This topic was posted , thanks marshmallow.
- Cracking the code of the Dead Sea Scrolls | University of Groningen | April 21, 2021
- search scrolls in FR title name
Posted on 04/23/2021 7:04:48 PM PDT by marshmallow
Artificial intelligence has helped to solve a long-standing mystery concerning the Dead Sea Scrolls. The technology confirms that one of the ancient manuscripts – the Great Isaiah Scroll – was penned by two scribes who wrote with very similar handwriting, rather than being the result of a single person’s work.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are a set of ancient Hebrew manuscripts comprising Biblical and Jewish texts, found in caves near the Dead Sea in the mid-20th century.
The Great Isaiah Scroll is a copy of the Book of Isaiah that is found in both the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament. The copy was completed around the 2nd century BC, and is written using the Hebrew alphabet.
“Before the discovery of the scrolls, we practically only had medieval manuscripts from the year 1000 [for studying the early history of this text]. These Dead Sea Scrolls are like a time machine,” says Mladen Popović at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
“They allow us to travel way back in time, even to the time that the Hebrew Bible was still being written. So, the scrolls provide us with a unique vantage point to study the culture behind what became the Bible.”
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
I got a chance to see the Dead Sea Scrolls back around 1968 when they were on a tour of the U.S. Quite impressive.
Thanks for posting.
No skeptics ever want to here the words, Dead Sea Scrolls and Isaiah, mentioned in the same sentence.
Did AI take into account that scribe “A” had a hand cramp and lost his pen and wrote slightly differently every so often?
AI means humans are unable to do deep thought.
“The authors also open up the fascinating question of whether this level of affinity between the scribal hands points to a stellar professional, able to ‘match’ another hand or whether we are dealing with a shared scribal training environment,” says Hempel.
I'll take a shared scribal training environment for $1,000, Alex.
I recently became aware of the accomplishments of AlphaZero, which plays chess, and AlphaGo, which plays the game of Go. Really pretty impressive.
We truly live in interesting times.
How good is this new way of doing things? An autonomous Tesla killed two people in California when it crashed into a tree and started a massive four-hour fire that took 32,000 GALLONS of water to extinguish it.
Other autonomous navigating systems fail to see dark-skinned people because such people aren't well-populated in the training dataset, and the data scientists are can't see the forest through the trees.
For certain, low-intensity cost/benefit items like "recommendations" pushed to you on Netflix or Spotify or Amazon based on your behavior, maybe AI is good.
For other stuff, it's nowhere near as good as a human.
bookmark
Pinging mairdie - this might be interesting to you.
confirm the identification of two different scribes
Not in the sense that they know who they are, obviously, only that perhaps more than one person penned the scroll.
Hardly ground breaking or knowledge advancing.
Maybe its time for grant renewal?
Absolutely! Immediately passed the link on to Mac. Thank you! Mary
“I’ll take a shared scribal training environment for $1,000, Alex”
Me too.
And a question I have about that whole period is what was the social organization that supplied clerics and scribes a livelihood at most or at least their sustenance. Who “paid” for them, and how??
Likely the same way scribes are supported today. Groups and individuals commission or purchase scrolls, tefillin, and mezuzahs.
This topic was posted , thanks marshmallow.
Incredible! It never even occurred to me that the Qumran scribes used artificial intelligence!
I suppose to human understanding a Word from God could be considered artificial. ;^)
PINGY THINGY!...................
The scrolls were dated to about 200 BC, so during the Hellenistic period after Alexander the Great, and during the Second Temple period. Scribes and priests were supported by tithes and sacrifices at the temple...................
The scrolls were already 200 years old when they were stashed in the caves. It would be like someone today hiding the original copy of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of 1789...........
Thanks for your answer, and sorry you had to do the research that I hadn’t taken the time to do.
I thought your answer about how the scribes and priests had been supported in traditional Hebrew culture was how it must have been.
It always seemed to me as unlikely that in those days someone could have the time and means to be a scribe while also doing work for their own survival or more. I did think the religious scribes had to be mostly like the royal scribes in Middle Est societies - supported by someone else.
It seems in Hebrew religious life some priests, and even some prophets (like Ezra), began their religious careers as scribes. Outside of priests and anyone being taught by the works written by the scribes, few others would have been as well informed of the religious writings.
As to your general comment, the role of tithes and sacrifices, it has also been my understanding that in general, in Hebrew society, charity was mainly an operation organized by the priestly class, in the form of tithes they sought from everyone (before the temple period). Then, in Roman times, and particularly the time of Yeshua, the secular tax collector became so hated because their takings reduced what everyone had left over, after paying Cesar and Herod, altering their circumstances as regards making the tithes that supported charity. In todays times there is a great misunderstanding about Christians and charity. The Left would have everyone believe the Conservative Christians are not very charitable. The actual charitable giving numbers for the U.S. show the opposite to be true. What Christians reject if the idea that socialism is the better place for charity. There are all sorts of places in the bible warning of making the receiving of charity a way of life for someone.
Along towards the end of the Temple period, scribes had become a politically powerful sect, allied with the Pharisees. .......................
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