Network Analysis of Biblical Texts
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jch.31682Keywords:
network theory, knowledge representation, word co-occurrence networks, miracle of the five thousandAbstract
This article presents examples of using Network Theory to analyse the text of the New Testament. We provide an introduction to the basic concepts of Network Theory and centrality measures in networks and suggest a simple method of creating word co-occurrence networks from passages. Special consideration is given to the psychological realism of the model in the context of the ancient Mediterranean world. Following a demonstration of the method on the first two verses of the Gospel of John, we compare multiple versions of a miracle story with the help of network analysis. The final part of the article demonstrates how the method can be extended to account for the knowledge of different readerships in the interpretation of the text.
References
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Hurtado, Larry W. 2006. The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
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Kowalski, Beate. 2013. “Jesus Sättigt ganz Israel (Die Speisung der Fünftausend)”. In Kompendium der frühchristlichen Wundererzählungen. Band 1: Die Wunder Jesu, ed. Ruben Zimmermann, Detlev Dormeyer, Judith Hartenstein, Christian Münch, Enno Edzar Popkes and Uta Poplutz, 442–53. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus.
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Murai, Hajime, and Akifumi Tokosumi. 2007. “Network Analysis of the Four Gospels and the Catechism of the Catholic Church”. Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics 11: 772–79. https://doi.org/10.20965/jaciii.2007.p0772
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Sowa, John F. 1992. “Semantic Networks”. In Encyclopaedia of Artificial Intelligence, 2nd edn, ed. Stuart Shapiro, 1493–1511. New York: Wiley.
Strijkers, Kristof, and Albert Costa. 2011. “Riding the Lexical Speedway: A Critical Review on the Time Course of Lexical Selection in Speech Production”. Frontiers in Psychology 2: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00356
Theissen, Gerd. 1998. Urchristliche Wundergeschichten: ein Beitrag zur formgeschichtlichen Erforschung der synoptischen Evangelien, 7th edn. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus.
Theissen, Gerd, and Annette Merz. 1998. The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.
Turney, Peter D, and Patrick Pantel. 2010. “From Frequency to Meaning: Vector Space Models of Semantics”. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research 37: 141–88.
White, L. Michael. 1992. Social Networks in the Early Christian Environment: Issues and Methods for Social History. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press.
Baddeley, Alan D., and Graham J. Hitch. 1974. “Working Memory”. In The Psychology of Learning and Motivation: Advances in Research and Theory, Vol. 8, ed. G. A. Bower, 47–89. New York: Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0079-7421(08)60452-1
Bolyki, János. 1998. Jesu Tischgemeinschaften. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr.
Bovon, François. 2012. Das Evangelium Nach Lukas 1, Lk. 1,1–9, 50. Düsseldorf: Benziger Verlag and Neukirchen–Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag.
Church, Kenneth Ward, and Patrick Hanks. 1990. “Word Association Norms, Mutual Information, and Lexicography”. Computational Linguistics 16: 22–29.
Cowan, Nelson, Candice C. Morey and Zhijian Chen. 2007. “The Legend of the Magical Number Seven”. In Tall Tales about the Mind & Brain: Separating Fact from Fiction, ed. Sergio Della Sala, 45–59. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198568773.003.0005
Czachesz, István. 2011. “Women, Charity, and Mobility in Early Christianity: Weak Links and the Historical Transformation of Religions”. In Changing Minds: Religion and Cognition Through the Ages, ed. István Czachesz and Tamás Biró, 129–54. Leuven: Peeters.
Dengel, Andreas. 2012. Semantische Technologien: Grundlagen – Konzepte – Anwendungen. Heidelberg: Spektrum Akademischer Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-8274-2664-2
Duling, Dennis C. 1999. “The Jesus Movement and Social Network Analysis (Part I: The Spatial Network)”. Biblical Theology Bulletin 29: 156–75. https://doi.org/10.1177/014610799902900404
Duling, Dennis C. 2000. “The Jesus Movement and Social Network Analysis (Part II: The Social Network)”. Biblical Theology Bulletin 30: 3–14. https://doi.org/10.1177/014610790003000102
Duling, Dennis C. 2013. “Paul’s Aegean Network: The Strength of Strong Ties”. Biblical Theology Bulletin 43: 135–54. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146107913493564
Hurtado, Larry W. 2006. The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Kolaczyk, Eric D. 2009. Statistical Analysis of Network Data: Methods and Models. New York and London: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-88146-1
Kollmann, Bernd. 2013. “Brot und Fisch zum Abwinken (Die Speisung der Fünftausend)”. In Kompendium der frühchristlichen Wundererzählungen. Band 1: Die Wunder Jesu, ed. Ruben Zimmermann, Detlev Dormeyer, Judith Hartenstein, Christian Münch, Enno Edzar Popkes and Uta Poplutz, 294–303. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus.
Kowalski, Beate. 2013. “Jesus Sättigt ganz Israel (Die Speisung der Fünftausend)”. In Kompendium der frühchristlichen Wundererzählungen. Band 1: Die Wunder Jesu, ed. Ruben Zimmermann, Detlev Dormeyer, Judith Hartenstein, Christian Münch, Enno Edzar Popkes and Uta Poplutz, 442–53. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus.
Lemaire, Benoit, and Guy Denhi. 2004. “Incremental Construction of an Associative Network from a Corpus”. In 26th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, ed. K. D. Forbus, D. Gentner and T. Regier, 825–30. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Moessner, David P. 1989. Lord of the Banquet: The Literary and Theological Significance of the Lukan Travel Narrative. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress.
Murai, Hajime, and Akifumi Tokosumi. 2007. “Network Analysis of the Four Gospels and the Catechism of the Catholic Church”. Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics 11: 772–79. https://doi.org/10.20965/jaciii.2007.p0772
Palshikar, Girish Keshav. 2007. “Keyword Extraction from a Single Document Using Centrality Measures”. In Pattern Recognition and Machine Intelligence, ed. Ashish Ghosh, Rajat K. De and Sankar K. Pal, 503–10. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 4815. Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-77046-6_62
Serrano, J. Ignacio, A. Iglesias and M. D. del Castillo. 2007. “Modeling Human Reading in Conceptual Networks for Text Representation and Comparison”. In International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, 613–18. Piscataway, NJ: International Neural Network Society; IEEE Computational Intelligence Society. https://doi.org/10.1109/IJCNN.2007.4371027
Sowa, John F. 1992. “Semantic Networks”. In Encyclopaedia of Artificial Intelligence, 2nd edn, ed. Stuart Shapiro, 1493–1511. New York: Wiley.
Strijkers, Kristof, and Albert Costa. 2011. “Riding the Lexical Speedway: A Critical Review on the Time Course of Lexical Selection in Speech Production”. Frontiers in Psychology 2: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00356
Theissen, Gerd. 1998. Urchristliche Wundergeschichten: ein Beitrag zur formgeschichtlichen Erforschung der synoptischen Evangelien, 7th edn. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus.
Theissen, Gerd, and Annette Merz. 1998. The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.
Turney, Peter D, and Patrick Pantel. 2010. “From Frequency to Meaning: Vector Space Models of Semantics”. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research 37: 141–88.
White, L. Michael. 1992. Social Networks in the Early Christian Environment: Issues and Methods for Social History. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press.
Published
2018-03-29
Issue
Section
Digital Humanities, Cognitive Historiography and the Study of Religion
How to Cite
Czachesz, I. (2018). Network Analysis of Biblical Texts. Journal of Cognitive Historiography, 3(1-2), 43-67. https://doi.org/10.1558/jch.31682
