An Israeli algorithm sheds light on the Bible

An Israeli algorithm sheds light on the Bible

news.yahoo.com

Software developed by an Israeli team is giving intriguing new hints about what researchers believe to be the multiple hands that wrote the Bible.

The new software analyzes style and word choices to distinguish parts of a single text written by different authors, and when applied to the Bible its algorithm teased out distinct writerly voices in the holy book.

(visit the link for the full news article)

I thought this was pretty cool. Upon reading Genesis it's pretty obvious there is more than one version of a story being told. But, it's amazing that they can develop an algorithm that can actually detect this.

And, with a 90% match with the scholary opinion, either the scholars, or the code, is doing a good job - or both!



news.yahoo.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by EthanT


Big deal.
It might be a story if the bible wasn't a work of fiction.
So all i get from this story is that Israel has invented another lie to back up their biblical lie

Originally posted by meathed
reply to post by EthanT

 

Big deal.
It might be a story if the bible wasn't a work of fiction.
So all i get from this story is that Israel has invented another lie to back up their biblical lie

wow, some folks sure are biased.

Could have been a story, IF it wasn't about the Bible ... lame. What does it matter?

Back up a lie? If anything, this will probably frustrate a lot of people who say it was "written by God", because it shows it was written by many hands over time.

So if the Bible & Torah are really the word of God, then shouldn't the algorithm be able to verify that it is.

If it isn't the word of God then it would do what it has done and show that the Bible & Torah are written by individuals that speak from their own reservoirs of knowledge, not as a conduit of a single creator.

Hmmm, the implications could start (another) holy-war.

From what I learned in Catholic school, there are different rabbinical viewpoints and authors within the book of genesis, amongst others. Elohim, Yahweh, Priestly and something else. As far as I know, this is nothing new, other than an analyzation of the different authors. How does this disprove God? Is God not allowed to speak through multiple people? Why are so many people so eager to mock religious belief that they post something that has been well known for centuries as so called proof that God does not exist?

Good find OP. I find this quite interesting. Not so sure about the people behind it, and their motives, but whatever.

And on the contrary Meathed, I think there is some accuracy to the bible as a history book, taken as a whole, and not detail for detail. It is an historical outline, not a textbook.

As to the multiple writers. I don't see this as a problem for christians. In 2 Timothy 3:16, is written:

All scripture [is] given by inspiration of God, and [is] profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness

Inspiration. Not dictation.

Originally posted by steppenwolf86
From what I learned in Catholic school, there are different rabbinical viewpoints and authors within the book of genesis, amongst others. Elohim, Yahweh, Priestly and something else. As far as I know, this is nothing new, other than an analyzation of the different authors. How does this disprove God? Is God not allowed to speak through multiple people? Why are so many people so eager to mock religious belief that they post something that has been well known for centuries as so called proof that God does not exist?

edit on 29-6-2011 by steppenwolf86 because: (no reason given)

That's pretty much right Steppenwolf.

One version called the Elohim, or "E" texts, originates from around Eight Century BC, and belonged originally to the Northern Kingdom of Israel. They have been reworked a couple times, with the most recent being the "P", or Priestly texts, you mentioned, which came after the Babylonian Exile.

The other one is the Yahwist, or "J" texts. These date maybe to the ninth century BC, and belong to the southern kingdom of Judah.

At least that's what we thought last I read about this. May have changed since then. Somebody feel free to update that, if so.

One version has the animals created before man, while the other has man created before the animals, amongst other differences

One thing that is interesting too is that Elohim is actualy plural for God. Therefore one version has Gods creating the Earth, etc. So much for monotheism!!

I don't know if anybody has done any computer coding out there, but I would think writing an algoritm to detect all this would be pretty tricky.

Originally posted by steppenwolf86
From what I learned in Catholic school, there are different rabbinical viewpoints and authors within the book of genesis, amongst others. Elohim, Yahweh, Priestly and something else. As far as I know, this is nothing new, other than an analyzation of the different authors. How does this disprove God? Is God not allowed to speak through multiple people? Why are so many people so eager to mock religious belief that they post something that has been well known for centuries as so called proof that God does not exist?

edit on 29-6-2011 by steppenwolf86 because: (no reason given)

By the way, I posted this because of what seemed like an amazing computer algorithm.

I think God exists, so you're reading the intent of this thread all wrong.

How would this prove, in any way, that God does not exist?

reply to post by EthanT


that little piece of software could end plagiarism entirely. sweet.

very interesting AI i give you a S+F for this. thank you

Originally posted by steppenwolf86
From what I learned in Catholic school, there are different rabbinical viewpoints and authors within the book of genesis, amongst others. Elohim, Yahweh, Priestly and something else. As far as I know, this is nothing new, other than an analyzation of the different authors. How does this disprove God? Is God not allowed to speak through multiple people? Why are so many people so eager to mock religious belief that they post something that has been well known for centuries as so called proof that God does not exist?

edit on 29-6-2011 by steppenwolf86 because: (no reason given)

I am not trying to be a pain here, but.... Let's say I was like all powerful and I could take over people minds and talk/write "through them." Now if I could do that, it would always be ME doing the talking, the style wouldn't change, it would not be the people I took over doing the mental formulation and structuring of communication. So, if we are to believe that God "wrote" the bible, then we must believe that He has some kind of multiple personality disorder. This isn't to say that I don't believe the bible was inspired by the creator, cosmic muffin, spaghetti monster, etc., however, I do believe the original teachings have been corrupted by people with an agenda, eg mainstream religions, ALL OF THEM. I don't care if you're catholic, muslim, protestant, mormon, etc... these days and maybe for the last thousand years or more, what may have been a beautiful written account of history is now a programming tool. Everyone's got an agenda who promotes their version of "salvation."

