用词频分析揭示圣经作者差异,实证三作者分层
Critical biblical studies via word frequency analysis: unveiling text authorship
- 通过词频统计识别文本中细微语言模式差异
- 准确区分三类文献(D、DtrH、P),P与其他两者差异显著
- 无需预设作者身份,结果可解释且符合专家判断
《圣经》历经数世纪口传与笔录,其早期版本面貌模糊。关于文本层累、成书年代与历史背景的争议持续不断。传统人工考据依赖语言、风格、经文内证与历史线索,虽有进展,但计算机辅助分析仍具潜力。本研究采用统计方法分析词频,特别关注少数词汇频率异常对整体文本的影响,旨在区分《圣经》前九卷中多个章节的三位作者。我们选取50章,依据圣经释经标准分为三组(D、DtrH、P)。不预设作者身份,仅基于词频差异区分三组,并识别作者特有的语言特征。分析显示,前两位作者(D与DtrH)关系更近,而与第三位(P)差异明显,与专家共识一致。通过比较各章与参考语料库的相似性,实现高精度作者归属。该研究为圣经作者归属提供了可解释、统计显著的语言学证据,证实不同作者存在可识别的语言特征。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
The Bible, a product of an extensive and intricate process of oral-written transmission spanning centuries, obscures the contours of its earlier recensions. Debate rages over determining the existing layers and identifying the date of composition and historical background of the biblical texts. Traditional manual methodologies have grappled with authorship challenges through scrupulous textual criticism, employing linguistic, stylistic, inner-biblical, and historical criteria. Despite recent progress in computer-assisted analysis, many patterns still need to be uncovered in Biblical Texts. In this study, we address the question of authorship of biblical texts by employing statistical analysis to the frequency of words using a method that is particularly sensitive to deviations in frequencies associated with a few words out of potentially many. We aim to differentiate between three distinct authors across numerous chapters spanning the first nine books of the Bible. In particular, we examine 50 chapters labeled according to biblical exegesis considerations into three corpora (D, DtrH, and P). Without prior assumptions about author identity, our approach leverages subtle differences in word frequencies to distinguish among the three corpora and identify author-dependent linguistic properties. Our analysis indicates that the first two authors (D and DtrH) are much more closely related compared to P, a fact that aligns with expert assessments. Additionally, we attain high accuracy in attributing authorship by evaluating the similarity of each chapter with the reference corpora. This study sheds new light on the authorship of biblical texts by providing interpretable, statistically significant evidence that there are different linguistic characteristics of biblical authors and that these differences can be identified.
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