Statistical Approaches to Paul's Letters

Distributions, Visualization, Cluster Mapping, and Topology
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-90-04-74135-5
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 7, 190 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 472 g

Reihe: Digital Biblical Studies

This book demonstrates the utility of statistical and computational approaches to Paul’s letters. Such work helps resolve questions of authorship, describes and quantifies aspects of Paul’s style, and explains structural relationships within and between Paul’s letters. A series of linked case studies deploy a shared set of top-down stylistic features to differentially analyse Paul’s seven undisputed letters. Each chapter explores a different digital approach, co-written with a subject expert in this method. Chapters range from a history of the field to theoretical branches of mathematics, with each chapter providing a case study applying a different method to issues within Pauline Studies, with progressively more sophisticated statistical, computational, and mathematical models.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Robertson, Paul

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Christentum, Christliche Theologie Christentum/Christliche Theologie Allgemein

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface

Acknowledgments

List of Figures

List of Tables

Notes on Contributors

Introduction: History of Stylometry and Digital Approaches to Pauline Style

Part 1 Describing and Distributing

1 A Poisson Analysis of Paul’s Letters Thomas McCauley and Paul Robertson

2 Zipf’s Law and Paul’s Literary Techniques Thomas McCauley and Paul Robertson

Part 2 Mapping and Visualizing

3 Mapping Paul’s Letters: Grouping, Identifying, and Plotting Stylistic Features Ashley Roy and Paul Robertson

4 Analyzing Paul’s Letters: Cluster Mapping and Comparing across Features and Letters Ashley Roy and Paul Robertson

Part 3 Abstracting and Theorizing

5 Topology: Persistent Homology and Paul’s Letters John Lind and Paul Robertson

Conclusion

Appendices

References

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Paul Robertson, Ph.D. (2013, Brown University), is Senior Lecturer in Classics & Humanities and Director of Undergraduate Research at the University of New Hampshire, and Research Associate in the Department of New Testament and Related Literature at the University of Pretoria. His books explore comparing early Christian literature (2016), theorizing inter-religion (2019), selfhood and the Cyclops myth (2022), and the anthropology of belief (2024).