Computer-Generated Dead Sea Scrolls Texts 98% Accurate

When BAS recently published the computer-generated transcripts of the secret Dead Sea Scrolls produced by Professor Ben Zion Wacholder and Martin G. Abegg,^a both of Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati, members of the official editing team scoffed, claiming the computer-reconstructed texts were inaccurate—a “pastiche,” Professor Eugene Ulrich of Notre Dame University and one of the three chief editors of the official editing team called them.

According to Professor John Strugnell, who was the scroll team’s editor in chief before his dismissal last year following a virulently anti-Jewish and anti-Israel interview,^b Wacholder and Abegg’s reconstructions are about “20 percent wrong.” And of course you can’t tell which 20 percent is wrong. Professor Ulrich agrees; his estimate is that the Wacholder/Abegg reconstructions are about “80 percent accurate.” No scholar could “base solid work” on the computer-reconstructed texts, he said. “How can you trust it?” he added.

Wacholder and Abegg had checked their computer-generated texts against texts that had been published and they were convinced their transcripts had far fewer errors than Strugnell and Ulrich claimed. But Wacholder and Abegg had no way of checking their results against unpublished texts.