AI analysis suggests Dead Sea Scrolls are older than scientists thought, but not all experts are convinced
Many of the Dead Sea Scrolls may be older than experts thought, according to an artificial intelligence (AI) analysis.
Consisting of about 1,000 ancient manuscripts etched onto animal skin, papyrus and copper, the Dead Sea Scrolls contain the earliest known versions of texts from the Hebrew Bible — including copies of the books of Genesis, Exodus, Isaiah, Kings and Deuteronomy — and date from the third century B.C. to the first century A.D.
Now, scientists have used an AI program, dubbed Enoch, to analyze the handwriting patterns on the scrolls, revealing that they may be older than experts thought. The study authors say their findings, published June 4 in the journal PLOS One, are a significant step in dating some of the earliest versions of the Bible. However, not all experts are convinced.
“With the Enoch tool we have opened a new door into the ancient world, like a time machine, that allows us to study the hands that wrote the Bible,” lead study author Mladen Popović, director of the Qumran Institute at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, said in a statement. “Especially now that we have established, for the first time, that two biblical scroll fragments come from the time of their presumed authors.”
Discovered by Bedouin shepherds inside the West Bank’s caves of Qumran from 1946 to 1947, the ancient manuscripts range from legal documents and calendars to sections of the Hebrew Bible and psalms, written mostly in Hebrew but also in Aramaic and Greek.
Previous dating of the scrolls relied on paleography — the study of ancient writing systems — with some undergoing radiocarbon dating in the 1990s. However, castor oil had been applied to some of the manuscripts in modern times to improve their legibility. This oil is also a contaminant that can disrupt radiocarbon dating, so the results from these techniques remain a topic of debate.
In an attempt to clear things up, the researchers first cleaned 30 samples from different manuscripts to remove the castor oil, before successfully radiocarbon-dating 27 of them. They found that two of these scroll fragments were younger than past analyses suggested but that other fragments were older.
Then, the scientists set about creating their Enoch AI model. Enoch was trained on the handwriting of 24 of the newly dated manuscripts and their radiocarbon dates. After verifying the model with 13 further selected images from the same manuscripts, the researchers presented it with 135 undated manuscripts. They found that it agreed with the estimates made by scholars 79% of the time.
Yet the results for the remaining 21% of the scrolls point to a mystery, with Enoch giving them a range of dates that could make them older, hard to determine, or even a century younger than initial estimates.
They also suggest that two different writing styles, known as the Hasmonean and Herodian scripts (named after the Jewish Hasmonean dynasty and Herod, the Roman client king, respectively), could have overlapped for longer than previously thought.
Nonetheless, Enoch also corroborates earlier paleography, notably for a scroll titled 4Q114, which contains three chapters from the Book of Daniel. Analysts initially estimated 4Q114’s writing to have been inked during the height of the Maccabee uprising in 165 B.C. (a part of the Hanukkah story) due to its description of Antiochus IV’s desecration of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. The AI model’s estimate also falls within this range, between 230 B.C. and 160 B.C.
But for some paleographers, the results are hardly surprising.
“The results of this study are very interesting, and presumably important, but not Earth-shattering,” Christopher Rollston,a professor and chair of biblical and Near Eastern languages and civilizations at The George Washington University, told Live Science in an email. “Most of the conclusions of this article also dovetail with what the great palaeographers in the field, such as the late Frank Moore Cross, had already stated more than 60 years ago.”
Rollston also criticized the notion that the new tool could enable researchers to “study the hands that wrote the Bible” as “at the very least, gross hyperbole.” No manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible date to the First Temple period (circa 1200 to 586 B.C.), when it was originally composed, or to the early parts of the Second Temple period (538 B.C. to A.D. 70), he said.
He noted that AI can be useful, but it should only be one of many techniques used to study ancient texts like the Dead Sea Scrolls.
“Enoch could and should never be the only tool in the toolbox of someone wishing to determine the date for the writing of a manuscript. After all, human handwriting, and all of its variations and idiosyncratic features, is a deeply human thing,” Rollston added. “Machines can be helpful in isolating features of a script, but the presence of a gifted palaeographer is at least as valuable as a machine-learning tool.”
See more here Livescience.com
Please Donate Below To Support Our Ongoing Work To Defend The Scientific Method
PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATI ONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company 
incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX.
Trackback from your site.
Howdy
| #
Oh it’s archaic so it’s got to be real hasn’t it…
Doesn’t matter how old they are, are they genuine truthful texts or red herrings?
Reply
Taxibill
| #
These “scrolls” have been proven to be as fake as the hollowcost. Why don’t we just bomb Iran, cause the jews don’t have the balls to do anything on their own.
Reply
Lloyd
| #
Bigot much?
Reply
Taxibill
| #
Is this your term for a realist ? Hyperbole is par for the course with you bolsheviks. Always trying to deny actual history.
Reply
Aaron
| #
lol ai
garbage in garbage out
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi PSI Readers,
This is a great article is about recent historical FACTS which cannot be denied. I draw attention to the book, GULLIVER’S TRAVELS, written by Jonathan Swift published in 1735, nearly three centuries ago. In this book Swift created the word “yahoo”. About which I read “The term “yahoo” has come to mean a crude, brutish or obscenely coarse person. (Wikipedia).
Howdy, Taxiblli, and Aaron, I consider your comments to be those of an yahoo because they seem to only mock the serious effort of Ben Turner to inform us of these recent discoveries of ancient FACTUAL HISTORY.
Have a good day
Reply
Aaron
| #
how dare we MOCK ai
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi Aaron,
I wrote “mock the serious effort of Ben Turner”. Can you not even read?
Reply
Howdy
| #
a rude, noisy, or violent person.
Wind your neck in Jerry, nobody bothering with you again? I asked a civil question, and nobody cares about your old word claims.The word actually covers your own behaviour based on your wikipedia quote.
Yahoo is also a cry of joy. Perhaps you never heard of the yahoo company either.. Do try and keep up, and stay on topic instead of floating around the room in that box of yours, plucking nonsense as you go.
Reply
Howdy
| #
Found another one:
(cryptozoology) A humanoid cryptid said to exist in parts of eastern Australia, and also reported in the Bahamas.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yahoo
Stick that in your pipe and smoke it!
Reply
Taxibill
| #
Do some research Jerry. The scrolls are as fake as the turkic ashkeNAZI claim of israel being their ancestral homeland .
Reply