This repository relates to my PhD-projekt "Roles and Relations: A Study of Participant Tracking, Semantic Roles, and Social Networks in Leviticus 17โ26" and contains the data and scripts for the research. The research is carried out at the Eep Talstra Centre for Bible and Computer at Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam.
The research focuses on the Hebrew text of Leviticus 17-26 and explores the distrubution and linking of participants in the text as well as the semantic and social roles of the participants. The main contribution of the research, apart from the development of new methods for the interpretation of Biblical texts, is a deeper understanding of the roles and relationships among the participants of the text. The computational part of the research is carried out on the BHSA corpus of the Hebrew Bible using the Python3 package text-fabric.
Below follows a table of content reminiscent of the dissertation with links to appendices and subrepositories containing scripts and datasets
Introduction to the dissertation, briefly introducing the main research question of the research: "In sum, the overall research question to be pursued in this study is how we should understand the functions and meanings (i.e., the roles) of the participants within the social community implied by the piece of literature called the Holiness Code (Lev 17-26)."
An extensive summary of how Leviticus 17-26 has previously been handled in scholarly work. It is argued that the text, which is a law text, should be understood as social literature that tells a "story". The main building blocks of the story are the participants to which this dissertation is dedicated. The chapter also contains a summary of previous research on the participants, and specific research questions for a Social Network Analysis are outlined.
A detailed discussion of the participants of Lev 17-26, their distribution and links. The scripts and data produced for this chapter is stored in a sepearate repository.
- Scripts and data: https://github.com/ch-jensen/participants
- Spreadsheet of the participants and their references: Participants-and-references_Lev17-26.xlsx
The chapter offers three developments: 1) A proposal of quantitative models for the study of Biblical Hebrew verbal aspect, 2) Particular studies of the verbal aspects dynamicity and causation, and 3) a hierarchy of semantic roles related to the notion of agency. The scripts and data produced for this chapter is stored in a sepearate repository.
- Scripts and data: https://github.com/ch-jensen/semantic-roles
The participants of Lev 17-26 are explored as a social network formed by the participants themselves and their internal relationships (conceptualized as interactions and realized by verbs). By doing so, the insights of chapter 3 and 4 are combined. The chapter concludes in a social network description of a selection of participants. The scripts and data produced for this chapter is stored in a sepearate repository.
- Scripts and data: https://github.com/ch-jensen/SNA
A reader-friendly interlinear Hebrew text with most data produced in the research and documented in the dissertation. The dissertation itself only contains a sample (Lev 17). The full appendix is available here: Full appendix.pdf