Idan Dershowitz, 38, now claims the manuscript is, indeed, real and far older than Shapira thought.
Dershowitz published his claims and arguments in a paper released earlier this month, The Valediction of Moses: New Evidence on the Shapira Deuteronomy Fragments.
The paper outlines a number of techniques, including linguistic and archival evidence, to argue that the text is actually an earlier, more primitive draft of Deuteronomy, dating to the period of the First Temple.
Proving the authenticity of the claims will be incredibly difficult.
Experts have yet to subject Dershowitz’s claims and research to analysis, but a closed-door seminar at Harvard in 2019 resulted in fierce debate, according to The New York Times.
Antiques dealer Moses Willhelm Shapira released the scroll to the world in 1883
The 15 fragments claim to contain words from the biblical book of Deuteronomy
He sold them to the British Museum for £1 million but they were branded as fake
The museum sold the fragments at auction for £25 and they disappeared forever
A new study into the linguistics and structure of the words based on drawings and writings from the 18th century suggest it may actually be ancient text