On the many variations in arrangement and detail we need not dwell; they speak for themselves. But we have quoted enough to show that these fragments present problems of the utmost importance and interest both to criticism and exegesis, unless, indeed, they are to be regarded as the ingenious fabrications of some Oriental Ireland, who, knowing the interest felt by scholars in variations of the Sacred Text, has set himself, with infinite pains and skill, to forestall a growing demand. Until this preliminary question is resolved to the satisfaction of all competent scholars, no further questions need be raised. In any case the _primá facie_ presumption must be held to be enormously against the genuineness of the fragments. Such a presumption rests on the improbability of finding manuscripts older by at least sixteen centuries than any extant manuscripts of the same text, on the comparative ease with which such fragments can be forged, and on the powerful motives to such forgery attested by the price placed by Mr. Shapira on his property. All that we know of the _provenance_ of the fragments is that Mr. Shapira obtained them from an Arab of doubtful character; and that Arabs of doubtful character have driven a splendid trade in Moabite antiquities ever since the discovery of the Moabite stone. On the other hand, the forger, if forgery there be, is assuredly no clumsy and ignorant bungler, as the makers of the Moabite pottery were confidently alleged to be by those who disputed its genuineness. It is, of course, part of his craft, and not, perhaps, much more than the 'prentice part, to give to the sheepskins on which the text is inscribed an appearance of immemorial antiquity. But a good deal more than the skill required to make a new sheepskin look like an old one has gone to the production of Mr. Shapira's fragments. If they are forged, the fabricator must have known what scholars would be likely to expect in genuine fragments, and have set himself to fulfill their expectations. In these days of scientific palæography and minute textual scholarship no forger of ancient manuscripts could hope to take in scholars unless he were a scholar himself. Variations of text would be looked for as a matter of course; palæographical accuracy would be exacted to the minutest turn of a letter. Now, to vary a text so as to furnish a different recension without betraying ignorance or solecism requires scholarship of no mean order, while it is very far from an easy thing to write currently in an archaic and unfamiliar character in such a manner as to deceive experts in palæography. But the fabricator of these fragments, if fabricated they are, has attempted and accomplished a good deal more than this. He has in some cases produced two identical texts written in different hands, both preserving unimpaired the archaic character of the letters. This implies either the employment of two scribes or else an almost