Dead Sea Scrolls older than previously thought

[arapahoepark]

This was making the rounds and found it fascinating.

AI analysis of ancient handwriting gives new age estimates for Dead Sea Scrolls

Many of the Dead Sea Scrolls, some of the most widely known archaeological finds of all time, may be older than once thought, according to a new study.

www.ksl.com

One interesting thing that stuck out:

One sample from a scroll known to contain verse from the Book of Daniel was once believed to date to the second century B.C. "That was a generation after the original author," Popović said, "and now with the carbon 14, we securely move it (further back) to the time of the author."

Scholars still aren't changing their presuppositions on dating because of prophecies even though it now seems to long before Maccabees.

 

[MW]

AI only reinforces what some scholars had already argued based on paleography and carbon 14. The empirical evidence keeps pushing Daniel’s earliest copies further back in time, yet many critical scholars still resist revising their late-dating theories. That might suggest they are bound by their antisupernaturalistic assumptions. But there are many areas where carbon 14 dating is calibrated within specific timelines. This is one of those areas where empiricism fails to impress and theological assumptions are predominant in evaluating evidence.

 

[Sovereign Grace]

This was making the rounds and found it fascinating.

AI analysis of ancient handwriting gives new age estimates for Dead Sea Scrolls

Many of the Dead Sea Scrolls, some of the most widely known archaeological finds of all time, may be older than once thought, according to a new study.

www.ksl.com

One interesting thing that stuck out:

Scholars still aren't changing their presuppositions on dating because of prophecies even though it now seems to long before Maccabees.

I'm leery of carbon 14 dating, as they have used it to prove fossils being million/billion years old.

 

[arapahoepark]

I'm leery of carbon 14 dating, as they have used it to prove fossils being million/billion years old.

Carbon 14 is allegedly for things only 'recent' (i.e. 50,000 years and less).
You're thinking of other types which yes, do yield wildly different results.

 

[beardedreformer]

I'm leery of carbon 14 dating, as they have used it to prove fossils being million/billion years old.

Yes, fossils, but also cowboy boots.

 

[No Other Name]

I'm leery of carbon 14 dating, as they have used it to prove fossils being million/billion years old.

Radiometric dating is a proven scientific method and is as reliable as anything else if one sticks to what is known directly and makes no assumptions.

They don't use C-14 to date fossils but Rb-87 decaying into Sr-86 (or Sr-87) or uranium or thorium decaying into lead or strontium (referred to as "U-238 or U-237 dating").

Their problem is that carbon is still present (along with soft tissue fragments) in some fossils supposedly millions of years old.

 

[ZackF]

Radiometric dating is a proven scientific method and is as reliable as anything else if one sticks to what is known directly and makes no assumptions.

They don't use C-14 to date fossils but Rb-87 decaying into Sr-86 (or Sr-87) or uranium or thorium decaying into lead or strontium (referred to as "U-238 or U-237 dating").

Their problem is that carbon is still present (along with soft tissue fragments) in some fossils supposedly millions of years old.

Yes and rocks created during Mount St Helens eruption being dated to millions of years…

 

[No Other Name]

Yes and rocks created during Mount St Helens eruption being dated to millions of years…

Yes I want to be clear. The method dating artifacts - whether texts or rocks or fossils - is sound within a reasonable range. The interpretive methods of dating is unsound, and they have gotten eggs on their faces more than once. A fact which will never make it into secular government-sponsored textbooks.

 

[mpinckard]

Yes and rocks created during Mount St Helens eruption being dated to millions of years…

The inaccurate dating of the rocks formed by the eruption of Mt. St. Helens actually illustrates Brad's point.

In order for any radiometric dating method to truly be accurate, we need to know the relative quantities of the two isotopes in the rock or object when it was first made. My understanding is that there are ways of determining that for more recent objects (on the order of thousands of years old) that are dated with the Carbon-14 method. But with objects supposedly millions or billions of years old, there's no way to know--that's where assumptions have to be made, which, as Brad pointed out, is what causes problems in radiometric dating.

