Case file · High strangeness
The Shapira scroll
Jerusalem antiquities dealer Moses Shapira offered the British Museum in 1883 leather strips with an early version of Deuteronomy, said to come from a cave near Dhiban in Jordan.
1883 CE · 31.50, 35.78 · status: disputed
The account
Scholars declared them forgeries; Shapira killed himself in 1884, and the strips disappeared. After the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, some scholars argued they might have been genuine.
The sceptical view
Shapira had earlier sold fake Moabite pottery; the debate cannot be settled because the strips are lost.