Before the exile, Israelites and Judahites wrote in Old Hebrew script. During the Second Temple period, Aramaic script slowly replaces Old Hebrew to the extent that the rabbis even disqualify a Torah scroll written in Old Hebrew.
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David A. deSilva, Judea under Greek and Roman rule. Essentials of biblical studies. New York: Oxford University Press, 2024. Pp. 216. ISBN 9780190263256.I noted the publication of the book here.Review by
Gary Gilbert, Claremont McKenna College. gary.gilbert@claremontmckenna.eduFor some time now, it has been well-accepted that when studying biblical texts and the history of Jews and Christians in antiquity one should have a solid understanding of the context, or what often used to be referred to as the background, to these texts and history. One needed, therefore, a basic familiarity with the languages, history, literatures, and cultures of the contemporary societies, be they Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, or Roman. David A. deSilva has taken this to heart, and produced an excellent primer on the history of Judea as part of the “larger story of the activities and interests of the Seleucid, Ptolemaic, Roman and Parthian empires” ...
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Whereas until now scholars have largely dated the texts based on their paleography — the shape of their lettering — the interdisciplinary research team started its study by carbon dating pieces of parchment from 30 of the scrolls held by the Israel Antiquities Authority.The underlying, open-access PLOS One article:Once these dates were procured, high-resolution images of the Hebrew and Aramaic lettering from the securely dated scrolls were fed into an AI data-prediction model whimsically named “Enoch.”
The Enoch model, using geometry-based character shape analysis to learn the paleographic characteristics of the timestamped scrolls, could then extrapolate their paleographic shapes and date other scrolls that have not yet undergone destructive radiocarbon testing.
The system was used to investigate high-resolution images of an additional 135 scrolls. When checked by human paleographers, Enoch’s suggested dating was found to be 79% accurate.
Dating ancient manuscripts using radiocarbon and AI-based writing style analysisThe article is quite technical, with a dozen appendices filling it out.Mladen Popović , Maruf A. Dhali, Lambert Schomaker, Johannes van der Plicht, Kaare Lund Rasmussen, Jacopo La Nasa, Ilaria Degano, Maria Perla Colombini, Eibert Tigchelaar
Published: June 4, 2025
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0323185Abstract
Determining by means of palaeography the chronology of ancient handwritten manuscripts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls is essential for reconstructing the evolution of ideas, but there is an almost complete lack of date-bearing manuscripts. To overcome this problem, we present Enoch, an AI-based date-prediction model, trained on the basis of 24 14C-dated scroll samples. By applying Bayesian ridge regression on angular and allographic writing style feature vectors, Enoch could predict 14C-based dates with varied mean absolute errors (MAEs) of 27.9 to 30.7 years. In order to explore the viability of the character-shape based dating approach, the trained Enoch model then computed date predictions for 135 non-dated scrolls, aligning with 79% in palaeographic post-hoc evaluation. The 14C ranges and Enoch’s style-based predictions are often older than traditionally assumed palaeographic estimates, leading to a new chronology of the scrolls and the re-dating of ancient Jewish key texts that contribute to current debates on Jewish and Christian origins.
Live Science has an article by Ben Turner which includes some critical commentary by epigrapher Christopher Rollston: AI analysis suggests Dead Sea Scrolls are older than scientists thought, but not all experts are convinced. An AI analysis of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which include texts from the Hebrew Bible, could mean they were composed earlier than experts thought. Professor Rollston is property cautious about the results and properly criticises some overly enthusiastic rhetoric about the research.
The most entertaining result of the research:
Nonetheless, Enoch also corroborates earlier paleography, notably for a scroll titled 4Q114, which contains three chapters from the Book of Daniel. Analysts initially estimated 4Q114's writing to have been inked during the height of the Maccabee uprising in 165 B.C. (a part of the Hanukkah story) due to its description of Antiochus IV's desecration of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. The AI model's estimate also falls within this range, between 230 B.C. and 160 B.C.I can't wait to see how this will be deployed by the early daters of the Book of Daniel.
