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Tracking Semantic Drift in the Biblical Corpus

Tracking Semantic Drift in the Biblical Corpus. by Matthew Munson mmunson@gcdh.de Twitter: @sonofmun. Background. Hypothesis One can understand the New Testament better by investigating how it uses and changes sections of the Old Testament

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Tracking Semantic Drift in the Biblical Corpus

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  1. Tracking Semantic Drift in the Biblical Corpus by Matthew Munson mmunson@gcdh.de Twitter: @sonofmun

  2. Background • Hypothesis • One can understand the New Testament better by investigating how it uses and changes sections of the Old Testament • And one can do this on the level of individual words • What I will present • Method and Data • Some interpretation and a little synthesis of results

  3. Theoretical Basis I • Daniel Boyarin – Theological • Rabbis recombined biblical passages, recontextualizing them into new narratives1 • Zellig Harris - Linguistic • the most precise way of determining a word’s meaning is by investigating the meanings of the words that occur along with that word.2 • We can determine differences in word meaning by analyzing differences in context

  4. Theoretical Basis II • Later authors recontextualize and context demonstrates meaning • So by tracking how later authors recontextualize the words used by earlier authors, we can track meaning change • These differences could be • Theological • Cultural • Linguistic

  5. Note ofCaution • Ultimate in historical-critical method • meaning is relational • But this makes determining “actual meaning” a very complex process • the “meaning” of every word is communicated by the meaning of every other word with which it co-occurs • and every word with which the co-occurrentsco-occur • etc.

  6. MethodologicalOverview • Count co-occurrences of word lemmata • Window of 4 left and 4 right of target word • Calculate statistical significance ofco-occurrence • Compare the words between and within the testaments

  7. Count Co-Occurrence Counts: ὁ - 5 καί - 2 ἐν- 1 ἀρχή- 1 ποιέω- 1 οὐρανός - 1 ἄβυσσος - 1 πνεῦμα - 1 ἐπιφέρω - 1 ἐπάνω - 1 ὕδωρ - 1

  8. Calculate Statistical Significance • Significant co-occurrence happens when two words occur together more often than you would expect by chance • LXX: ὁ 1 every 7 words, κύριος 1 every 72 • w/θεός: ὁ 1 every 5 words, κύριος 1 every 22 • θεόςattracts κύριος more than it attracts ὁ • Log-likelihood measure

  9. Log Likelihood • Betterforsparsedata • More interpretablethan, e.g., chi-squared • “Itis…a numberthattellsushowmuchmorelikelyonehypothesisisthananother” (Manning and Schutze, 1999)

  10. Log Likelihood Formula = log L(c12, c1, p) + log L(c2-c12, N-c1, p) - log L(c12, c1, p1) – log L(c2-c12, N-c1, p2) Where L(k,n,x) = xk(1-x)n-k c1 = occurrences of word 1 c2 = occurrences of word 2 c12 = co-occurrences of word 1 with word 2 N = number of tokens in the text p = c1/N p1 = c12/c1 p2 = (c2-c12)/(N-c1)

  11. Different Ways Forward • Compare LL listsmanually, but… • 3,893 words common tobothtestaments • Over 14,000 (LXX) or 5,300 (NT) possibleco-occurrants • Need toreducethecomplexity • Compare LL listsautomatically

  12. Cosine Similarity • Calculates the similarity of two lists Python Code c1 = {ἐγώ: 0.00015636973, αὐτός:-0.00656411755…} c2 = {ἐγώ:0.58764128248, αὐτός:0.00000217846…} terms = set(c1).union(c2) dotprod = sum(c1.get(k, 0) * c2.get(k, 0) for k in terms) magA = math.sqrt(sum(c1.get(k, 0)**2 for k in terms)) magB = math.sqrt(sum(c2.get(k, 0)**2 for k in terms)) return dotprod / (magA * magB)

  13. Cosine Similarity • I calculatedsimilaritybetweenthetestaments • e.g., howsimilararethe log-likelihoodlistsforθεός in the OT andθεός in the NT • This tellsuswhichwordshavechangedthemostbetweenthetestaments • Andwithinthetestaments • e.g., howsimilaristhe log-likelihoodlistforθεός in the OT withthatofκύριος in the OT • Tells uswhichwordsaremostsimilarwithineachtestament

  14. And then... • Investigate change in usage (log-likelihood lists) • OT Log Likelihood – NT Log Likelihood= change • Investigate change in meaning (cosine similarity lists) • OT COS Similarity – NT COS Similarity = change • Here‘s how...

  15. 1. DetermineDifference in Usage

  16. 1. DetermineDifference in Usage

  17. 2. Compare Change in Usage Σίμων - Simon χάρις – grace, favor

  18. 2. Change in Usage Analysis Σίμων χάρις OT appears with εὑρίσκω (to find), with ἐναντίον and ἐνώπιον (facingwords), and withἀγαθός (descriptionofgifts) NT appears with θεός and κύριος (giver ofgifts) and σοφία and ἔλεος (possible gifts) • OT • appears with ἀρχιερεύς and ἀδελφός (he was high priest and brother of Judas and Jonathan Maccabee) • NT • appears with Ἰούδας (“Judas son of Simon”), with ἐπικαλέω and ἀποκρίνομαι (apostolic words) and with θάλασσα (the sea)

  19. 3. Compare Change in Topic Σίμων χάρις

  20. 3. Change in Topic Analysis Σίμων χάρις OT shares same topic with κατασχίζω, κόνδυ, νεφθαι, καρπόω (sacrificialwords) NT shares same topicwithμαθητής, θεός, and λέγω. Words 10 and 11 areἀγάπη andπίστις (gifts) • OT • shares same topic with πολεμέω, ἐξολεθρεύω, ἰσχύς,and πατάσσω (war words), and Ονιας and Ιωναθαν (two other high priests) • NT • shares same topic with Ἀνδρέας, Ἰάκωβος, and Πέτρος (names of apostles), with ἁλιεύω (to fish), and with διενθυμέομαι and φράζω (interpretationwords)

  21. 1. DetermineDifference in Usage

  22. 1. DetermineDifference in Usage

  23. 2. Compare Change in Usage Septuagint Co-Occurrents New Testament Co-Occurrents

  24. 2. Compare Change in Usage Septuagint Verbs New Testament Verbs

  25. 2. Compare Change in Usage SeptuagintNouns New Testament Nouns

  26. 3. Compare Change in Topic Septuagint New Testament

  27. 3. Change in Topic – LXX Similar Words

  28. 3. Change in Topic – LXX Similar Words

  29. 3. Change in Topic – NT Similar Words

  30. 3. Change in Topic – NT Similar Words

  31. Conclusions • Method produces a lot of noise • But it produces classifiable, logical results • LXX – God’s is represented in many ways • NT – God’s servants and their relationship to God • NT is much more uniform than LXX (Jon Levenson) • Next Steps • Compare the LL tables for the words on each end of the CSDifflists • This should give an idea of usage and meaning of the words in each testament • This will, in turn, make it clear what the significance of θεος being closely related to those words is • All “meaning” that would be found here is relational not absolute • Automatic classification of related words with topic modeling • Analysis with translation equivalentsand comparisonwith co-occurrence results

  32. Thank You!

  33. Footnotes • Daniel Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. • Zellig S. Harris, “How Words Carry Meaning.” Language and Information: The Bampton Lectures, Columbia University, 1986. Lecture. http://www.ircs.upenn.edu/zellig/3_2.mp3

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