In a groundbreaking study, researchers have developed an AI-based model that, combined with radiocarbon dating, helps date ancient manuscripts with greater accuracy. This new model, Enoch, was used to reanalyze the age of Dead Sea Scrolls and has revealed that many of these scrolls could be much older than previously thought. Published in PLoS ONE, the research opens new doors in understanding the evolution of these ancient texts.

The Problem of Dating Ancient Manuscripts

Dating ancient manuscripts, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, has long been a challenge for archaeologists and historians. Many of these manuscripts lack explicit date markings, making it difficult to pinpoint when they were created. Traditional methods have relied heavily on paleography, the study of handwriting styles, to estimate the age of these texts. However, paleography has its limitations, as researchers need enough well-dated samples from a specific period to form a reliable timeline.

This issue is compounded by the fact that many ancient texts, including those found in caves near the Dead Sea, offer no date-bearing information. Without this crucial data, it becomes almost impossible to reconstruct the precise history of these manuscripts. Fortunately, a team of scientists has come up with an innovative solution by combining radiocarbon dating and machine learning algorithms to predict the age of ancient documents, providing a new avenue for dating manuscripts with limited information.

The Creation of the Enoch Tool

To overcome these challenges, an international team led by Dr. Mladen Popović from the University of Groningen developed the Enoch model, named after the biblical figure. The team trained this AI-based program on a database of 24 dated scroll samples. By studying how handwriting styles evolved over time, the AI could predict the approximate age of other undated manuscripts from the same region. This model was tested on a set of Dead Sea Scrolls fragments, providing valuable insights into their creation timeline.

Dr. Popović and his team used both radiocarbon dating and the Enoch model to establish an accurate age range for these manuscripts. The results were impressive: the AI model’s predictions were found to be accurate 79% of the time. This result is particularly notable because it suggests that previous methods may have underestimated the age of several of these documents.

Breaking New Ground in Ancient Manuscript Dating

One of the most exciting outcomes of the study is that the combination of AI and radiocarbon dating revealed older dates for many of the Dead Sea Scrolls than were previously thought. The Enoch tool, in particular, proved to be an invaluable resource in refining the timeline of these ancient texts. The researchers noted that their findings are just the beginning, suggesting that further research and more data could deepen our understanding of when these manuscripts were created.

As Dr. Popović explained, “Although more data and further research could help understand the timeline, our work provides new insights into when these documents might have been created.” This new method offers a significant step toward resolving the dating problem that has surrounded the Dead Sea Scrolls for decades. Moreover, it provides a model that could be applied to other partially dated manuscript collections from various periods in history.

Opening a New Door to the Ancient World

The implications of this research go beyond just the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Enoch tool has the potential to revolutionize how historians study ancient texts, including religious scriptures like the Bible. As Dr. Popović pointed out, “With the Enoch tool, we have opened a new door into the ancient world, like a time machine, that allows us to study the hands that wrote the Bible, especially now that we have established, for the first time, that two Biblical scroll fragments come from the time of their presumed authors.” This breakthrough brings us closer to understanding the historical context in which these sacred texts were written and how they have evolved over the centuries.

By dating these fragments more accurately, researchers can now study how early biblical texts were transmitted and how they may have influenced later religious practices. The ability to pinpoint the ages of such documents is a monumental step in biblical studies and archaeological research, providing scholars with a clearer view of the ancient world.

A Collaborative Effort Between Scientific Disciplines

The success of the Enoch tool and the study as a whole highlights the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration. Dr. Popović and his team worked across multiple scientific fields, including archaeology, radiocarbon dating, paleography, and machine learning, to achieve this breakthrough. This cooperation between experts from different disciplines is crucial for tackling complex problems like dating ancient manuscripts.

Dr. Popović emphasized this aspect, saying, “This would not have been possible without the collaboration between so many different scientific disciplines, a real team effort.” The development of Enoch exemplifies how modern technology, combined with traditional archaeological techniques, can provide new insights into ancient history. This project sets a precedent for future research in the field of manuscript dating, encouraging further innovation and collaboration across scientific fields.

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GRONINGEN, Netherlands — Many of the Dead Sea Scrolls, some of the most widely known archaeological finds of all time, may be older than once thought, according to a new study.

The fresh analysis, which paired radiocarbon dating with artificial intelligence, determined some of the biblical manuscripts date to about 2,300 years ago, when their presumed authors lived, said Mladen Popović, lead author of the report published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One.

Bedouin shepherds first spotted the scrolls by chance in the Judaean Desert, near the Dead Sea, in 1947. Archaeologists then recovered thousands of fragments belonging to hundreds of manuscripts from 11 caves, all near the site of Khirbat Qumran in what is now the West Bank.

