The topics of the papers ranged computer-assisted stylistic analyses of New Testament texts to explorations of large textual corpora for the themes of intergroup hostility and martyrdom, as well as surveys into recent, potentially helpful methodological advances such as transformer models.
The following papers were presented:
Harri Söderholm (Helsinki): “Computing Martyrdom: My Road So Far”
Zdeňka Špiclová (West Bohemia) & Nina Nikki (Helsinki): “Intergroup Hostility as a Cultural Attractor in Early Christian texts”
István Czachesz (Tromsø): “Meaning-making in biological and cultural systems”
Alessandra Luce (New Hampshire) & Paul Robertson (New Hampshire): “Comparing and Assessing Statistical Distance Metrics with the Christian Apostle Paul’s Letters”
Vojtěch Kaše (West Bohemia): “Contextual Word Embeddings and the Study of Metaphors in Early Christian Texts”
Erich Benjamin Pracht (Aarhus) & Thomas McCauley (Boston): “Style and Influence: Hebrews and the Early Christian Stylistic Fingerprint”
Sophie Robert-Hayek (Metz): “Benchmarking Computational Stemmatology Algorithm for the Transmission of the Bible”
Dane Alexander Rich (Boston): “Something to Do with Paying Attention: An Exploration and Review of the Use and Potential of Transformer Based Large Language Models in Biblical Studies”