Review
=====
Title: The Lost Book of Moses: The Hunt for the World’s Oldest Bible
Author: Chanan Tigay
Publisher: Ecco (an imprint of HarperCollins)
Genre: Literary journalism
Year of Publication: 2016
Number of Pages: 272
Binding: Paperback
ISBN13: 978-0-06-220641-1
Price: $27.99
Reviewed by Julie J. Nichols for the Association for Mormon Letters
This swashbuckling narrative takes us with its author from Philadelphia across the United States to Europe and Israel and back in a years-long roller coaster attempt to determine whether certain untraceable archaeological finds of the 1880s were or were not authentic forerunners of the Dead Sea Scrolls. There are over-the-top speculations in this account, moments of mania when it’s easy to get impatient with Tigay as he pursues wild hares in his efforts to find the missing documents and absolve the perpetrators. Inconsistencies in the modulated typeface supposed to distinguish source material from Tigay’s own words are irritating. But be assured: the satisfying conclusion makes the whole mad journey worthwhile.
Tigay, now an assistant professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University, first heard of Moses Wilhelm Shapira from his rabbi father, a Biblical scholar as likely to speak Akkadian and tout scholarly tomes to the dinner table as to cuff his kids for disrespectful antics over their food. And if you noticed a certain bantering tone in the previous sentence, you will have observed precisely the tone of this entire book—whose working title was (and is advertised on Tigay’s professional pages as) *Unholy Scriptures: Fraud, Suicide, Scandal, and the Bible that Rocked the Holy City.* It’s a spirited, opinionated, passionate personal narrative recounting Tigay’s investigation into a nineteenth-century Biblical scandal. If you like your history spiced with attitude, conjecture, and personality—and then with a logically-supported solution to a decades-old mystery–this may be the book for you.
Especially if you’re interested in religious duping. Forgery. Mark Hoffman. Who’s fooling whom, and why, and how it could happen. That kind of thing. Because we’re all susceptible, aren’t we? Doesn’t everyone want proof that their beliefs are materially grounded? Couldn’t the original manuscript of Deuteronomy be out there somewhere, just waiting to show how scribes, translators, power-mad kings changed it for their own profit? Don’t we all want to know that the word of God *really* started out to be?
Of course we do. If it were reported that the Golden Plates, from which Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon, had been unearthed and were waiting to be examined for authenticity, even we, the faithful, might rush to the scene.
So this story—not a scholarly book with footnotes, not a textbook, but not a mere memoir either, and most intriguingly not a novel—has indubitable appeal. The mystery, the “inciting incident” of the narrative, is the 1884 suicide death of antiquities dealer Moses Wilhelm Shapira in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and the disappearance of the suitcase full of manuscripts he took with him into the hotel room where he ended his life. Layering nineteenth-century archaeological-industry history and twenty-first century fact-finding legwork, Tigay presents Shapira’s biography and psychology; the Biblical-documents craze of the times; Shapira’s supporters at the British Museum, his rivals in France, and his enemies from all over Europe and the Middle East; and Tigay’s personal “Shapiramania,” egged on by supporters, rivals, and enemies of his own.
We follow both Shapira’s and Tigay’s adventures—or rather, we follow the vicissitudes of Tigay’s obsession as he traces Shapira’s path from Russia to Jerusalem, from England to France and Germany and back, ultimately, to his family in Jerusalem. He has what looks like the “original” Deuteronomy manuscript, whose contents call into question much of what Biblical scholarship has taken for granted for centuries. Magnificent authenticated discoveries precede him; but so do forgeries and fakes. So some of his contacts (i.e. the British Museum et al) are willing to offer him big money for his finds–while others are intent upon exposing him. And then–the suicide.
Shapira’s daughter “Harry”’s novelized biography of her father is quoted frequently. The ARC I read does not have citations for any of the newspaper reports or comments peppering the account. The quotations are a little bewildering if you’re a scholar looking for sources. But Tigay’s driving questions are transparently these: Where are Shapira’s missing documents now? What happened to them? Were they authentic, or were they fake? If they were fake, is Shapira guilty, or was he a victim himself? He could have committed suicide for either reason. Some of Tigay’s sources tell him one thing, some say another. Some withhold information because they want to be the ones to find the final answer. Others casually reveal tidbits that turn out to be Tigay’s golden keys. And golden they are. It’s hard to argue with Tigay’s ultimate verdict.
No spoilers here. If you want to know who helps Tigay reach his conclusions at last, and if you want to know what those conclusions are, you must read the book. But I *can,* and will, reveal (with appropriate elisions) the lovely ending:
“Approaching Shapira’s final…resting place, I found myself aching to make a…gesture…of respect, recognition, remembrance….I picked up a stone and set it down…[and] if I closed my eyes, I could just make out…a grand basalt headstone, polished and bright…on the front, inscribed in clear black letters, this:
Moses Wilhelm Shapira
Father, husband, agent to the British Museum” (260)
It’s the perfect finale—respectful, even admiring, certainly moving. Here in the end, in the final chapter, it comes together. It works. The persistent reader understands Shapira, Tigay, and even the gullible side of herself/himself with sympathy and compassion—and that’s why we read anything, after all.