Handwritten Text Recognition on Gemini

I just saw this old (almost a year old, which is ancient in AI terms) article on Google Gemini 3 essentially solving the problem of Handwritten Text Recognition for historical English documents. The author reports results at or better than skilled human transcribers without fine tuning. An important point, he notes, "We obtained the best performance with temperature (how variable the model’s outputs are) set to 0, media resolution to high (the best image quality), and the thinking level at the minimum of 128." Temperature of 0 ensures maximally consistent results, and the low thinking level stops the model from second-guessing itself. For our Psalms project we have been experimenting with AI-generated transcriptions of Hebrew Masoretic Manuscripts, but none of the systems can as yet accurately read the vowels and accents. We are cooperating with the Open Masorah project to try to use our human-labelled transcriptions to improve performance on this task.

Encoding the Layout of the Leningrad Codex

Charles Loder has started a project to encode the layout of the Leningrad Codex to better situate its text on the page. He's also asking for volunteers to align folios with the help of AI. Recovering the materiality and layout of our manuscripts is a worthy endeavor, and we have tried to do that as well with our transcriptions of manuscripts for Psalms 1-50 (https://hbcepsalms.manuscriptroom.com/manuscript-workspace).

HT Agade

Burning Model Scrolls

True story.... Years ago my poor pregnant wife woke up to the smell of smoke to find me burning model scrolls in the living room. :) I was burning them to observe damage patterns and practice reconstructing fragmentary scrolls.

A new article reports how several scholars have gone and done that as a test case for virtually unwrapping carbonized scrolls like the Herculaneum papyri. They used modern papyrus with lead-laced ink, carbonized it, and then went through the process of scanning and virtually unwrapping it. Their conclusion that metallic additives in the ink make the scanning process more effective and easier is not particularly novel, since we have already observed that in other scrolls like the En-Gedi Leviticus scroll. The real challenge is reading and unrolling scrolls without metal additives. But it does sound like a fun experiment, and the authors hope that it can serve as a ground truth for benchmarking other studies and methods.

James Moore on Elephantine

James Moore has an interview on the Judeans at Elephantine and their socio-religious background that is well worth a listen. He makes the interesting suggestion that Judeans who fled Elephantine might have brought their literary (scriptures?) with them as a possible explanation for their absence from the finds. And I would date the invention of Torah scrolls earlier than he would. :) But all in all fascinating discussion.

The interview is based on his newly published book on the topic.

RIP Hector Patmore

I've just learned that Hector Patmore has passed away while hiking in Scotland. I didn't know him well, but he was always kind and thoughtful in our interactions. Hector made a big impact in our field with his project on the Targums especially. One of his students has prepared a nice tribute in his memory.

Fassberg, The Hebrew of Qumran

Steven Fassberg has published a new grammar of Qumran Hebrew entitled The Hebrew of Qumran. This promises to be a very useful tool.

_______________________________

Via Agade:

Ugarit-Verlag – Buch- und Medienhandel GmbH, Germany, has the pleasure to announce the publication of:

The Hebrew of Qumran

AOAT, 482

Steven E. Fassberg

Hardcover, 373 pp.

Price: 148,00 € / $ 172,00

ISBN: 978-3-86835-382-2

Steven E. Fassberg’s The Hebrew of Qumran provides a comprehensive yet concise account of the Hebrew language of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The study examines the linguistic features of the Qumran texts within the broader development of Hebrew during the Second Temple period, taking into account the diverse linguistic traditions and varieties attested in the manuscripts.

Following an introduction to the Qumran community, the archaeological site, the scrolls, and the history of linguistic research, Fassberg discusses orthography and phonology, morphology and morphosyntax, verbs, particles, and syntax. Particular attention is given to the relationship between Qumran Hebrew and Biblical Hebrew, Mishnaic Hebrew, and other ancient Hebrew traditions, as well as to possible Aramaic influence.

The grammar is complemented by comments on the lexicon, a chrestomathy of selected Qumran texts, a glossary, and extensive indices and bibliographical references. The volume thus provides an important reference work and practical research tool for the study of the language and texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Steven E. Fassberg is the Caspar Levias Professor of Ancient Semitic Languages at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

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Fassberg also provides an interesting personal note on the website:

This grammar owes its existence to Prof. Josef Tropper, at the time editor of the series Lehrbücher orientalischer Sprachen (LOS), who invited me to contribute a short grammar to the series on the Hebrew of Qumran. Because of previous commitments, many years passed before I was able to take up the task. The grammar turned out to be longer than originally intended and Prof. Thomas R. Kämmerer, the head of Ugarit-Verlag, suggested that Alter Orient und Altes Testament (AOAT) might be a more suitable series for the volume. I thank Prof. Kämmerer and the editors of AOAT, Prof. Régine Hunziker-Rodewald and Dr. Ulrike Steinert, for accepting the manuscript for publication.

This monograph does not replace the larger grammar of Elisha Qimron, A Grammar of the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Jerusalem, 2018). All students and scholars of the Dead Sea Scrolls are greatly indebted to Prof. Qimron for the massive amount of data he has amassed in his grammar as well as for his countless contributions to the language and the texts of the Scrolls over the past fifty years. It would be amiss not to mention also the pioneering Hebrew work of E. Y. Kutscher, Language and Linguistic Background of the Great Isaiah Scroll (Jerusalem, 1959; English translation Leiden, 1974), which still serves as a beacon to all in the field. The important contributions of many additional scholars are noted throughout the grammar.

Call for Help Digitizing HOTTP

Andrew Case is asking for volunteers to help digitize the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project volumes so that they can be easily distributed and translated. He has done initial AI-generated transcriptions and is asking for those with language/text-critical expertise to check and correct the transcriptions to ensure (and improve) accuracy using a user interface he has created for the purpose. If you have the relevant skills and would like to help make this resource more easily available, email him at andrewdcase [at] gmail [dot] com.