In the case of the Mt. St. Helens rocks, the method used to date them was the potassium-argon method, used for things that are supposed to have been very old, because of the very slow rate of decay of potassium-40 into argon-40. For the purposes of this method, the original level of argon-40 is assumed to have been zero, such that any presence of argon-40 will indicate a significant progression of time. The lab that ran the tests was not told where the rocks had come from, only that they should expect "low argon." If the assumption of zero original argon was correct, the result of the test should have been that the sample contained too little argon to measure, and that it therefore could not have been dated by this method. Instead, the test showed the rocks to be anywhere from hundreds of thousands to hundreds of millions of years old.

What is shown to be faulty by this example is not the method itself (at least, not necessarily). Rather, it's the assumptions that have to be made for very old objects that are faulty. If your assumptions are wrong by even the slimmest of margins, you'll get wildly inaccurate results, particularly with an isotope that decays as slowly as potassium-40. And when you're trying to measure the age of objects you suppose to be millions or billions of years old, you HAVE to use very slowly-decaying isotopes.

So, in the end, radiometric dating can indeed be very accurate, but only for "recent" objects, for which we can scientifically ascertain the original quantities of the decay products, rather than assuming them.

 

[ZackF]

The inaccurate dating of the rocks formed by the eruption of Mt. St. Helens actually illustrates Brad's point.

In order for any radiometric dating method to truly be accurate, we need to know the relative quantities of the two isotopes in the rock or object when it was first made. My understanding is that there are ways of determining that for more recent objects (on the order of thousands of years old) that are dated with the Carbon-14 method. But with objects supposedly millions or billions of years old, there's no way to know--that's where assumptions have to be made, which, as Brad pointed out, is what causes problems in radiometric dating.

In the case of the Mt. St. Helens rocks, the method used to date them was the potassium-argon method, used for things that are supposed to have been very old, because of the very slow rate of decay of potassium-40 into argon-40. For the purposes of this method, the original level of argon-40 is assumed to have been zero, such that any presence of argon-40 will indicate a significant progression of time. The lab that ran the tests was not told where the rocks had come from, only that they should expect "low argon." If the assumption of zero original argon was correct, the result of the test should have been that the sample contained too little argon to measure, and that it therefore could not have been dated by this method. Instead, the test showed the rocks to be anywhere from hundreds of thousands to hundreds of millions of years old.

What is shown to be faulty by this example is not the method itself (at least, not necessarily). Rather, it's the assumptions that have to be made for very old objects that are faulty. If your assumptions are wrong by even the slimmest of margins, you'll get wildly inaccurate results, particularly with an isotope that decays as slowly as potassium-40. And when you're trying to measure the age of objects you suppose to be millions or billions of years old, you HAVE to use very slowly-decaying isotopes.

So, in the end, radiometric dating can indeed be very accurate, but only for "recent" objects, for which we can scientifically ascertain the original quantities of the decay products, rather than assuming them.

You have to presume the age, or at least ball park number, of the object being tested. It seems this testing method would be inappropriate for resolving disputes about the age of the Earth.

 

[No Other Name]

You have to presume the age, or at least ball park number, of the object being tested. It seems this testing method would be inappropriate for resolving disputes about the age of the Earth.

Well, yeah, the age of the Earth cannot be scientifically measured. That was never included in my original post about the radiometric dating method being perfectly valid and here I will quote myself:

if one sticks to what is known directly and makes no assumptions.

 

[mpinckard]

You have to presume the age, or at least ball park number, of the object being tested. It seems this testing method would be inappropriate for resolving disputes about the age of the Earth.

Absolutely correct. Just need to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater--chances are pretty good, in the case of the DSS, that these dates obtained via C-14 dating are reasonably accurate. Of course, nothing is certain--as it is, the new, earlier dates are a correction of dates previously found via carbon dating, which were erroneous because of factors that researchers failed to account for.

 

[No Other Name]

Re: the DSS. I am wondering if it took an AI analysis to "shake up" the presumptions of later dates imposed upon the anti-supernaturalistic views of the previous scholars. The history of that issue is out of my "radar range" so to speak.

 

[MW]

Re: the DSS. I am wondering if it took an AI analysis to "shake up" the presumptions of later dates imposed upon the anti-supernaturalistic views of the previous scholars. The history of that issue is out of my "radar range" so to speak.

I threw this to AI to see what it would say and it confirmed my own thought. The DSS themselves did the "shake up." Traditional scholarship put in the work decades earlier. AI only refines the details.

Some have the idea that AI takes human bias out of the equation, but it doesn't. It only works with the material as it is presented. [I threw this statement to AI and it said "Absolutely!"]