Author’s Blog
Menahem Mansoor – Disturbing the Scholarly Calm
Travel writer, explorer, and journalist John Hillaby broke the news of an exciting story for The New York Times readers with an article submitted from London on 12 August 1956. The story was a revival of “the case of a man who committed suicide seventy years...
The Price of The Moses Scroll Has Dropped But The Value Remains the Same
In July of 1885, the manuscript strips that Shapira presented to scholars in Europe were sold by Sotheby, Wilkinson, and Hodge, the famous auctioneers of the Strand, London. Listed as Lot 302, the description said, “The Schapira Manuscripts. Deuteronomy in Hebrew. 7...
One Year Since Publication – My Thoughts and Thanks
Today marks the first anniversary since the publication of The Moses Scroll, so I could not let the day pass without pausing to reflect on the unexpected success of my first book. As a first-time author and a self-published one at that, I could not be more...
Touring Holy Lands with Ross K. Nichols & Friends
I was last in Israel in March of 2020 when the world shut down because of Covid; in fact, I had a difficult time returning to the states at that time. Thankfully, and finally, things seem to be returning to a sense of normalcy, and I am very excited to share some good...
A Transcription of Shapira’s Handwritten “Notes as a Preface to the M.S. Deuteronomy
[A PDF version of this post is available on my Academia page. These “notes as a preface to the M.S. of Deut.” is contained in the dossier, “Papers Relative to M.W. Shapira’s Forged MS. Of Deuteronomy (A.D. 1883 – 1884).” Add. MS. 41294 (London: British Library). In...
Afraid of Fraud – The Codex Sinaiticus
In 1933, the British Museum purchased one of the world’s most precious Biblical manuscripts from the Russians. It is known as the Codex Sinaiticus. They reportedly paid £100,000; a price equal to approximately £7.3 million in 2022. I, of course, knew the basic story...