Fascinating use of AI Home | Archaeology Artificial Intelligence Helps Identify Authors of Dead Sea Scrolls Algorithms deduce that the Great Isaiah Scroll was written by two scribes, showing AI can help unravel the mystery of who penned the oldest known manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible Three fragments from the Temple Scroll Credit: AP Among the biggest open questions about the Dead Sea Scrolls are who wrote them, and where. Were these 2,000-year-old manuscripts penned by a single group in the Judean desert, perhaps the enigmatic sect known as the Essenes? Or did they originate in different places and within various Jewish religious streams? The simple answer is that we don’t know, since the biblical scribes of antiquity didn’t sign their work, cite their allegiance, or give us many clues about their identity. But now Dutch researchers have enlisted artificial intelligence to analyze the handwriting on the scrolls and determine how many different scribes were behind each text. The team o...

  What to say, fifty-something degrees here on the Florida Gulf Coast early this morning, while a snow photograph from son Joe, who now lives in Kentucky, 34°F as I checked his weather, clouds, cloudy, overcast. We had right dismal weather here last week, but no snow. No Snow after years of it in my earlier life is One Reason for happy retirement on the Florida Gulf Coast, in 7H gazing out over StAndrewsBay and Shell Island into the Gulf of Mexico. Of course, the Forever Reason is that it's home and central to heart, soul, mind, and strength, though if hurricane season brings another HMichael I may be gone. Where? IDK, maybe an elusive promise to self like that red convertible I promised myself if I survived my 2010/2011 heart adventure and failed to keep my promise. Maybe a Traveler, like my sister? She's a trip, eighty-something and wheeling a Class A motorhome around town and countryside as confidently as a teenager in an ATV!!   Crowds of peop...

An escapist or realistic way to start the day, not sure, but it doesn't matter, this morning I read poems for a while. From Poem-a-Day, starting with one by Camille T Dungy, then wandering to a culturally related poem by Toi Derricotte, enjoyed and read several of hers and thinking to understand. I get it, I do understand her poems, but I can't understand where she is in life because we're so different; a case of I can sympathize because I have a heart and a brain, but cannot empathize because I am male and white. See, there's the difference I was commenting on in a recent blogpost.  First, in the news, I read about Walter Mondale, a good man who just died. Having voted both ways over my years, honestly can't remember whether I voted for Fritz or not, though I could figure it out by checking Mondale v when Reagan sent U S Marines to Beirut, which caused a sea change in my political views and voting. But then as priest and pastor I did strive, not for justice among a...

  Last week combatted covid isolation watching several films, both YouTube and Amazon, read one-and-a-half of two most recent issues of The New Yorker , thence to several books including Hemingway's in our time collection of short stories (1925) and all but the final chapter of The Sun Also Rises. Sunday is always a favorite day. Up early, three a.m. is the standing target for Sunday, definitely if I am in the pulpit that day. Not so yesterday, so going back to sleep after visiting with Father Nature about midnight, slept soundly until three-fifteen, then up for coffee and further to contemplate Sunday School class. Water and the other half of Saturday's jumbo beef-burger for breakfast - - chopped sirloin seared outside, red inside at first, but cooked through when warmed for re-run. mustard & mayo, cheese a cheddar and a gouda. Started a rainy Sunday morning. Phone turned off. Rite One Eucharistic Prayer II, Sunday School gathering in the parish library, Rite Tw...

  NO, the Instructed Eucharist is not this morning after all. The first mug of coffee is down and at work rousing the Ancient One from sound sleep, and YES, we're having Sunday School this morning - -  usual time and place, couple dozen (I'll try to remember to count them this morning) steps to the parish library through the double doors in the single-story building at the east end of the yellowing brick road, between worship services 9:15 to 10:15, come one come all, come early come timely come late, everyone is invited and welcome.  Being that today is the Third Sunday of Easter, Year B and our season and appointed gospel subject is the Resurrection, but primarily because I enjoy comparing events and stirring unsettling questions like "what REALLY happened?" and "what did Jesus REALLY say and do?", this morning's Sunday School handout is (NRSV) Mark chapter 16, Matthew chapter 28, Luke chapter 24, and John chapters 20 and 21. And it's my plan of th...