuteronomy: evidence from the verbal system". Academia Letters.
  44. [44]
    Publishers Weekly, Volume 26
  45. [45]
    Bardtke, Hans. "Qumran und seine Funde" [Qumran and its Findings]. Theologische Rundschau (30. Jahrgang Heft 4 (April 1965)): 281–315 [290].
  46. [46]
    Sabo, Yoram (2018). סוחר המגילות: מסע בעקבות האוצר היהודי האבוד [The Scroll Merchant: In Search of Moses Wilhelm Shapira's Lost Jewish Treasure] (in Hebrew). Bnei Brak [Tel-Aviv]: Hakibbutz Hameuchad. p. 90.
  47. [47]
    Guil 2017, pp. 6–27.
  48. [48]
    "Dead Sea Scroll Traced to Jew Who Committed Suicide 70 Years Ago". Jewish Telegraphic Agency. 14 August 1956. Archived from the original on 19 March 2021. Retrieved 4 March 2018.
  49. [49]
    Reiner 1997, p. Endnote 2.
  50. [50]
    J. L. Teicher "The Genuineness of the Shapira Manuscripts," Times Literary Supplement, 22 March 1957.
  51. [51]
    Shemuel Yeivin in Hillaby, John (13 August 1956). "American Revives Biblical Scroll Case". New York Times.
  52. [52]
    Allegro, John Marco (1965). The Shapira affair. Doubleday. ISBN 9789120009094. OCLC 543413.
  53. [53]
    Jefferson, Helen (1968). "The Shapira Manuscript and the Qumran Scrolls". Revue de Qumrân. 6 (3): 391–399.
  54. [54]
    Gordon, Cyrus (1974). Riddles in History. Crown.
  55. [55]
    Stegemann, Hartmut (1978). "Religionsgeschichtliche Erwägungen zu den Gottesbezeichnungen in den Qumrantexten". In Delcor, M. (ed.). Qumrân: sa piété, sa théologie et son milieu.
  56. [56]
    Silberman, Neil Asher (1998). "Power, politics and the past: The social construction of antiquity in the Holy Land". In Levy, Thomas Evan (ed.). The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land. London: Leicester University Press.
  57. [57]
    Guil 2017.
  58. [58]
    Dershowitz, Idan (2021). The Valediction of Moses A Proto-Biblical Book (PDF). Mohr Siebeck Tübingen. ISBN 978-3-16-160644-1.
  59. [59]
    Nichols, Ross (24 February 2021). The Moses Scroll: Reopening the Most Controversial Case in the History of Biblical Scholarship. St. Francisville, LA: Horeb Press. ISBN 978-1-7366134-0-5.
  60. [60]
    Dershowitz, Idan; Pat-El, Na'ama (2021). "The Linguistic Profile of V". The Valediction of Moses. A Proto-Biblical Book. doi:10.1628/978-3-16-160645-8. ISBN 9783161606458. S2CID 234273321.
  61. [61]
    Sass, Benjamin (2021). "Can a Unique Letterform Clinch the Authenticity of the Shapira Leather Manuscripts? A Rejoinder to Matthieu Richelle". Semitica. 63: 223–242.
  62. [62]
    Tabor, James (Winter 2021). "The Shapira Scrolls: The Case for Authenticity". Biblical Archeological Review.
  63. [63]
    Israel Finkelstein in Finkelstein, Israel; Sass, Benjamin. "Idan Dershowitz's V and Paleography". Retrieved 29 December 2021.
  64. [64]
    Bar Ilan, Meir (2021). "Review by Meir Bar-Ilan of Dershowitz on Shapirah".
  65. [65]
    Metzler, Maria. "Christopher Rollston's Critique of the Shapira Argument by Idan Dershowitz".
  66. [66]
    Shapira, David. "מזויף או אמיתי ?! תעלומה סביב מגילות שפירא בעקבות מחקרו של ד"ר עידן דרשוביץ - עם ד"ר דוד שפירא" (in Hebrew). YouTube. Retrieved 29 December 2021.
  67. [67]
    Nodet, Etienne (2022). "Review of The Valediction of Moses. A Proto-Biblical Book, by Idan Dershowitz". Revue Biblique: 290–291.
  68. [68]
    Rollston, Christopher. "Deja Vu all over Again: The Antiquities Market, the Shapira Strips, Menahem Mansoor, and Idan Dershowitz". Rollston Epigraphy. Retrieved 20 December 2021.
  69. [69]
    "The Myth of Moses Shapira". ANCIENT JEW REVIEW. September 2021. Retrieved 20 December 2021.
  70. [70]
    Suchard, Benjamin D. (2021). "A Valediction to Moses W. Shapira's Deuteronomy Document". Bibliotheca Orientalis. 78 (3–4): 364–387. doi:10.2143/BIOR.78.3.3289918.
  71. [71]
    Richelle, Matthieu (2021). "The Shapira Strips in Light of Paleography: Six Impossible Things before Breakfast". Semitica. 63: 243–294. doi:10.2143/SE.63.0.3289905.
  72. [72]
    Hendel, Ronald (1 June 2021). "Notes on the Orthography of the Shapira Manuscripts: The Forger's Marks". Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (in German). 133 (2): 225–230. doi:10.1515/zaw-2021-2008. ISSN 1613-0103. S2CID 235219521.
  73. [73]
    Klawans, Jonathan (18 March 2021). "The Shapira Fragments". Bible History Daily. Biblical Archaeology Society. Retrieved 20 December 2021.
  74. [74]
    Samuel, Harald (7 May 2021). "A Reply to Idan Dershowitz and Na'ama Pat-El's 'Response to Benjamin Suchard'". Academia Letters.
  75. [75]
    Richelle, Matthieu; Hendel, Ron (2021). "The Shapira Scrolls: The Case for Forgery". Biblical Archaeology Review. 47 (4): 39–46.
  76. [76]
    Klawans, Jonathan (2022). "Shapira's Deuteronomy, Its Decalogue, and Dead Sea Scrolls Authentic and Forged". Dead Sea Discoveries. 29 (2): 199–227. doi:10.1163/15685179-bja10032. ISSN 0929-0761.
  77. [77]
    Stackert, Jeffrey (2023). "A Text That Was but Isn't: On the Contribution of Literary Evidence in the Assessment of Shapira Deuteronomy". Maarav. 27 (1–2): 74–90. doi:10.1086/726572. ISSN 0149-5712.
  78. [78]
    van Bekkum, Koert (2022). "Moses Wilhelm Shapira's 'Deuteronomy' between Epigraphy and Literary Criticism". In Averbeck, Richard E.; Hoffmeier, James K.; Howard, J. Caleb; Zwickel, Wolfgang (eds.). 'Now These Records are Ancient': Studies in Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical History, Language and Culture in Honor of K. Lawson Younger, Jr. Zaphon. pp. 53–59. ISBN 978-3-96327-191-5.
  79. [79]
    "האומנם נוסח קדום של ספר דברים?". הארץ (in Hebrew). Retrieved 28 December 2021.
  80. [80]
    "בכל זאת זיוף". הארץ (in Hebrew). Retrieved 28 December 2021.
  81. [81]
    "שפירא-מאניה". הזמן הזה (in Hebrew). 1 August 2021. Retrieved 28 December 2021.
  82. [82]
    Dershowitz, Idan (2021). The Valediction of Moses. Forschungen zum Alten Testament. Vol. 145 (1 ed.). Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. ISBN 978-3-16-160644-1.
  83. [83]
    Schuessler, Jennifer (10 March 2021). "Is a Long-Dismissed Forgery Actually the Oldest Known Biblical Manuscript?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 15 September 2023.

