The Dead Sea Scrolls may have been written decades — or even centuries — earlier than scholars previously thought, according to a revolutionary study that merges traditional scholarship with artificial intelligence. The results potentially reshape scholars' understandings of ancient Israel's history, a new study published Wednesday on PLOS ONE has shown. Whereas until now scholars have largely dated the texts based on their paleography — the shape of their lettering — the interdisciplinary research team started its study by carbon dating pieces of parchment from 30 of the scrolls held by the Israel Antiquities Authority. Once these dates were procured, high-resolution images of the Hebrew and Aramaic lettering from the securely dated scrolls were fed into an AI data-prediction model whimsically named "Enoch." The Enoch model, using geometry-based character shape analysis to learn the paleographic characteristics of the timestamped scrolls, could then extrapolate their paleographic shapes and date other scrolls that have not yet undergone destructive radiocarbon testing. https://www.timesofisrael.com/... |