The project is a collaboration of Dead Sea Scrolls scholars with computer scientists and aims to create a dynamic, virtual research environment for the digitalization of the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is to be achieved by enhancing and linking the robust databases administered by the Qumran-Lexicon-project of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library of the IAA, by developing advanced digital tools for linking texts and images, and by developing new end-user applications for the creation and publication of a new generation of critical digital editions.
The main outcome of the project will be in the form of an enhanced hands-on virtual workspace for scholars examining fragments and a standardized environment for collaborative production and presentation of Dead Sea Scrolls editions. The project will prepare exemplary editions of some representative biblical as well as non-biblical texts from the Qumran caves. The research environment will feature advanced tools for clustering fragments, and for suggesting joins and jigsaw-puzzling them, as well as for monitoring the material reconstructions of scrolls.
The environment will also offer palaeographic tools and an alignment tool connecting text and image. It will allow the reader access not only to the ‘text’ of a given composition in its original language together with an English translation, but also to its distinct copies, to high-resolution images of the fragments, to dictionary entries and to parallel texts. The platform will also include an inventory collecting and recording all variants of biblical texts in the Dead Sea Scrolls according to a multi-dimensional classification scheme. All of these developments will be published on the IAA Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library website.
Principal Investigators are Dr. Jonathan Ben Dov (Department of Bible, University of Haifa) together with Prof. Dr. Nachum Dershowitz (School of Computer Sciences, Tel Aviv University) for the Israeli part, and Prof. Dr. Reinhard G. Kratz (Faculty of Theology at the University of Göttingen and the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities) for the German part. Dr. Noam Mizrahi (Department of Hebrew Culture Studies, Tel-Aviv University) and Adj. Prof. Dr. Ingo Kottsieper (The Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities) are responsible for individual projects. Further associate partners are Prof. Dr. Lior Wolf (School of Computer Sciences, Tel Aviv University), Prof. Dr. Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra (École pratique des hautes études, Paris), and Prof. Dr. Shani Tzoref (Geiger College/School of Jewish Theology, University of Potsdam).
Cooperation partners of the DIP-project-team are the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the Israel Antiquities Authority, represented by Pnina Shor, Curator and Director, Dead Sea Scrolls Projects. The project is planned for five years and will be funded with ca. EURO 1.6 million.
Contact:
Prof. Dr. Reinhard G. Kratz
University of Göttingen
Faculty of Theology
Platz der Göttinger Sieben 2
37073 Göttingen
Tel: +49-(0)551-39-7129/7130
Email: rkratz(at)gwdg.de
Web: http://www.uni-goettingen.de/en/56085.html
