Redating the radiocarbon dating of The Dead Sea Scrolls

Dead Sea Discoveries

Volumn 11, Issue 2, 2004, Pages 143-157

  Atwill, Joseph ^a   Braunheim, Steve ^b   Eisenman, Robert ^c  

^a CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b Intri Plex Technologies   (United States)

^c CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61949155087     PISSN: 09290761     EISSN: 15685179     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/1568517041717854     Document Type: Review

References (22)

1. Letter, Eisenman and Davies to Amir Drori, 2 May, 1989; see M. Baigent and R. Leigh, The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception (London: Jonathan Cape, 1991) 80-82 and 242. In it they included two caveats, one that the new methods be used to determine relative not absolute chronology, that is, earlier versus later in the same test run; absolute chronology is in their view virtually impossible because of the multiple imprecisions to which C14 testing was subject. Second, they insisted that "opposition scholars" be included in the process because they were the ones that had initially felt the most need for such tests and were most likely to understand which were the key documents that should be tested. Neither caveat was heeded
2. G. Bonani, M. Broshi, I. Carmi, S. Ivy, J. Strugnell, and W. Wolfi, "Radiocarbon Dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls", 'Atiqot 20 (1991) 127-32
3. and "Radiocarbon Dating of Fourteen Dead Sea Scrolls", Radiocarbon 34 (1992) 643-49
4. T. Jull, D.J. Donahue, M. Broshi, and E. Tov, "Radiocarbon Dating of Scrolls and Linen Fragments from the Judean Desert," Radiocarbon 37 (1995) 11-19. Not incuriously, these were the same laboratories that had previously been selected for the C14 testing of the Holy Shroud of Turin
5. "New Carbon-14 Results Leave Room for Debate" BAR 21/4 (1995), p. 61
6. For further analysis see G. Rodley and B. Thiering, "Use of Radiocarbon Dating in Assessing Christian Connections to the Dead Sea Scrolls," Radiocarbon 41 (1999) 169-82
7. M. Wise, The First Messiah (Harper Collins: San Francisco, 1996)
8. A. Ellgard, Jesus One Hundred Years Before Christ (New York: Overlook Press, 1999)
9. G. Doudna, "Dating the Scrolls on the Basis of Radiocarbon Analysis," The Dead Sea Scrolls after Fifty Years (eds P. Flint and J. VanderKam; Leiden: Brill, 1998) 430-71. Doudna actually to some extent gives his agenda away at the end of this article in discussing his ideas about a "Single-Generation Hypothesis", that is, that most sectarian Scrolls were written in a very short timeframe in the middle of the First Century BC (462-64). Though he gives his credits at the beginning of the article (430), he neglects to mention Eisenman, who first introduced him to the subject of AMS Carbon testing after the initial testing reports, initiated him into its complexities, and on whose behalf he first undertook to write BAR questioning the results of the first run of C14 tests in 1991
10. M. Stuiver and G.W. Pearson, "High-Precision Calibration of the Radiocarbon Time Scale, AD 1950-500 BC" Radiocarbon 28 (1986) 805-38
11. G. Rodley, "An Assess-ment of the Radiocarbon Dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls," Radiocarbon 35 (1993) 335-38
12. For the 1998 corrections, see M. Stuiver, P.J. Reimer, E. Bard, J.W. Beck, G.S. Burr, K.A. Hughen, B. Kromer, F.G. McCormac, J. van der Plicht, and M. Spurk, "INTCAL98 Radiocarbon Age Calibration, 24,000-0 Cal BP," Radiocarbon 40 (1998) 1041-83
13. For further analysis, see G. Rodley and B. Thiering, "Use of Radiocarbon Dating in Assessing Christian Connections to the Dead Sea Scrolls," 169-99
14. and Doudna, "Dating the Scrolls on the Basis of Radiocarbon Analysis," 433-36
15. See for instance M. Stuiver and P.J. Reimer, "Extended 14C Data Base and Revised CALIB 14C Age Calibration Program," Radiocarbon 35 (1993) 215-30
16. H. Eshel, "4Q348, 4Q343, and 4Q345: Three Econimic Documents from Qumran Cave 4?", JJS 52 (2001) 132-35
17. N. Caldararo, "Storage Conditions and Physical Treatments Relating to the Dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls," Radiocarbon 37 (1995) 21, in the same journal and as a seeming follow-up article to the Jull piece
18. T. Jull, D.J. Donahue, M. Broshi, and E. Tov, "Radiocarbon Dating of Scrolls and Linen Fragments," 11-12
19. T. Jull, D.J. Donahue, M. Broshi, and E. Tov, "Radiocarbon Dating of Scrolls and Linen Fragments," 11
20. See R.E.M. Hedges, "Radiocarbon Dating by Accelerator Mass Spectomety: Some recent Results and Applications," Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series A, vol. 323 (issue 1569) 57-72
21. F.G. McCormac and M.G.L. Baillie, "Radiocarbon to Calendar Date Conversion: Calendrical Band Widths as a Function of Radiocarbon Precision," Radiocarbon 35 (1993) 311-16
22. Cf. Doudna, "Dating the Scrolls on the Basis of Radiocarbon Analysis," 433-40 on the subject of "Accuracy and Precision"