If the paleographic profile of Second Temple-era Hebrew needs to be adjusted backwards by some decades, that could have historical implications. But let's see how well the research holds up. Enoch disagrees with expert human paleographers 79% of the time. That is, the paleographers thought Enoch gave unrealistically high or low dates about a fifth of the time. And Enoch has only an 85% overlap with the C-14 probability distributions. Neither sounds all that impressive to me, but the samples for the latter are small and the implications of the former are unclear.
I can't pretend to be able to follow the detailed mathematical data presented in the article. I leave it for others to comment on that.
We'll see. Watch this space.
PRE-POST UPDATE: I was about to post this when I found Brent Nongbri's post over at Variant Readings: New Radiocarbon Analysis of the Dead Sea Scrolls. He has some useful comments.
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Walter Brueggemann (1933-2025)Walter Brueggemann, born on March 11, 1933, died early in the morning on June 5, 2025.
A giant in the field of Old Testament scholarship, he outpaced all others in terms of his reach and scope. Brueggemann is often the only Old Testament scholar anyone knows by name, and this is no doubt due to his staggering literary output. A bibliography of his books runs to twenty pages and contains over 120 separate titles, over 40 of which appeared with Fortress Press. Most scholars, even prolific ones, aspire to three or four books in a career; Brueggemann published fourteen in his 90th and 91st years of age. It is not only the quantity that impresses; it is the quality. Several of these books changed and defined the field—though in Walter’s case, the field in question is actually plural, fields. He was one of a precious few who wrote easily and effectively for larger publics, especially Christian clergy and laypeople.
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Readers of the Lost ArkHaha clever title. For countless PaleoJudaica posts on the Ark of the Covenant, start here and just keep following those links.Imagining the Ark of the Covenant from Ancient Times to the Present
Kevin M. McGeough
$34.99
Hardcover
Published: 08 April 2025
264 Pages | 10 photos, 2 maps
6 1/8 x 9 1/4 inches
ISBN: 9780197653883Also Available As:
E-bookDescription
The sacred chest said to have been built by the Israelites to house the stone tablets on which the Ten Commandments were written, the Ark of the Covenant has long captured the popular imagination. According to the Bible, the Israelites carried it with them as they wandered in the wilderness and entered the promised land. After the Temple of Solomon was built, the Ark was kept in an inner sanctum where God made his divine presence felt to the Israelites. The Hebrew Bible is unclear about what happened to the Ark after the destruction of the temple and offers vague accounts of its function. Despite (or because of) this ambiguity, the Ark continues to hold an important place in Jewish and Christian tradition, even in its absence, and has led to much popular speculation. Widely imagined and re-imagined, it is perhaps today best known in popular culture as the object sought by Indiana Jones in the 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark.
In Readers of the Lost Ark Kevin McGeough explores the different ways people have interpreted and made sense of the Ark from ancient times to the present, in biblical literature, theological discourse, art, popular film, travel souvenirs, toys, faith-healing events, and alternative histories. The book recounts stories of people who have sought to find the Ark of the Covenant and examines how the Ark takes on new meanings in Europe, North America, East Asia, Ethiopia, and the modern Middle East.
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Studies in Rabbinic Narratives, Volume 2
Jeffrey L. RubensteinISBN 9781967013005
Volume BJS 375
Status Available
Publication Date March 2025Paperback $80.00
eBook $80.00
Hardback $100.00Studies in Rabbinic Narratives, Volume 2 explores rabbinic narratives found in the Mishnah, Talmuds, and midrashim. Contributors use a variety of methods drawn from literary and cultural theory to address fundamental questions such as the relationship between stories and law, between aggadic narratives and their halakic contexts, and between rabbinic narratives and their Greco-Roman, Persian-Sasanian and Syrian-Christian contexts. The volume includes eleven studies by contributors Gila Fine, Matthew Goldstone, Chaya T. Halberstam, Jenny R. Labendz, Lynn Kaye, Admiel Kosman, Avi M. Miller, Aviva Richman, Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, Mira Beth Wasserman, and Shlomo Zuckier.
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