![Shapira Scroll Lithograph (partial)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Shapira_Scroll_Lithograph_%28partial%29.jpg)
The Shapira Scroll, also known as the Shapira Strips or Shapira Manuscript, was a set of leather strips inscribed in
Paleo-Hebrew script
The Paleo-Hebrew script ( he, הכתב העברי הקדום), also Palaeo-Hebrew, Proto-Hebrew or Old Hebrew, is the writing system found in Canaanite inscriptions from the region of biblical Israel and Judah. It is considered to be the script ...
. It was presented by
Moses Wilhelm Shapira
Moses Wilhelm Shapira ( he, מוזס וילהלם שפירא; 1830 – March 9, 1884) was a Jerusalem antiquities dealer and purveyor of allegedly forged Semitic artifacts – the most high profile of which was the Shapira Scroll. The shame bro ...
in 1883 as an ancient
Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...
-related artifact and almost immediately denounced by scholars as a forgery.
The scroll consisted of fifteen leather strips, which Shapira claimed had been found in
Wadi Mujib
Wadi Mujib ( ar, وادي الموجب, ''Wadi el-Mujib''), also known as Arnon Stream (Hebrew: נַחַל ארנון), is a river in Jordan. The river empties into the Dead Sea circa below sea level. Today, Wadi Mujib is fed by seven tributa ...
(biblical Arnon) near the
Dead Sea
The Dead Sea ( he, יַם הַמֶּלַח, ''Yam hamMelaḥ''; ar, اَلْبَحْرُ الْمَيْتُ, ''Āl-Baḥrū l-Maytū''), also known by other names, is a salt lake bordered by Jordan to the east and Israel and the West Bank ...
. The Hebrew text hinted at a different version of
Deuteronomy
Deuteronomy ( grc, Δευτερονόμιον, Deuteronómion, second law) is the fifth and last book of the Torah (in Judaism), where it is called (Hebrew: hbo, , Dəḇārīm, hewords Moses.html"_;"title="f_Moses">f_Moseslabel=none)_and_th ...
, including the addition of a new line to the
Ten Commandments
The Ten Commandments (Biblical Hebrew עשרת הדברים \ עֲשֶׂרֶת הַדְּבָרִים, ''aséret ha-dvarím'', lit. The Decalogue, The Ten Words, cf. Mishnaic Hebrew עשרת הדיברות \ עֲשֶׂרֶת הַדִּבְ ...
: "You shall not hate your brother in your heart: I am
God
In monotheism, monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator deity, creator, and principal object of Faith#Religious views, faith.Richard Swinburne, Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Ted Honderich, Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Ox ...
, your god." The text also lacks all laws except for the ten commandments, which it renders consistently 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
Forgery is a white-collar crime that generally refers to the false making or material alteration of a legal instrument with the specific intent to defraud anyone (other than themself). Tampering with a certain legal instrument may be forbidd ...
drove Shapira to suicide in 1884.
Shapira's widow had at least part of the scroll in 1884, which she sent to . The scroll reappeared a couple of years later in a
Sotheby's
Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, and ...
auction, where it was sold for £10 5s to
Bernard Quaritch
Bernard Alexander Christian Quaritch ( ; April 23, 1819 – December 17, 1899) was a German-born British bookseller and collector.
The company established by Bernard Quaritch in 1847 lives on in London as Bernard Quaritch Ltd, dealing in rare ...
, 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
Burton upon Trent, also known as Burton-on-Trent or simply Burton, is a market town in the borough of East Staffordshire in the county of Staffordshire, England, close to the border with Derbyshire. In 2011, it had a population of 72,299. Th ...
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
[ as evidence of forgery. ]Paul Schröder
Paul may refer to:
*Paul (given name), a given name (includes a list of people with that name)
*Paul (surname), a list of people
People
Christianity
* Paul the Apostle (AD c.5–c.64/65), also known as Saul of Tarsus or Saint Paul, early Chri ...
, 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.
While in Germany, Shapira told Hermann Guthe that: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
Hermann Leberecht Strack (6 May 1848 – 5 October 1922) was a German Protestant theologian and orientalist; born in Berlin.
Biography
From 1877, Strack was assistant professor of Old Testament exegesis and Semitic languages at the University ...
of Berlin on 9 May 1883:
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 icthe 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 ic they discovered there several bundles of very old rugs. Thinking they may iccontain 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 icsince having the charms in his tent, he became a wealthy man having sheeps icetc.
