18 Aug 10

Social Identity Theory: A Bibliography in Progress

Some theories from various social scientific disciplines make a singular appearance in our field, while others have a bit of staying power. Social Identity Theory (SIT)–or, as it has been called, the “social identity perspective” or the “social identity approach”–appears to fall in that latter category. The concepts are not entirely new (e.g., boundary markers between insiders and outsiders), nor even is the term “social identity” itself (see E.A. Judge, “The Social Identity of the First Christians” in 1980), but SIT relates data that otherwise wouldn’t often be considered together (e.g., the demarcation of group boundaries and “ethics”).

The approach is borrowed from social psychologists Henri Tajfel, John Turner, and those who have followed them. The literature within social psychology itself is vast and, at least to this biblicist, intimidating. The literature using the theory in biblical studies is much shorter . . . for now. Ben Byerly has a bibliography that he calls “Social Identity in the Bible,” but it is more expansive in its understanding of “social identity” (which isn’t a bad thing). In many of those works, you will not find any engagement with this particular social psychological approach. Since I’m currently trying to get a handle on this approach, I thought I would offer a more restrictive bibliography covering only those works explicitly applying SIT to biblical studies, some to a greater extent than others. This is not because I think SIT is the only good approach to discussing group identity in biblical studies or ancient history, but because I need to take it just one theory at a time for my own sanity.

As it stands now, I count a little over 30 books or articles in this category. As you can see, though, it’s heating up. I have found only one author in the 20th century: Esler, who claims to have inaugurated the theory in New Testament interpretation (See Galatians, p. 41 – I have found no evidence to the contrary). Around 20 of these sources have been published since 2007 alone. That’s two-thirds of this bibliography coming in the last four years!

It also appears that the members of the biblical studies researchers at the University of Helsinki (including Petri Luomanen, Raimo Hakola, Jutta Jokiranta, and Risto Uro) are in a competition for the most publications discussing identity in biblical studies (Uro is not on this list, but has related publications). Jutta Jokiranta seems to be the first person applying SIT to the DSS, while I believe the South African Jan Bosman is the first (and only?) scholar to apply the approach to the Hebrew Bible (Louis Jonker picks up on Bosman’s dissertation work as helpful, but doesn’t fully engage the theory himself).

Three of the entries are fellow bibliobloggers (Philip Harland, Brian Tucker, and Coleman Baker) two of whom are in the process of tidying things up on their dissertations for publication with Pickwick (an imprint of Wipf and Stock). Wipf and Stock seems to be picking up on the trend, as they also published Matthew Marohl’s dissertation listed below.

I am posting this list in hopes that it might be helpful to someone else, but also in hopes that others may help me fill in any gaps that I may have. If you notice any missing items, or know of forthcoming items that should be included, please let me know!

By the way, in addition to producing his own work, Brian Tucker is like a book review factory on identity issues–and a good one at that! See his blog for his coverage of a great many books dealing with identity and go looking for his various review essays as well.

And without further adieu, the bibliography (avec links):

Asano, Atsuhiro. Community—Identity Construction in Galatians: Exegetical, Social-Anthropological, and Socio-Historical Studies. JSNT 285. London: T & T Clark International, 2005.

Baker, Coleman A. “Identity, Memory, and Prototypicality in Early Christianity: Peter, Paul, and Recategorization in the Acts of the Apostles.” Ph.D. diss., Texas Christian University—Brite Divinity School, 2010. Forthcoming from Wipf and Stock, Pickwick imprint.

Bosman, Jan. Social Identity in Nahum: A Theological-Ethical Inquiry. Biblical Intersections 1. Piscataway, N.J: Georgias, 2009. [Link to the D.Th. thesis version of the work.]

Brawley, Robert L. “Social Identity and the Aim of Accomplished Life in Acts 2.” Pages 16-33 in Acts and Ethics. Edited by Thomas E. Phillips. New Testament Monographs 9. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2005.

_____. “From Reflex to Reaction? Identity in Philippians 2.6-11 and Its Context.” Pages 128-46 in Reading Paul in Context: Explorations in Identity Formation: Essays in Honour of William S. Campbell. Edited by Kathy Ehrensperger and J. Brian Tucker. LNTS, 428. London : T&T Clark, (forthcoming) 2010.

Cobb, L. Stephanie. Dying to Be Men: Gender and Language in Early Christian Martyr Texts. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.

Esler, Philip Francis. Galatians. London: Routledge, 1998.

_____. “Jesus and the Reduction of Intergroup Conflict: The Parable of the Good Samaritan in the Light of Social Identity Theory.” Biblical Interpretation 8.4 (2000): 325-357.

_____. “Social identity, the virtues, and the good life: a new approach to Romans 12:1-15:13.” Biblical Theology Bulletin 33.2 (2003): 51-63.

_____. Conflict and Identity in Romans: The Social Setting of Paul’s Letter. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003.

