antiquities ever since the discovery of the Moabite stone. On the other
hand, the forger, if forgery there be, is assuredly no clumsy and
ignorant bungler, as the makers of the Moabite pottery were confidently
alleged to be by those who disputed its genuineness. It is, of course,
part of his craft, and not, perhaps, much more than the 'prentice part,
to give to the sheepskins on which the text is inscribed an appearance
of immemorial antiquity. But a good deal more than the skill required to
make a new sheepskin look like an old one has gone to the production of
Mr. Shapira's fragments. If they are forged, the fabricator must have
known what scholars would be likely to expect in genuine fragments,
and have set himself to fulfill their expectations. In these days of
scientific palaeography and minute textual scholarship no forger of
ancient manuscripts could hope to take in scholars unless he were a
scholar himself. Variations of text would be looked for as a matter of
course; palaeographical accuracy would be exacted to the minutest turn
of a letter. Now, to vary a text so as to furnish a different recension
without betraying ignorance or solecism requires scholarship of no mean
order, while it is very far from an easy thing to write currently in an
archaic and unfamiliar character in such a manner as to deceive experts
in palaeography. But the fabricator of these fragments, if fabricated
they are, has attempted and accomplished a good deal more than this.
He has in some cases produced two identical texts written in different
hands, both preserving unimpaired the archaic character of the letters.
This implies either the employment of two scribes or else an almost
incredible skill in the single scribe employed, and in either case
it doubles the probability of detection. If, moreover, the supposed
fabricator is also himself the scribe, it is evident that he is not only
a very ingenious artist, but also a very accomplished scholar, and one
can only regret that he has engaged in an industry which has placed him
at the mercy of an Arab who would steal his mother-in-law for a few