Shapira wrote a letter to Ginsburg in early August, informing him that:In July 1878, the Sheik Machmud Arakat, the well-known chief of the guides from Jerusalem to the Jordan, paid me the customary visit . . . sthe 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: 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 thew 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.[
]
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
Franz Delitzsch (23 February 1813, in Leipzig – 4 March 1890, in Leipzig) was a German Lutheran theologian and Hebraist. Delitzsch wrote many commentaries on books of the Bible, Jewish antiquities, Biblical psychology, as well as a history of ...
and then denounced the scroll as a fabrication. Delitzch published separately in his journal '' Saat auf Hoffnung'' in 1880, calling it a fake.
On 9 May 1883, Shapira wrote a ten-page letter to Hermann Strack
Hermann Leberecht Strack (6 May 1848 – 5 October 1922) was a German Protestant theologian and orientalist; born in Berlin.
Biography
From 1877, Strack was assistant professor of Old Testament exegesis and Semitic languages at the University ...
, 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 hapiras while to bring such an evident forgery to Europe." Also in May 1883, Shapira showed one piece of the manuscript to Paul Schröder
Paul may refer to:
*Paul (given name), a given name (includes a list of people with that name)
*Paul (surname), a list of people
People
Christianity
* Paul the Apostle (AD c.5–c.64/65), also known as Saul of Tarsus or Saint Paul, early Chri ...
, then the German consul in Beirut
Beirut, french: Beyrouth is the capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, which makes it the third-largest city in the Levant region. The city is situated on a peninsula at the midpoint o ...
, for a short time in poor light; he refused to authenticate it without longer study of all the fragments.[
]
In June 1883, perhaps having revised the text,[ Shapira brought the scroll to Germany in an attempt to sell it to the ]Royal Library of Berlin
The Berlin State Library (german: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin; officially abbreviated as ''SBB'', colloquially ''Stabi'') is a universal library in Berlin, Germany and a property of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. It is one of the larg ...
. Karl Richard Lepsius
Karl Richard Lepsius ( la, Carolus Richardius Lepsius) (23 December 181010 July 1884) was a pioneering Prussian Egyptologist, linguist and modern archaeologist.
He is widely known for his magnum opus ''Denkmäler aus Ägypten und Äthiopien'' ...
, then the Library's keeper, convened a symposium of leading Bible scholars in Berlin (Lepsius himself, Eduard Sachau
Carl Eduard Sachau (20 July 1845 – 17 September 1930) was a German orientalist. He taught Josef Horovitz and Eugen Mittwoch.
Biography
He studied oriental languages at the Universities of Kiel and Leipzig, obtaining his PhD at Halle in 1867 ...
, Eberhard Schrader, August Dillmann
Christian Friedrich August Dillmann (25 April 18237 July 1894) was a German orientalist and biblical scholar.
Life
The son of a Württemberg schoolmaster, he was born at Illingen. He was educated at the University of Tübingen, where he became ...
, Adolf Erman
Johann Peter Adolf Erman (; 31 October 185426 June 1937) was a renowned German Egyptologist and lexicographer.
Life
Born in Berlin, he was the son of Georg Adolf Erman and grandson of Paul Erman and Friedrich Bessel.
Educated at Leipzig and ...
, and Moritz Steinschneider
Moritz Steinschneider (30 March 1816, Prostějov, Moravia, Austrian Empire – 24 January 1907, Berlin) was a Moravian bibliographer and Orientalist. He received his early instruction in Hebrew from his father, Jacob Steinschneider ( 1782; ...
), to evaluate the scroll on July 10; these unanimously declared it a fake after a 90-minute inspection. In a separate German analysis in the first week of July, published August 14, Hermann Guthe and Eduard Meyer
Eduard Meyer (25 January 1855 – 31 August 1930) was a German historian. He was the brother of Celticist Kuno Meyer (1858–1919).
Biography
Meyer was born in Hamburg and educated at the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums and later at the univer ...
concluded the scroll was a forgery; Theodor Nöldeke
Theodor Nöldeke (; born 2 March 1836 – 25 December 1930) was a German orientalist and scholar. His research interests ranged over Old Testament studies, Semitic languages and Arabic, Persian and Syriac literature. Nöldeke translated several ...
and Emil Friedrich Kautzsch were said to agree. Shapira also showed the scroll to Strack in person, whose view did not change.[ The Royal Library offered to buy it at a lower price, to enable German students to study the forger's technique; Shapira took it to London instead. The German scholars did not publicize their findings, and other experts' conclusions were reached independently.