_____. New Testament Theology: Communion and Community. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005.

_____. “‘Remember my Fetters’: Memorialisation of Paul’s Imprisonment.” Pages 231-258 in Explaining Christian Origins and Early Judaism. Edited by Petri Luomanen, Ilkka Pyysiäinen, and Risto Uro. Biblical Interpretation Series 89. Leiden: Brill, 2007. [Google Books link starts on the second page of the article because the first page is missing in the preview.]

Esler, Philip Francis, and Ronald A. Piper. Lazarus, Mary and Martha: Social-Scientific Approaches to the Gospel of John. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 2006.

Faulkner, Anne. “Jewish Identity and the Jerusalem Conference: Social Identity and Self–categorization in the Early Church Communities.” eSharp 1 (2005): 1-19.

_____. “The Emergence of Gentile Leadership and the Jerusalem Conference: A Socio-Psychological Approach to the Group Dynamics of the Participation of Gentile Believers in the Early Church.” Ph.D. Thesis, University of Durham, 2009.

Harland, Philip. Dynamics of Identity in the World of the Early Christians. London: T&T Clark, 2009.

Hakola, Raimo. “Social Identities and Group Phenomena in Second Temple Judaism.” Pages 259-276 in Explaining Christian Origins and Early Judaism: Contributions from Cognitive and Social Science. Edited by Petri Luomanen, Ilkka Pyysiäinen, and Risto Uro. Biblical Interpretation Series 89. Leiden: Brill, 2007. [The first several pages are missing from the Google Books preview.]

_____. “Social Identity and a Stereotype in the Making: The Pharisees as Hypocrites in Matt 23.” Pages 123–39 in Identity Formation in the New Testament edited by Bengt Holmberg and Mikael Winninge. Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2008.

_____. “The Burden of Ambiguity: Nicodemus and the Social Identity of the Johannine Christians.” New Testament Studies 55 (2009): 438-55.

Horrell, David. “‘Becoming Christian’: Solidifying Christian Identity and Content.” Pages 309-335 in Handbook of Early Christianity: Social Science Approaches. Edited by Anthony J. Blasi, Jean Duhaime, and Paul-Andre Turcotte. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira, 2002. [See also this version online.]

Jokiranta, Jutta. “Identity on a Continuum: Constructing and Expressing Sectarian Social Identity in Qumran Serakhim and Pesharim.” Ph.D. diss., University of Helsinki, 2005. Forthcoming in STDJ; Leiden: Brill.

_____. “Pesharim: A Mirror of Self-Understanding.” Pages 23–34 in Reading the Present in the Qumran Library: The Perception of the Contemporary by Means of Scriptural Interpretations. Edited by Kristin De Troyer and Armin Lange. Society of Biblical Literature Symposium Series. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005. [Only mentions SIT somewhat generally.]

_____.“The Prototypical Teacher in the Qumran Pesharim: A Social-Identity Approach.” Pages 254-66 in Ancient Israel: The Old Testament in its Social Context. Edited by Philip Francis Esler. Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg Fortress, 2006. [Essay is included in her dissertation]

_____. “Social Identity in the Qumran Movement: The Case of the Penal Code.” Pages 277-298 in Explaining Christian Origins and Early Judaism. Edited by Petri Luomanen, Ilkka Pyysiäinen, and Risto Uro. Biblical Interpretation Series 89. Leiden: Brill, 2007.

_____. “Social Identity Approach: Identity-Constructing Elements in the Psalms Pesher.” Pages 85-109 in Defining Identities: We, You, and the Other in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Proceedings of the Fifth Meeting of the IOQS in Groningen. Edited by Florentino Garcia Martinez and Mladen Popović. STDJ 70. Leiden: Brill, 2008. [Essay is included in her dissertation - first page unavailable on Google Books preview.]

Kazen, Thomas. “Son of Man and Early Christian Identity Formation.” Pages 97-122 in Identity Formation in the New Testament edited by Bengt Holmberg and Mikael Winninge. Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2008.

Keay, Robert D. “Paul the Spiritual Guide: A Social Identity Perspective on Paul’s Apostolic Self-Identity.” Ph.D. Thesis, University of St. Andrews, 2004. [See his summary of the thesis in Tyndale Bulletin.]

Kuecker, Aaron J. “The Spirit and the ‘Other’: Social Identity, Ethnicity and Intergroup Reconciliation in Luke-Acts.” Ph.D. thesis, University of St. Andrews, 2008.

_____. “The Spirit and the ‘Other’, Satan and the ‘Self’: Economic Ethics as a Consequence of Identity Transformation in Luke-Acts.” Pages 81-103 in Engaging Economics: New Testament Scenarios and Early Christian Reception. Edited by Bruce W. Longenecker and Kelly D. Liebengood. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009.

Lamoreaux, Jason T. “Social Identity, Boundary Breaking, and Ritual: Saul’s Recruitment on the Road to Damascus.” BTB 38.3 (2008): 122-34.

