Book of the Month: February 2025

Ross K. Nichols: The Moses Scroll: Reopening the Most Controversial Case in the History of Biblical Scholarship (Horeb Press, St Francisville, LA, 2021). Hardcover, Kindle, Audio. If you like non-fiction mysteries and thrillers that in the end provide you with fascinating and well researched historical materials then this is the book for you. This is the most engaging story I have encountered in my entire career as a Biblical scholar. I was pleased to write the Forward. This little book should be in the library of anyone who likes to delve into the ancient past as it related to biblical texts–once thought to be a forgery in the 1880s, might well be the OLDEST Dead Sea Scroll ever discovered. You be the judge. I am 90% convinced it is an authentic ancient scroll, and not a clever 19th century forgery. It has disappeared but a team of researchers is hot on the trail to find its present whereabouts so it can be properly tested.

In 1878, a Jerusalem antiquities dealer named Moses Wilhelm Shapira acquired a curious biblical manuscript consisting of sixteen leather strips. The manuscript, written in ancient, Paleo-Hebrew, contained what appeared to be a form of the Bible’s Book of Deuteronomy but with significant variations. It was allegedly discovered by Bedouin tribesmen around 1865, east of the Dead Sea, in a remote cave, high above the Wadi Mujib (biblical Arnon). Shapira believed that his manuscript was both ancient and authentic. In 1883, he presented his scroll to the leading scholars of Europe. Newspapers around the world covered the unfolding story as scholars debated the genuineness of the leather strips. Ultimately the scroll was deemed a forgery and Shapira the forger. However, beginning in 1947, ancient scrolls discovered in the Qumran caves near the Dead Sea lead us to ask—were the critics wrong? The Moses Scroll documents the details of the entire saga based upon what we know today including a chronological telling of the fascinating story based upon 19th-century reports; an assessment of the genuineness of Shapira’s scroll; a new transcription of the manuscript as seen through the eyes of the 19th-century’s best Hebraists; and the author’s own translation of the original sixteen leather strips with a commentary and notes.