Associated Products
THEOT Work for the National Endowment for the Humanities Grant (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: THEOT Work for the National Endowment for the Humanities Grant
Author: Garry Jost
Abstract: The Textual History of the Ethiopic Old Testament (THEOT) project has employed manual and computer processes to compare and analyze Ethiopic texts. The team received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in 2020 to refine these processes, to publish our findings, and to offer a website for the use of other scholars. Two teams collaborate for this work, the Philology Team (Curt Niccum, Steve Delamarter, Ralph Lee, Daniel Assefa, and Garry Jost), and the Data Team (Brent Reeves, James Prather, Steve Delamarter, and Garry Jost). Our work focuses on supporting the needs/requirements of scholars to help answer their questions about the Ethiopic texts and the textual history of those texts. We are developing a website to offer two capabilities: 1. Scholars can review/check our work by examining the various artifacts, generated by hand or machine. 2. If the scholars determine that our processes may be useful for their work, they can use the processes of the website to analyze their own texts, which are not limited to texts in the Ge`ez language. The presentation will include a demonstration of our website, in the current state of development at the time of the SBL presentation
Date: 11/20/2022
Conference Name: Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature
Ethiopic Deuteronomy (Book Section)Title: Ethiopic Deuteronomy
Author: Ralph Lee
Editor: Dominik Markl
Abstract: This article summarizes the findings of the THEOT project study of Deuteronomy, seeking to outline the main findings regarding the textual history of Ethiopic Deuteronomy: the earliest attested clusters, and the reasons for their differentiation, the more major revision process that starts in the late sixteenth century, and the process of standardization following that. It also provides some examples of interpretative translations found in Ethiopic Deuteronomy.
Year: 2022
Primary URL:
https://brill.com/display/serial/VTSOPrimary URL Description: Link to publisher's description of series.
Access Model: subscription
Publisher: Brill
Book Title: The Formation and Interpretation of Old Testament Literature
The Relevance of the Gǝ‘ǝz Psalter for the Editing of the Greek Psalms (Book Section)Title: The Relevance of the Gǝ‘ǝz Psalter for the Editing of the Greek Psalms
Author: Steve Delamarter
Author: Curt Niccum
Editor: F. Albrecht
Abstract: For some time, Old Testament text critics have recognized the importance of the Gǝ‘ǝz (classical Ethiopic) version for textual criticism, especially as a witness to an early Greek text. Nevertheless, most studies have merely mined the version for kernels of Greek evidence, either treating the versional evidence as monolothic or citing Gǝ‘ǝz variants indiscriminately with little to no discernment of their place in Ethiopian transmission history. Retroversion into Greek, however, can only take place after completing the requisite work of establishing the earliest Gǝ‘ǝz text, understanding the version’s own transmission history, and paying attention to translation technique. Even then, retroversion is methodologically tenuous. We survey here the current knowledge of the Gǝ‘ǝz Psalter in order to provide a foundation for future work. Despite the limitations, the Gǝ‘ǝz version offers important testimony to an early Greek form of Psalms.
Year: 2022
Primary URL:
https://www.vandenhoeck-ruprecht-verlage.com/themen-entdecken/theologie-und-religion/praktische-theologie/50/de-septuaginta-investigationes-dsiPrimary URL Description: Publisher's description of series.
Access Model: subscription
Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
Book Title: Editing the Greek Psalter
4.1.3.2 Scribal Cultures and Computational Methodologies: Case Study in Ethiopic Manuscripts (Book Section)Title: 4.1.3.2 Scribal Cultures and Computational Methodologies: Case Study in Ethiopic Manuscripts
Author: Steve Delamarter
Editor: A. Lange
Abstract: This article begins with a description of the theoretical framework for bringing technology tools and statistical analysis to the study of manuscripts of the Ethiopic Old Testament. The types of data used in these types of studies can extend well beyond textual information, to paratextual and codicological information. The remainder of the article describes a number of tools and practices for studying textual history by means of the methods of quantitative codicology and materials science.
Year: 2022
Primary URL:
https://brill.com/display/serial/THBPrimary URL Description: Link is to the publisher's description of the series.