Lieu, Judith. Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Luomanen, Petri. “The Sociology of Knowledge, the Social Identity Approach and the Cognitive Science of Religion.” Pages 199-229 in Explaining Christian Origins and Early Judaism: Contributions from Cognitive and Social Science. Edited by Petri Luomanen, Ilkka Pyysiäinen, and Risto Uro. Biblical Interpretation Series 89. Leiden: Brill, 2007.

May, Alistair Scott. The Body for the Lord: Sex and Identity in 1 Corinthians 5-7. JSNT 278. London ; New York: T & T Clark International, 2004.

Marohl, Matthew J. Faithfulness and the Purpose of Hebrews: A Social Identity Approach. Princeton Theological Monograph Series. Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2008. [He is explicitly following Esler as an example “of the appropriate and effective use of social identity theory in biblical interpretations” (35). Esler was also his doctoral advisor.]

Roitto, Rikard. “Behaving Like a Christ-Believer, as a Household Member or as Both?: A Cognitive Perspective on Identity and Behavior Norms in the Early Christ-Movement.” Pages 93-114 in Exploring Early Christian Identity. Edited by Bengt Holmberg. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008.

Tellbe, Mikael. “The Prototypical Christ-Believer: Early Christian Identity Formation in Ephesus.” Pages 115-38 in Exploring Early Christian Identity. Edited by Bengt Holmberg. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008. [If you have a better link for Tellbe, please let me know. I'm not adept at maneuvering Swedish websites!]

Tucker, J. Brian. ‘You Belong to Christ’ Paul and the Formation of Social Identity in 1 Cor 1–4. Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, (Forthcoming) 2010.

_____. “Baths, Baptism, and Patronage: The Continuing Role of Roman Social Identity in Corinth.” Pages 173-88 in Reading Paul in Context: Explorations in Identity Formation: Essays in Honour of William S. Campbell. Edited by Kathy Ehrensperger and J. Brian Tucker. LNTS, 428. London : T&T Clark, (forthcoming) 2010.

Ukwuegbu, Bernard O. “Paraenesis, Identity-Defining Norms, or Both? Galatians 5:13-6:10 in the Light of Social Identity Theory.” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 70.3 (2008): 538-559.

Vaccarella, Kevin M. “Shaping Christian Identity: The False Scripture Argument in Early Christian Literature.” Ph.D. diss., Florida State University, 2007.

10 Comments Posted in biblical studies, bibliographies, identity formation, social identity theory, social-scientific research by Patrick George McCullough
31 Jul 10

Enoch Graduate Seminar: Best Conference Ever?

Pázmány Péter Catholic University of Hungary - Piliscaba campusLast week, my friend, Kevin Scull, and I attended the Enoch Graduate Seminar in Budapest, Hungary (see his post about the experience). The seminar was unlike any conference I’ve ever experienced or even heard about. It was run more like a graduate seminar course at a university than a conference, but even more intellectually fulfilling than that. It had both Kevin and I wondering about conferences that we’d like to see happen in the future.

Format. We all distributed our papers ahead of time. Our presentations were supposed to be more like introductions to the discussion than a verbatim recital of our written work. We had ten minutes to make these introductions, and then the discussion was scheduled for one hour past that. Inevitably, some discussions might bore you to death (the nature of things), while others would stimulate promising new thoughts. Unlike most conferences, you were expected to stay for all the sessions, read all the papers, and contribute to the discussions (as you are able).

The conference lasted about four days, two of which were full with six papers, two of which included only three papers. Most days ended with a final paper/lecture from a scholar. Except for Wednesday, when we took a “field trip” over to the city of Budapest, we ended our day at 7pm. As you might imagine, the conference was exhausting. And, while the host campus was a beautiful little spot outside Budapest, it appears that Hungarians do not believe in air conditioning. Sitting through roughly eight hours of discussion/presentations until the early evening in a hot and humid seminar room made for a more “memorable” experience.

The Enoch Grad Seminar is the graduate student version of the larger Enoch Seminar, which gathers to discuss a particular topic each time. I understand that the larger conference for established scholars (invite only) does not have the same kind of intimacy as the graduate seminar, but I like the idea of having a set topic. Their first meeting, if I heard correctly, was to discuss the proofs of George Nickelsburg’s Hermeneia commentary on 1 Enoch. To me, that sounds like a fabulous idea, and easily transferable to other fields.

Content. The Seminar is not only about Enoch, as the name of the conference might suggest. Rather, Enoch is used more as a reference point because, as Prof. Boccaccini noted, “Enoch is everywhere!” It’s used as a way of marking off a couple centuries before and after the turn of the common era. On the whole, it was a conference mainly on Second Temple Judaism, with only about four or five papers explicitly dealing with New Testament documents. When Christianity was discussed, it was as a part of the larger umbrella of Second Temple Judaism. Unlike the lip service I’ve seen given to this idea in the past (that the early Christian movement was a part of early Judaism), the discussions from this conference represented a really robust approach to Second Temple texts and issues.

Boccaccini offered a kind of plea for New Testament scholars to engage in greater depth with the texts and issues of Second Temple Judaism. He also seemed to have a desire to have studies of Second Temple texts interact more directly with New Testament texts. As it stands, they are two different fields, when they really should be more integrated.