“The Dead Sea Scrolls were extremely important when they were discovered, because they completely changed the way we think about ancient Judaism and early Christianity,” said Popović, who is also dean of the Faculty of Religion, Culture and Society at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. “Out of around 1,000 manuscripts, a bit more than 200 are what we call biblical Old Testament, and they are the oldest copies we have of the Hebrew Bible. They gave us a lot of information about what the text looked like back then.”

The scrolls are like a time machine, according to Popović, because they let scholars see what people were reading, writing and thinking at the time.

“They are physical, tangible evidence of a period of history that is crucial — whether you’re Christian, Jewish or don’t believe at all, because the Bible is one of the most influential books in the history of the world, so the scrolls allow us to study it as a form of cultural evolution,” he said.

Almost none of the Dead Sea Scrolls — which were written mostly in Hebrew on parchment and papyrus — have dates on them. Based primarily on paleography, the study and deciphering of ancient writing and manuscripts, scholars have believed the manuscripts range from the third century BC to the second century AD.

“But now, with our project, we have to date some manuscripts already to the end of the fourth century BCE,” he said, meaning that the earliest scrolls could be up to 100 years older than previously thought.

“That’s really exciting because it opens up new possibilities to think about how these texts were written and how they moved to other users and readers — outside of their original authors and their social circles,” Popović added.

The findings will not only inspire further studies and affect historical reconstructions, according to the authors of the report, but will also unlock new prospects in the analysis of historical manuscripts.

Determining the age of Dead Sea Scrolls

Earlier estimates of the manuscripts’ age came from radiocarbon dating conducted in the 1990s. Chemist Willard Libby developed this method — used to ascertain the age of organic materials — in the late 1940s at the University of Chicago. Also known as carbon 14 dating, a chemical analysis of a sample, such as a fossil or manuscript, determines the quantity of carbon 14 atoms it contains. All living organisms absorb this element, but it starts to decay as soon as death occurs, so looking at how much is left can give a fairly accurate age of an organic specimen as old as about 60,000 years.

Carbon dating has downsides, however. The analyzed sample is destroyed during the process, and some results can be misleading. “The problem with earlier tests (on the scrolls) is that they didn’t address the issue of castor oil,” Popović said. “Castor oil is a modern invention, and it was used in the 1950s by the original scholars to make the text more legible. But it’s a modern contaminant, and it skews the radiocarbon result to a much more modern date.”

The study team first used new radiocarbon dating, applying more modern techniques, on 30 manuscripts, which revealed that most of them were older than previously thought. Only two were younger.

The researchers then used high-resolution images of these newly dated documents to train an AI they developed, called Enoch after the Biblical figure who was the father of Methuselah. The scientists presented Enoch with more documents they had carbon-dated, but withheld the dating information, and the AI correctly guessed the age 85% of the time, according to Popović. “In a number of cases, the AI even gave a narrower date range for the manuscripts than the carbon 14 did,” he said.

Next, Popović and his colleagues fed Enoch more images from 135 different Dead Sea Scrolls that were not carbon-dated and asked the AI to estimate their age. The scientists rated the results as “realistic” or “unrealistic,” based on their own paleographic experience, and found that Enoch had given realistic results on 79% of the samples.

Some of the manuscripts in the study were found to be 50 to 100 years older than formerly thought, Popović said.

One sample from a scroll known to contain verse from the Book of Daniel was once believed to date to the second century B.C. “That was a generation after the original author,” Popović said, “and now with the carbon 14, we securely move it (further back) to the time of the author.”

Another manuscript, with verses from the Book of Ecclesiastes, also dates older, Popović added. “The manuscript was previously dated on paleographic grounds to 175 to 125 B.C., but now Enoch suggests 300 to 240 B.C.,” he said.

Eventually, artificial intelligence could supplant carbon 14 as a method of dating manuscripts, Popović suggested. “Carbon 14 is destructive,” he said, “because you need to cut off a little piece of the Dead Sea Scroll, and then it’s gone. It’s only 7 milligrams, but it’s still stuff that you lose. With Enoch, you don’t have to do any of this. This a first step. There are all sorts of possibilities to improve Enoch further.”

If the team pushes forward with Enoch’s development, Popović believes it could be used to assess scripts such as Syriac, Arabic, Greek and Latin.

‘A massive step forward’

Scholars who were not involved with the study were encouraged by the findings.

