In 1883 fifteen leather strips found by Bedouin in caves on the east side of the Dead Sea came into possession of book and manuscript antiquities dealer Moses Shapira of Jerusalem. These ancient texts were written in Paleo-Hebrew and after painstaking reading and transcription of the faded letters by Shapira,…
Ross Nichols, author of the book,The Moses Scroll published last year, offers the best to date overview of the entire 19th century saga of Jerusalem antiquarian and bookseller, William Moses Shapira, and his sixteen leather strips inscribed in paleo-Hebrew purportedly discovered by Bedouin on the east side of the Dead Sea…
My first visit to Qumran was in April 1979–forty-three years ago. I have since been back over sixty times, spending as much as a month at a time there on two extensive surveys and three liscensed excavations. In this extensive interview with Neal Sendlak, host of the Youtube channel Gnostic Informant,…
This lecture lays out the varied calendrical systems used in ancient Judaism. Calendars are complex things and lie at the core of our lives, as well as how most religious traditions function. How to count time was one of the most contentious issues between various ancient Jewish groups and sects–whether…
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1946-47. We are already seeing signs of various retrospective reporting and analysis in special issues of major mass media publications such as National Geographic and Life magazine. These thick, lavishly illustrated, special editions are harbingers of much more…
Here is a lecture version of my previous post, “Dead Messiahs Who Don’t Return.” Please Like, Share, and Subscribe to my YouTube Channel, and click the “bell” on Youtube if you want notifications. I am uploading dozens if lectures from my decades long career in March. https://youtu.be/rMe0g52O-OY
I am continuing to post the materials that I have used in my courses for 45 years now–free for anyone to see and use. You are welcome to print out, read, and share the link via social media, but please do not repost or reproduce without permission. The following excerpt from…
Many of my readers are aware of the publication of Ross Nichols’s new book, The Moses Scroll that chronicles the whole Moses Shapira Saga and the question of whether or not the 19th century “Dead Sea Scroll” was most likely ancient or a modern forgery. I just received word from Nichols…
From Ross Nichols. Well worth reading. An Easter 1883 resurrection. Then and now https://themosesscroll.com/moses-shapiras-manuscript-and-an-easter-to-remember/ https://themosesscroll.com/moses-shapiras-manuscript-and-an-easter-to-remember/
Today’s international weekend edition of the New York Times has the Moses Shapira “Dead Sea Scroll” story, that appeared on-line March 10th, on the front page, above the fold! Congratulations to Idan Dershowitz for his years of painstaking work on the 1878 Shapira Scroll fragments–which have disappeared–trying to reconstruct them and…