International Connections. At the conference, we had five grad students from the US (UCLA, Michigan, and Marquette), one from Canada (McGill), three from the UK (Cambridge, Durham, and Nottingham), three Hungarians, an Argentinian currently studying at the Sorbonne, and individuals from Greece, the University of Copenhagen, Israel, and Russia. The intensity of the experience helped us all to deepen our global networks, not to mention friendships. We all had a great time together.

The next Enoch Grad Seminar is more accessible for those of us in the states at Notre Dame. I certainly recommend grad students in the field to seek out this conference in two years, when it comes around again. I’m worried that it will not be quite as international as this one was, given the location, but I imagine it will still be fulfilling either way.

1 Comment Posted in Enoch, Second Temple Judaism, conferences by Patrick George McCullough
10 Jul 10

Interpreting the Bible: “Elite” Scholars and “Non-elite” Communities

How elite are biblical scholars? As an Anabaptist and a biblical-scholar-in-training, I have long wondered what my role is in my own (local and larger) community of faith. For example, Stuart Murray devotes a chapter of his Biblical Interpretation in the Anabaptist Tradition to “congregational hermeneutics” (find a summary of the book here). The idea is that (according to 16th century Anabaptists) only a local community, attempting to be truly obedient, could understand the meaning of Scripture together as a community. If I am signing up for the scholarly path, what does that mean for my connection to Anabaptism? Is my training going against the grain of such “congregational hermeneutics”? Where is my place at the Anabaptist table of interpreters?

As I am reading through Philip Esler’s Galatians volume, I was pleasantly surprised to find a helpful insight on this topic from someone thoroughly rooted in a social historical analysis of the biblical text (as I try to be). He discusses the “base communities of Latin America and local groups elsewhere” which reveal “a different pattern” of biblical interpretation than is found in the North Atlantic:

. . . one in which the correlation between scriptural interpretation and the scrutiny of the contemporary situation are conducted by the communities themselves, with some help from theologians functioning as consultants rather than creators of the theology. In these contexts the value of non-elite readings of biblical text becomes apparent. For, in the end, although New Testament interpreters may provide exegetical results which can be appropriated by local communities seeking to undertake correlations of the type just mentioned, it is only those congregations who can make the earliest Christian story, critically understood, their story. . . . The only realistic prospects of developing an intercultural understanding of New Testament experience are located in Christian communities. [27, emphases mine]

Just prior to this statement, Esler effectively critiques those who attack historical methods of interpretation. I can resonate with Esler’s perspective here. As scholars of the biblical texts, our interpretation must be rooted in an attempt to understand the social historical environment from which they come. Postmodern criticism does remind us that we are fallible and does warn us against absolute confidence in our own assumed objectivity. But I like the idea that my purpose is to immerse myself in the historical stuff and serve as a “consultant” to the interpretation of my community. My community as a whole takes whatever attempt at objective interpretation I have made and applies it our own subjective situation collectively.

This is not all just an idealistic pipe dream. Just in the past few months, for example, as my congregation (a Mennonite church in southern California) went through a membership discernment process, I taught a Sunday school session on “Boundaries in the Bible: Inclusion and Exclusion among God’s People.” I brought to my fellow congregants what I had learned from an in-depth review of the topic and they got into groups discussing it. They came up with insights of how the historical analysis of the Bible would apply in our own world. The session was part of a much longer process in which we explored membership issues from a variety of angles.

In the end, the community as a whole came up with the wording of the policy and decided together whether the statements accurately reflected our sense of the issue as a community. With the exception of a few, we came to a vast majority approval of our new policy. I played only a small role, but it gives me hope and a vision for finding a place outside the ivory tower of academia. I’d also like to note that I think my social historical approach offered a more transferable and applicable reading of Scripture in the process than might some other methods.

10 Comments Posted in Esler, anabaptism, hermeneutics by Patrick George McCullough
9 Jul 10

Wow. That’s a long sentence.

This from a scholar I admire and respect. Normally an extraordinary communicator, this particular New Testament scholar writes the following single sentence:

Within the terms of the perspective on communication I will adopt, therefore, the twenty-seven New Testament documents are the evidence for a process whereby, at a particular time and place, certain persons (the authors of the texts) reduced meanings into messages of a particular symbolic form, in this case the written word, for transmission to other persons (the express or implied recipients) and those written messages were in fact transmitted to them by delivery, as with actual letters like Galatians, or by publication, as with the gospels or other documents like the Acts of the Apostles and the Apocalypse, whereupon the recipients perceived and interpreted them, and possibly even acted on the basis of their interpretations.

Oh my. If a student of mine wrote a sentence like this, it could possibly drop his/her grade from A to A-. Several sentences like this: B+. Of course, this particular sentence was authored by a UK author and I understand we have a different appreciation for the efficiency of words across the pond.

9 Comments Posted in grammar, writing by Patrick George McCullough
23 Jun 10

Is Social-Scientific Research of the Bible Useless?

