Computer solves mystery of Dead Sea Scroll
Isaiah scroll was written by two people
Computer solves mystery of Dead Sea Scroll
Door Christien Boomsma
By Christien Boomsma
Christien Boomsma
Christien is sinds 2016 achtergrondcoördinator bij UKrant. Ze plant de achtergrondverhalen en begeleidt de auteurs. Bij haar eigen verhalen ligt de focus op wetenschap en academisch leven. Daarnaast schrijft ze veel over onderwerpen als sociale veiligheid en maakt ze graag persoonlijke interviews. In haar vrije tijd schrijft ze jeugdboeken en geeft schrijftrainingen.Mladen Popović, director of the Qumran Insitute which studies the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Lambert Schomaker, an expert in artificial intelligence, have spent years on their project The Hands that Wrote the Bible. By combining Popović’ knowledge of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Schomaker’s advanced handwriting analysis technology, they hope to gain insight into the anonymous writers who put together the Old Testament.
Academics have been arguing over whether the Isaiah scroll had been written by one or two writers for years. ‘They’ve been trying to find evidence. They’ll take something specific about a letter, for example, to try and identify a writer’, says Popović. But the identification can be subjective, and it’s open to discussion.
Computer analyses
But the article published in research journal PlosOne on Wednesday proves it. ‘The book scroll contains the letter aleph, the a, more than five thousand times’, says Schomaker. ‘It’s impossible for a person to compare them all.’ His computer analyses, however, can compare the letters.
One of the things Schomaker looks at is how the way someone holds their pen affects their handwriting. His analysis showed that a second writer took over after the twenty-seventh column. ‘Instead of using impressionistic evidence, we used the computer to prove that the difference between the two parts of the scroll is statistically significant’, says Popović.
Complex relationships
Popović is happy with the results. ‘This opens a new window to the distant past, giving us insight into the complex relationships between the writers who created these book scrolls.’ The writers of the Isaiah scrolls had similar styles of writing, which could indicate they have the same training. ‘Our next step is to analyse other book scrolls to see if we can identify writers who had different training.’