Access Model: subscription
Publisher: Brill
Book Title: Textual History of the Bible, vol. 4: Scientific Methodologies and Technology Applied to the Textual History of the Bible
4.1.4 Machine-Readable Standards and Computational Methodologies (Book Section)Title: 4.1.4 Machine-Readable Standards and Computational Methodologies
Author: Steve Delamarter
Editor: A. Lange
Abstract: This article begins with an introduction to quantitative codicology and its relevance for the study of textual history. It continues with a description of the developments that are making this field possible, followed by examples that illustrate the types of knowledge that may be gained through this sort of quantitative study of manuscripts. Because this field is only now just emerging, the descriptions of tools and methods offered below will take the form of reports on provisional explorations.
Year: 2022
Primary URL:
https://brill.com/display/serial/THBPrimary URL Description: The link is to the publisher's description of the series.
Access Model: subscription
Publisher: Brill
Book Title: Textual History of the Bible, vol. 4: Scientific Methodologies and Technology Applied to the Textual History of the Bible
Automated Transcription of Gə‘əz Manuscripts Using Deep Learning (Article)Title: Automated Transcription of Gə‘əz Manuscripts Using Deep Learning
Author: Samuel Grieggs
Author: Jessica Lockhart
Author: Alexandra Atiya
Author: Gelila Tilahun
Author: Suzanne Conklin Akbari
Author: Eyob Derillo
Author: Jarod Jacobs
Author: Christine Kwon
Author: Michael Gervers
Author: Steve Delamarter
Author: Alexandra Gillespie
Author: Walter Scheirer
Abstract: This paper describes a collaborative project designed to meet the needs of communities interested in Gə'əz language texts by developing an easy-to-use open-source tool that converts images of Gə'əz manuscript pages into a transcription using optical character recognition (OCR). Our computational tool incorporates a custom data curation process to address the language-specific facets of Gə'əz coupled with a Convolutional Recurrent Neural Network to perform the transcription. Our work also begins to identify ethical questions about access and ownership raised by AI-driven digital transcription of Gə'əz manuscript texts, in part by centering the needs and the involvement of Ethiopian scholars and communities. Gə'əz manuscripts and their texts offer a vital resource for sustaining the history and living culture of Ethiopia and its people. An open-source OCR transcription tool for digitized Gə'əz manuscripts can be used by students and scholars of Ethiopian manuscripts to create a substantial and computer-searchable corpus of transcribed and digitized Gə'əz texts. With suitable ground-truth, it can also be retrained to read other under-resourced scripts. The tool we developed can be run without a graphics processing unit (GPU), meaning that it requires comparatively little computing power than most other modern AI systems. It can be run offline from a personal computer, or accessed via a web client and potentially in the web browser of a smartphone. The paper describes our team’s collaborative development of this first open-source tool for Gə'əz manuscript transcription that is both highly accurate and accessible to communities interested in Gə'əz books and the texts they contain.
Year: 2022
Primary URL:
http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/Primary URL Description: The link is to the journal website.
Access Model: open access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Digital Humanities Quarterly
Publisher: The Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations
Identifying the Cluster Membership of Previously Unstudied Manuscripts Witnessing to the Textual History of Ethiopic Deuteronomy (Book Section)Title: Identifying the Cluster Membership of Previously Unstudied Manuscripts Witnessing to the Textual History of Ethiopic Deuteronomy
Author: Steve Delamarter
Author: Ralph Lee
Editor: To be announced
Abstract: This article describes first the work of the THEOT team on 34 manuscripts of Ethiopic Deuteronomy and what we have learned about the various text forms that have developed over the last seven centuries. Based on this work with a large sample, we have been able to identify the collections of distinctive readings that characterize each cluster. Using this list of distinctive readings, Delamarter and Lee developed a set of diagnostic steps for use in identifying the likely cluster membership of any new, unstudied manuscript of Deuteronomy. They apply their method to an additional 30 manuscripts beyond their initial sample and identify cluster membership for each.
Year: 2022
Primary URL:
https://www.harrassowitz.de/Primary URL Description: This is the publisher's homepage. As this article is for a Festschrift, specific details need to remain undisclosed at present.