There is a story I heard recently about a prominent biblical scholar.  Though he was not himself into social scientific criticism, he was invited to speak at a panel discussion of a book applying social theory to the Bible. This scholar was surprised to be invited. When he sat on the panel, he shared his honest opinion that there was nothing in this book that he had not thought of himself. He communicated to the audience that social scientific research was useless.

Similarly, I once overheard a scholar who emphasized theological approaches bemoaning his task as an outside reader to a New Testament dissertation. This dissertation spent a chapter discussing a particular social theory that she was using to frame her methodology. This scholar/outside-reader saw this sort of discussion as unimportant to what he considered the real work of biblical studies.

From what I gather, there is a significant population of biblical scholars who are entirely disinterested in social theories as applied to biblical texts. As far as I can tell, this stems from a belief that social theories merely dress up what biblical scholars already know in fancy jargon. On the one hand, point taken. If sociology and social psychology is being pillaged by biblicists merely to “sound new” while not really pushing the field any further, then shame shame.

On the other hand, social theory truly has the potential to raise new questions, frame stale discussions in helpful ways, provide new windows for insights, offer an alternative lens for viewing the social world of texts, etc. Social theory cannot be applied lock, stock, and barrel to ancient texts, of course, but rather serve as heuristic tools — incidentally, when I first learned the word “heuristic” as an undergrad, it took me years to understand what it really meant. Further, though, there are deeper issues here related to interdisciplinary fatigue (a nicer word than “laziness”) and ideology.

I’ll give you the difficulty of dealing with social theory on top of everything else that’s out there. Listen, it has taken me a long time even to begin to understand just one little piece of social theory (i.e., social identity theory). When I started reading literature  on the topic, it all seemed like a big confusing cloud of jargon. It’s easy to just toss it aside and not to try to wrestle with it. Heck, New Testament studies may own the widest gap in all of academe between the minute puddle of primary literature and its vast ocean of secondary literature. We have enough to read already.

But to say that there is nothing social theory can tell us feels a bit like the old-fashioned view that “Hey, what’s a shrink going to tell me that I don’t already know?” For years many people wondered (and still do wonder) why talk to a mental health professional [who has spent years studying the intricacies of the human mind and the behaviors associated with it] when my own common sense serves me just fine, thank you very much. Haven’t we figured out yet that these professionals have scientifically-tested ways in which to weed out the crap that we are unable to see and help us through uncharted territory in useful ways? Sociologists and social psychologists are applying scientific techniques to the collective behaviors of groups, communities, ethnicities, societies, etc. These people have years of research and experience to guide them in their conclusions. If there is a way to apply what people are seeing in our own times to the ancient world, making some sense of our texts, then why not give it a chance?

On the one hand, it’s possible (probable?) that a particular author has done a botched up job trying to use social theory with biblical research. On the other hand, it is also possible (probable?) that–speaking of social identity–many outsiders to social scientific methods don’t really make an effort to understand the complexities of the methods. And therefore, they do not really understand how these methods push the field in new directions.

I’ll take on ideology in my next post. Then, on to mistakes made by biblicists using social scientific techniques — even if the mistakes don’t disqualify the techniques themselves.

15 Comments Posted in social history, social scientific criticism by Patrick George McCullough
5 Jun 10

Imagining a Google (Ancient) Translate

Continuing on my theme of imagining the usefulness of interesting technologies for the work of biblical studies and ancient historians, I have heard lately quite a bit about how innovative Google’s online translator is. I wonder what would happen if its resources were directed towards ancient languages and texts.

First, let me point you to the stuff I’ve been hearing. Two of the podcasts I listen to regularly recently discussed the phenomenon of Google’s translator: On The Media’s story “Bridging the Online Language Barrier” and a story from The World in Words podcast. The former story brings an interesting discussion on the history of automatic translators that’s worth sharing here:

PROFESSOR DAVID BELLOS: After the war, just as computers were being invented, the bright idea came that maybe you could use these wonderful new machines to do code cracking and that maybe languages could be looked at as if they were in code, as if the real meaning of the thing was actually the English and the Russian was just, you know, one of these complicated ways of masking what the real meaning was.

MARK PHILLIPS: First you teach the computer vocabulary, apple equals yablaka, and then you teach it all the rules and grammar, do it for every language and, boom, you’ve got a Star Trek-style universal translator.

PROFESSOR DAVID BELLOS: It didn’t produce the results they wanted.

MARK PHILLIPS: David Bellos:

PROFESSOR DAVID BELLOS: The reason it didn’t was that it was based on not a very sophisticated idea of what language actually is. What I am saying isn’t in code for something else, it is what I’m saying. So there are really very strict limits on what you can do with machine translation, based on the idea of code. By the early 1960s, they’d pretty much given up.

MARK PHILLIPS: This rules-based machine translation was a failure, but there was still another method called statistical translation. Think of it as a behavioral approach. The underlying grammar and syntax don’t matter, but repeated exposure to language, as it’s actually used, does. It’s like how babies learn. You don’t diagram sentences for them. They just hear you say stuff and copy you.

