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. More recently some scholars have reopened the debate (see below) but the majority remain to be convinced.
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." 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 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 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 gave several different accounts of the scroll's provenance, and the inconsistencies between them have been used 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. 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 Adschaje ... 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 Selim was unable to visit Jerusalem, he had asked his friend, the Sheik, Mahmud of Abu Dis near Jerusalem, to arrange a meeting with Selim 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: 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: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:[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.
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. Delitzsch 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, 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." 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.
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. 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. 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; Theodor Nöldeke 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 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.Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement for 1883
Shapira sought to sell the scroll to the British Museum for a million pounds, and allowed the Museum to exhibit two of the 15 strips. 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; on August 17, Edward Augustus Bond, principal librarian of the British Museum, indicated that he too thought they were fake.
On August 13, Adolf Neubauer, 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 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, 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. Claude Reignier Conder also declared them fake on the 18th, and Ernest Renan, Albert Löwy, and Charles Henry Waller 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, 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 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.Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement for 1883, pp. 207–208 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, 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.Newspaper "Het Vaderland", March 12, 1884.