The Hebrew Bible is a composite text written by many authors and compiled over hundreds of years. With much of the academic analysis of the Bible dedicated towards discerning nested authorship, scholars closely examine word choice and style to infer distinct components. Despite centuries of advancement in understanding authorial layers within the Bible, attribution for many verses is still heavily debated. The principal aim of our research project is to develop a set of machine learning algorithms to contribute to the analysis of biblical authorship.

Combining the cultural embeddedness of anthropologists and the design innovation of the Berkeley Center of New Media (BCNM), this project builds a global online archive of conversations recorded by ethnographers in field sites worldwide. Our scalable global archive addresses two concerns in contemporary anthropology: 1) renewed interest in collaboration as both ethnographic object and method, and 2) the paucity of interactive, design-focused ethnographic archives.

The staggering disparity between what cultural heritage collections hold in their storage facilities and what they are able to publicly display (typically 5% or less of their total holdings) is a well-known fact. For example, the Victoria and Albert Museum shares the following information on its website: