New Directions in the Computational Analysis of Biblical Hebrew Grammar

Abstract

The concern of the paper is to highlight how computational analysis of Biblical Hebrew grammar can now be done in very sophisticated ways and with insightful results for exegesis. Three databases, namely, the Eep Talstra Centre for Bible and Computer (ETCBC) Database, the Accordance Hebrew Syntactic Database, and the Andersen-Forbes Syntactic Database,are compared in terms of their relation to linguistic theory (or, theories), the nature and spectrum of retrieved data, and the representation of synchronic and diachronic linguistic variation. Interaction between different contexts, including the African context, are promoted namely between linguists working on Biblical Hebrew and exegetes working on the Hebrew Bible by illustrating how exegesis and language are intimately connected, as well as among geographical contexts by comparing a European database (ETCBC), a North American database (Accordance) and a Southern hemisphere database (Andersen-Forbes).