Biblical Studies and Digital Humanities

Oxford Bibliographies, 2023

Digital humanities and the Bible is an arm of biblical studies that uses computing and linked data technologies to create tools, portals, electronic indices, digital textual editions, and digital publications for biblical research and pedagogy. The intersection of biblical studies and computing technology has transformed how scholars teach and study the Bible, its world and characters, and its interpretative history. Digital Bible scholars and theologians engage digital tools and applications in their research, teaching, and publishing. They also analyze how digital methods, databases, and visualization affect the dissemination of knowledge of the Bible. This article presents projects that elucidate how scholars can use digital tools to probe the questions of biblical studies and train scholars in the skills for studying the Bible. It includes introductory material for students and scholars new to the digital humanities. The digital scholarship addressed here is meant to help scholars recognize the size of different biblical textual corpora in the various languages of the ancient world. Collaborators in the digital humanities work across disciplinary boundaries. Biblical studies, too, which brings together theologians, philologists, historians, archaeologists, paleographers, and anthropologists, therefore, works well with the interdisciplinary nature of the digital humanities. Digital bible scholars work with librarian collections, archives, memory institutions, and the preservation of cultural heritage as this pertains to their field and the knowledge economy of the Bible: its textual history, its people and places, and its transmission.

2019

Digital Humanities in Biblical, Early Jewish and Early Christian Studies, 2014

Theological Librarianship, 2023

Ancient Manuscripts in Digital Culture, 2019

This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the prevailing CC-BY-NC 4.0 License, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.

2017

Scholarly discourse evaluating the digital turn in biblical and religious studies is at an early stage in its development, as attested to by the creation of two new book series in 2016: Introduction to Digital Humanities: Religion (IDH, de Gruyter), and Digital Biblical Studies (DBS, Brill). Previously, Heidi Campbell published an overview of the topic (Campbell 2013), developed in further publications (Campbell-Althenhofen 2015, Campbell-Garner 2016). In a recent overview, Carrie Schroeder develops two central questions on the topic: “what does it mean for Biblical Studies to be marginal to the Digital Humanities when DH is a field positioning itself as transformative for the humanities? How can our expertise in Biblical Studies influence and shape Digital Humanities for the better?” (Schroeder 2016). Using her field, Coptic studies, as an example she shows that the particular skills and needs of a marginal field within a marginal field can be a strong driver in DH. Consequently, a...

Τὰ διὰ τὸ εἶναι μέγιστα καὶ ὑπὲρ ἄνθρωπον τυγχάνειν εἰς ὑπερβολήν τε ὑπεράνω τῆς ἐπικήρου φύσεως ἡμῶν ἀδύνατα τῷ λογικῷ καὶ θνητῷ γένει καταλαβεῖν ἐν πολλῇ δὲ καὶ ἀμετρήτῳ ἐκ χεομένῃ ἀπὸ θεοῦ εἰς ἀνθρώπους χάριτι θεοῦ διὰ τοῦ τῆς ἀνυπερβλήτου εἰς ἡμᾶς χάριτος ὑπηρέτου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ τοῦ συνεργοῦ πνεύματος βουλήσει θεοῦ δυνατὰ γίνεται.

Charles Ess, ed. Critical Thinking and the Bible in the Age of New Media. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 2004

Not long ago, a student of mine described a Bible study software package she had recently purchased for about one hundred dollars. This software package, which advertises itself as a PC-based "reference library," contains complete texts of four versions of the Bible, cross reference resources, a Bible dictionary, an encyclopedia, two commentaries, word study reference works, and biblical language reference helps. It also includes maps, study guides, a reading plan, and a photo collection of notable geographical sites from the ancient near east. It even provides a place for "personal notes." My student described this new acquisition not with the excitement of someone who has made a remarkable discovery but in a matter of fact way, almost as a parenthetical aside in an ongoing conversation. This incident is noteworthy not for being unusual but precisely because it typifies a generation of young adult students of the Bible who stand poised at the outset of a new millennium. She, like her contemporaries, is aptly described as a child of the digital age (Honen). Conversant and comfortable with personal computers and a host of software applications, she knows how to communicate electronically and has surfed the Internet for business, research, and recreation. Thanks to the technologies of digitization and computer-mediated communication (most strikingly evident in the Internet and the World

Between Humanities and the Digital, edited by Patrik Svensson and David Theo Goldberg (pp. 283-294)

The study of religion remains a minor participant in the digital humanities. 􏰀eligious te􏰁ts were analy􏰂ed in the earliest days of humanities computing (Busa 2004), but today religion is at best a marginal theme in digital humanities conferences and debates. Digiti􏰂ation pro􏰃ects continue to be undertaken, and the study of digital religion is a vibrant academic field, but methods of large-scale data analysis, visuali􏰂ation, and publication remain largely traditional. 􏰀eligious practitioners have taken to digital media with greater enthusiasm than academics, undertaking their own digiti􏰂ation, data visuali􏰂ation, publishing, networking, and conceptual pro􏰃ects outside the academy with a considerable degree of success. This chapter will survey some of the work currently being done at the intersection of religion and digital technology, drawing attention to nonacademic work and calling for greater engagement with the methods and ideas of the digital humanities.

This is an overview of the assignments related to the modules of the course “Bible Translation and Digital Humanities” (also known as “Bible Translation in the Digital Age), which is one of the five courses in the Minor Programme “Bible Translation in the Digital Age” by Prof. Lourens de Vries, Prof. Peter-Ben Smit and me. The assignments will be discussed in our weekly class meetings in the period October–December. These assignments apply to the Autumn Semester 2020, but our intention is to offer this minor every year. For more information on this minor see https://minor.vu.nl/en/programmes-a-z/bible-translation-digital-age/index.aspx The course consists of the following modules and is concluded by a final paper: 1. Introduction to Digital Humanities 2. Corpora and Translation Studies 3. Computer-aided Bible Translation 4. Tools for Linguistic Analysis — SHEBANQ 5. Machine Translation and the Bible 6. Seminars (which serve as an “virtual excursion”) 7. Final paper