Biblical texts shaped and influenced Slavia orthodoxa and Old Church Slavonic (OCS) by laying the groundwork for historical and symbolic exegesis, i.e., the interpretation and understanding of facts and narratives, such that historical events were seen in the light of Scriptural prototypes. Thus, the identification of biblical quotations is of the utmost importance for textological as well as functional textual analysis. This is a task fraught with challenges, demanding a nuanced approach that balances philological rigour with an understanding of the broader intellectual and theological context.
So far attempts to develop a software tool for support this process are limited and no standalone solutions are yet available. Yet, such technological support for quotation identification could be very impactful to Palaeoslavistics and shed light on previously unknown intertextual relations, text history, and meanings. Among other things, it could facilitate the investigation of the dual phenomena of inter- and hypertextuality, whereby texts drew on common sources and came to reference each other or themselves internally. These phenomena are strongly present in medieval Slavonic Patristic and liturgical texts owing to their extensive citation of the Scriptures; having a tool to identify such quotations would make it possible to study such aspects of these texts more deeply from a semiotic point of view.
In the BogoSlov project, we set out to develop experimental software infrastructure to assist the identification and listing of Biblical quotations in OCS texts. This infrastructure is intended to include tools for annotation, algorithms and language models, combined in a toolset software bundle to support scholars in their efforts of identification and verification Biblical quotations. Within the project, two major biblical sources of quotations (primary texts) will be examined: the Psalter and the Gospels, both of which are frequently quoted in medieval texts.
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