Bibliography

Further reading

Original scholarly papers

  • The Shapira Manuscripts. Palestine Exploration Fund. October 1883. pp. 195–209 [195–198]. Retrieved 13 March 2021. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help), including the assessments by A. Neubauer, Clermont-Ganneau, C. R. Conder, and C. D. Ginsburg.
  • Asya, Yaakov (1975). "Parashat Shapira", supplement to: Myriam Harry [pseud.], "Bat Yerushalayim Hakatanah" (in Hebrew, A. Levenson Publishing House), originally published as "La Petite Fille de Jerusalem" (in French, Paris, 1914)
  • Besant, Walter. "Autobiography of Sir Walter Besant" (New York, 1902; reprint, St. Clair Shores, MI: Scholarly Press, 1971), pp. 161–167
  • Carter, A.C.R. "Shapira, the Bible Forger", in "Let Me Tell You", pp. 216–219, London, 1940
  • Clermont-Ganneau, C. S. "Les fraudes archéologiques en Palestine", Paris, 1885, pp. 107ff., 152ff. 159, 173
  • Guthe, Hermann. "Fragmente einer Lederhandschrift", Leipzig, 1883
  • Neubauer, Adolf (1883). The Shapira MSS. of Deuteronomy. Vol. 589 (18 Aug. 1883), 590 (25 Aug. 1883). London: J. Murray. pp. 116, 130–131. Retrieved 13 March 2021. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)

Initial reappraisal (1956–1958)

  • Goshen-Gottstein, Moshe H. "The Shapira Forgery and the Qumran Scrolls", Journal of Jewish Studies 7 [1956], 187–193, and "The Qumran Scrolls and the Shapira Forgery" [in Hebrew], Haaretz, 28 December 1956
  • Mansoor, Menahem (1958). "The Case of Shapira's Dead Sea (Deuteronomy) Scrolls of 1883" (PDF). Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 47: 183–229.
  • Rabinowicz, Oskar K. "The Shapira Forgery Mystery". Jewish Quarterly Review. New Series (47 [1956–7]): 170–183.
  • Teicher, J.L. "The Genuineness of the Shapira Manuscripts", Times Literary Supplement, 22 March 1957

Modern scholarship (1965–)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Shapira Scroll.

Primary sources
Share this article:

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Shapira_Scroll, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.