Introduction
People worked together to make the Bible. I can tell
because of all the names.
(Naomi, age 5[1])
[Digital Humanities’] tool-building
enterprise risks falling into a binary in which digital tools represent
innovation, dynamism, and provocative instability, while the materials
they operate upon — very often literary texts — represent availability,
continuity, and unproblematic stability.
[Galey 2010, 100]
It should come as no surprise that technologies used to study and represent the
past are not hermeneutically neutral. To state this positively: the technologies
themselves
mean something; they have illocutionary force. In
considering technologies through which the past might be apprehended, it is
important to remember that the past is only ever
approximately
apprehended: one cannot simply “go back,” but must rely on
constructed memories, artifacts, written accounts, recordings, etc. Further, as
these examples indicate, most of our means of apprehending the past rely on
technology, broadly defined. Consider Ferré’s broad understanding of technology: “...technology involves (i)
implements used as (ii) means to practical ends that are somehow (iii)
manifested in the material world as (iv) expressions of
intelligence”
[
Ferré 1995, 25].
Thus when history is studied or represented, one must ask, In
what ways are the associated technologies conveying meaning?
This article will direct the question toward a particular kind of history,
textual history, taking biblical texts as an illustrative example. The goal is
to better understand how textual technologies of yesterday, today, or tomorrow
capture or obscure the material history of their texts. Biblical texts are
particularly useful since they feature prominently during major media shifts in
the past two millennia (from scroll to codex, script to print, print to
digital). First, two technologies widely used are considered and compared: the
(non-digital) book and its digital counterparts. This analysis will suggest ways
in which the associated paratexts affect the reader’s understanding of the
text’s past. Second, technologies increasingly available but less commonly used
for texts, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), will be considered
along the same lines. These technologies are particularly interesting because,
although they are digital, they represent 3D physical space quite realistically.
It will be seen that each technology examined conveys certain elements of
textual history while obscuring others. These observations will lead to more
general considerations for those creating, using, and studying texts.
It should be said at the outset that in order to understand and describe what is
or is not unique about a text mediated by
this or
that
technology, we necessarily describe features of texts that are normally taken
for granted. As Willard McCarty reminds, this is a difficult exercise: “In consequence of the rigours of
using this language, which requires complete and explicit specification,
there arises...the struggle to articulate what normally goes without
saying in our editions and editing practices”
[
McCarty 2013, 2]. To aid in the task, we will look through the lens of
paratext.
Technologies and the History of Biblical Texts
The purpose here is to sufficiently explore the subtle
“messages” various book technologies send a reader of
biblical texts; that is, to consider the illocutionary force of the various
paratexts. For heuristic purposes, let us begin by considering the form of
biblical texts that most people encounter today: The printed Bible in
translation. Such a book is generally a collection of 66 or more ancient
documents bound together in a single volume (
Figure
1)
[5].
Right away we should note that the binding itself is significant. The
binding is a paratext that conveys a message: these documents
belong together. But in terms of the text’s history, the
binding paratext of a codex potentially obscures the fact that the documents
within were completed at various times over the course of 1,500 or more years by
authors who almost certainly did not envision that their work would be read
alongside of these other works. Indeed, the texts of these documents were
transmitted by copying and came to be collected together and assorted in various
ways over the centuries by diverse groups, many of whom did not agree about the
documents’ relation to one another.
[6] Even where an introduction or
marginal note gives an account of the composition of a particular document, the
paratextual message of
belonging remains.
Early in the textual history of many of the biblical texts, however, especially
those of the Hebrew Bible, the scroll, not the codex, was the book technology of
choice.
[7] We might therefore ask: Does a
scroll have a similar binding or boundary paratext as a codex? Of course, each
end of the scroll serves as a boundary, and if multiple texts are contained in a
single scroll, these texts are related to one another by virtue of the boundary
paratext analogous to the binding of a codex. Perhaps a closer equivalent to the
binding paratext of the codex would be the receptacle of a group of scrolls,
perhaps a shelf, a chest, or a jar.
[8] For example, the
Torah
Ark, a special receptacle for Torah scrolls
used in some synagogues, represents a similar kind of canonical paratext as the
binding of the Bible earlier described. But note that a collection of scrolls is
far less fixed than a collection of texts bound in a codex, and the paratextual
message of belonging is less overt. Thus a canonical collection of scrolls
captures the distinctiveness of individual documents, obscuring to a lesser
extent the collection’s textual history.
