
Has anyone heard of “V”? The below is abstract from a pdf available on Academia.edu. I’ve taken a peek at the pdf, and find many well-known scholars have contributed their expertise to Dershowitz’s effort in it’s writing. . . Here’s the abstract:
“Moses Wilhelm Shapira’s infamous Deuteronomy fragments – long believed to be forgeries – are authentic ancient manuscripts, and they are of far greater significance than ever imagined. The literary work that these manuscripts preserve – which Idan Dershowitz calls “The Valediction of Moses” or “V” – is not based on the book of Deuteronomy. On the contrary, V is a much earlier version of Deuteronomy. In other words, V is a proto-biblical book, the likes of which has never before been seen. This conclusion is supported by a series of philological analyses, as well as previously unknown archival documents, which undermine the consensus on these manuscripts. An excursus co-authored with Na’ama Pat-El assesses V’s linguistic profile, finding it to be consistent with Iron Age epigraphic Hebrew. V contains early versions of passages whose biblical counterparts reflect post-Priestly updating. Moreover, unlike the canonical narratives of Deuteronomy, this ancient work shows no signs of influence from the Deuteronomic law code. Indeed, V preserves an earlier, and dramatically different, literary structure for the entire work – one that lacks the Deuteronomic law code altogether. These findings have significant consequences for the composition history of the Bible, historical linguistics, the history of religion, paleography, archaeology, and more. The volume includes a full critical edition and English translation of V.”

** you do not have permission to see this link ** criticizes Idan Dershowitz (& Ross Nichols) for giving “very incomplete versions of Shapira’s earlier career.”
… he had already been famous, notorious even, as a bookseller and antiquities dealer in Jerusalem for over a decade. There, Shapira had offered literally thousands of fake antiquities for sale. Over a span of five years in the 1870s, he had some 2,000 “Moabite” pottery vessels and clay statuettes on sale in his Jerusalem shop, managing to sell around 1,700 to the Royal Museum in Berlin. They, too, were all fake. Shapira did sell hundreds of authentic medieval and early modern manuscripts, but acquired them in dubious fashion: claiming to be a rabbi —he was actually a Jewish convert to Christianity — to convince Jewish communities in Yemen to sell him their scrolls, or simply bribing officials to help him take them by force. Shapira appears to have doctored at least one manuscript and told lies about others. Among the remarkable items for sale in his shop over the years were, according to Shapira, an inscription set up by Moses to celebrate his conquest of Moab, an ancient Moabite parchment describing their gods, and a manuscript of the book of Jeremiah from the time of Jesus.
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