Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Busted!

HURRIYET DAILY NEWS: Four caught selling 1,900-year-old leather Torah.

I would be happy to be wrong on this, but I simply do not believe that these guys had a complete Torah scroll that was 1900 years old. That would be nearly as old as the Dead Sea Scrolls. It does sound like they did have an oldish Hebrew scroll of some sort which perhaps they shouldn't have had, and it's as well that this was noticed. I'm not sure if the photo is supposed to be of the scroll, but it's upside down and of poor resolution, the script is not of 100 CE, and it doesn't look a Torah scroll to me.

Ilan Ben Zion has more details in The Times of Israel: Turkish police bust men trying to sell ‘a 1,900-year-old Torah’: Suspects insist they legally acquired ancient 29-foot-long parchment.

That would make it comparable in length to the Temple Scroll (9 meters).

As the latter article notes, the Turkish authorities do not have an impressive recent track record for understanding such Bible-related antiquities as fall into their hands. (See here and [final story] here.) Still, I give them points for at least paying attention and investigating these things.