But by then Shapira's scrolls had vanished. With the discovery of the eerily similar Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, investigators reopened the case, wondering whether the ill-fated merchant had, in fact, discovered the first Dead Sea Scroll, decades before the rest. But before the British Museum could acquire them, Shapira's nemesis, French archaeologist Charles Clermont-Ganneau, denounced his find as a fraud. When news of the discovery leaked to the excited English press, Shapira became a household name. Written centuries earlier in the barren plains east of the Dead Sea and stashed away in caves, the mysterious scrolls called into question the divine authorship of the scriptures, taking three thousand years of religious faith and turning them upside down. In the summer of 1883, Moses Wilhelm Shapira-archaeological treasure hunter, inveterate social climber, and denizen of Jerusalem's bustling marketplace - arrived unannounced in London claiming to have discovered the world's oldest Bible scroll. A gripping account of one man's quest to find the oldest Bible in the world and solve the riddle of the brilliant, doomed antiquities dealer accused of forging it.
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