]
In London
On July 20, Shapira informed the secretary of the Palestine Exploration Fund
The Palestine Exploration Fund is a British society based in London. It was founded in 1865, shortly after the completion of the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem, and is the oldest known organization in the world created specifically for the study ...
that he had brought the manuscript to London, and on July 24 he showed the manuscript to the Fund's Walter Besant
Sir Walter Besant (14 August 1836 – 9 June 1901) was an English novelist and historian. William Henry Besant was his brother, and another brother, Frank, was the husband of Annie Besant.
Early life and education
The son of wine merchant Will ...
and Claude Reignier Conder
Claude Reignier Conder (29 December 1848, Cheltenham – 16 February 1910, Cheltenham) was an English soldier, explorer and antiquarian. He was a great-great-grandson of Louis-François Roubiliac and grandson of editor and author Josiah 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
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
for further inspection.
Shapira sought to sell the scroll to the British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
for a million pounds, and allowed the Museum to exhibit two of the 15 strips. The Museum designated Christian David Ginsburg
Christian David Ginsburg (, 25 December 1831 – 7 March 1914) was a Polish-born British Bible scholar and a student of the Masoretic tradition in Judaism.
He was born to a Jewish family in Warsaw but converted to Christianity at the age of 15.
...
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;[ on August 17, ]Edward Augustus Bond
Sir Edward Augustus Bond (31 December 18152 January 1898) was an English librarian.
Biography
Bond was born at Hanwell, London, England, the son of a schoolmaster. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood, and in 1832 obtained a ...
, principal librarian of the British Museum, indicated that he too thought they were fake.
On August 13, Adolf Neubauer
Adolf Neubauer (11 March 1831 in Bittse, Hungary – 6 April 1907, London) was at the Bodleian Library and reader in Rabbinic Hebrew at Oxford University.
Biography
He was born in Bittse (Nagybiccse), Upper Hungary (now Bytča in Slovakia ...
, who had earlier exposed Shapira's fake "coffin of Samson", identified the scroll as a forgery; on August 19, he published further arguments against its authenticity, as did Archibald Sayce
The Rev. Archibald Henry Sayce (25 September 18454 February 1933) was a pioneer British Assyriologist and linguist, who held a chair as Professor of Assyriology at the University of Oxford from 1891 to 1919. He was able to write in at least twe ...
on the same day. Neubauer's identification was later called the scroll's death knell.[
The French Ministry of Public Instruction's ]Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau
Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau (19 February 1846 – 15 February 1923) was a noted French Orientalist and archaeologist.
Biography
Clermont-Ganneau was born in Paris, the son of Simon Ganneau, a sculptor and mystic who died in 1851 when Clermo ...
, 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. 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
Forgery is a white-collar crime that generally refers to the false making or material alteration of a legal instrument with the specific intent to defraud anyone (other than themself). Tampering with a certain legal instrument may be forbid ...
. Claude Reignier Conder
Claude Reignier Conder (29 December 1848, Cheltenham – 16 February 1910, Cheltenham) was an English soldier, explorer and antiquarian. He was a great-great-grandson of Louis-François Roubiliac and grandson of editor and author Josiah Conder. ...
also declared them fake on the 21st, and Ernest Renan
Joseph Ernest Renan (; 27 February 18232 October 1892) was a French Orientalist and Semitic scholar, expert of Semitic languages and civilizations, historian of religion, philologist, philosopher, biblical scholar, and critic. He wrote influe ...
, Albert Löwy
Albert Löwy (8 December 1816 – 21 May 1908) was a Moravian-born English Hebrew scholar and Reform rabbi.
Biography
He was born Abraham Löwy in Aussee, Moravia (now Úsov, Czech Republic), the eldest son of thirteen children of Leopold and ...
, and Charles Henry Waller
Charles Henry Waller (1840–1910) was a Church of England minister, evangelical theologian and teacher.
Biography
Born at Ettingshall in Staffordshire (now part of Wolverhampton) on 23 November 1840, Waller was the eldest son of Stephen R. Walle ...
soon followed. 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."