The catch is to teach the machine, you have to load huge amounts of text into the computer. Back in the 1960s, they didn’t have enough data to make a statistical machine translation work. Now we do, says Michael Galvez, a project manager at Google Translate.

MICHAEL GALVEZ: What we do is we actually use hundreds of billions of words that Google infrastructure has access to.

MARK PHILLIPS: It’s a two-step process. First, Google’s computers pull it all in, recognize the language and create what they call a language model. There’s one for each of the 52 languages currently on the service. As they get more data for a particular language, the computers get a better feel for it. It knows from a statistical standpoint that in English, the sentence “The boy are sad” is very rare, just as a five-year-old knows that sounds weird.

But the language model only teaches the computer how to speak each language by itself. The next step is to learn how to go between multiple languages. Google’s Michael Galvez says, for that:

MICHAEL GALVEZ: We also build what’s called a translation model, using previous human translation that we have access to, documents from the EU, the United Nations, very high-quality translation corpora.

MARK PHILLIPS: Everything spoken or written at the United Nations is automatically translated into six languages.

[U.N. HUBBUB/MANY LANGUAGES AT ONCE]]

Google uses U.N. and European Union transcripts, along with tons of other professional high-quality translations, to build this translation model, which allows their computers to take a sentence and predict what it would be in another language. Michael Galvez:

MICHAEL GALVEZ: We take the language model and the translation model and we put these two models together, and we basically create the machine translation system out of this.

MARK PHILLIPS: It produces startlingly accurate results. Plug in an article from a Spanish-language newspaper and it reads like an English article that just needs a trip to the copy editor.

So, what if we took Google Translate and plugged in all the hundreds of ancient texts in ancient Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, etc., along with the best translations of those texts available? Imagine what it might be able to do for previously untranslated ancient texts! Of course, as the reporter notes, it would still “need a trip to the copy editor” or the scholar of ancient texts, in this case. One feature that would be nice would be for Google to offer a few options, so that you could choose the translation that seems to make the most sense in this particular context. This could be amazing for epigraphy: as new inscriptions are found, they can be run through the ancient translator and then just fixed up a bit.

Scholarship has become highly specialized. Imagine the possibilities that might be available if these sorts of resources could be made available to people in different fields. Maybe New Testament scholars would finally start paying attention to inscriptions. I know that a lot of scholars would cry foul about this sort of thing and how you still need human translators. Well, of course we do, but why not enhance accessibility for a greater number of scholars? Or even for our students for that matter? As one person interviewed for the story noted: “The solution isn’t machine translation just getting better or human translators just getting more pervasive. The solution is some combination of the two.”

Now all we need is for Google to get on those ancient texts with their translator. How about it Google? Do you want to take over the ancient world as well?

2 Comments Posted in Google Translate, ancient texts, epigraphy, linguistics, translation by Patrick George McCullough
4 Jun 10

Imagining a Video Study Bible (via Vook)

Occasionally, I like to take a moment to imagine what relevance a new technological product might have for biblical studies. Yesterday, a friend of mine told me about a fairly new and hype-gathering tool called Vook (a name that does not exactly roll off the tongue). This is a tool that seems to be aimed at the iPad and whatever other similar devices follow the iPad. It integrates e-reading with watching videos. At first, I didn’t get it. Okay, so, maybe some sort of instruction manual could use video to show you how to do something. But how do you find complementary video for literary works. On their trailer, they include what looks like stock video of a woman running. Really? I’m reading about a woman running and you give me a video of a woman running? Is that how it works? That’s a little hokey.

On the other hand, apparently they also have video bits that are like documentaries. So, you decide to read Sherlock Holmes and you get videos on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his historical situation, as well as some impromtu “on the street” interviews about his fictional characters. This is more like it. Not something that helps me “get in the mood” of the story, per se, but something that is kind of like a commentary… giving me background information or relevant conversation about the topic, story, or author at hand. I think I could get into that. Naturally, if they team up with quality producers of informed video content (BBC, PBS, etc.), they could get something really amazing going on there.

Can’t you see Zondervan getting behind something like this and putting out hosts of different sorts of study Bibles for different audiences? The more academic publishers could try to create one with top scholars being interviewed on particular passages or themes, archaeological issues. Vook Bibles could include sermons appropriate to the audience or something like Rob Bell’s NOOMA videos. Maps included in study Bibles could go beyond mere stagnant arrows, to show sequential movement. Charts and tables of information could be adapted for video format and placed in appropriate locations in the text.

As we move down the road a few years, I can see quite a few people getting access to these sorts of devices. If institutions follow the trend of schools handing out the latest technologies to students, then I could see something like Vook offering a really interesting service for academic works (e.g., textbooks, etc.). I tell you what, though, if they want to make some money, I bet coming out with Zondervan-style plethora of Bibles would do them lots of good. Of course, I would like a couple Vook Bibles to be the New Oxford Annotateds or New Interpreters or HarperCollins Study Bibles of the Vook Bible lineup (a category that I have just made up). So, what do you think, Vook?

