Dead Sea Scrolls a century older than previously thought

New AI technology can date the manuscripts with a 30-year uncertainty

A fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were found at the Qumran caves in the occupied West Bank. Reuters

Fragments from a collection of ancient Jewish manuscripts found on the northern shores of the Dead Sea are 100 years older than previously thought, a study found.

The Dead Sea Scrolls, as they are best known, were discovered in the mid 20th century at the Qumran caves in the occupied West Bank.

They include the oldest surviving manuscripts of entire books from the Bible, and which for decades were generally dated from the 3rd to 2nd century BCE.

But new AI technology developed by researchers has enabled them to date some of the scrolls back to the 4th century BCE.

Two of the biblical scrolls – the Book of Daniel and Ecclesiastes – are now believed to have come from the time of their presumed authors.

The Book of Daniel is believed to have been completed in the 160s BCE. The AI software, Enoch, placed the scroll back in that time period.

The same was true for a scroll fragment of Ecclesiastes, which is commonly assumed to have been written by an anonymous author in the 3rd century BCE.

“More manuscripts are now older, being dated to the first half of the second century BCE, the third century BCE and in two cases even into the late fourth century BCE,” Mladen Popovic, who co-led the research, told The National.

“We may have to change our understanding of when the community of Qumran came into existence,” said the researcher, who is professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Judaism and director of the Qumran Institute at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands.

Computer scientist Maruf Dhali, centre, and fellow researchers. Photo: University of Groningen

The researchers' findings were published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS on Wednesday.

They say the Enoch date-prediction programme provides more accurate date estimates for individual manuscripts. It uses AI to combine the traditional study of old handwriting with radiocarbon dating, which calculates the age of a material by measuring the amount of a specific carbon molecule in the sample.

Traditionally, researchers studying ancient handwriting have been unable to more accurately date texts between 4th and 2nd century BCE, but researchers say this “gap” has now been closed through Enoch’s additional use of carbon dating.

Fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Israel Antiquities Authority laboratory in Jerusalem. AFP

They say that the programme can predict radio carbon-based dates and handwriting style with an uncertainty of about 30 years.

“The beauty of the model is that we can get down to individual manuscript level, which gives us a nuanced picture of the data,” Prof Popovic said.

The work was a collaboration between historians of the ancient world and computer scientists, led by Prof Popovic and Dr Maruf Dhali, assistant professor in artificial intelligence.

The first results, which analysed 135 manuscripts, showed that many were much older than previously thought.

“This also changes how researchers should interpret the development of two ancient Jewish script styles which are called Hasmonaean and Herodian,” the researchers said.

Writing styles were analysed using BiNet, a deep neural network for detection of handwritten ink-trace patterns. Photo: University of Groningen

The two scripts are now believed to have co-existed from the second century BCE, and manuscripts in the Hasmonean script could be older than their current estimate of 150-50 BCE.

“This new chronology of the scrolls significantly impacts our understanding of political and intellectual developments in the eastern Mediterranean during the Hellenistic and early Roman periods – late fourth century BCE until second century CE,” the authors said.

Prof Mladen Popovic, right, and Dr Maruf Dhali working with Enoch to date a manuscript from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Photo: University of Groningen

“It allows for new insights to be developed about literacy in ancient Judaea in relation to historical, political, and cultural developments such as urbanisation, the rise of the Hasmonaean dynasty, and the rise and development of religious groups such as those behind the Dead Sea Scrolls and the early Christians,” they said.

Prof Popovic said this changes the widely accepted notion that the literacy among Jewish groups such as the Qumran community was a result of the expansion of the Hasmonean dynasty from the second half of the second century.

“Instead of understanding a rise in literacy as a consequence of the Hasmonean expansion, the earlier dating of many manuscripts may suggest that literacy and the formation of groups that form their own ideas about texts that are valuable and important for their community … preceded Hasmonean expansion,” he said.

He speculates that this “may even have been one factor in something like the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucid empire. But this is speculation at the moment and needs further research”.

There are more than 1,000 manuscripts in the collection that still need analysing. “Our study is a first but significant step, opening a door into history with new possibilities for research,” he said.