An exploratory study on the use of a phylogenetic algorithm in the reconstruction of stemmata of halachic texts
Until recently, philological-historical analyses of ancient texts were based almost exclusively on the know-how of experienced scholars. The main disadvantage of this approach is the lack of a methodological means for resolving conflicting conclusions reached by different researchers. Additional pro...
| Published in: | Hebrew Union College annual / Jewish Institute of Religion |
|---|---|
| Authors: | ; ; |
| Format: | Print Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
|
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
College
2005
|
| In: |
Hebrew Union College annual / Jewish Institute of Religion
Year: 2005, Volume: 76, Pages: 273-288 |
| RelBib Classification: | BH Judaism |
| Further subjects: | B
Textual criticism
B Rabbinic Judaism B Text history B Halacha |
| Parallel Edition: | Electronic
|
| Summary: | Until recently, philological-historical analyses of ancient texts were based almost exclusively on the know-how of experienced scholars. The main disadvantage of this approach is the lack of a methodological means for resolving conflicting conclusions reached by different researchers. Additional problems arise when the amount of data that needs to be considered is too large to be dealt with manually, or when the evidence precludes a simple description of the ancestry of the various versions. This article describes the analysis of several halachic texts through the use of a phylogenetic algorithm called maximum parsimony, which was originally designed for the study of biological data. Hundreds of textual variants occurring in various manuscript witnesses of three halachic texts were used in conjunction with the maximum parsimony procedure to derive phylogenetic trees from encoded data. Group patterns produced by this algorithm were found to be fairly similar to some results obtained through conventional philological-historical research conducted on the same texts. In a significant number of cases, however, particular stemmatic statements were not supported by maximum parsimony. Our conclusion is that phylogenetic methodology may be useful to historical-philologists in reconstructing the stemmata of text traditions or the ancestry of halachic manuscripts. Computerized phylogenetic algorithms are expected to outperform the traditional manual approach especially as far as long documents are concerned, as well as in cases in which a proliferation of text witnesses needs to be considered. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 0360-9049 |
| Contains: | In: Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Hebrew Union College annual / Jewish Institute of Religion
|