Chanan Tigay

Non-fiction about the author’s quest to locate a lost biblical manuscript, and to solve the mystery of its origins. In 1883, Moses Wilhelm Shapira, an antiquities dealer from Jerusalem, brought a scroll, purported to be an early version of the book of Deuteronomy, to England, along with a story of where he found it. Several notable experts examined the scroll and declared their findings. Decades later, the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. Did Shapira find the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls sixty years earlier or was it a clever forgery? Chanan Tigay, an American journalist and son of a biblical scholar, traveled to many countries across the world on a four-year journey to uncover the truth.

“If the fragments, and so the scrolls, were real, they would reveal so much about how the Bible developed – how it was written, rewritten, and revised over the course of centuries. And if they were a forgery, whoever created this manuscript was some kind of genius – clever, creative, and profoundly learned. In conjuring a wild version of Deuteronomy, they had somehow managed to predict the Dead Sea Scrolls decades before their discovery. Who had the chops to pull off a fraud this brilliant?”

This book is meticulously researched and well-written in a journalist style. The author keeps a sense of suspense in the narrative by doling out information gradually. At any given time, the reader will not know more than the author knew at that point in his search. The mystery is unraveled in alternating chapters between Shapira’s story and the author’s search, with historical context provided as necessary.

Tigay tells an intriguing tale of obsession, rivalry, scandal, suicide, and journeys into remote and previously unmapped regions. I found it fascinating. This book will appeal to those interested in historical mysteries or the history of theological artifacts.… (meer)

Wavering between 3 and 4 stars. Rounding up to 4 because I suspect I'd have enjoyed it more if I'd read rather than listened – the author reads in my Audible recording and does an excellent job, but my listening/walking periods have been sporadic lately and I kept losing the train of the narrative. So, reader-fail. On the other hand, the story never became compelling enough that I was “drop-everything” eager to get to it, so maybe it wasn't just me.

Anyway, this is a story-within-a-story, and, while not exactly thrilling (I notice that some reviewers felt that it was “Indiana Jones-like.” My memories of Indiana Jones may be off, but I recall lots danger and action, rather than extensive library research and meetings. Still, there is a search for an Ark of the Covenant era artifact, and lots of antisemitism, if no Nazis, so...) it is interesting. Except when it gets repetitive. The story is about the hunt by our author, Chanan Tigay, for the leather strips, lost at the end of the 19th century, purported by their “discoverer”, Moses Shapira, to be the oldest copy of Deuteronomy. Along with the tale of his search, he tells Moses Shapira's story, debating the question of whether Shapira was the brilliant creator of a clever hoax, the persecuted victim of antisemitic prejudice, or the maligned discoverer of an ancient treasure. Or a little of all of these. An intrinsic problem for Tigay's story is that we, his readers, would have noticed if news headlines had recently gone wild with the story of the discovery of a genuinely ancient copy of the Book of Deuteronomy and of a maligned antiques dealer. So we know right up front that Tigay isn't going to find the strips, have them analyzed using modern dating methods, and discover that they really are what Shapira suggested they were. So, our options are more limited and with less potential for thrills. Still, given this, Tigay does manage to maintain some suspense and to create a reasonably satisfying conclusion. The ins and outs of Tigay's hunt and of Shapira's intrepid efforts are fairly engaging despite the predictable outcome.… (meer)