Having both AI and an enhanced carbon 14 dating method allows a level of calibration across both methodologies that is helpful, according to Charlotte Hempel, a professor of Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. “The pronounced pattern seems to be that AI offers a narrower window within the Carbon 14 window,” she said via email. “I wonder whether this suggests a higher level of precision, which would be extremely exciting.”

The study represents a first attempt to harness AI technology to extend existing scientific knowledge from carbon 14 dating of certain manuscripts to other manuscripts, said Lawrence H. Schiffman, Global Distinguished Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University.

“To some extent, it is not yet clear whether or not the new method will provide us with reliable information on texts that have not yet been Carbon-14 dated,” he added via email. “The interesting comments regarding revision of the dating of some manuscripts that may be expected through further development of this approach or new carbon-14 dating, while not new to this study, constitute a very important observation about the field of Dead Sea Scrolls in general.”

Commenting on the computational aspects of the study, Brent Seales, the alumni professor of computer science at the University of Kentucky, said the approach taken by the authors seems rigorous even if the sample sizes are small.

Using AI to completely replace carbon dating may be premature, however. “(AI) is a useful tool to incorporate into the broader picture, and to make estimates in the absence of Carbon-14 based on the witness of other similar fragments,” Seales wrote in an email.

“Like everything with machine learning, and like a fine wine, it should get better over time and with more samples. The dating of ancient manuscripts is an extremely difficult problem, with sparse data and heavy constraints on access and expertise. Bravo to the team for this data-driven contribution that takes a massive step forward.”

A new study suggests the Dead Sea Scrolls may be older than previously thought, using AI and radiocarbon dating to reassess their age.

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A groundbreaking study reveals that the Dead Sea Scrolls, some of the most significant archaeological finds, may be older than previously believed. This new research, published on June 7, 2025, combines advanced radiocarbon dating with artificial intelligence to reassess the age of these ancient manuscripts.

6 Key Takeaways Dead Sea Scrolls may be older than thought.

New study uses AI and radiocarbon dating.

Scrolls provide insights into ancient texts.

Enoch AI predicts manuscript ages accurately.

Carbon dating has limitations and drawbacks.

Scholars optimistic about AI’s potential.

Researchers led by Mladen Popović found that many scrolls date back approximately 2,300 years, coinciding with the time of their presumed authors. This fresh analysis not only challenges long-held beliefs about the scrolls’ origins but also opens new avenues for understanding ancient texts.

Fast Answer: Recent findings suggest the Dead Sea Scrolls may be up to 100 years older than previously thought, reshaping our understanding of ancient texts and their historical context.

This revelation raises important questions about the methods used in dating ancient manuscripts. How can we ensure accuracy in our historical interpretations? The integration of AI in this analysis offers a promising direction for future research.

AI can enhance the precision of dating ancient texts.

New techniques may reveal previously unknown historical contexts.

Understanding these scrolls is crucial for both religious and cultural studies.

The implications of this study extend globally, as it reshapes our understanding of religious texts and cultural history.

As researchers continue to refine these methods, the potential for discovering new insights into ancient civilizations grows. This study encourages scholars and enthusiasts alike to stay engaged with ongoing developments in historical research.

New research blends cutting-edge artificial intelligence with advanced radiocarbon dating and offers a transformative perspective on the origins of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

A revolutionary study led by Professor Mladen Popović from the University of Groningen is challenging long-standing assumptions about the Dead Sea Scrolls’ age and authorship. Published in PLOS ONE, the research leverages cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) alongside enhanced radiocarbon dating methods to date these ancient manuscripts with unprecedented accuracy—some scrolls now appear to be up to 150 years older than earlier estimates.

The Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in the Qumran caves between 1946 and 1947, represent the oldest surviving texts of the Hebrew Bible. Written primarily in Hebrew, with some passages in Aramaic and Greek, the scrolls encompass religious scriptures, legal texts, and ancient calendars, originally dated from the third century BCE to the second century CE.

Historically, scholars relied on paleography—analyzing handwriting styles—to estimate the scrolls’ age. Later, radiocarbon dating offered more precision. However, previous radiocarbon results were skewed due to a mid-20th-century preservation method that coated scrolls with castor oil. This new study revisited those samples, meticulously cleaning 30 fragments to remove contamination, with 27 yielding reliable radiocarbon results.

To push the boundaries of historical dating, the research team developed an AI model called Enoch, named after the ancient biblical figure associated with knowledge and wisdom. Trained on 62 high-resolution images from 24 scrolls, Enoch learned to identify subtle handwriting differences. When tested on 135 previously undated scrolls, Enoch’s estimates aligned with expert paleographers’ expectations 79% of the time.

