Analysis of ancient handwriting by AI provides revised age estimations for the Dead Sea Scrolls.
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A fresh analysis of the Dead Sea Scrolls could shift our understanding of their age, researchers claim. Pairing radiocarbon dating with artificial intelligence, they believe that some biblical manuscripts are around 2,300 years old, aligning with the presumed authors' lifespans.
Bedouin shepherds casually stumbled upon the scrolls deep in the Judaean Desert near the Dead Sea in 1947. Archaeologists then gathered thousands of fragments from hundreds of manuscripts across 11 caves, all near Khirbat Qumran in the West Bank.
"The Dead Sea Scrolls were revolutionary when discovered because they drastically changed our perspective on ancient Judaism and early Christianity," says Mladen Popović, lead author of the study and dean of the Faculty of Religion, Culture and Society at the University of Groningen, Netherlands. "Out of around 1,000 manuscripts, a bit more than 200 are considered biblical Old Testament, and they are our oldest copies of the Hebrew Bible."
Popović refers to the scrolls as time machines since they provide a glimpse into what people were reading, writing, and thinking during a historically significant period. Regardless of belief system - be it Christian, Jewish, or none - the Bible's influence on world history is immense, and the scrolls enable scholars to trace its evolution.
Almost none of the Dead Sea Scrolls have dates on them. Scholars largely relied on paleography—the study and deciphering of ancient writing and manuscripts—to estimate manuscript ages, believing they ranged from the third century BC to the second century AD. However, recent research suggests that some scrolls could be as old as 100 years older than previously thought.
Popović and his team utilized cutting-edge radiocarbon dating techniques on 30 manuscripts, which led them to notice inconsistencies with older tests. The researchers then employed an AI named Enoch to analyze high-resolution images of the newly dated scrolls. Enoch correctly predicted the age of manuscripts 85% of the time, sometimes even providing narrower date ranges compared to traditional radiocarbon dating.
Enoch was then tested on images of 135 Dead Sea Scrolls that were not carbon-dated. The AI's estimates were deemed "realistic" in 79% of cases by scholars, driving excitement for further research.
If the team continues to develop Enoch, it could potentially be used to analyze other ancient scripts such as Syriac, Arabic, Greek, and Latin. Future studies may provide even tighter age ranges, potentially remolding our understanding of biblical history and literature.
Additional Resources:
- Lost biblical plant with medicinal properties resurrected from 1,000-year-old seed
- How 2,300-year-old gold rings bring an ancient chapter of Jerusalem’s history to life
- Decoding the Dead Sea Scrolls: Combining radiocarbon dating and AI
- Carbon Dating the Dead Sea Scrolls Using Artificial Intelligence
- Dead Sea Scrolls may be older than believed, new dating shows
Science news: In a groundbreaking discovery, researchers use a combination of radiocarbon dating and artificial intelligence to reevaluate the age of Dead Sea Scrolls, suggesting that some biblical manuscripts might be 100 years older than previously thought.
This finding not only has the potential to reshape our understanding of biblical history and literature but could also pave the way for applying these technologies to other ancient scripts such as Syriac, Arabic, Greek, and Latin, shedding new light on medical-conditions and technological advancements during those periods.
