Twenty years ago, a scholarly consensus identified the Dead Sea Scrolls with the ascetic Essene community at Qumran. Now the picture is more complicated.

A recent book claims otherwise, but we possess far too little evidence to make confident claims about what ancient Jews accepted as Scripture before the rabbinic period.

Researchers at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands are using artificial intelligence to “read” the handwriting on the Dead Sea Scrolls.