Dead Sea Scrolls possibly even older than scholars thought

A specially designed artificial intelligence program named after a Judaic prophet suggests one of biblical archeology’s greatest finds require reexamination. According to an international team of researchers in consultation with “Enoch,” some of the Dead Sea Scrolls may be a bit older than we thought. Their evidence is laid out in a study published on June 4 in the journal PLOS One.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are among the most remarkable and revolutionary archeological discoveries ever made. Researchers uncovered the first documents within the West Bank’s Qumrum Caves in 1946, eventually amassing around 15,000 scrolls and parchment fragments over the next decade. Historians and religious studies experts have spent years examining the trove believed to date to the Second Temple era (516 BCE–70 CE), in the process learning invaluable details about ancient Jewish and early Christian life. The scrolls also include some of the oldest complete biblically canonical books known to exist, and helped confirm the era’s rabbinic culture to maintain remarkably standardized written texts over a roughly 1,000-year period.