Notes on the Orthography of the Shapira Manuscripts: The Forger's Marks (original) (raw)
Related papers
This article offers a short overview and assessment of the debate since March 2021 regarding the so-called Shapira strips, which came to light in the 1880s, following the publication of an article and monograph by Idan Dershowitz, professor of Hebrew Bible at the University of Potsdam, claiming that the strips which Moses Shapira tried to sell to the British Museum in 1883 were not forgeries, but contained a pre-exilic progenitor of the present book of Deuteronomy. The affair and both its early and recent reception are described, along with methodological and societal issues.
The Shapira Manuscript: proto-Deuteronomy or Reworked Pentateuch?
2023
This paper presents a literary-critical and comparative study of the Transjordan campaign as narrated by the Valediction of Moses (corresponding to Deut 1:40-3:11), with a view to determine whether the latter can be considered an ancestor of Deuteronomy, so claimed by Idan Dershowitz. Our observations lead to the conclusion that V is a revision of D, and we therefore reject Dershowitz's claim that V is proto-Deuteronomy. Instead, we suggest that the closest analogue to the Valediction can be found among a number of scrolls discovered in the Judean desert. Indeed, the wide scope of compositional techniques used by the V scribe, including the activities of correcting, revising and supplementing by importing material are similar to those used by the manuscripts identified by scholars as the Reworked Pentateuch manuscripts.
A comparison with Ginsburg's largely inexact drawings of the Mesha and Siloam letterforms leads me to conclude that the drawings of Shapira's manuscripts by Ginsburg and most other 1880s scholars are also unlikely to be facsimiles. Hence these drawings of the lost manuscripts are unsuited for confirming or denying authenticity. The sole exception is the zigzag yod of The Graphic. The potential for genuineness of that yod has a soundness of its own: Taken at face value, the combined Samaria, Rehov and Haror comparisons show this letter, hence the Shapira manuscripts at large, to be genuine. For if not, how could a forger in the 1880s foresee a letterform, the next attestation of which, at Samaria, lay three decades in the future? To be sure, excusing away The Graphic's meandering yod as clumsy (Richelle), or incidental, or immaterial, is no option, as noted below; the clearly drawn form is too highly diagnostic to be unintended. Résumé. Une comparaison avec les dessins largement inexacts réalisés par Ginsburg des inscriptions de Mésha et de Siloé m'amènent à conclure que les dessins des manuscrits Shapira faits par Ginsburg et par d'autres spécialistes dans les années 1880 ne sont pas des facsimilés. Il en découle que ces dessins ne peuvent confirmer ou infirmer l'autenticité de ces manuscrits. La seule exception est le yod en forme de zigzag attesté dans The Graphic. Le potentiel d'authenticité de ce yod est à lui seul convaincant : la comparaison avec Samarie, Rehov et Haror montre que cette lettre, et donc les manuscrits Shapira dans leur ensemble, sont authentiques. Sinon, comment un faussaire des années 1880 aurait-il pu prédire une forme attestée seulement trois décennies plus tard à Samarie ? Écarter ce yod sous prétexte qu'il serait maladroit (Richelle), incidentel ou immatériel est impossible : la forme clairement tracée est trop distinctive pour être involontaire.
At certain stages in the history of the text of the sacred scriptures of both Judaism and Islam an effort was made to standardise their oral and written form. The standardisation of the written form of the text aimed to fix not only the content and its grammatical details but also the orthography in which the words were represented. When a manuscript of the Hebrew Bible or of the Arabic Qur'an was produced the scribe was generally not free to follow the orthographic system which was customary in the period in which he lived but was required to reproduce the orthography which had been fixed at an earlier period, despite the fact that the orthography in use in other types of manuscript had changed.
Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 2021
Moses Wilhelm Shapira’s infamous Deuteronomy fragments have long been deemed forgeries, with Shapira himself serving as the obvious suspect. I provide new evidence that Shapira did not forge the fragments and was himself convinced of their authenticity. Indeed, the evidence for forgery is illusory. In a companion monograph, I show that the Shapira fragments are not only authen- tic ancient artifacts but are unprecedented in their significance: They preserve a pre-canonical antecedent of the Book of Deuteronomy.
