Statistical Approaches to Paul’s Letters

Distributions, Visualization, Cluster Mapping, and Topology

Paul Robertson (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

210 Seiten

2025
Brill (Verlag)
978-90-04-74135-5 (ISBN)

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This book explores statistical and computational methods to describing, analysing, and comparing Paul’s letters, with chapters including a qualitative review of the field’s history, methodological remarks, analyses of statistical distributions, forms of data visualisation, multi-variate cluster mapping, and topology.

This book demonstrates the utility of statistical and computational approaches to Paul’s letters. Such work helps resolve questions of authorship, describes and quantifies aspects of Paul’s style, and explains structural relationships within and between Paul’s letters. A series of linked case studies deploy a shared set of top-down stylistic features to differentially analyse Paul’s seven undisputed letters. Each chapter explores a different digital approach, co-written with a subject expert in this method. Chapters range from a history of the field to theoretical branches of mathematics, with each chapter providing a case study applying a different method to issues within Pauline Studies, with progressively more sophisticated statistical, computational, and mathematical models.

Paul Robertson, Ph.D. (2013, Brown University), is Senior Lecturer in Classics & Humanities and Director of Undergraduate Research at the University of New Hampshire, and Research Associate in the Department of New Testament and Related Literature at the University of Pretoria. His books explore comparing early Christian literature (2016), theorizing inter-religion (2019), selfhood and the Cyclops myth (2022), and the anthropology of belief (2024).

Preface

Acknowledgments

List of Figures

List of Tables

Notes on Contributors

Introduction: History of Stylometry and Digital Approaches to Pauline Style

Part 1 Describing and Distributing

1 A Poisson Analysis of Paul’s Letters

Thomas McCauley and Paul Robertson

2 Zipf’s Law and Paul’s Literary Techniques

Thomas McCauley and Paul Robertson

Part 2 Mapping and Visualizing

3 Mapping Paul’s Letters: Grouping, Identifying, and Plotting Stylistic Features

Ashley Roy and Paul Robertson

4 Analyzing Paul’s Letters: Cluster Mapping and Comparing across Features and Letters

Ashley Roy and Paul Robertson

Part 3 Abstracting and Theorizing

5 Topology: Persistent Homology and Paul’s Letters

John Lind and Paul Robertson

Conclusion

Appendices

References

Index

Erscheinungsdatum	23.09.2025
Reihe/Serie	Digital Biblical Studies ; 7
Verlagsort	Leiden
Sprache	englisch
Maße	155 x 235 mm
Gewicht	478 g
Themenwelt	Religion / Theologie ► Christentum ► Kirchengeschichte
ISBN-10	90-04-74135-6 / 9004741356
ISBN-13	978-90-04-74135-5 / 9789004741355
Zustand	Neuware