Chanan Tigay’s Search for Answers About an Ancient Set of (Possibly Fake) Scrolls
It took a while for Chanan Tigay’s eureka moment to sink in.
He had spent four years on a quest to determine the whereabouts of a group of ancient scrolls that were purported to be the oldest text of the Bible in existence—older than the Dead Sea Scrolls. They might be a source of highly significant evidence of the most ancient state of the Bible for scholars, but no one had seen the scrolls since the suicide of their last owner in 1884. And their location was only one of the mysteries surrounding the scrolls: There was strong likelihood the scrolls were fake. Experts at the British Museum in London had disagreed over the age and provenance of the scrolls, and following sensationalist reports in the British press, all of London, including William Gladstone—the prime minister at the time of their appearance—had come to examine them. Over the decades since the scrolls’ disappearance, no lack of drama had been connected to them; the son of a rabbi and biblical scholar, Tigay was merely the latest individual to investigate.