A valediction to Moses W. Shapira’s Deuteronomy document
Bibliotheca Orientalis, 2021
In his 2021 monograph "The Valediction of Moses", Idan Dershowitz argues that the manuscripts offered for sale by Moses Wilhelm Shapira in 1883, generally considered to have been forged, were genuine and contained a pre-exilic source text of Deuteronomy he refers to as V. Based on Dershowitz’s new critical edition of the text, this paper examines the historical and philological evidence for this thesis. V’s literary dependence on the Masoretic Text can be demonstrated on text-critical and linguistic grounds, which makes a pre-exilic date of composition highly unlikely. An analysis of the historical, literary, and linguistic arguments presented by Dershowitz moreover shows that nothing in V proves its authenticity, while the orthography and certain linguistic features strongly support the identification of this text as a forgery produced between 1870 and 1880.
The Valediction of Moses: New Evidence on the Shapira Deuteronomy Fragments
Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 2021
Wilhelm Moses Shapira’s infamous Deuteronomy fragments have long been deemed forgeries, with Shapira himself serving as the obvious suspect. I provide new evidence that Shapira did not forge the fragments and was himself convinced of their authenticity. Indeed, the evidence for forgery is illusory. In a companion monograph, I show that the Shapira fragments are not only authentic ancient artifacts but are unprecedented in their significance: They preserve a pre-canonical antecedent of the Book of Deuteronomy.
Orthography and Biblical Criticism
2014
Biblical Hebrew exhibits considerable orthographic variability. A single word may be spelled in multiple ways—often within the same book. In this study, we set out to determine if these differences in spelling correspond in any way to scholarly theories regarding the authorship of the Pentateuch. Our results indicate that despite the tortuous editing processes and countless generations of hand-copied manuscripts, certain statistically significant correlations between orthography and the hypothesized sources remain.
The textual development of the Torah did not differ from the development of the other books of Scripture. It would have been understandable had early scribes been more reverential toward the text of the Torah, but to the best of our knowledge this was not the case. Thus, the same variety of orthographic styles that were in vogue for the books of the Prophets and Hagiographa are evi-denced in the Torah. As a result, the exceedingly plene and very inconsistent spelling practice possibly produced by the " Qumran scribal school " 1 was also employed in several Torah scrolls. 2 Likewise, the range of variation between the textual sources in the Torah does not seem to be any narrower than in the other books of Scripture; thus in Exodus 35–40 the amount of variation between the MT and LXX is much larger than in most other books, on a par with the variation between the MT and LXX in 1 Kings, Esther, and Daniel (including the so-called apocryphal Additions). By the same token, the Samaritan Pentateuch (SP) reflects an editorial stage in the composition of the Torah that differs much from the composition of the MT and was created at a later stage. Against this background, we will take a closer look at one group of relatively small textual differences between the various sources, namely, the harmonizing additions in the manuscripts of the Torah, especially in Deuteronomy.
The textual development of the Torah did not differ from the development of the other books of Scripture. It would have been understandable had early scribes been more reverential toward the text of the Torah, but to the best of our knowledge this was not the case. Thus, the same variety of orthographic styles that were in vogue for the books of the Prophets and Hagiographa are evidenced in the Torah. As a result, the exceedingly plene and very inconsistent spelling practice possibly produced by the "Qumran scribal school" 1 was also employed in several Torah scrolls. 2 Likewise, the range of variation between the textual sources in the Torah does not seem to be any narrower than in the other books of Scripture; thus in Exodus 35-40 the amount of variation between the MT and LXX is much larger than in most other books, on a par with the variation between the MT and LXX in 1 Kings, Esther, and Daniel (including the so-called apocryphal Additions). By the same token, the Samaritan Pentateuch (SP) reflects an editorial stage in the composition of the Torah that differs much from the composition of the MT and was created at a later stage. Against this background, we will take a closer look at one group of relatively small textual differences between the various sources, namely, the harmonizing additions in the manuscripts of the Torah, especially in Deuteronomy.