“This AI technology is like opening a time machine to the ancient world,” said Prof. Popović. “It brings us closer than ever to the people who actually penned the earliest versions of the Bible.”

Enoch’s date prediction estimate for 4Q319. (a) from full spectrum color image to binarized image to 14C plot for 4Q259 that went into the training of Enoch. (b), from full spectrum color image to binarized image to Enoch’s date prediction plot for 4Q319 (see also illustration 9 in S5 Appendix). Red bars represent the probability of each date bin. The blue curve shows the smoothed distribution. Grey spikes indicate the local uncertainty of the estimate. Credit: Popović et al., 2025, PLOS One, CC-BY 4.0

One striking example is scroll 4Q114, containing excerpts from the Book of Daniel. Earlier studies placed its origin in the late 2nd century BCE. Enoch, however, suggests a date between 230 BCE and 160 BCE—potentially aligning it with the lifetime of its purported author.

Moreover, the study highlights overlapping use of Hasmonean and Herodian script styles, indicating a broader time frame for their coexistence than previously believed. In another significant find, a fragment of Ecclesiastes was dated to the precise era traditionally associated with its authorship—possibly redefining timelines in Jewish intellectual history.

Beyond the Dead Sea Scrolls, the research team sees vast potential for Enoch’s application in dating other ancient manuscripts, offering a non-invasive alternative to traditional carbon dating.

This pioneering fusion of AI and archaeology not only transforms our understanding of biblical history but also opens new doors for exploring humanity’s literary and religious heritage with precision and care.

Popović M, Dhali MA, Schomaker L, van der Plicht J, Lund Rasmussen K, La Nasa J, et al. (2025) Dating ancient manuscripts using radiocarbon and AI-based writing style analysis. PLoS One 20(6): e0323185. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0323185

Cover Image Credit: Dead Sea Scroll 28a from Qumran Cave 1, complete, the Jordan Museum in Amman. Public domain

Many of the manuscripts known as the Dead Sea Scrolls may be much older than previously thought, according to a new study that could transform our understanding of their Jewish and Christian origins.

The mysterious scrolls are a collection of ancient Jewish texts mainly written in Hebrew that were found in 1947 by nomadic Arab shepherds looking for a lost sheep.

They are the oldest Bible texts ever found, containing passages of the Old Testament from over 1,800 to 2,000 years ago.

Until now, a study of ancient handwriting suggests most of the scrolls are from the third century BC to the second century AD.

Some date-bearing manuscripts written in Aramaic/Hebrew have been estimated to be from the fifth or fourth centuries BC, and the late first and early second century AD.

But since most of the scrolls do not have any other date-bearing manuscripts for reference, the ages of the individual manuscripts haven’t been precisely estimated.

Archaeologists have yet to accurately date over a thousand manuscripts and fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls collection.

Now, researchers have combined radiocarbon dating and an AI prediction model to arrive at a more accurate estimate of the age of individual manuscripts.

Scientists found that two biblical scroll fragments of the scrolls come from the same time as their presumed biblical authors.

These fragments have been objectively dated to between the fourth century BC and the second century AD, according to the latest study published in the journal PLOS One.

In the study, scientists trained their AI date-prediction model to analyse handwritten ink-trace patterns and digitised manuscripts.

The model was trained to analyse intricate geometries of the ink trace, looking into the curvature of each character’s shape, helping it probe the texts beyond what traditional palaeography offered.

Researchers cross-verified the AI model with texts that have already been convincingly dated.

They found that it could predict the age of manuscripts just from the writing style with an uncertainty of some 30 years.

Scientists then used the AI to date roughly one thousand Dead Sea manuscripts.

A two thousand-year-old fragment of the The Words of the Luminaries from the Dead Sea Scrolls is seen on display at The Jewish Museum in NYC (Getty Images)

They first made the model analyse the digitised images of 135 scrolls and let professional palaeographers evaluate the AI’s predictions.

It then confirmed that many Dead Sea Scrolls are much older than previously thought, transforming our understanding of the development of two ancient Jewish scripts called “Hasmonaean” and “Herodian.”

Scroll fragments written in these scripts could belong to the late second century BC instead of the current prevailing view of the mid-first century BC.

Manuscripts in the Hasmonaean-type script could be older than their current estimate of 150 BC to 50 BC, researchers found.

It still remains a mystery who exactly wrote the manuscripts.

Researchers suspect it was an anonymous author from the Hellenistic period of the third century BC.

The latest findings impact our understanding of political and intellectual developments in the eastern Mediterranean during the Hellenistic and early Roman periods, scientists say.