Introducing Scientific Methods for the Interpretation of the Bible: Quantitative Analysis of Christian Documents

Author(s):  
Hajime Murai
2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter G. Noble

By looking backwards we can often discover solutions that will allow forward progress. We see in the bible the idea that history repeats itself: What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Ecclesiastes 1:9 But the author subscribes to the idea put forward by the American humorist, Mark Twain: History doesn’t repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes. The design and construction of water-borne craft using “scientific” methods is a relatively recent development in the context of the whole history of that activity, and is by no means universally applied even today Many traditional craft in current service still rely on the process akin to natural selection, as proposed by Darwin, that is, it is not the strongest, most intelligent nor the fittest that survive but those that best adapt. And the evolutionary process continues today. From Bangkok water taxis with “long-tail” propulsion systems, and from Haitian fishing boats with high performance new sails to whaling umiaks in NW Alaska covered with tensioned membrane skins made from walrus hide and equipped with outboard motors, there can be value in studying the design, construction and operational approaches of these craft. Such consideration can lead to insights for the modern naval architect. A number of well-researched publications (Tapan Adney, 1964) and (Haddon, 1975) give a wealth of information on indigenous craft. Sturgeon Nose Canoe USN ZUMWALT Class Destroyer. Noble Lessons to be learned from the study of indigenous craft 2 Lessons such as optimizing weight/strength ratios, minimizing resistance, utilizing materials in clever ways, developing repairable structures etc., can all be learned from the study of indigenous craft. The sense of continuity with a living past obtained by the study of the work of previous generations of designers and builders, realizing that many current problems were their problems too, is both valuable and satisfying. That said, not all examples given in this paper can be directly linked to designers actively seeking out past developments. Some examples have occurred by coincidence, some by accident and some by unwitting “reinvention of the wheel”. Many “new” ideas, however, have been tried before and it is very often possible to test a new idea against past experience. This paper builds on previous ethno-technical study, (Noble 1994) describing the author’s experience in this field and uses a number of specific examples to illustrate the premise.


Author(s):  
Kseniia Vitalievna Bogdanova

This paper aims at demonstrating various forms of intertextuality as exemplified by selective excerption of samples from a corpus of narrative and user-interface elements of roleplaying videogames, or RPGs. We review several types of excerpts, by applying through various scientific methods (description, comparison, qualitative and quantitative analysis, induction). These include: the virtual “books” that facilitate the immersion into the RPG world, while adhering to the stylistic requirements of the respective real-world genres; unique fantasy idioms in dialog lines spoken by RPG characters, with references to English phraseology; and finally, the titles of missions that the player needs to, which are often based on allusions to English proverbs or classical literature.


2017 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Piet A. Geyser

This article reflects on hermeneutics in the widest sense of the concept and not on the detailed technicalities from philosophical and other perspectives. Hermeneutics will be taken to refer to the whole act and process of understanding. It is done with special reference to how the understanding of Scripture and specifically the New Testament of theologians of the Netherdutch Reformed Church over the past seven decades, is reflected in the work in the HTS Theological Studies journal. It is clear that their approach to the understanding and concretisation of the message of the New Testament was one of greatest respect for Scripture. The basic tenet throughout was that the Word of God was to be found in the Bible. There was no assumption that Bible and Word of God were identified on one and the same level. Taking the Bible as literature seriously implied that the best scientific methods had to be found and implemented in this search for the meaning of the Word of God for the Church’s message and practice in the world.


2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-182
Author(s):  
Nargiz Seidova ◽  

Benevolences and curses, integral and authentic part of the discourse, most clearly reflect the culture of people. The use of these expressions in the communication space of different languages indicates the need for their study from the standpoint of linguistics, folklore, stylistics, rhetoric, psychology, cultural studies and other sciences. This article provides diachronic analysis and examines the deictic means of French benevolences and curses in the French language. The material for the study was the texts of the Bible, French epic poems, medieval legends, ballads, tales, and fiction. When considering this topic, the author used both general and special scientific methods and techniques: a historical-etymological method, a descriptive method that includes methods for observing, comparing, interpreting and classifying the material being studied; semantic identification method; distribution method. Comparing the medieval French discourse with the modern French language, the author examined the grammatical and semantic evolution, which underwent benevolences and curses.


