Using Objective Stylometric Techniques to Evaluate New Testament Authorship

Background: Bible scholars often debate the authorship of certain books appearing in the New Testament.   Purpose: The purpose of the present study was to evaluate New Testament authorship by using stylometric analytical techniques   Setting: This research focuses o...

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Main Author: Kenneth Royal
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: The Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University 2012-11-01
Series:Journal of MultiDisciplinary Evaluation
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Online Access:https://journals.sfu.ca/jmde/index.php/jmde_1/article/view/352
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author Kenneth Royal
author_facet Kenneth Royal
author_sort Kenneth Royal
collection DOAJ
description Background: Bible scholars often debate the authorship of certain books appearing in the New Testament.   Purpose: The purpose of the present study was to evaluate New Testament authorship by using stylometric analytical techniques   Setting: This research focuses on texts appearing in the New Testament.   Intervention: This was an exploratory research on evaluation study with no intervention.   Research Design: A powerful, state-of-the-art psychometric model was applied to Biblical text in an effort to identify correlations among word usage and writing style among each of the New Testament books. Data Collection and Analysis: Strong’s Concordance was used to provide original Greek text. Computer programming was necessary to create a worksheet that contained a list of New Testament books, each Greek word appearing in the New Testament, and a count of each word’s appearance relative to each book. Rasch-based Principal Components Analysis of standardized residual correlations was used to map stylistic similarities and differences.   Findings: With regard to substantive findings, the gospels (Matthew, Luke, Mark, and John) and the narrative book of Acts were closely correlated. Other texts presented a mix of expected and unexpected findings. With regard to other findings, the technique presented in this study offers a great deal of promise to various research and evaluation practices.  
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spelling doaj-art-65d3341269eb4f8ca55a8820e9bbcf752025-08-20T02:10:03ZengThe Evaluation Center at Western Michigan UniversityJournal of MultiDisciplinary Evaluation1556-81802012-11-0181910.56645/jmde.v8i19.352Using Objective Stylometric Techniques to Evaluate New Testament AuthorshipKenneth Royal0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5508-1480University of Kentucky Background: Bible scholars often debate the authorship of certain books appearing in the New Testament.   Purpose: The purpose of the present study was to evaluate New Testament authorship by using stylometric analytical techniques   Setting: This research focuses on texts appearing in the New Testament.   Intervention: This was an exploratory research on evaluation study with no intervention.   Research Design: A powerful, state-of-the-art psychometric model was applied to Biblical text in an effort to identify correlations among word usage and writing style among each of the New Testament books. Data Collection and Analysis: Strong’s Concordance was used to provide original Greek text. Computer programming was necessary to create a worksheet that contained a list of New Testament books, each Greek word appearing in the New Testament, and a count of each word’s appearance relative to each book. Rasch-based Principal Components Analysis of standardized residual correlations was used to map stylistic similarities and differences.   Findings: With regard to substantive findings, the gospels (Matthew, Luke, Mark, and John) and the narrative book of Acts were closely correlated. Other texts presented a mix of expected and unexpected findings. With regard to other findings, the technique presented in this study offers a great deal of promise to various research and evaluation practices.   https://journals.sfu.ca/jmde/index.php/jmde_1/article/view/352authorshipBiblemeasurementNew Testamentpsychometricsstylometrics
spellingShingle Kenneth Royal
Using Objective Stylometric Techniques to Evaluate New Testament Authorship
Journal of MultiDisciplinary Evaluation
authorship
Bible
measurement
New Testament
psychometrics
stylometrics
title Using Objective Stylometric Techniques to Evaluate New Testament Authorship
title_full Using Objective Stylometric Techniques to Evaluate New Testament Authorship
title_fullStr Using Objective Stylometric Techniques to Evaluate New Testament Authorship
title_full_unstemmed Using Objective Stylometric Techniques to Evaluate New Testament Authorship
title_short Using Objective Stylometric Techniques to Evaluate New Testament Authorship
title_sort using objective stylometric techniques to evaluate new testament authorship
topic authorship
Bible
measurement
New Testament
psychometrics
stylometrics
url https://journals.sfu.ca/jmde/index.php/jmde_1/article/view/352
work_keys_str_mv AT kennethroyal usingobjectivestylometrictechniquestoevaluatenewtestamentauthorship