Posted on 06/11/2025 5:42:57 AM PDT by Red Badger
Could artificial intelligence solve one of the Bible’s biggest mysteries? A team of researchers used AI-powered statistical modeling to analyze the authorship of the Hebrew Bible and made surprising discoveries about ancient narratives. Credit: Shutterstock A multidisciplinary team of researchers is using artificial intelligence to unravel the authorship of the Hebrew Bible’s earliest books.
Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing everything from healthcare to filmmaking to finance. So, why not apply it to one of the most ancient and influential books in history—the Bible?
That’s exactly what an international team of researchers set out to do. Among them was Shira Faigenbaum-Golovin, an assistant research professor of mathematics at Duke University. Together, they used a mix of AI, statistical modeling, and linguistic analysis to take on one of the biggest mysteries in biblical scholarship: who actually wrote the Bible?
By carefully examining subtle differences in word choices across the text, the team identified three distinct scribal traditions, or writing styles, within the first nine books of the Hebrew Bible, known as the Enneateuch. They then used the same AI-powered model to analyze other chapters and estimate their most likely authors. Even better, the model also explained how it reached its conclusions.
But how did the mathematician get here?
From Pottery to the Pentateuch
In 2010, Faigenbaum-Golovin began collaborating with Israel Finkelstein, head of the School of Archaeology and Maritime Cultures at the University of Haifa, using mathematical and statistical tools to determine the authorship of lettering found on pottery fragments from 600 B.C. by comparing the style and shape of the letters inscribed on each fragment.
“We concluded that the findings in those inscriptions could offer valuable clues for dating texts from the Old Testament,” Faigenbaum-Golovin said. “That’s when we started putting together our current team, who could help us analyze these biblical texts.”
Bible Analysis Graphical Representation
Graphical representation of the team’s results. By comparing word usage and sentence patterns, their AI-based statistical model identified three distinct writing styles, or scribal traditions, shown here in yellow, blue and green. Credit: Faigenbaum-Golovin et al.
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The multidisciplinary undertaking was made up of two parts. First, Faigenbaum-Golovin and Finkelstein’s team — Alon Kipnis (Reichman University), Axel Bühler (Protestant Faculty of Theology of Paris), Eli Piasetzky (Tel Aviv University), and Thomas Römer (Collège de France) — was made up of archaeologists, biblical scholars, physicists, mathematicians, and computer scientists. The team used a novel AI-based statistical model to analyze language patterns in three major sections of the Bible. They studied the Bible’s first five books: Deuteronomy, the so-called Deuteronomistic History from Joshua to Kings, and the priestly writings in the Torah.
Results showed Deuteronomy and the historical books were more similar to each other than to the priestly texts, which is already the consensus among biblical scholars.
Distinguishing Word by Word
“We found that each group of authors has a different style — surprisingly, even regarding simple and common words such as ‘no,’ ‘which,’ or ‘king.’ Our method accurately identifies these differences,” said Römer.
To test the model, the team selected 50 chapters from the first nine books of the Bible, each of which has already been allocated by biblical scholars to one of the writing styles mentioned above. “The model compared the chapters and proposed a quantitative formula for allocating each chapter to one of the three writing styles,” said Faigenbaum-Golovin.
In the second part of the study, the team applied their model to chapters of the Bible whose authorship was more hotly debated. By comparing these chapters to each of the three writing styles, the model was able to determine which group of authors was more likely to have written them. Even better: the model also explained why it was making these calls.
“One of the main advantages of the method is its ability to explain the results of the analysis — that is, to specify the words or phrases that led to the allocation of a given chapter to a particular writing style,” said Kipnis.
Since the text in the Bible has been edited and re-edited many times, the team faced big challenges finding segments that retained their original wording and language. Once found, these biblical texts were often very short — sometimes just a few verses — which made most standard statistical methods and traditional machine learning unsuitable for their analysis. They had to develop a custom approach that could handle such limited data.
Word Roots Over Deep Learning
Limited data often brings fears of inaccuracy. “We spent a lot of time convincing ourselves that the results we were getting weren’t just garbage,” said Faigenbaum-Golovin. “We had to be absolutely sure of the statistical significance.”
To circumvent the issue, instead of using traditional machine learning, which requires lots of training data, the researchers used a simpler, more direct method. They compared sentence patterns and how often certain words or word roots (lemmas) appeared in different texts, to see if they were likely written by the same group of authors.
A surprising find? The team discovered that although the two sections of the Ark Narrative in the Books of Samuel address the same theme and are sometimes regarded as parts of a single narrative, the text in 1 Samuel does not align with any of the three corpora, whereas the chapter in 2 Samuel shows affinity with the Deuteronomistic History (Joshua to Kings).
Looking forward, Faigenbaum-Golovin said the same technique can be used for other historical documents. “If you’re looking at document fragments to find out if they were written by Abraham Lincoln, for example, this method can help determine if they are real or just a forgery.”
“The study introduces a new paradigm for analyzing ancient texts,” summarized Finkelstein.
Faigenbaum-Golovin and her team are now looking at using the same methodology to unearth new discoveries about other ancient texts, like the Dead Sea Scrolls. She emphasized how much she enjoyed the long-term cross-disciplinary partnership.
“It’s such a unique collaboration between science and the humanities,” she said. “It’s a surprising symbiosis, and I’m lucky to work with people who use innovative research to push boundaries.”
Reference:
“Critical biblical studies via word frequency analysis: Unveiling text authorship”
by Shira Faigenbaum-Golovin, Alon Kipnis, Axel Bühler, Eli Piasetzky, Thomas Römer and Israel Finkelstein, 3 June 2025, PLOS ONE.
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0322905
Funding:
Alon Kipnis was supported in part by funding from the Koret Foundation and the BSF under Grant No. 2022124. Shira Faigenbaum-Golovin is grateful to the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fund for Strategic Innovation, the Zuckerman-CHE STEM Program, the Simons Foundation under Grant Math+X 400837, and Duke University for supporting her research.
PinGGG!...............................
I will just go with God’s perfect word, when we needed to know who wrote what he told us.
King James I wrote it... And according to all the left-wing historian’s.... He was a trans homo.
Sad, but true. Thankfully there are still some truthful historians and as long as there is truth, the lies of the left can be exposed.
Just last Sunday I taught a seminar class at church on “Who Wrote the Gospels”. I wanted to rebut the modern academic school that says we can’t know who wrote them. I spent 100 hours easily researching this. The historical evidence is overwhelming that the traditional authors wrote the Gospels.
Funny that Jesus Christ never questioned the original authors of Each book of the Bible. AI knows better than God!!! /s
Thankfully, spirituality is wholly foreign to AI of even the most advanced level.
King James I wrote the Bible? You must be a PHD!
Thank you for your volunteer hours promoting what is accurate. We need more people like you.
I will find out one day - one day when I get home.
King James had it written for him. By whom? Just go to Psalm 46 in the KJV. Count the words forward from the start of Psalm 46 and note the 46th word. Then go to the end of Psalm 46 and count 46 words backward and note that word. Then put the two words together.
But just remember that the KJV, like any of the other now much more accurate versions (NASB, NIV, ESV, etc) is a TRANSLATION of the original Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic texts.
That's pretty much the most important passage.
I recall in 2nd grade asked why we celebrated Christmas, one girl said it was Santas birthday.
AI is nothing more than a glorified google search.
Unfair!! You didn't post a spoiler alert on this shocking news.
/s
What denomination is AI?
Kids say the damnedest things.
Who Wrote the Bible?
.
I Am
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