Author(s):  
Alexandra Turik

In modern society, the image of the prophet, in particular Moses, evokes in the minds of the Ukrainian people respect, esteem and the desire to find an ideological leader. Now the interpretation of the linguistic image of Moses in the Bible remains unanalyzed, which determines the relevance of our study. The aim of our work is to study the specifics of interpretation and modeling of the speech image of Moses in Ukrainian literature. The scientific novelty of the obtained results and conclusions is that the work defines a range of means of embodiment of the image of Moses in the text of the Bible. Methods. The analysis of the linguistic material is based on the principles of an integrated philological approach using the linguo-cognitive method of analyzing the phenomenon under study, in particular: the method of conceptual analysis (for modeling the internal structure of the concept of Moses), the method of contextual analysis (for highlighting the textual embodiment of the concept of Moses). In the article general scientific methods and techniques are used, such as – linguistic observation, classification, systematization, comparison, abstraction, as well as the method of quantitative calculations. Conclusions. It is worth noting that the concept Moses is used in conjunction with adjectives to denote the greatness, sacrifice and other positive traits of the prophet: great, most gentle, most faithful, trusted; and lack of eloquence: heavy-tongued and heavy-toothed; and also with adjectives that emphasize Moses' belonging to the Lord: the servant of the Lord.The concept of Moses is presented in the text of the Bible by a spectrum of such conceptual features: “mediator between God and men”, “servant of the God” or “doer of the Lord”, “preacher of the God”, “fugitive who killed the Egyptian”, “prophet without eloquence”, “Everyone knows the sage”, “the great man in the land of Egypt”, “the softest of all”, “the defender of his brothers”, “the one who works for the benefit of his own people ”, “the one who was pulled out of the water”.


Author(s):  
J.P. Fallon ◽  
P.J. Gregory ◽  
C.J. Taylor

Quantitative image analysis systems have been used for several years in research and quality control applications in various fields including metallurgy and medicine. The technique has been applied as an extension of subjective microscopy to problems requiring quantitative results and which are amenable to automatic methods of interpretation.Feature extraction. In the most general sense, a feature can be defined as a portion of the image which differs in some consistent way from the background. A feature may be characterized by the density difference between itself and the background, by an edge gradient, or by the spatial frequency content (texture) within its boundaries. The task of feature extraction includes recognition of features and encoding of the associated information for quantitative analysis.Quantitative Analysis. Quantitative analysis is the determination of one or more physical measurements of each feature. These measurements may be straightforward ones such as area, length, or perimeter, or more complex stereological measurements such as convex perimeter or Feret's diameter.


Author(s):  
V. V. Damiano ◽  
R. P. Daniele ◽  
H. T. Tucker ◽  
J. H. Dauber

An important example of intracellular particles is encountered in silicosis where alveolar macrophages ingest inspired silica particles. The quantitation of the silica uptake by these cells may be a potentially useful method for monitoring silica exposure. Accurate quantitative analysis of ingested silica by phagocytic cells is difficult because the particles are frequently small, irregularly shaped and cannot be visualized within the cells. Semiquantitative methods which make use of particles of known size, shape and composition as calibration standards may be the most direct and simplest approach to undertake. The present paper describes an empirical method in which glass microspheres were used as a model to show how the ratio of the silicon Kα peak X-ray intensity from the microspheres to that of a bulk sample of the same composition correlated to the mass of the microsphere contained within the cell. Irregular shaped silica particles were also analyzed and a calibration curve was generated from these data.


Author(s):  
H.J. Dudek

The chemical inhomogenities in modern materials such as fibers, phases and inclusions, often have diameters in the region of one micrometer. Using electron microbeam analysis for the determination of the element concentrations one has to know the smallest possible diameter of such regions for a given accuracy of the quantitative analysis.In th is paper the correction procedure for the quantitative electron microbeam analysis is extended to a spacial problem to determine the smallest possible measurements of a cylindrical particle P of high D (depth resolution) and diameter L (lateral resolution) embeded in a matrix M and which has to be analysed quantitative with the accuracy q. The mathematical accounts lead to the following form of the characteristic x-ray intens ity of the element i of a particle P embeded in the matrix M in relation to the intensity of a standard S


Author(s):  
John A. Hunt

Spectrum-imaging is a useful technique for comparing different processing methods on very large data sets which are identical for each method. This paper is concerned with comparing methods of electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) quantitative analysis on the Al-Li system. The spectrum-image analyzed here was obtained from an Al-10at%Li foil aged to produce δ' precipitates that can span the foil thickness. Two 1024 channel EELS spectra offset in energy by 1 eV were recorded and stored at each pixel in the 80x80 spectrum-image (25 Mbytes). An energy range of 39-89eV (20 channels/eV) are represented. During processing the spectra are either subtracted to create an artifact corrected difference spectrum, or the energy offset is numerically removed and the spectra are added to create a normal spectrum. The spectrum-images are processed into 2D floating-point images using methods and software described in [1].


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document