5 August 2024

Statements on Bible references in form of a sentence

As a next milestone of the bibref project, there is a new idea to communicate details of identified quotations of the Greek Old Testament in the Greek New Testament. Let us consider Matthew 1:23: it is well-accepted that it quotes Isaiah 7:14. The New Testament text contains an introductory comment in 1:22, “Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying,” written in the KJV translation.

One can give a graphical description of this by using this simple figure:

The blue square refers to the introduction. The rest explains that the Greek texts from the New and Old Testament have a considerable match that differs only in 8 percent. The New Testament text contains 73 letters, which is an almost verbatim quotation of the Old Testament text (containing 71 characters originally).

The graphical representation is very useful to have a quick look of the structure of the relationship between the two passages. Now, as an improvement, there is a textual explanation of this relationship, exported from a work-in-progress database that currently contains more than 200 entries. Here is the textual description:

Statement q1_1181 connects
 SBLGNT Matthew 1:23 1:23-34 (1922-1994) with
 LXX Isaiah 7:14+35 7:14 (14234-14304) based on
  introduction 1:22 1:22 (1856-1921) form toytodeolongegoneninaplhrvuhtorhuenypokyrioydiatoyprofhtoylegontos and
  clasp 1:23 1:23-34 (1922-1994, length 73) form idoyhparuenosengastriejeikaitejetaiyionkaikalesoysintoonomaaytoyemmanoyhl
   matches LXX Isaiah 7:14+35 7:14 (14234-14304, length 71) form idoyhparuenosengastriejeikaitejetaiyionkaikaleseistoonomaaytoyemmanoyhl
    differing 8.33%
  providing cover 100.00%.

The textual description gives a more accurate explanation of the details. Also, it makes possible to consider the relationship as a statement in a scientific sense. It clearly explains the stated relationship by identifying the piece of information with a unique label (here q1_1181: this refers to an internal serial number), giving the exact positions of the introductory text and the clasps. Also, the percentual differences between the clasps and coverage rate are computed.

Such statements can be created also manually by anyone, of course. At this point we, however, have a list of manual entries that have been exported by a machine algorithm, querying the experimental SQL database in the documentation part of bibref. Here you can find the current state of the exported database. For the long term, the SQL database should be obsoleted and only these new type statements should be used. They could fully reflect all required information to have a scientifically convincing picture of an assumed quotation.

Here is a second example:

Statement q2_15011 connects
 SBLGNT Matthew 2:6 (2608-2722) with
 LXX II_Samuel 5:2+95 5:2-33 (13368-13395) and
 LXX Micah 5:2 5:2-79 (6563-6627) based on
  introduction 2:5 2:5 (2544-2607) form oideeipanaytvenbhuleemthsioydaiasoytvsgargegraptaidiatoyprofhtoy and
  clasp 2:6 2:6-103 (2608-2619, length 12) form kaisybhuleem
   matches LXX Micah 5:2 5:2-132 (6563-6574, length 12) form kaisybhuleem
    verbatim and
  clasp 2:6+36 2:6-41 (2644-2681, length 38) form entoishgemosinioydaeksoygarejeleysetai
   matches LXX Micah 5:2+45 5:2-65 (6608-6641, length 34) form enxiliasinioydaeksoymoiejeleysetai
    differing 32.43% and
  clasp 2:6+88 2:6 (2696-2722, length 27) form poimaneitonlaonmoytonisrahl
   matches LXX II_Samuel 5:2+95 5:2-33 (13368-13395, length 28) form poimaneistonlaonmoytonisrahl
    differing 7.41% and
  clasp 2:6+106 2:6 (2714-2722, length 9) form tonisrahl
   matches LXX Micah 5:2+99 5:2-37 (6662-6669, length 8) form tvisrahl
    differing 37.50%
  providing cover 66.96%.

It is not very often that more than one Old Testament book is referred in a New Testament quotation. Here, the traditionally identified match is Micah 5:2, but it seems also possible that Matthew explained the Old Testament text written by Micah by referring to another part of the Scripture, namely, to II_Samuel 5:2.

Anyway, all of these observations all hypothetical truth. Each idea can be observed and discussed. By having an exact statement that collects all required pieces of information by using reproducable data, we have a step forward towards scientific discussion.

What next? The language and its syntax will be defined by a grammar via computer software (e.g. like yacc/bison or ANTLR). Then, the new list of machine exported sentences will be supported in bibref for analysis: it could be checked that a sentence is correctly written and if it can be eventually improved. Statements could be grouped and saved in a user maintainable list. Tools could be created that automatically convert SBLGNT based sentences into StatResGNT based ones. Graphical export of a statement into SVG or other formats might be supported. Finally, the syntax format might be further improved to support more difficult quotation structures (e.g. where the Ten Commandments are quoted, but they appear not just in Exodus but in Deuteronomy; currently we focus on the first appearance only).

Entries on topic internal references in the Bible

Zoltán Kovács
Linz School of Education
Johannes Kepler University
Altenberger Strasse 69
A-4040 Linz

zoltan@geogebra.org