Author’s Blog
Moses Shapira’s Magnificent Missing Manuscript of Jeremiah?
Yet another paper has appeared in the ongoing debate over the authenticity of Shapira’s [in]famous leather manuscript strips. The latest, posted on Academia, relates a story of a manuscript seen in the shop of Moses Shapira in the year 1870. The author writes that in...
The Christian Nature of Shapira’s Fragments: An Argument Accepted, Ignored, or Considered Unconvincing
On 12 January 2022, Brill published a new contribution to Shapira studies in Dead Sea Discoveries (2022) 1-29. The printed version will soon follow the online version under the same title, "Shapira's Deuteronomy, Its Decalogue, and Dead Sea Scrolls Authentic and...
The Shapira Affair and Those Skeptical of The Scrolls
On 6 January 2022, Idan Dershowitz posted a four-part thread on his Twitter account.[1] This is what he posted. I just listened to an excellent talk by Michael Langlois,[2] in which he dispels the myth that the Dead Sea Scrolls were accepted by most early...
Shapira in the Netherlands – But Why?
One of the great puzzles for most researchers of the Shapira Affair is why he spent the final months of his life in the Netherlands. The basic story, oft repeated, is that after the official rejection of his manuscript strips by Christian Ginsburg, the dejected...
Lofty Hills of Moab – A Hymn by M. Lowrie Hofford 1884
Research often yields things of interest tangentially related to the investigation at hand. I was looking for 19th-century photographs of the land east of the Jordan, searching the archives of the Library of Congress, which contain a wealth of public domain images of...
Clermont-Ganneau was Told No and The Record Went on Record – 17 August 1883
“On Friday, Clermont-Ganneau returned to the museum where he was informed with ‘great regret’ by Edward Augustus Bond, the principal librarian, that Mr. Shapira had ‘expressly refused his consent’ for him to inspect the fragments. The Frenchman would describe his...