Oeralindaboek

   Unofficial title of a manuscript that turned up in 1867. It describes in an unusual script and in quasi-ancient Frisian language the chronicles of the Frisians since prehistoric times. Most historians now consider it a forgery. Recently Dr. Goffe Jensma tried to make a reasonable case that it was written by minister and writer Francois Haverschmidt (1835–1894; pseudonym Piet Paal tjens), who could have written it as a parody on the Bible in order to challenge orthodox Christianity. In the 1930s, German National Socialist scholar Herman Wirth (1885–1981) published a mutilated “translation” of it. After World WarII, the battle between adherents of the historical authenticity of the sources of the Oera Linda Boek and its opponents continued. Robert Scrutton (The Other Atlantis, 1977) and Frank H. Pierce II (The Oera Linda Book, 1983) have pub lished new English translations.