For decades, the Dead Sea Scrolls have fascinated scholars and the public alike, offering rare insights into the origins of Judaism and Christianity.
These ancient texts, discovered in caves near the Dead Sea in the mid-20th century, date from around the third century BCE to the second century CE.
But until now, it’s been nearly impossible to pinpoint when each individual scroll was actually written.
A new breakthrough changes that.
An international team of researchers led by the University of Groningen has developed a powerful new tool called Enoch, which combines artificial intelligence with radiocarbon dating and handwriting analysis.
The result?
A much clearer timeline of when the scrolls were written—some even by authors living during the times described in the Bible.
Traditionally, scrolls were dated by paleography—the study of ancient handwriting.
But this method is imprecise and relies heavily on expert judgment, especially since there are no other securely dated Hebrew or Aramaic manuscripts from that era to compare with.
There’s a wide gap between the few dated texts from the 4th century BCE and those from the 1st or 2nd century CE, making it difficult to anchor most Dead Sea Scrolls in time.
The team behind the Enoch model set out to change that by using radiocarbon dating on 24 Dead Sea Scroll samples and combining the results with high-tech handwriting analysis.
They used machine learning and a deep neural network called BiNet, which can analyze minute details in handwriting—down to the curves and strokes of individual letters.
This allows the model to detect subtle differences in writing styles across time, something traditional paleography cannot do alone.
Once trained, Enoch was able to predict the age of a manuscript within about 30 years—a level of precision that even radiocarbon dating alone doesn’t usually achieve for this period. The team then tested the model on 135 digitized scrolls, and experts reviewed the AI’s predictions. The results are now published in the journal PLOS One.
What they found surprised them. Many scrolls turned out to be older than previously believed. Even more exciting, two scroll fragments—one from the Book of Daniel and one from Ecclesiastes—were written during the same time periods as their assumed authors. This marks the first time any part of a biblical book has been matched so closely in age to when it was believed to have been written.
The implications go far beyond dating old documents. This new timeline changes how scholars understand the evolution of ancient Hebrew script styles and suggests that key religious texts were being copied and shared earlier than thought. It also provides rare, tangible connections to the people who wrote them—anonymous scribes whose work has shaped religious thought for thousands of years.
This breakthrough offers not just a clearer picture of the past but a whole new way of looking at ancient history—through the eyes, and hands, of those who lived it.
