In 1883 a dealer in antiquities, Moses Shapira, offered for sale a set of purportedly ancient leather strips containing extracts related to the book of Deuteronomy, but differing from the standard text. Shapira had previously been involved (unwittingly, he said) in selling fake ancient artefacts, and after some consideration the manuscripts were also declared to be fakes. Shapira committed suicide. The manuscripts were lost, and for a long time were assumed to have been destroyed in a fire in 1899. More recently they were discovered to have been sold to a collector in Staffordshire, but their fate after his death in 1903 remains unknown.
The interesting thing about this story is that after the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, some people began to wonder whether the Shapira Scroll could have been genuine after all. A number of similarities between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Shapira Scroll have been pointed out, though in the absence of the manuscript the debate has not been resolved.
A paper published in Palestine Exploration Quarterly in 2017 by Schlomo Guil, entitled "The Shapira Scroll was an Authentic Dead Sea Scroll," has just been made available at ResearchGate:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication...Sea_Scroll
The interesting thing about this story is that after the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, some people began to wonder whether the Shapira Scroll could have been genuine after all. A number of similarities between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Shapira Scroll have been pointed out, though in the absence of the manuscript the debate has not been resolved.
A paper published in Palestine Exploration Quarterly in 2017 by Schlomo Guil, entitled "The Shapira Scroll was an Authentic Dead Sea Scroll," has just been made available at ResearchGate:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication...Sea_Scroll
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