Researchers now have a new tool they can use to support, refine or modify their own estimates for specific manuscripts
An Artificial Intelligence (AI) model that examined some of the Dead Sea manuscripts, which, among other texts, include the older copies of the so -called Hebrew Bible, indicated that they are older than thought.
The University of Groningen (Netherlands) has developed an AI-dates, called Enoch, which provides much more accurate estimates for individual manuscripts in an empirical base, combining it with radiocarbon dating and paleography.
The investigators inserted the binary images of 135 manuscripts in ENOCH and then asked the paleographers to evaluate the predictions of the dates, according to the study published in PLOS One and quoted on Wednesday by the EFE agency.
Researchers now have a new tool they can use to support, refine or modify their own estimates for specific manuscripts, often with a 50 -year accuracy if they are over 2,000 years old, the university noted in a statement.
The manuscripts were discovered seven decades ago (especially in the Qumran caves near the Dead Sea) and contain the oldest manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and many ancient Jewish texts.
Although the general dating of the scrolls is between the third century BC and the second century CD, so far it has not been possible to accurately estimate the age of each manuscript.
Enoch’s early results show that many are older than previously thought and also change the way researchers should interpret the development of two ancient Jewish writing styles, called “Hasmoneu” and “Herodian”.
Hasmoneu writing manuscripts may be older than the current estimate of approximately 150-50 BC, while Herodian writing has come earlier than previously thought, suggesting that the two writings have coexisted since the late BC century, and not in the middle of the first century BC, as the predominant vision, noted the university.
Cross validation has shown that ENOCH can predict radiocarbon dating from style with an uncertainty of about 30 years (more or less). This is even more precise than the results of direct radiocarbon dating for the period between 300 and 50 AC
Enoch is the first comprehensive automatic learning -based model that uses gross image data to offer probabilistic predictions from the date of manuscripts.
The combination of empirical evidence (radiocarbon dating from physics and analysis of forms of geometry characteristics) brings to paleography “a degree of quantified objectivity never before achieved in this field” according to the same note.
This new chronology of scrolls “significantly influences our understanding of the political and intellectual evolution of the Eastern Mediterranean during the initial Hellenistic and Roman periods (from the end of the fourth century to the second century AD),” the researchers underlined.
In addition, it allows the development of new knowledge about Literacy in ancient Judea in relation to historical, political and cultural events, such as urbanization, “the rise of the asmonean dynasty and the emergence and development of religious groups such as those behind the Dead Sea manuscripts and the early Christians.”
