Nicolai Winther-Nielsen - Interactive Tools and Tasks for the Hebrew Bible

jdmdh:4003 - Journal of Data Mining & Digital Humanities, October 27, 2017, Special Issue on Computer-Aided Processing of Intertextuality in Ancient Languages - https://doi.org/10.46298/jdmdh.4003
Interactive Tools and Tasks for the Hebrew BibleArticle

Authors: Nicolai Winther-Nielsen 1

  • 1 Fjellhaug International University College Denmark

This contribution to a special issue on “Computer-aided processing of intertextuality” in ancient texts will illustrate how using digital tools to interact with the Hebrew Bible offers new promising perspectives for visualizing the texts and for performing tasks in education and research. This contribution explores how the corpus of the Hebrew Bible created and maintained by the Eep Talstra Centre for Bible and Computer can support new methods for modern knowledge workers within the field of digital humanities and theology be applied to ancient texts, and how this can be envisioned as a new field of digital intertextuality. The article first describes how the corpus was used to develop the Bible Online Learner as a persuasive technology to enhance language learning with, in, and around a database that acts as the engine driving interactive tasks for learners. Intertextuality in this case is a matter of active exploration and ongoing practice. Furthermore, interactive corpus-technology has an important bearing on the task of textual criticism as a specialized area of research that depends increasingly on the availability of digital resources. Commercial solutions developed by software companies like Logos and Accordance offer a market-based intertextuality defined by the production of advanced digital resources for scholars and students as useful alternatives to often inaccessible and expensive printed versions. It is reasonable to expect that in the future interactive corpus technology will allow scholars to do innovative academic tasks in textual criticism and interpretation. We have already seen the emergence of promising tools for text categorization, analysis of translation shifts, and interpretation. Broadly speaking, interactive tools and tasks within the three areas of language learning, textual criticism, and Biblical studies illustrate a new kind of intertextuality emerging within digital humanities.


Volume: Special Issue on Computer-Aided Processing of Intertextuality in Ancient Languages
Section: Towards a Digital Ecosystem: NLP. Corpus infrastructure. Methods for Retrieving Texts and Computing Text Similarities
Published on: October 27, 2017
Accepted on: October 23, 2017
Submitted on: October 23, 2017
Keywords: Bible Online Learner,Joshua 24, Hebrew Bible,Digital intertextuality,Corpus,Logos Bible software,language learning,Hebrew Bible,ETCBC,textual criticism,Joshua,[INFO.INFO-CL] Computer Science [cs]/Computation and Language [cs.CL]

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