{"id":85784,"date":"2021-05-04T17:00:18","date_gmt":"2021-05-04T15:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=85784"},"modified":"2021-05-04T07:57:28","modified_gmt":"2021-05-04T05:57:28","slug":"11-00-63","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=85784","title":{"rendered":"Dead Sea Scrolls: Mysterious scribe wrote eight diverse scrolls, scholars find"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Dead Sea Scrolls: Mysterious scribe wrote eight diverse scrolls, scholars find<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

ROSSELLA TERCATIN<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\u201cThe main purpose of my work has been using artificial intelligence, an extraction algorithm and statistical analyses to test 51 manuscripts which share a particular handwriting style.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

Adolfo Roitman, curator of the Dead Sea Scrolls, points at the original Isaiah Scroll, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, inside a secured climate-controlled room in the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem September 26, 2011. \/ (photo credit: BAZ RATNER\/REUTERS)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Some 2,000 years ago, an individual scribe wrote at least eight of the Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts, making him the most prolific scribe ever identified, a group of scholars have found out.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Dead Sea Scrolls are a corpus of some 25,000 fragments unearthed in caves on the shores of the Dead Sea in the 1940s and 1950s. The artifacts include some of the most ancient manuscripts of the Bible and other religious texts that were not accepted in the canon and nonreligious writings.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the past few years, an artificial intelligence-based paleographic project carried out by scholars at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and supported by the European Research Council has been focusing on understanding more about the identity of the scribes who copied the scrolls.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe are pioneering Qumran research at the level of the individual scribe,\u201d paleographer Gemma Hayes told The Jerusalem Post, after presenting the preliminary results of her research at an academic conference at Groningen last month.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Hands that Wrote the Bible,\u201d project team visiting Qumran. (Photo credit: Courtesy Gemma Hayes)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe main purpose of my work has been using artificial intelligence, an extraction algorithm and statistical analyses to test 51 manuscripts which share a particular handwriting style,\u201d she added.<\/span><\/p>\n

The style is known as round semi-formal.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very beautiful handwriting which dates back to the late 1st century BCE,\u201d Hayes said.<\/span><\/p>\n

The manuscripts analyzed by the researchers had already been grouped together in the past. Celebrated paleographer Ada Yardeni, who passed away in 2018, suggested that some 90 Dead Sea Scrolls fragments featuring this specific style were the work of one individual.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cShe had a method, she identified the specific way a certain letter \u2013 a lamed \u2013 was written, and she argued that based on this letter you could group all these manuscripts together,\u201d Hayes explained.<\/span><\/p>\n

The researchers have not been able to test all of the manuscripts Yardeni clustered together because some of them did not present enough material for the technology to examine them.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe need a certain amount of characters,\u201d Hayes pointed out.<\/span>
\nThe results on the 51 artifacts that were tested were very significant: the system recognized that eight of the manuscripts considered were written by the same person, making him the most prolific scribe ever identified, in addition to proving his ability to work in two languages.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the really exciting aspects of our findings is that these manuscripts are very diverse,\u201d the researcher explained. \u201cWe found seven Hebrew manuscripts and one Aramaic manuscript, so-called sectarian manuscripts associated with the community in Qumran and non-sectarian manuscripts, as well as some para-biblical texts, including the one known as the testament of Naftali and some writing about Rachel and Joseph.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Among the scrolls written by this individual author is also the iconic Miqsat Ma\u2019ase ha-Torah (MMT) scroll, considered by scholars a foundational document of the Jewish sect which many scholars believed lived in Qumran.<\/span>
\nThe fact that the same person wrote texts of different natures might help shed new light on the identity of this community and their relationship with the rest of the Jewish people.<\/span><\/p>\n

Scholars from \u201cThe Hands that Wrote the Bible\u201d led by Prof. Mladen Popovic, the head of the Qumran Institute of the University of Groningen, trained their algorithm to recognize elements such as background and foreground, and measure the movement of the writing and calligraphy.<\/span><\/p>\n

The system therefore allowed them to establish whether manuscripts which looked very similar were actually written by the same person or just in the same style.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that many wrote in a similar way can potentially tell us something about the training they received,\u201d Hayes pointed out.<\/span><\/p>\n

Besides the eight manuscripts identified as copied by the same scribe, all the rest were penned by the different people, with one possible exception: two fragments which could have been written by just one person. They are also very diverse and include some biblical manuscripts as well.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hayes\u2019 research is ongoing. Among others, she is studying the texts\u2019 spelling characteristics.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m looking into putting flesh and bones into this scribe,\u201d she concluded.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

Zawarto\u015b\u0107 publikowanych artyku\u0142\u00f3w i materia\u0142\u00f3w nie reprezentuje pogl\u0105d\u00f3w ani opinii Reunion’68,<\/em>
\nani te\u017c webmastera Blogu Reunion’68, chyba ze jest to wyra\u017anie zaznaczone.
\nTwoje uwagi, linki, w\u0142asne artyku\u0142y lub wiadomo\u015bci prze\u015blij na adres:
\n<\/em>webmaster@reunion68.com<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dead Sea Scrolls: Mysterious scribe wrote eight diverse scrolls, scholars find ROSSELLA TERCATIN \u201cThe main purpose of my work has been using artificial intelligence, an extraction algorithm and statistical analyses to test 51 manuscripts which share a particular handwriting style.\u201d Adolfo Roitman, curator of the Dead Sea Scrolls, points at the original Isaiah Scroll, one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85784"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85784"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85807,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85784\/revisions\/85807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}