Jonathan Klawans

Biblical Forgery and Academic Authentication: Persisting Patterns of Guile and Gullibility

Biblical Forgery and Academic Authentication describes and decries the roles academics have played in the authentication of biblical forgeries. The most notorious recent incident is surely the 2016 publication of thirteen minuscule Dead Sea Scroll fragments displayed in the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, quickly determined to be clever forgeries. Additional episodes range from Cyrus Gordon's 1970s authentications of supposedly ancient Hebrew inscriptions discovered in America to more recent trusting re-evaluations of the suspicious Deuteronomy manuscripts offered for sale by Moses Wilhelm Shapira in 1883. While various articles and books have focused on one incident or another, no recent monograph has tried to grasp the larger, repeating dynamic of academic naiveté among biblical scholars. Nor has any work on forgery to date isolated and illustrated the distinct role played by the academic authenticator-a figure who stands between forgers and skeptics, neither forging nor criticizing the artifacts they encounter and endorse. The inherently controversial act of authenticating unprovenanced finds occasionally coincides with other broken norms (undue secrecy, insufficient disclosures, at times with money involved). This book sheds new light on long-resolved forgery cases, to tip the balance in some open cases, and to expose the ethical and intellectual lapses that permit the current situation to persist and fester.