The Digital Humanities in Biblical Studies and Theology

Abstract

This special issue of Open Theology dedicated to digital humanities (DH) belongs to, and in many ways represents, a new step in the digital development of biblical studies and theology-the start of a general diffusion of digital research, digital tools, and digital culture in theology. This new step has come to the fore through the recent publication of books like Networked Theology (Campbell and Garner 2016) and Creating Church Online (Hutchings 2017), and also by the creation of the first research centre focused on Christian digital theology in 2014, the CODEC centre in Durham, UK, presented in the first article of this issue.1 This introduction to this special edition briefly traces some of the significant steps that have influenced the development of the digital humanities as it relates to the critical study of the Bible and theology, and contextualises the articles in this fascicle within this larger conversation. It is well known that the first computing theological tool-the first ever computing tool built for the humanities-was the Index Thomisticus, created by the Jesuit Roberto Busa.2 Soon thereafter, the Reverend John W. Ellison produced the first computing tool for biblical studies, an index of the English translation of the Revised Standard Version.3 This traditional Anfangspunkt in the history of DH has often promoted Roberto Busa to the position of "father of the discipline," a status supported, for example, by Domenico Fiormonte: "Busa's undertaking founded the discipline of the Humanities Computing (although years later it was renamed Digital Humanities), but above all it laid the groundwork for a profound epistemological and cultural transformation."4 This preeminent role attributed to Busa is still underlined by the near-ecstatic enthusiasm he himself has demonstrated for DH, going so far as to compare DH to the "finger of God" in 2004.5 But, as Steven Jones has pointed out, the emphasis of Busa's role was also motivated by postwar political and economic agendas;6 several other names could stake a claim to have been present at the birth of DH, as Julianne Nyhan and Andrew Flinn have illustrated.7 Milad Doueihi suggested in 2014 that an evaluation of the history of DH should start with the analysis of Alan Turing's seminal 1950 article "Computing Machinery and Intelligence."8 Following this proposition, Claire Clivaz has recently examined Turing's article in conversation with the writings of Ada Lovelace and Louis Frédéric Menabrea, underlining the prominent role of that the concepts of mind and/or the spirit played for all three of these authors.9 In light of the important epistemological turn represented by DH, theologians, along with scholars