Notes on the Orthography of the Shapira Manuscripts: The Forger’s Marks

The Shapira manuscripts, putatively precursors of Deuteronomy, have many indications of forgery, particularly in the orthography, which mixes the writing conventions of the Mesha stele and the Hebrew Bible. Notably, the consistent use of waw , instead of he , to mark final ō is an anachronism. These problems were not perceivable by the text’s nineteenth century critics (or its forgers), but in hindsight are clear marks of the forger’s art.