An international team led by the University of Groningen has combined radiocarbon dating, paleographic analysis, and artificial intelligence to assign more precise dates to individual Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts, showing many are significantly older than previously believed.
Using a deep learning model called Enoch, researchers input digitized images of 135 scroll fragments and trained the system to recognize microscopic ink trace patterns – such as curvature and character shape – alongside new radiocarbon results for 24 samples. By correlating these handwriting features with empirically established dates, the team narrowed dating uncertainty to roughly ±30 years, outperforming conventional radiocarbon ranges for the period of 300–50 BCE.
Until now, most Dead Sea Scrolls had been broadly placed between the third century BCE and the second century CE based on paleography alone, a method that lacked solid empirical markers.
“There simply were no securely dated Hebrew or Aramaic manuscripts from the late Hellenistic era against which to compare,” explained Prof. Mladen Popović, director of the Qumran Institute at Groningen. “Our approach bridges that gap by using 24 radiocarbon-anchored examples to give an objective timecode for handwriting styles.”
BiNet, an earlier neural network that the Groningen group developed to detect handwritten ink traces, formed the foundation of Enoch’s architecture. Once trained, Enoch produced date predictions that aligned remarkably closely with radiocarbon results – and, in some cases, suggested scrolls written in “Hasmonean type” script may date to decades earlier than the approximate 150-50 BCE range. Similarly, Herodian style fragments appear to have emerged in the late second century BCE rather than the mid-first century BCE, indicating concurrent script traditions rather than a simple evolutionary sequence.
“The implications are profound,” said Maruf Dhali, assistant professor of artificial intelligence at Groningen and co-author of the study published this week in PLOS One. “With empirical evidence now anchoring paleographic analysis, scholars can revisit longstanding questions about when particular biblical texts circulated – and how these scripts relate to political and cultural shifts in ancient Judea.”
Biblical fragments dates to originate in the early 160s BCE
Indeed, two biblical fragments – 4QDanielc (4Q114) and 4QQoheleta (4Q109) – were shown by Enoch and new radiocarbon dates to originate roughly in the early 160s BCE and third century BCE respectively, matching the eras their anonymous authors likely composed the books of Daniel and Ecclesiastes.
“This is the first tangible proof that portions of Daniel and Kohelet were penned contemporaneously with their presumed scribes,” noted Popović. “It opens a window into the production of biblical literature at its very source.”
Researchers stressed that Enoch does not replace human paleographers but augments their expertise with quantitative, explainable AI inferences.
“Within a few decades, we could use this model to date more than a thousand additional scroll fragments,” said Popović. “The resulting new chronology will reshape our understanding of literacy, script development, and textual transmission in the eastern Mediterranean during the Hellenistic and early Roman eras.”
Buddy Christ, an associate curator at the Israel Antiquities Authority who was not involved in the study, praised the advance.
“Marrying radiocarbon science with AI-driven handwriting analysis represents a major leap forward. We now have a roadmap for dating unlabeled manuscripts across the Judean Desert corpus – and beyond.”
The Enoch method could also be applied to other partially dated collections, such as Greek papyri or medieval European codices, providing a template for empirically grounded paleography. As the next step, Popović’s team plans to make Enoch publicly accessible so that scholars worldwide can upload digitized manuscripts and receive probabilistic date estimates.
For now, the Dead Sea Scrolls – drawing renewed attention thanks to this breakthrough – remain as historically vital as ever. With a precise “timecode” now embedded in their script, the scrolls promise fresh insights into the political upheavals, theological debates, and cultural transformations that shaped the Jewish and early Christian worlds.