0 Comments Posted in ipad, study bibles, technology, video, vook by Patrick George McCullough
31 May 10

Teaching Ignatius: Recap and Reflection

Coincidentally, as my friend Kevin Scull was presenting a paper on Ignatius (”Self-Effacement in the Letters of Ignatius and Paul”) at NAPS, the class he was teaching (”Earliest Christian Documents in Historical Context”) was scheduled to address Ignatius’ writings (the very same day, in fact!). Clearly, Kevin could not be in both Chicago and Los Angeles at the same time, even if it was the same topic that demanded his attention. I was honored that he requested I step in for him to lead his seminar of about a dozen students on the topic of Ignatius. I had a great time.

It was a three hour seminar that began with a writing exercise (the class fulfills a “Writing II Requirement” or a “W” course at UCLA) on word precision and verb tense–not as dry as it sounds! The students had to have their rough draft of their final paper completed by that class session, so, they had examples to share with their peers.

Then we switched to Ignatius, the students having read his letter to the Ephesians and to the Romans. They had done some background reading from Ehrman and a scholarly article dealing with why Ignatius was arrested (external persecution or internal strife?). We spent some productive time discussing the major themes that Ignatius cares about: martyrdom, bishops, unity, and false teachings. We tried to connect the dots between his concerns regarding bishops, unity, and false teachings (false teachings bring dissension, the bishop dictates the boundaries of unity, etc.).

We tried to discern what those false teachings might have been. They identified “flesh” as an important topic in Ephesians, but weren’t sure what to make of it. One student thought that this could have been something “christological,” but when I explained docetism to them, they didn’t seem convinced that the false teachings were solely docetism. They thought that Ignatius was emphasizing spirit just as much as flesh in his comments, so they thought it could go either way.

When I told them about the old view that there was a singular “docetic Judaizing” group that Ignatius was fighting against in all congregations, just about every student thought this was ridiculous–as they’re faces expressed. This was a group very suspicious of the work of “scholars.” They almost reminded me of the way the sixteenth century Anabaptists talked about “the wicked scribes.” But their distaste was less for religious reasons as it was for logical ones. To paraphrase one student, “It seems like these scholars just decide some things, which have very little evidence, sound like good ideas and everybody just goes along with it and bases more work on it.” Teaching the issues of historical scholarship, particularly in the ancient world, to undergrads often reminds one of the speculative house of cards we academics live in.

For the rest of the class session, we talked about how Ignatius compares and contrasts with Paul (including the theme of Kevin’s own presentation on self-effacement) and the nature of persecution of Christians in the early second century (they had also read the Pliny and Trajan exchange, and a comment from Tertullian on how Christians get blamed for everything).

I love my own classroom, but it was nice to take a step back from seventeenth-century absolute monarchy and teach Christian origins again. And for a great group of students, too. Every student contributed something valuable to the discussion. I could tell that Kevin had been helping these students through some very challenging terrain in a masterful way. In the end, though, it does make me somewhat sad that I will not get to teach next year–even if it means I’ll be more productive in my research. I’ve already been looking for ways to keep a foot in the pedagogical waters next year.

1 Comment Posted in Ignatius, Kevin Scull, pedagogy by Patrick George McCullough
25 May 10

LOST Finale Reflections Part 3: Some Cultural Parallels (SPOILERS)

As you can see from my two earlier posts, I’m not crazy about the way the LOST storytellers handled the “solution” to the sideways reality question. On the other hand, I would not have been opposed to having the show consider the afterlife in some way. I think they could have done what they did (some sort of afterlife) without reverting to Shyamalanian tricks or making me choke on their potent religious soup. I kind of wish they would have explored the afterlife in a more direct manner instead of using the Sixth Sense surprise.

As I reflect upon the LOST depiction of afterlife, I am immediately reminded of at least two cultural references (which is fitting since I taught my students about intertextuality today). My first association after learning that this sideways world in the film is the afterlife was “Defending Your Life.” Remember that one? In the movie, the character played by Albert Brooks discovers that he is on trial for how fearless he was in his life. Now he’s being tested on whether he was brave enough in this first life to “move on” to the next thing, or whether he has to go back and try again. There is something very intriguing in this Purgatory-like/reincarnation idea that one must deal with the meaning of his or her life after death in some way.

Complementing that aspect of accounting for the the life one has lived, the second reference that came to mind is C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce (others elsewhere noticed too). This is an even better parallel and one of my favorite books. In Divorce, Lewis tells the tale of two worlds, that symbolically represent heaven and hell. In a very Plato sort of way, some of the people in the shady, shadowy world of hell take a bus trip up to the very solid and “real” world of heaven. They arrive at the outskirts of heaven and it is so “real” and, thus, more solid, that the blades of grass do not bend under the feet of the shadowy people from the gray world of hell. People in the hell-place are subject to their own personal versions of hell, whatever self-destructive persona that person had before death, but multiplied. The afterlife in LOST obviously is not either hell or heaven, but there is room for both. Reality in the afterlife is not exactly the same as it had been before death, but directly influenced by one’s experience of life.