Access Model: subscription
Publisher: Harrassowitz
Book Title: To be announced
On the Practices and Benefits of Textual History (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: On the Practices and Benefits of Textual History
Abstract: This paper provided first a brief introduction to textual history and distinguishes it from textual criticism. It then proceeds to a description of the assumptions of the field and the foundations for doing this work to be found in the Law of Statistical Regularity, the importance of careful construction of samples for study (both the chronological distribution of the sample manuscripts as well as the size and distribution of the sample). We then describe the methods for creating accurate transcriptions, and preparing the transcriptions for machine readability, converting the textual relations into numbers, generating statistical profiles, and querying the database of statistics to identify shared text variations within the manuscript clusters. At this point we describe the three major epochs in the textual history of the Ethiopic Old Testament, and demonstrate the types of reports that we can generate that illuminate the textual history.
Author: Daniel Assefa
Author: Steve Delamarter
Date: 9/29/2022
Location: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
The André Tweed Collection of Ethiopic Manuscripts on the Beta Maṣaḥǝft Website (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: The André Tweed Collection of Ethiopic Manuscripts on the Beta Maṣaḥǝft Website
Abstract: Based on the experience of members of the THEOT team working with the Andre Tweed collection of Ethiopian manuscripts (ca. 220 items) at Howard University, this two-hour zoom consultation provided the team at Duke University with information they could use to prioritize the work they will do on their own collection of about 110 Ethiopian manuscripts in their collection. We provided an explanation of: 1) The Benefits to Throwing Your Lot in with a Virtual Manuscript Environment; 2) the best forms in which metadata will serve the needs of digital humanists in the study of textual history and manuscript studies; 3) the workflow necessary to ensure the accurate labeling and organization of image sets of manuscripts so that the images can be made available in the IIIF protocols; and 4) the options that the Duke Team has in deciding about the extent of the work they could do in each area.
Author: Steve Delamarter
Author: Ralph Lee
Date: 10/8/2022
Location: Duke University
Dendrograms (Article)Title: Dendrograms
Author: Garry Jost
Abstract: This article invites readers to consider using dendrograms as a statistical tool to compare a number of texts (of manuscripts). It first explains that a dendrogram is a visual representation of the similarities and differences among manuscript readings. It then shows how the Textual History of the Ethiopic Old Testament (THEOT) project uses dendrograms for its analysis. As is often the case with computer processing, if the number of manuscripts is small, and the text is relatively short, the data can be processed by manual and mental processes. However, as the number of manuscripts increases, and the length of the text expands, visualizations generated by a computer, such as a dendrogram, become extremely helpful.
Year: 2023
Primary URL:
http://https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/textual-history-of-the-bible/4-science-and-technology-DUM_228762Primary URL Description: Link to Vol. 3, part D of Brill's series "The Textual History of the Bible."
Access Model: subscription and print
Periodical Title: The Textual History of the Bible
Publisher: Brill
A Description of EMML 8934 (Article)Title: A Description of EMML 8934
Author: Daniel Assefa
Abstract: The manuscript EMML 8934, located in Atkǝna Giorgis, Gondar region, more precisely in Debra Tabor province, Wäräda Färta, Ethiopia, contains the Book of Isaiah and the Book of Malachi in their entirety and most of the Book of Hosea and Zechariah. EMML 8934 has 104 + 2 folios, framed by wooden boards. Its size is 28 cm x 19 cm. It has 2 columns and the numbers of lines range from 22 to 25 (fol. 103r has 26 lines and fol. 104r has 27 lines). While the manuscript does not have a colophon, from paleographical examination, one may estimate that it is not later than 14th century. In EMML 8934, only the Book of Malachi is copied without any interruption and without problems of order. Malachi 1:1-2:4 folio 101r-104v. This is not the case for the other three books where parts are out of the order. EMML 8934 has numerous variants when compared with the textus receptus of the Book of Isaiah. There are also numerous erasures and later hands in EMML 8934. In Folio 22v, for instance, strikethroughs are visible at the bottom of the first column and at the top of the second column. This is quite different from the usual signs of erasures with a line above a word and another line below. Corrections are written above by later hands reflecting writings of a much later period.
Year: 2023
Primary URL:
https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/textual-history-of-the-bible/3-textual-criticism-and-transmission-DUM_229225Primary URL Description: Link to "Textual Criticism and Transmission," vol. 3 part C of the series "The Textual History of the Bible."
Access Model: Subscription and online
Format: Other
Periodical Title: Textual History of the Bible
Publisher: Brill