On August 27, Christian David Ginsburg
Christian David Ginsburg (, 25 December 1831 – 7 March 1914) was a Polish-born British Bible scholar and a student of the Masoretic tradition in Judaism.
He was born to a Jewish family in Warsaw but converted to Christianity at the age of 15.
...
, who as the designated philological examiner of the British Museum had been given access to the entire scroll, published the same conclusion. Earlier that week, the British Museum had ceased to display Shapira's strips. Ginsburg also suggested the shape of the strips, their ruling, and the leather used matched Yemenite scrolls Shapira had sold in previous years. Clermont-Ganneau later made the same assessment.[ 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.
]
Aftermath and scroll's fate
Ginsburg's conclusion drove Shapira to despair, and he fled London.
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
Sir Edward Augustus Bond (31 December 18152 January 1898) was an English librarian.
Biography
Bond was born at Hanwell, London, England, the son of a schoolmaster. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood, and in 1832 obtained a ...
, principal librarian of the British Museum, begging for reconsideration of the manuscript. 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
Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Rotte'') is the second largest city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is in the province of South Holland, part of the North Sea mouth of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta, via the ''"N ...
.
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. Rosette sent "two small pieces" to Schlottmann for further study in 1884. It later appeared in an auction at Sotheby's
Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, and ...
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.[
In 1970 Professor Alan David Crown, on the basis of a misreading of a letter from Sir ]Charles Nicholson
Sir Charles Nicholson, 1st Baronet (23 November 1808 – 8 November 1903) was an English-Australian politician, university founder, explorer, pastoralist, antiquarian and philanthropist. The Nicholson Museum at the University of Sydney is nam ...
to Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet, playwright and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European and Scottish literature, notably the novels ''Ivanhoe'', ''Rob Roy (n ...
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.[ 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.
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
Burton upon Trent, also known as Burton-on-Trent or simply Burton, is a market town in the borough of East Staffordshire in the county of Staffordshire, England, close to the border with Derbyshire. In 2011, it had a population of 72,299. Th ...
on March 8, 1889. 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. They were covered in dark glutinous matter and had a faint odor of funeral spices or asphalt
Asphalt, also known as bitumen (, ), is a sticky, black, highly viscous liquid or semi-solid form of petroleum. It may be found in natural deposits or may be a refined product, and is classed as a pitch. Before the 20th century, the term a ...
, known in the nineteenth century for their use in Egyptian mummification but not later found on genuine dead sea scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls (also the Qumran Caves Scrolls) are ancient Jewish and Hebrew religious manuscripts discovered between 1946 and 1956 at the Qumran Caves in what was then Mandatory Palestine, near Ein Feshkha in the West Bank, on the nor ...
. 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. 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.[ 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. 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
''Scriptio continua'' (Latin for "continuous script"), also known as ''scriptura continua'' or ''scripta continua'', is a style of writing without spaces or other marks between the words or sentences. The form also lacks punctuation, diacritic ...
'' except in the Decalogue
The Ten Commandments ( Biblical Hebrew עשרת הדברים \ עֲשֶׂרֶת הַדְּבָרִים, ''aséret ha-dvarím'', lit. The Decalogue, The Ten Words, cf. Mishnaic Hebrew עשרת הדיברות \ עֲשֶׂרֶת הַדִּבְ ...
, a style never discovered in other Hebrew manuscripts but widely assumed by Shapira's contemporaries to have been the original form of the text. In the Decalogue, every word is followed by an interpunct
An interpunct , also known as an interpoint, middle dot, middot and centered dot or centred dot, is a punctuation mark consisting of a vertically centered dot used for interword separation in ancient Latin script. (Word-separating spaces did no ...
except לא, ''do not'', and nota accusativi. The writing, by multiple hands, more closely resembles that of inscriptions like the Mesha Stele
The Mesha Stele, also known as the Moabite Stone, is a stele dated around 840 BCE containing a significant Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions, Canaanite inscription in the name of King Mesha of Moab (a kingdom located in modern Jordan). Mesha tel ...
, 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.[ ]André Lemaire
André Lemaire (born 1942) is a French epigrapher, historian and philologist. He is Director of Studies at the École pratique des hautes études, where he teaches Hebraic and Aramean philology and epigraphy. He specializes in West-Semitic old c ...
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.