Like The Great Divorce, there seems to be an element to the afterlife that it is what people imagine it. The best connection I’ve seen between the LOST finale and Divorce comes from Travis Prinzi (who also mixes in some Harry Potter):

The Flash Sideways is a postmodern Graytown (from C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce.) It’s like Lewis’s Graytown, because the people there can stay or leave as they feel ready. . . . But also consider that Christian told Jack that all the castaways “made” the place, because they needed it.

And in that case, it’s like King’s Cross. Harry perceives his meeting place with Dumbledore as King’s Cross, because it’s his own perception. What he believes actually shapes the place. In Lewis’s Graytown, the place is what it is and looks like what it looks like. Graytown’s citizens disagree on the meaning of the place, but not its makeup. At King’s Cross, and in this Sideways world, the place looks like what its inhabitants make it in their own imaginations. But all are able to proceed to love eternal when they are ready.

As the story ended, the people sitting with me immediately began discussing: So is the Sideways real? I just smiled to myself, being too exhausted to formulate an answer. I wanted to say with Dumbledore, “It was in their heads, but why on earth should that make it not real?” What LOST did was make the statement: what is in your head is real. Imagination vindicated. Faith vindicated. Spiritual reality vindicated.

What gets me curious, though, is the fact that in Divorce the shadowy members of Graytown are subject to whatever delusions they have lived and died with. Jack Shepherd, however, seems to have “let go” and found redemption by the time he has died. Why, then, does he revert back to his earlier skeptic ways once he’s in the afterlife scenario? That bit kind of conjures up a Matrix-like scenario, to name a third cultural reference — a need for an awakening. The difference from the Matrix, though, is that this alternate reality does not seem repressive.

It’s also interesting there is apparently a former (kinda) purgatory to the ultimate (kinda) purgatory, while Michael and others with unresolved issues remain on the island whispering to future island visitors. But that will have to wait for further speculation.

0 Comments Posted in Albert Brooks, C.S. Lewis, Matrix, afterlife, intertextuality, lost by Patrick George McCullough
24 May 10

LOST Finale Reflections Part 2: Nauseating Religious Soup (SPOILERS)

Stained Glass Window[ . . .  continued from part 1]

In addition to the shallow switcharoo (IMHO) ending, to me the reunion at the interfaith church was just so eerily and obnoxiously warm and fuzzy, that it made me think that the LOST gang was some sort of creepy suicide cult. I liked it better when the show worked in subtle references to various religious symbolism, but this last scene feels like a strange religious cocktail blend that kinda makes me want to vomit. Did you notice the stained glass window? The Taoist yin and yang, Christian cross, Jewish star of David, Muslim crescent moon and star, Hindu aum, and Buddhist dharmacakra wheel (a connection to the frozen wheel I hadn’t considered). Really, did you have to be that blatant about your religious combo meal? What happened to the mystery? It’s as if LOST is taking us aside to tell us, “Hi viewer, in this series we have borrowed from all of these very profound and inspirational religions. Won’t you, like us, respect and value these important religious traditions in your own path to spiritual enlightenment?”

Please permit me a moment of commentary here. Far from respecting all religions, this sort of religious soup is a slap in the face to all communities of faith. This is where Stephen Prothero’s latest book, God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World–and Why Their Differences Matter, has tremendous relevance (check out his video interview on PBS’ Religion and Ethics). When we blend all religions together, we create something entirely different from any one religion. We need to consider each religion within its own context if we’re going to respect and study each religion, not “the simple celebration of diversity for diversity’s sake—that is too easy,” as Prof. Boustan likes to say. In his letter from the director on UCLA’s Center for the Study of Religion site, Boustan notes, “We must avoid the temptation to divide the world into the familiar and the exotic.” The LOST finale has not avoided such temptation and rather makes religion into a cheesy, meaningless prop.

Christian Shepherd at the PulpitGary Susman at TV Squad interprets the stained glass window thusly: “There’s an afterlife waiting for everyone, as long as they have faith and are willing to let go.” Why on God’s green earth would LOST end its magnificent run with such a hokey message? Commenting on that stained-glass window and the entire interfaith church idea, one blogger complains, “Why not just have Jack ascend to heaven in a Prius with a ‘coexist’ bumper sticker?” Not that I have anything against Priuses (Prii?) or those stickers (if properly conceived), but the point is: Why do the final moments of the LOST finale feel like an after school special on the importance of respecting religious diversity? There we were, wondering about the mythology of LOST, which questions would be answered and how, following the epic story, and then, we were being homilized. And it’s not even a good homily at that.

On the other hand, I did appreciate Kate’s poignant question at the beginning of the episode: “‘Christian Shepherd’? Seriously?”

[continued (with some less negative thoughts) in part 3 . . . ]

7 Comments Posted in lost, pluralism, religion, religious diversity by Patrick George McCullough

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