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\u201cPeople who aren\u2019t scholars of Dead Sea Scrolls are not \u2018in the know\u2019 and can easily be fooled because of the lack of self-correction.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prior to the publication of his piece, only one major volume\u2014published by Brill in 2016\u2014had been formally retracted and watermarked as such. Others, including Bloomsbury\u2019s Gleanings from the Caves<\/em>, continued to circulate, without any warning, even though the volume\u2019s own editors have acknowledged that nearly half the fragments they published are fake.<\/p>\n Klawans\u2019s article is not about uncovering new forgeries. The inauthenticity of these fragments has already been established through some scientific testing and scholarly consensus. What\u2019s missing, he argues, is accountability. Most of the publications that presented these forgeries as authentic remain uncorrected, unmarked, and in some cases, still for sale. Klawans calls for formal retractions of these flawed works that lack elements of self-correction, not to punish authors, but to protect the integrity of the scholarly record.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m really interested in academic authentications of forgery. I\u2019m interested in having scholars look at these instances when we messed up\u2014when things got through peer review that should never have,\u201d he says. \u201cI think many Dead Sea Scrolls scholars thought this story was just over. But it is not old news\u2014there is unfinished business.\u201d<\/p>\n This lack of transparency mirrors a growing concern in the digital world: the persistence of misinformation in AI-generated content. Just as forged scrolls can mislead scholars and students, AI systems trained on flawed or outdated data can confidently present falsehoods as fact. The difference is scale\u2014AI can amplify errors across millions of interactions in seconds.<\/p>\n Klawans\u2019s academic journey has long been shaped by questions of authenticity, but the issue came to the forefront of his work only more recently. His first book focused on purity, the second on sacrifice, and the third on Josephus and theological diversity in the Second Temple period. Each project hinted at the next, culminating in his current focus on forgery.<\/p>\n \u201cForgery is the way you fake antiquity, and literary forgery is often a response to the charge of heresy,\u201d he explained. \u201cThat\u2019s one of the ways I got into my current interest in forgery.\u201d<\/p>\n His investigation into the Dead Sea Scrolls forgery crisis deepened while writing a book on biblical forgeries. What he found was troubling: a pattern of scholarly rationalizations\u2014\u201cbroken pens, old scribes\u201d\u2014used to explain away inconsistencies in the fragments. And a publishing ecosystem that, in many cases, failed to acknowledge the possibility of forgery at all.<\/p>\n \u201cI got more and more frustrated at how hard it was to do the work, but also at how many of these publications lack any elements of self-correction,\u201d he said. \u201cThey don\u2019t speak about the possibility of forgery; they just presume authenticity.\u201d Klawans is careful to distinguish between academic disagreement about authenticity (which is par for the course) and publications that presume authenticity without argument. Retraction, he argues, should be reserved for the latter: when authenticity is presumed regarding objects that turn out to be fake.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a very specific case,\u201d he said. \u201cI can\u2019t think of other instances in the last 20 or even 30 years when things that turned out to be fake were published with hardly any discussion of authenticity whatsoever.\u201d<\/p>\n His call to action is clear: follow the example set by Brill, the only major publisher to retract a volume of forged scrolls. Make the retracted content freely available, clearly marked, and accompanied by notices that explain the reasons for retraction.<\/p>\n And, he said, it is working\u2014slowly. In June 2025, shortly after Klawans\u2019s piece appeared in Ancient Jew Review, he forwarded the link to editors at Bloomsbury. Rather quickly\u2014albeit after some back and forth\u2014the publisher posted a \u201cwarning label\u201d online for one of the forged scroll publications: \u201cThe Publishers were made aware that some of the fragments discussed in this book have been discovered, since publication, to be of dubious authenticity. The Publisher is investigating this matter.\u201d At least one other similar warning has been posted with regard to another publication. And Klawans said a few other journals are also exploring the matter.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m gratified that people are paying attention,\u201d Klawans said. \u201cI think there\u2019s increasing recognition that there\u2019s some unfinished business here\u2014that it\u2019s time to mark these fakes as fakes at the source.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"\/cas\/files\/2025\/09\/AdobeStock_354152616-424x636.jpeg\")
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