2024-2025 Faculty Research Grant
Oliver Glanz and Daniel Olariu (Old Testament).
Towards a Syntactical Database of Ancient Biblical Greek Texts.
The Greek Septuagint (GT) is the earliest known translation of the Hebrew Bible (HB). As such, it is, invaluable
- for linguistic studies as it can shed light on what certain Hebrew words and phrases mean,
- for exegetical studies as the GT can indicate which interpretative routes early readers have taken when reading the HB,
- for text critical studies as the GT can shed light on hypothetical but also existing (e.g. 4QJerb,d) HB text traditions.
- for New Testament (NT) studies. This is because the NT by standard quotes the GT version of the OT.
Due to the essential nature of the GT for the study of both OT and NT efforts have been made to offer an interlinear text that aligns the Hebrew phrases of the HB with the Greek phrases of the GT. None of the previous attempts, however, have worked with modern AI supported syntax parsers resulting in their low usability to carry out typical linguistic research procedures. In addition, early efforts have collaborated with commercial Biblesoftware companies (Accordance, Logos) preventing open-source access and disallowing the data to be used in typical modern data analysis environments (python, jupyter notebooks, etc.).
Our project aims to address these limitations. We will work on (1) enriching existing data with syntactical information, (2) align the complete HB and GT data (from wordlevel up to sentence level), and (3) convert the new database into the widely used open-source TextFabric research environment. The completed project will offer a sophisticated analysis tool for scholars and enhance Biblical interpretation.