The En-Gedi scroll's peer-reviewed radiocarbon date (3rd–4th century CE) contradicts the University of Kentucky's 2015 press-release date (late 6th century CE)

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Textus 26 (2016), the journal of the Hebrew University Bible Project, published "An Early Leviticus Scroll from En-Gedi: Preliminary Publication" by Michael Segal and Emanuel Tov (Hebrew University), W. Brent Seales and Clifford Seth Parker (University of Kentucky), and Pnina Shor and Yosef Porath (Israel Antiquities Authority), with a paleographic appendix by Ada Yardeni. Four of the six named authors, plus the appendix contributor, are independent of the Kentucky/Vesuvius Challenge side entirely — the paper independently corroborates the 2015 announcement and technique behind virtual unwrapping's first public proof from a venue substantially independent of both the University of Kentucky's own newsroom and the (then nonexistent) Vesuvius Challenge.

But the peer-reviewed paper's own radiocarbon result disagrees with the figure given in the University of Kentucky's contemporaneous press materials. The university's 2015 press release (syndicated verbatim by ScienceDaily, sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150720115149.htm, sha 5cc935b644f956133a46970bcbd7f4e89953a1d889cc7c73ff6a6eb2a03b3a63) stated the scroll was "dated by C14 analysis... to the late sixth century C.E." The Textus paper instead reports: "According to Carbon 14 dating, the scroll was copied between the 3rd and 4th century CE (firm assessment)... The test results indicate a probability of 68.2% that the scroll dates between 235–340 CE, and a probability of 88.9% that it dates between 210–390 CE" — more than two centuries earlier than the press figure — with Yardeni's paleographic analysis suggesting an earlier date still, "the second half of the 1st century CE or, at the latest, the beginning of the 2nd century CE."

Per the sourcing floor's compiled-source guidance (00-meta/specs/sources.md), where a contemporaneous primary and a press account disagree, the more careful primary wins: the press release's "late sixth century" figure reads as an early, since-superseded estimate, not a live contradiction of the peer-reviewed dating. The separate superlative "oldest Hebrew biblical text outside the Dead Sea Scrolls" — carried in the same 2015 press materials and repeated in claim-virtual-unwrapping-first-proved-on-2015-en-gedi-scroll — remains [unverified-historical — no Tier 1–2 source located this session states the "oldest outside the Dead Sea Scrolls" framing directly; the Textus paper supports it indirectly by dating the scroll close to, but after, the latest Qumran material, without using this comparative language itself].