In this paper, I intend to set a groundwork for a renewed attention to collections of scriptures as historical social scientific data, aided by the new capabilities available to social researchers computational and internet research methods, utilizing the massive database of Jewish texts available through an open source application programming interface (API) hosted by The Sefaria Project as case study. I will first provide background on the history of the study of the Babylonian Talmud - a central and encyclopedic node of Jewish scriptures around which most other Jewish texts are traditionally organized, and an introduction to the types of sociological questions that could be approached by treating it as a data set. I will then give a brief history of the Talmud’s transmission and development as a body of knowledge up to its digitization in the present day. Then, I will present several ways in which computational methods could be applied to the Talmud database to approach sociological questions, and address potential challenges for future researchers to take into consideration.

2. ‫ך‬ָ‫פ‬ֲ‫ה‬
ְ‫ב‬ָּ‫ה‬
ּ‫ך‬ָ‫פ‬ֲ‫ה‬ַ‫ו‬
ְ‫ב‬ָּ‫ה‬
ּ
‫ד‬ְּ‫ל‬ֹ‫כ‬ָּ‫א‬
‫ה‬ָ‫ב‬
.ּ
Self-­‐conceptions
Values
Aspirations
Can also reveal patterns of:
social organization,
social processes,
social change over time.

3. Lines of Transmission
Massive corpora of texts:
Collected, redacted, and compiled
across centuries and locations.
Often feature references and
citations to previous or
contemporary sources.
Allows social investigations into
shifts and differences in doctrine,
practice, as well as the
organization of religious concepts
and bodies of knowledge.

4. Ways of Knowing
Library Methods: selecting and reading through particular sections
using the physical page or digital copy page by page, or use
information found in associated dictionaries and databases to find
and use relevant data.

5. (New) Ways of Knowing?
Computational Methods: search, sort, parse, re-organize data,
repeatedly iterate commands across millions of lines of text. More
streamlined and efficient processes, can handle much larger
workloads, and can be infinitely customized to meet the criteria of
particular research questions.

6. Competing Paradigms
Builder: interested in maintaining the structural integrity of the body of texts
out of a desire to sense that scripture presents complete and coherent portrait
of one's world.
Archaeologist: extracting insights into social facts - "neither obligated nor
expected to offer a strained resolution”…"does not strive to create harmony in
a place where it does not exist” (Kulp & Rogoff 2014).

7. Sociological Data in the Talmud?
37 different volumes, or tractates, 6 major organizing orders:
Zeraim (“Seeds”): agricultural laws and practices
Moed (“Festival”): religious holy days
Nashim (“Women”): betrothal, marriage, divorce, and adultery
litigation
Nezikin (“Damages”): property, physical harm
Kodashim (“Holies") and Tohorot (“Purities”):
rites, laws of worship in the Jewish Temple

8. Case Study: Betrothal
Also changed by medieval scholars
and codified into Jewish law, and
then cited by authorities through
history leading up to the 21st
Century. Massiveamounts of
information about how a text has
been adapted, and its application
changed over time among a
significant population, over a span
of 2,000 years.
Mishna Babylonian Talmud
Consumated through sexual
intercourse.
Adultery -> automatic divorce.
Less time to plan wedding.
Consumated through exchange of
money between bride and groom.
Adultery -> reduction in value of
prenuptial entitlement.
More time to plan wedding!

9. Talmud as Open
Source Big Data
Printing press drastically expanded access
to Talmud. Moved from domain of elites to
foundation for intensely text-based
religious practice, academic critique.
Sefaria Project:
Digitizing majority of all Jewish texts
Online collaboration by laypeople on
generating open source, non-copyrighted
translations,
Sharing collections of “source sheets.”
Mostly communal endeavor embarked
upon for the sake of increasing availability
of texts to a wide audience, and is
sustained by donations and grants from
non-profits devoted to Jewish education -
mostly features of the “sharing
economy” (Lessig 2008)

10. APIs, Code Sharing,
Mobile/Web Applications

11. Mapping Social Environments
Capacity to capture all - or nearly all - relevant text
on a given topic opens up exciting new lines of
meso-and macro-level inquiry into cultural
environments (Bail 2014).

12. Mapping Social Change

13. Alternative classifications
according to theoretically and
empirically-driven sorting of
content.
Differences between the
traditional classification and the
ones generated using automated
processes and algorithms could be
worthy of analysis.
(Re)Classification

14. And now for some perils!
Narrowing effects of online databases (Evans 2008).

15. A Mixed Methods Solution
Combining
both
approaches,
taking
both
the
priorities
and
emphases
of
traditional
study
and
the
conveniences
and
totality
of
computational
methods
with
a
grain
of
salt.
Developing
a
discerning
intuition
for
the
right
combination.

16. Thank you!
Further Questions?
danya@uchicago.edu
Research made possible by the Fuerstenberg
Fellowship at the University of Chicago.