Cheers - Dave

This is a pretty fascinating use of this branch of mathematics, it can differentiate writing styles, word usage, etc. among different authors of a single text, like the bible. If anything it proves that the bible was written by several authors.

This will be a great tool for catching plagiarists too, put it to use when grading a thesis or an authors work, and see if this algorithm detects more than one authors writing style.

reply to post by EthanT


i'd like to see them develop an algorithm that does comparative etymology searches between the original languages of the text, and known civilizations of the near, far, and middle east. (european languages, too)

reply to post by meathed


If you read the story you would have realized this program is doing actually the opposite of what you are saying. It is proving that many more people wrote the book and confirming what others have been saying. It is by no means proving it is the work of God. You call the bible fiction and I agree it is but I consider it part of Mythology along side ancient Greek writings. It all contains a grain of truth it just was not interpreted with modern eyes man. How would you write down something that you have no grasp of or lack the words to describe it?

Originally posted by EthanT
How would this prove, in any way, that God does not exist?

It doesn't prove it.

But it does tend to contradict some religious beliefs as mentioned at the end of the article:

Three of the four scholars, including Koppel, are religious Jews who subscribe in some form to the belief that the Torah was dictated to Moses in its entirety by a single author: God.

For academic scholars, the existence of different stylistic threads in the Bible indicates human authorship.

But the research team says in their paper they aren't addressing "how or why such distinct threads exist."

"Those for whom it is a matter of faith that the Pentateuch is not a composition of multiple writers can view the distinction investigated here as that of multiple styles," they said.

In other words, there's no reason why God could not write a book in different voices.

So academics are interpreting it as multiple authorship, in contradiction to the religious belief that "the Torah was dictated to Moses in its entirety by a single author". Personally I find the argument to support that particular religious belief that "there's no reason why God could not write a book in different voices" to be a weak argument. But all of this falls short of proof either way.

Originally posted by EthanT
I don't know if anybody has done any computer coding out there, but I would think writing an algoritm to detect all this would be pretty tricky.

I've written code and that's a loaded question because the coding itself would be relatively straightforward. The tricky part is figuring out what you want to code.

One way to do it would be to get scholars to describe what clues they look for to identify different authors. If they are looking for particular words to be repeated, then you can do word counts to see how frequently certain generic words are used in each chapter. I'm sure it's a lot more complicated than that but that's one example from the article.

its interesting, though genesis wasn't written overnight, and people change. i wouldn't be surprised if others wrote some of it.

i would like to see this software used on the "codex gigas" to ascertain if the legend of the book is true. it is one of the largest books in the world, and supposedly was written in one night by one monk who made a deal with satan. linguistic analysis has shown that it would have taken decades to write, yet the penmanship doesn't show signs of handwriting change with age, and it seems to be all written by the same author.

Originally posted by meathed
reply to post by EthanT

 

Big deal.
It might be a story if the bible wasn't a work of fiction.

Much of the bible is fiction - but perhaps myth is a less perjorative term to use for those bits - but much is clearly not fiction - Macabees for example, tallies well with the history we know of the period from Greek sources.

And AFAIK you don't actually have any proof that a lot of the stuff that isn't known is fiction either - the exitence of Moses, David, etc.

So all i get from this story is that Israel has invented another lie to back up their biblical lie

I'm an atheist & I reckon you're a pretty sad case!

Was not the original written in Aramaic, then translated and rewritten in Hebrew, then translated and rewritten in Latin, then translated and rewritten in Greek, and finally translated and rewritten in English...

Seems like a lot of authors involved... and just try to whisper a sentence at a party around a ring and see how that works out

To which version was the Algorithm applied?

Originally posted by ParanoidAmerican
reply to post by meathed

 

If you read the story you would have realized this program is doing actually the opposite of what you are saying. It is proving that many more people wrote the book and confirming what others have been saying. It is by no means proving it is the work of God. You call the bible fiction and I agree it is but I consider it part of Mythology along side ancient Greek writings. It all contains a grain of truth it just was not interpreted with modern eyes man. How would you write down something that you have no grasp of or lack the words to describe it?

I read the story. ( and i have even read the fictitious bible too )
This story is about Israel trying to back up their propaganda claims that they are god's chosen one's and that is all.
Its pathetic when you think about it.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
Personally I find the argument to support that particular religious belief that "there's no reason why God could not write a book in different voices" to be a weak argument.

I guess I better not tell you how I think God also speaks through ALL religions then

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
One way to do it would be to get scholars to describe what clues they look for to identify different authors. If they are looking for particular words to be repeated, then you can do word counts to see how frequently certain generic words are used in each chapter. I'm sure it's a lot more complicated than that but that's one example from the article.

Well, it's possible I am assuming the it's more difficult than it is. If it's just specific words they could use a simple 10-line-or-less perl script for that!

But, I suspect it is more complicated than that. Keying off grammatical structure and linguistic style would be a more difficult algorithm.