The project researches how gender is negotiated and manipulated in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament. This sheds new light on the role of gender and views of gender roles in early Christianity. At the same time, it further develops the role of machine learning in the field of digital humanities at larges.
Three doctoral positions
The project has at its core three doctoral positions. In these, the methodology of the use of machine learning for the analysis of gender in ancient manuscripts, the findings regarding gender, and their significance for the historiography and contemporary theological reflection of the Christian tradition are researched.
The projects will be executed as joint doctorates, in which the host institutions in Germany, the University of Rostock, the Wismar University of Applied Sciences and the Evangelische Hochschule Ludwigsburg, will collaborate with the Protestant Theological University and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
Gender
Making use of multiple thousands, often age-old manuscripts of the New Testament that have been digitized in recent years, the research project has three foci. First, it will investigate ways in which the textual transmission of the New Testament contains gender related variations, focusing on previously identified case studies. Second, it will develop a machine learning based way of tracing developments in the transmission of the text of the New Testament that have a bearing on gender.
Third, it will engage in an ethical and theological reflection on such variations and their significance for the understanding of the Christian tradition and its continuation in the 21st century.
'The account of her'
The photo shows the codex Sinaiticus, one of the most prominent manuscripts of the New Testament, reading 'the account of her' (a girl healed by Jesus), rather than 'the fame of him' (Jesus), or 'the news of the event (sc. the healing)'. These three options, represented in the manuscript tradition have a strong impact on what kind of gender roles are highlighted in what way. In standardized spelling, the three options are: ἡ φήμη αὕτη, i.e., the news of this event; ἡ φήμη αὐτῆς, i.e., the news about the girl, or ἡ φήμη αὐτοῦ, i.e., the news about him (Jesus).
The project, which has a budget of a little over 1 million EUR, was applied for by Prof. Dr. Soham al-Suadi, Professor of New Testament at Rostock University, Prof. Dr. Gotlind Ulshöfer, Professor of Protestant Theology (with a focus on Diaconal Studies) at Evangelische Hochschule Darmstadt-Treysa, Prof. Dr. Frank Krüger, Professor of Data Science and Machine Learning at the Wismar University of Applied Sciences, in close collaboration with Dr. Jan Krans, assistant professor of New Testament at the Protestant Theological University in Amsterdam, and Prof. Dr. Peter-Ben Smit, Professor of Contextual Biblical Interpretation at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, both of whom will serve as Mercator Fellows in the project.