In 622 B.C.E., the High Priest Hilkiah reported a great discovery – the original scroll of the Torah of Moses! The details of that discovery are recorded in the Hebrew Bible (2 Kings 22-23 and 2 Chronicles 34-35). A careful examination of these texts of the discovered scroll and the subsequent reform of King Josiah led scholars to propose that the scroll written by Moses resembled a form of the present book of Deuteronomy. What did Moses write? Can we, with any degree of certainty, discern the authentic form of Moses’ Torah? What happened to the scroll? Later scholars would call the story of Hilkiah’s discovery a “pious fraud,” but was it?
In 1865, Bedouin tribesmen discovered sixteen leather manuscript strips east of the Jordan, high above the Wadi Mujib (biblical Arnon), in a cave, wrapped in linen, appearing to be covered in pitch, written in ancient Hebrew. It soon became apparent that this scroll resembled a form of the Book of Deuteronomy but with noteworthy variations. It was ultimately declared a forgery, but was it? A careful study of the contents of THIS scroll suggests that the experts were wrong. Might it have been a copy of the original Torah of Moses?
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