Style and Influence: Computing Hebrews and the Early Christian Stylistic Fingerprint
Using Hebrews as a test case, we investigate how an author’s participation in his literary network influences his writing habits. Our theoretical framework is that no author writes in a vacuum: all authors recycle stylistic habits from their literary contemporaries. We develop and implement a statis...
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| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
MDPI AG
2025-01-01
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| Series: | Religions |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/16/1/55 |
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| Summary: | Using Hebrews as a test case, we investigate how an author’s participation in his literary network influences his writing habits. Our theoretical framework is that no author writes in a vacuum: all authors recycle stylistic habits from their literary contemporaries. We develop and implement a statistical procedure to trace stylistic influences, both in terms of which texts in an author’s literary network are influential and also in terms of which text-features are suggestive of influence. Stylistic units of analysis in this study are two-word sequences (N-Grams), 40 of which recur in Hebrews as a function of influence from the author’s literary network. We find that the author of Hebrews shares stylistic micro-patterns particularly with his co-religionists, which indicates that, already in New Testament times, the literature of emerging Christianity was developing a distinctive stylistic fingerprint, the features of which were transferred from one author to another. |
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| ISSN: | 2077-1444 |