GIS as a heuristic tool to interpret ancient historiography: A case study to reconstruct what could plausibly have happened according to the accounts in New Testament texts

This article examines how GIS can be used as a heuristic tool to reconstruct spatial–temporal events from narratives in order to examine whether a scenario is conceivable within the narrative world. The narrative about Paul's escape from Berea (Acts 17:14–15) is used as a case study. Several interpretive issues related to spatial and temporal questions surround these texts. In the case study, three methods are applied: (a) least-cost path analysis on elevation data to construct journeys and travel times for Roman roads; (b) network analysis to find seafaring routes valid for ancient times; and (c) the integration of spatial and temporal data in a space-time cube. Our main finding is that the method yields insights into the spatial–temporal dynamics of the narrative. This helps a modern reader to better understand the narrative conceivability of a story in the mind of a first-century reader.Urban Data Scienc

Iouδαíαν in Acts 2:9: a Diachronic Overview of its Conjectured Emendations

The appearance of ουδα » αν in the table of nations (Acts 2:9-11) has troubled interpreters for centuries. Several scholars have proposed to emendate the text. The argumentations for such conjectures vary in elaboration and support. This article gives a diachronic overview of the conjectured emendations. It concludes with an evaluation of the discussion from a phenomenological perspective and a summary of the used argumentation, thereby providing input for a reversed engineering approach to the issue. Urban Data Scienc

'Iouδαíαν in Acts 2:9: Reverse engineering textual emendations

Building on a plethora of conjectured emendations for IOÏ'ΔAIAN, this article approaches the issue once again to test the viability of a quantitative tool and to establish the possibility of palaeographical confusion of IOÏ'ΔAIAN with an alternative topo- or demonym. The article starts with an experiment using Greek topo- and demonyms derived from contemporary Christian, Jewish, and Classical sources to establish a palaeographical confusion score. Next the likeliness of the "closest"alternatives in the geographical arrangement of Acts 2:9-11 is explored. The article ends with an evaluation of the possible implications for the text in Acts 2:9 as well as a critical appraisal of the method for conjectural criticism.Urban Data Scienc

Spatial analysis of new testament textual emendations utilizing confusion distances

Before the interpretation of any text can start, the original wording of the text itself must be critically established. Conventionally, this is done following qualitative criteria. This article, however, explores the application of spatial analyses to New Testament textual criticism by demonstrating how the Levenshtein edit distance could be adapted to calculate confusion distances for variant readings in New Testament manuscripts, i.e. the possibility that a (combination of) letter(s) is confused by another (combination of) letter(s). Subsequently the outcomes are translated to Euclidian space using classical Multi-Dimensional Scaling, which enables visualisation and spatial analyses (in this case not related to geographical space). The article focuses on the data preparation and algorithm to make the data suitable for spatial analyses, thus providing the New Testament textual critic with new analytical tools.Urban Data Scienc