This is the eighth instalment of my blog series on the Leuven Database of Ancient Books (LDAB). As I wrote in the prelude, this exercise has a three-fold purpose, to satisfy my personal curiosity, to demonstrate as a proof of concept how information technology (IT) can boost NT studies, and how valuable scholarly resources like LDAB can be used to educate the general reader.
IT can and will definitely further NT studies in the specific areas of data analysis and data visualization. In my last post, I inquired into the formation of the New Testament Canon, using clustering methods to analyze the manuscript metadata; In this post, I will explore how to visualize the formation of the New Testament Canon. My colleague in genomic research has developed a great software tool, Circos, to “make data look beautiful”. It has become a standard in data visualization in many fields. When I applied it to my analysis, the results were stunning.
Figure I. New Testament Canon in the Second Century
All four Gospels are dated to the second century according to LDAB. There are 3 manuscripts of Matthew, 1 of Mark, and 2 each of Luke and John (Figure I). The manuscript count for each book is shown on the edge of circle, and is proportional to the length of the arc. Ribbons linking different segment of the circle denote manuscripts containing both books. For example, Matthew and Luke are attested together by two manuscripts, and 1 and 2 Thessalonians by one manuscript.
Figure II. New Testament Canon in the Third Century
The majority of Paul’s epistles are dated to the third century (Figure II). As I noted in my last post, in Greek manuscripts, Paul’s epistles form their own cluster (on the left), apart from the Gospels (on the right), therefore there are no ribbons connecting the two. The catholic epistles (top-left) existed as single-work manuscripts, and were not gathered into collections.
Figure III. New Testament Canon in the Fourth Century
By the fourth century, the network formation of the New Testament Canon is almost complete (Figure III). Matthew and John still have the most manuscripts attestations. Hebrews, Luke and Acts are next. Paul’s epistles (green-yellow cluster on the left) are connected to the Gospels (red-orange cluster on the right), and the catholic epistles (blue cluster top-left). All three NT clusters are connected to Old Testament books (purple cluster at the top). One manuscript includes Romans and Job, perhaps the reader is contemplating suffering and the end of man in the mind of God; another manuscript includes 1 Peter and Jonah, the common theme here is resurrection, as two Homilies on Easter in the same manuscript attest; Genesis is connected with both Hebrews and John in the manuscripts, the common theme being Creation and Worship of the Creator.
Related Posts:
References:
- Leuven Database of Ancient Books (LDAB). Accessed November 14, 2018. https://www.trismegistos.org/ldab.
- Circos. Accessed November 18, 2018. http://circos.ca