A new international research project is combining artificial intelligence with biblical archaeology in an effort to answer some of the most enduring questions surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls. Funded by a €2.5 million grant from the European Research Council, the five-year initiative will utilize artificial intelligence, chemical analysis, paleography, and manuscript studies to examine hundreds of scroll fragments preserved by the Israel Antiquities Authority. Researchers hope to determine where individual scrolls originated, identify centers of learning and scribal activity, and better understand how biblical texts and Jewish writings circulated throughout ancient Judea during the Second Temple period.
The project builds upon earlier AI research that successfully analyzed handwriting patterns to distinguish individual scribes who copied the manuscripts. Now researchers intend to move beyond identifying who wrote the scrolls to determining where they lived, the materials they used, and the intellectual networks that connected them. Approximately 25,000 fragments from the Dead Sea Scroll collection will contribute to the study. The scrolls, discovered in caves near the Dead Sea in the mid-twentieth century, contain the oldest known manuscripts of portions of the Hebrew Scriptures as well as numerous Jewish writings from the centuries surrounding the time of Christ.
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