Michael Press on the myth of Moses Shapira as a master forger: “So we are left with the image of Shapira — and that image, of a master forger and genius, is now entrenched. It seems impervious to the reality that he forged almost nothing himself, that he mostly sold fakes made by others. It seems unaffected by the fact that he and his collaborators were actually poor forgers.”

Stories about new biblical discoveries appear yearly in major newspapers around the world. But do all of these announcements give an accurate picture of what scholars – of archaeology, epigraphy, or the Bible – actually do?