The project started with a conversion of Lowfat trees from the MACULA linguistic datasets for the Nestle 1904 Greek New Testament towards Text-Fabric (TF). TF is a powerful Python package that supports working with ancient texts. For those less familiar with the programming language Python, it has a browser function that allows for the display of a text and its linguistic annotations and the performance of basic query options. The project involved not only the conversion of the XML data of the Lowfat trees into the TF format, but also the enrichment of the data to enable syntactic analysis. We have also taken care to document the final dataset in detail, including illustrative example use cases.
The project served not only as a preparation for a richly annotated syntactic dataset for the Greek New Testament, but also as a case study for the conversion from XML to TF and the creation and presentation of syntactic datasets. A special issue of the Andrews University Seminary Studies will (forthcoming in 2025) address the developments of Digital Humanities in New Testament studies, the position of the current dataset in the field of NT studies, the challenges we had to face in the conversion process, and the potential of the database both in research (exemplified by a case study on the so-called historical present in the NT Gospels) and in teaching (thanks to its integration in the Bible Online Learner).
More about this Research Project
Start/end Date
2022-2025
Team
Leader: Oliver Glanz (Andrews University) and Willem van Peursen (SRT, VU Amsterdam)
Team: Saulo de Oliveira Cantanhede (Andrews University) and Tony Jurg (SRT, VU Amsterdam)
Project website: GitHub - CenterBLC/N1904: Text-Fabric dataset of the Greek New Testament, based on the Nestle 1904 (7th printing) edition.