Abstract
Linking Syriac Data
How do the Biblical heritage and Hellenistic culture interact in the oldest documents of Syriac Christianity?
At the Eep Talstra Centre for Bible and Computer (ETCBC ) we will compare the Hebrew Bible and its ancient Syriac translation (the Peshitta) with the Syriac Book of the Laws of the Countries (ca. 200 AD) using linguistic data processing, especially topic modelling.
Processing of the Hebrew Bible has been made possible by the CLARIAH component SHEBANQ. In this project we will add Syriac texts to the procedure.
The material is digitally available, but requires further preparation to be delivered in research-ready shape. We will expose the analysed Syriac texts as Linked Open Data via syriac.ancient-data.org. In passing, we shall give the same treatment to relevant Hebrew material from SHEBANQ.
This is the second step in developing ancient-data.org as a data provider for research into the Semitic foundational texts from the Ancient Near East, one of the cradles of Western civilization.
People
![]() |
Principal Investigator Professor Biblical Studies VU Amsterdam |
Project Team
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
Dirk Roorda researcher, DANS |
Hannes Vlaardingerbroek scientific programmer, VUA |
Mathias Coeckelbergs scientific programmer, VUA |
Geert Jan Veldman Syriac scholar |
Femmy Admiraal Linguist, DANS |
Reinier de Valk Linked Data, DANS |
Deliverables
The following GitHub repository contains the Project Results of the CLARIAH research pilot LinkSyr.
In the near future the data will also be presented through:
- syriac.ancient-data.org
- peshitta.ancient-data.org (data of the ancient Syriac Bible translation used in the project)
- lectionaries.ancient-data.org (structured liturgical in related to the textual data)