A recent artificial intelligence investigation indicates that the Dead Sea Scrolls are probably substantially older than previously believed.
According to a study that used AI and radiocarbon dating to properly examine the remains of historic manuscripts, the scrolls may be centuries older than previously believed.
According to Mladen Popovic, the research’s lead author, the Dead Sea Scrolls… fundamentally altered our understanding of early Christianity and ancient Judaism. The study was released in the journal PLOS One on Wednesday.
According to Popovic, little over 200 of the 1,000 manuscripts are classified as biblical Old Testament. They’re the oldest Hebrew Bible copies we have.
Popovic is the dean of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands’ Faculty of Religion, Culture, and Society.
In 1947, Bedouin shepherds in what is now the West Bank found manuscripts in the Judean Desert. Archaeologists have collected thousands of fragments of those scrolls.
Samples from 30 of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were donated by the Israel Antiquities Authority, were analyzed by researchers using carbon dating rather than lettering form.
A high-resolution copy of the scripts was also produced, and 135 scrolls’ textual characters were analyzed by an AI-powered model named “Enoch.”
Based on the investigation, the scrolls are older than previously believed, dating from the third century B.C. to the first century A.D.
Though little more has been done to investigate their origin up to this point, a paleographic investigation of the text within the scrolls in 1961 limited their origin to that timeframe.
AI analysis supports the findings of the latest study, which prepared parchment fragments to eliminate any chemical evidence from earlier investigations before beginning carbon dating.
It implies that some of the scrolls, such as Ecclesiastes and other Old Testament texts, were a century or two older than first believed.
Additionally, the study indicates that literacy rates were significantly higher in the area.
“These manuscripts are not just the earliest copy of these [Old Testament] books that survived,” Joe Uziel, the head of the IAA Dead Sea Scrolls Unit, told The Times of Israel.
“One of the oldest copies of these compositions ever written,” he claimed.
There is a lot more to learn from further research on the Dead Sea Scrolls, according to Popovic, because only around 10% of the scrolls have been examined.