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| A cartoon in Punch magazine, 1883, showing Moses Wilhelm Shapira being apprehended by Christian David Ginzburg outside the British Museum, for allegedly forging an ancient textual find. |
Introduction
This article – based extensively on the research by Professor Idan Dershowitz[1] − examines a work that for many years was regarded as a forgery, but, arguably, turned out to be one of the most significant textual finds of the nineteenth century.
Part 1 describes the human-interest story of the original owner of the text, Moses Wilhelm Shapira and his eventual suicide after being accused of being the forger of the text.
Part 2 advocates for the authenticity of the text, and discusses some of the consequences of this find which Dershowitz considers to be “a text that could change everything” (Dershowitz 2021:vi). Because the text resembled sections of the Book of Deuteronomy which deals with Moses’ farewell speech, Dershowitz has called the Shapira texts the ‘Valediction of Moses.’
