Coding the Hebrew Bible

Abstract

The text of the Hebrew Bible is a subject of ongoing study in disciplines ranging from theology to linguistics to history to computing science. In order to study the text digitally, one has to represent it in bits and bytes, together with related materials. The author has compiled a dataset, called BHSA (Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (Amstelodamensis)), consisting of the textual source of the Hebrew Bible according to the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS), and annotations by the Eep Talstra Centre for Bible and Computer. This dataset powers the website SHEBANQ and others, and is being used in education and research. The author has developed a Python package, Text-Fabric, to process ancient texts together with annotations. He shows how Text-Fabric can be used to process the BHSA. This includes creating new research data alongside it, and sharing it. Text-Fabric also supports versioning: as versions of the BHSA change over time, and people invest a lot in applications based on the data, measures are needed to prevent the loss of earlier results.