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Was There Another Version of the Ten Commandments?
In 1883, Moses Shapira shocked the world
On May 9, 1883, Moses Shapira writes to Herman L. Strack, an Orientalist in Berlin, saying he has come upon an amazing find. It’s an ancient leather manuscript. On its darkened surface, paleo-Hebrew letters spell out the Ten Commandments—with surprises! Like an eleventh commandment: “Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart.”
Shapira was an antiquities dealer in Jerusalem, a Jew who had converted to Christianity. He was reputable, except for that one episode with the Moabite idols. They’d been dismissed as forgeries by the famed French archaeologist, Charles Clermont-Ganneau.
How had Shapira acquired this manuscript? He told a strange tale of a Bedouin man who’d found it, among mummies, in a cave on the eastern side of the Dead Sea. It was then stolen from him by another man, who’d sold it to Shapira, then disappeared.
Strack declines the opportunity to authenticate the manuscript, as do other scholars. So, Shapira takes it to London.
Walter Besant, the novelist and historian, recalls their meeting:
“He had with him, he said, a document which would simply make students of the Bible and Hebrew scholars reconsider their ways; it would throw a flood of light upon…
