A new study suggests that many of the Dead Sea Scrolls may be up to a century older than previously thought.
Published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One, the study combines radiocarbon dating with artificial intelligence to analyze the age of the ancient manuscripts. The findings indicate that some of the biblical texts date back roughly 2,300 years, placing them within the lifetimes of their presumed authors.
To reach this conclusion, researchers carbon-dated 30 scrolls from the Israel Antiquities Authority’s collection.
They then trained an AI model, named “Enoch,” on the distinctive letter shapes found in those scrolls. Using this model, they estimated the dates of 135 additional scrolls that had not been radiocarbon-dated.
“Enoch’s style-based predictions are often older than traditionally assumed paleographic estimates, leading to a new chronology of the scrolls and the re-dating of ancient Jewish key texts that contribute to current debates on Jewish and Christian origins,” the paper states.
“We thought of combining different disciplines, including radiocarbon dating and physics, artificial intelligence analysis, paleography, history and philology to reach the result,” lead researcher Mladen Popović, a professor at the University of Groningen told The Times of Israel. “It’s really been a team effort.”
According to the study, the AI matched carbon-dated scrolls with 85% accuracy and provided realistic dating estimates for 79% of the undated scrolls.
One scroll containing verses from the Book of Daniel, previously dated to the second century BCE, is now believed to originate much closer to the time of its presumed author. Another manuscript, from the Book of Ecclesiastes, has been re-dated from 175–125 BCE to between 300 and 240 BCE.
Popović said the findings opened the door to better understanding of how and when these texts were written, shared, and preserved. “Whether you’re Christian, Jewish, or not religious, the Bible is one of the most influential books in history,” he said. “These scrolls let us study it as it was evolving.”
Experts welcomed the new method. Charlotte Hempel of the University of Birmingham told CNN AI could narrow down date ranges even more precisely than carbon dating.
Lawrence Schiffman of New York University called the study a promising first step but cautioned that it’s not yet clear if it will work as well on undated texts. Brent Seales, a computer science professor at the University of Kentucky, said the approach is sound and could improve over time with more data.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, found in 1947 near Qumran in the West Bank, include about 1,000 manuscripts. Around 200 of these are biblical texts—the oldest copies of the Hebrew Bible. The scrolls provide valuable insight into Jewish beliefs and practices before and during the rise of Christianity.
