Videos shared on social media claim to show a recently discovered original scroll of the Book of Esther, a biblical text which recounts the deliverance of the Jewish people from a plot to exterminate them in the 5th century BC. But experts say the video shows a document with random Hebrew letters and no indication of a genuine antiquity.I missed this story when it came out, but it's the sort of thing we've seen many times before. The video announcement is still up on YouTube at present:
My regular readers, you will recognize the pattern: a scroll or codex made of similar-looking crappy material with drawn images, gibberish Hebrew lettering, and Masoretic vocalization (or sometimes Syriac script), all in gold print. Most of the ones I have seen come from Turkey.
I have collected many examples here.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.