Some of the Dead Sea Scrolls may be older than previously believed, and certain biblical texts might date back to the time of their original authors, according to new research.
The first of these ancient scrolls were discovered in the Qumran caves in the Judean Desert by Bedouin shepherds in the mid-20th century. Ranging from legal documents to portions of the Hebrew Bible, the manuscripts have traditionally been dated from the 3rd century BCE to the 2nd century CE, reports Nicola Davis for The Guardian.
Now, researchers from universities in the Netherlands, Denmark, and Italy have used artificial intelligence to gather new insights into the dates of individual scrolls—findings that could challenge established assumptions about when, where, and by whom they were produced.
“It’s like a time machine. We can now greet these people who lived 2,000 years ago and place them much more precisely in time,” said Mladen Popović, a professor at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and lead author of the study, speaking to The Guardian.
Many scrolls were carbon dated back in the 1990s, but Popović notes that scholars at the time did not account for contamination from castor oil—a substance used in the 1950s to help specialists read the manuscripts—which could skew results. Moreover, many scrolls had been dated solely based on handwriting style analysis.
In their Plos One publication, the team describes how they performed carbon dating on 30 samples from different manuscripts found at four sites, covering an estimated timespan of five centuries. Importantly, the researchers first cleaned the samples to remove any castor oil contamination. Of the 30 samples, 27 were successfully carbon dated. They found that while two samples turned out to be more recent than previously thought, many others were actually older.
Among their discoveries, the team found that two distinct styles of Paleo-Hebrew script—known as Hasmonean and Herodian hands—coexisted for far longer than previously assumed. They also determined that a manuscript known as 4Q114, which contains verses from the Book of Daniel, is older than traditional palaeographic analysis had suggested.
“Previously, it was dated to the late second century BCE, about a generation after the Book of Daniel’s author. Now, our study pushes it back to the period when the author himself lived,” said Popović.
Authentic Dead Sea Scrolls as displayed at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in 2018 (Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post via Getty Images/Ideal Image)
The team then used a type of AI called machine learning to build a model named “Enoch”—a nod to the biblical figure associated with knowledge and wisdom.
They trained Enoch using 62 digital images of ink traces from 24 carbon-dated manuscripts, along with their radiocarbon ages. They then tested the model by showing it 13 new images from the same manuscripts. In 85% of cases, the AI’s estimated ages matched the carbon dating results—and often narrowed down the date range even more precisely.
“We created a very robust tool, grounded in empirical research. It’s based on physics and geometry,” Popović told The Guardian.
When presented with images from 135 undated scrolls it hadn’t seen before, Enoch generated realistic dating estimates for 79% of them, as judged by expert palaeographers. Popović added that in cases where the estimates seemed implausible, the issue likely stemmed from poor-quality images or problematic data.
This system has already yielded fresh insights: for example, a copy of Ecclesiastes (included in both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament) appears to date to the period of its supposed author. According to Popović, Enoch could eventually date more scrolls without the need for destructive carbon dating, which requires taking tiny samples.
“There are more than 1,000 Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts, so our study is just a first but significant step. It opens a door to history with new possibilities for research,” he said.
Professor Joan Taylor, an expert at King’s College London, noted that the findings could have a major impact on Qumran studies. “These results imply that most of the scrolls found in the caves near Qumran were not written there, since the settlement wasn’t inhabited until later,” she said.
However, Dr. Matthew Collins of the University of Chester cautioned that radiocarbon dating reveals the age of the parchment, not necessarily when the text was written. He also questioned how stylistically representative the relatively small training sample was for different periods.
“Overall, this is a welcome study that adds a valuable new tool to our toolkit for dating such texts,” Collins said. “However, it’s a method that should be used carefully and alongside other evidence.”
