A group of independent researchers determined that the Museum of the Bible’s 16 supposed fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls are forgeries.
Museum of the Bible CEO Harry Hargrave announced the findings on Friday along with lead investigator Colette Loll, according to National Geographic. The faux fragments, purportedly of ancient religious texts, such as the oldest known copies of the Hebrew Bible, deceived a number of collectors and biblical scholars.
“The Museum of the Bible is trying to be as transparent as possible,” Hargrave said. “We’re victims. We’re victims of misrepresentation. We’re victims of fraud.”
“These fragments were manipulated with the intent to deceive,” Loll added. Loll’s team found that the fragments were likely made of ancient leather and modern ink.
The discovery calls into question the authenticity of dozens of supposed fragments that appeared on the antiquities market in the early 2000s. The pieces, about 70 in all, are known as the “post-2002” Dead Sea Scroll fragments.
“Once one or two of the fragments were fake, you know all of them probably are because they come from the same sources, and they look basically the same,” said Arstein Justnes, a researcher with the Lying Pen of Scribes project that identifies and tracks potential antique forgeries.
The discovery does not cast doubt on the 100,000 real fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls that are not in the “post-2002” batch. Most of the 100,000 are held in the Shrine of the Book exhibit in Jerusalem’s Israel Museum.
The first fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1947 on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea. The ancient texts have helped historians discover much about ancient Jewish civilization and trace the earliest-known, complete Hebrew Bible to about A.D. 70, when the Romans destroyed the Jewish Temple.
