‘Solving the dating problem’: AI rewrites the history of the Dead Sea Scrolls

The Dead Sea Scrolls, the most important manuscript discovery of the past hundred years, are revealing new secrets because of artificial intelligence.

A major new study published in the journal PLOS ONE has introduced a completely new way to determine how old these ancient texts are. This could change what we know about when they were written and the historical setting in which they appeared.

This new method, which uses advanced AI along with traditional radiocarbon dating, could transform our knowledge of Judaism and the early history of Christianity. According to DW, for many years, experts have carefully studied the Dead Sea Scrolls, trying to understand what they say and figure out how old they are. These nearly 1,000 ancient manuscripts were found in caves near the Dead Sea in the middle of the 20th century.

They include some of the oldest known versions of texts from the Hebrew Bible, giving us extremely valuable information about religious practices and daily life in ancient Judea. However, figuring out exactly when the scrolls were written has been a very difficult task.

The Dead Sea Scrolls may be older than we think

The main method used so far has been paleography, which is the study of ancient handwriting. While this approach has been helpful, it is also highly subjective. Small differences in handwriting styles between scribes and even changes in one scribe’s writing over time have made it very hard to pin down exact dates. Because of this subjectivity, past attempts to date the scrolls have not been as precise or reliable as scholars would like.

This new study provides a strong solution. Researchers created an AI program specifically designed to study the unique features of ancient handwriting. The AI was first trained using a set of 24 manuscripts whose ages had already been confirmed through radiocarbon dating. Radiocarbon dating works by measuring the decay of carbon-14 isotopes in organic materials to estimate their age.

While made with AI for fun.

Study author Mladen Popovic from the University of Groningen said, “It is very exciting to set a significant step into solving the dating problem of the Dead Sea Scrolls and also creating a new tool that could be used to study other partially dated manuscript collections from history.”

For example, the Book of Daniel 8-11, thought to be from 160s BC, could be as old as 230 BC. By studying these known manuscripts, the AI learned the detailed differences in handwriting styles across different time periods. This made it possible to analyze undated scrolls in a much more objective way.

Next, the AI examined 135 Dead Sea Scroll fragments that had never been firmly dated. These fragments were believed to have been written between roughly 200 BC and 100 AD. By comparing the handwriting in these fragments to the already-dated examples, the AI produced new estimates for when they were written. The results were very accurate, with the AI achieving a success rate of 79 percent.

The findings of this study are particularly interesting. The AI analysis suggests that many of the scrolls are much older than experts previously thought. Some may even date back to the early second century BCE or earlier. This new timeline challenges long-standing ideas about when scribes became more active in Judea.

It was once believed that a big increase in writing and manuscript production happened because of the growth of the Hasmonaean kingdom in the mid-second century BC. However, the new data indicates that a strong tradition of copying texts was already in place before this time.

This updated timeline has important effects on how we understand ancient Judea and the cultural background of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The revised dates could change how we interpret the texts themselves, offering new insights into the beliefs and practices of the people who wrote and preserved them.