2016-2017 Faculty Research Grant

Oliver Glanz (Old Testament) & Rodney Summerscales (Engineering & Computer Science)

Making Biblical Hebrew students learn the Hebrew Language not the Hebrew Bible

This is a joint project between Dr. Summerscales, a computer scientist with a background in natural language processing, and Dr. Glanz, a Hebraist within the field of digital humanities, to improve the web-based, opensource, Hebrew learning environment BibleOL (http://bibleol.3bmoodle.dk/). Using BibleOL in Seminary Hebrew classes has been shown to increase student scores by 10%.

Our project will:

1. Create a web-based grading/examination environment for Biblical Hebrew.
2. Improve the present BibleOL learning environment by adding novel Biblical Hebrew texts to the learning process. We intend to remove the crutch for Biblical Hebrew students who tend to translate Biblical Hebrew texts not by relying on their language skills but on their Bible knowledge. Our research wants to develop tools that prevent the confusion of these two different types of knowledge by making use of deep learning neural networks. Here the machine learns from the data categories, features and values of the ETCBC Hebrew DB as contained in the BibleOL in order to produce random, grammatically correct Biblical Hebrew texts that are only Biblical in the sense that they are built with the Biblical Hebrew vocabulary and Biblical Hebrew grammar but were never part of the OT. In this way we help the student to no longer rely on Bible knowledge but stimulate the efficient learning of the actual language.

This project is a collaborative effort between Seminary and Computer Science faculty that will improve a novel Hebrew instruction tool, and provide research experience for graduate and undergraduate computer science and seminary students.