Ginsburg reported that some strips were duplicates in different hands, with very slight differences (noted ''infra'').
Spelling and wording
The text uses Moabite spellings, made famous by the Mesha Stele
The Mesha Stele, also known as the Moabite Stone, is a stele dated around 840 BCE containing a significant Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions, Canaanite inscription in the name of King Mesha of Moab (a kingdom located in modern Jordan). Mesha tel ...
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.[ 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.]
Modern scholarship
Despite the unanimous assessment of the 19th century scholars who had access to the manuscripts that they were a forgery, a few have argued the scroll was genuine since it was lost.
Menahem Mansoor argued in 1956 that re-examination of the case would be justified. Mansoor's conclusion was immediately attacked by Moshe H. Goshen-Gottstein and by Oskar K. Rabinowicz. J. L. Teicher and others argued the scroll could be genuine.
More recently, Shlomo Guil (2017), (2021),[Dershowitz, Idan]
"The Valediction of Moses: New Evidence on the Shapira Deuteronomy Fragments."
''Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft'' 133 (1): 1-22. Ross Nichols (2021), and others
have argued that the strips were genuine. However, these claims have been repeatedly refuted by other scholars and it remains a minority view.
Text of the scroll
Gallery
Notes
References
Bibliography
*
Further reading
Original scholarly papers
* , including the assessments by A. Neubauer, Clermont-Ganneau, C. R. Conder, and C. D. Ginsburg.
* Asya, Yaakov (1975). "Parashat Shapira", supplement to: Myriam Harry seud. "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
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Initial reappraisal (1956–1958)
* Goshen-Gottstein, Moshe H. "The Shapira Forgery and the Qumran Scrolls", Journal of Jewish Studies 7 956 187–193, and "The Qumran Scrolls and the Shapira Forgery" n Hebrew Haaretz, 28 December 1956
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* Teicher, J.L. "The Genuineness of the Shapira Manuscripts", Times Literary Supplement, 22 March 1957
Modern scholarship (1965–)
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* Budde, Hendrik (1994). ''Die Affaere um die 'Moabitischen Althertuemer he 'Moabitic Antiquities' Affair in Budde and Mordechay Lewy, ''Von Halle Nach Jerusalem'' rom Halle to Jerusalem pp. 106–117, in German. Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Forschung des Landes Sachsen-Anhalt cience Ministry of the State of Saxony-Anhalt Halle.
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*Dershowitz, Idan (2021)
''The Valediction of Moses: A Proto-Biblical Book''
Forschungen zum Alten Testament.
* Dershowitz, Idan (2021)
"The Valediction of Moses: New Evidence on the Shapira Deuteronomy Fragments."
''Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft'' 133 (1): 1-22.
* Guil, Shlomo (2012)
''In Search of the Shop of Moses Wilhelm Shapira, the Leading Figure of the 19th Century Archaeological Enigma''
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* Mansoor (1983). ''The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Textbook and Study Guide'', 2nd ed., chap. 25, pp. 215–224. Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, MI.
* Nichols, Ross K. (2021)
''The Moses Scroll: Reopening the Most Controversial Case in the History of Biblical Scholarship''
Horeb Press, St. Francisville, LA. .
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* Silberman, Neil Asher (1982), ''One Million Pounds Sterling, the Rise and Fall of Moses Wilhelm Shapira, 1883–1885'', in "Digging for God and Country" New York: Knopf
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* Sabo, Yoram (2014). ''Shapira & I. A documentary film. In the footsteps of Shapira and his scroll.''
* Sabo, Yoram (2018). ''The Scroll Merchant: In Search Of Moses Wilhelm Shapira's Lost Jewish Treasure'' (Hebrew). Hakibbutz Hameuchad.
Primary sources
* British Library Add. MS. 41294, "Papers Relative to M. W. Shapira's Forged MS. of Deuteronomy (A.D. 1883–1884)."
* Some letters and images were published in {{Cite journal, last=Shavit, first=Yaakov, title=הערה לביוגראפיה של משה וילהלם שפירא, סוחר העתיקות מירושלים ולזיופיו, trans-title=Note to the biography of Moshe Wilhelm Shapira, the antiquities dealer from Jerusalem and his forgeries, language=he, date=1984, url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23398966, journal=Cathedra, issue=31, pages=182–188, jstor=23398966, issn=0334-4657
Archaeological forgeries
19th-century hoaxes