BIBLE HISTORY DAILY

The Puzzling Limits of Models

A study suggests an established technique used for the Dead Sea Scrolls is not as reliable as previously thought

Archaeology has been likened to solving a puzzle which is missing some–or occasionally most–of its pieces. The scholars who dedicate their lives to this pursuit have developed a toolkit of powerful techniques to fill in the information that time has not preserved, radiocarbon dating, lidar, and many more. Now, it may turn out that one of those techniques is not as reliable as they had thought.

In, “The Length of a Scroll: Quantitative Evaluation of Material Reconstructions” (PlOS One, 10/21/20), Eshbal Ratzon and Nachum Dershowitz study the use of mathematical modeling as a way to ascertain how much length is missing from decayed scrolls. These length estimates have been relevant to the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as other scrolls of importance to the study of ancient history.

The Dead Sea Scrolls may be the most important discovery in biblical archaeology of the last hundred years. They continue to reveal more information about ancient Judaism and the divergence which led to rabbinic Judaism and the emergence of Christianity. They are the closest source to the original Bible, and provide other texts that provide a wealth of insight into both ancient Judaism and the time of Jesus. Yet the scrolls had decayed over millenia. Most of what survived is in the form of fragments, some tantalizing puzzle pieces but far from enough to provide the complete picture without deduction and analysis.

Ratzon and Dershowitz explain the widely used mathematical method for deducing the length of even a degraded scroll. “…estimating the outer circumference and thickness of the substrate, and then calculating the length of the missing remainder.” Scholars have done very advanced analysis on this, using three consecutive points of damage on a fragment to learn the direction of rolling, and using the distance between points of damage to calculate the circumference.

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Though aware that these estimations are imperfect, scholars have relied upon the measurements to get a sense of what portion of the scrolls have survived, and thus inform guesses about what may be missing between the surviving puzzle pieces.

However, Ratzon and Dershowitz find in their analysis that the errors in this method are potentially much larger than scholars have assumed. Among other challenges, ancient scrolls “were probably not stored evenly rolled.” Also, scroll shrinkage over two millenia can confound even the most careful attempts to estimate the length of the scroll or the gaps between surviving fragments.

Learning the history of the biblical world has always been a daunting challenge. The new questions about the reliability of one of the tools to analyze the Dead Sea Scrolls, possibly the most critical firsthand source, only adds to that challenge. Fortunately, biblical archaeologists are dedicated to continuing to work the puzzle and advance our understanding of Bible history.

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