What, then, is the binding or boundary paratext of a
digital
biblical text? Technically, a computer file containing the text exists, usually
marked (or tagged) at document boundaries. Since a reader is generally unaware
of this technical boundary, its hermeneutical significance is more difficult to
discern.
[9] In terms of the electronic display of
a biblical text, boundaries might include title pages and chapter or page
numbers that indicate a beginning or a scroll bar that indicates the user’s
relative location within the document.
[10] It is instructive to compare the boundary paratexts
illustrated in Figures 2 and 3 below. In Accordance Bible Software, if a user
navigates to the beginning of the Gospel of Luke — a distinct ancient document —
scrolling up will display the ending of the Gospel of Mark — another distinct
document, usually bound just before Luke in a print Bible — with little
indication of a boundary between them (
Figure
2).
[11] But in YouVersion’s popular Bible app, navigating to
the beginning of the Gospel of Luke, the user is presented with the first
chapter of that document, unable to scroll up to any previous text (
Figure 3).
[12] To
advance within the text of chapter one, the user must scroll down. To advance to
chapter two, the user must tap the right arrow button. However, pressing the
left arrow button
will take the user to the last chapter of the
Gospel of Mark (similar to the scrolling navigation in Accordance). Thus in both
examples, the user can navigate back one chapter
in canonical
sequence, from Luke 1 to Mark 16, not unlike most printed Bibles.
YouVersion’s app presents more of a boundary between the two documents, the
Gospels of Mark and Luke, by virtue of its chapter boundaries. But in both
cases, the canonical sequence is fixed and the boundaries between documents are
not overt.
Consider also the uniformity of modern printed books in terms of typography, page
layout, and other elements of book design — paratextual properties according to
my definition — reinforcing the message that the documents are related and
belong together since each document (or “book” within) looks
and feels exactly the same.
[13] Similarly, printed Bibles typically have consecutive page
numbering
across the bound collection, another paratextual message
suggesting the unity and progression of its contents.
[14] An
additional numbering system is commonly used for referencing larger units of
each document (consecutively numbered “chapters”) under which
are smaller units (consecutively numbered “verses”, per
chapter).
[15] The consistency of this reference system across biblical
texts, including various editions, versions, and translations of modern Bibles,
and even anachronistically used in online editions of digitized manuscripts,
subtly suggests readerly, possibly even authorial, agreement about the unit -
delineation, and therefore the argument, of the texts. These numbering systems
are intentionally absent in some printed Bibles, often called Reader’s Bibles,
in order to present the reader a text formatted like familiar modern books. Some
Bible applications likewise allow the user to “hide” verse
and chapter numbers (and manipulate certain other visual paratextual features).
Even so, print and digital versions alike present an extremely uniform text
which subtly obscures its textual history.
The physical binding of a Bible also fixes the sequence (or canonical order) of
the documents. Imagine the hermeneutical difference, for example with a
Protestant Bible, if a reader had a series of 66 unnumbered volumes on a shelf,
each corresponding to one ancient document (e.g., Genesis, Exodus, etc.), rather
than a one-volume bound collection. At a glance, it would become immediately
clear that the documents vary greatly in size, which reduces the sense of
uniformity, even if slightly. The reader could also then order the collection in
a multitude of ways: by putative date of composition, by genre, by size, and so
on.
[16] While digital biblical
texts often utilize hyperlinking in such a way that navigation is not linear,
they nevertheless retain traditional canonical sequencing through the prominent
navigational features (e.g., scrolling, contents menu, etc.).
Similarly, there is finality to a printed Bible, like any printed book — a
paratextual message that suggests a pure, original text. This
“finality” enabled by the printing press was celebrated
by science and religion alike from an early period. In 1702, Bishop Thomas Sprat
could say: “[Both the Royal Society and the
Church]...have taken a like cours[e] to bring this about; each of them
passing by the corrupt Copies, and referring themselves to the perfect
Originals for their instruction; the one to Scripture, the other to the
large Volume of the Creatures”
[
Sprat 1702, 371]; cf. [
Eisenstein 1979, 696]).
[17] That sense of finality is far less
acute in Bible software.
[18]
Accordance Bible Software, for example, periodically alerts the user to
available updates, listing specific modules that might include a biblical text —
a text that is updated, changed with the click of a button!
Not only does this diminish the sense of finality present in a printed
text; it also reminds the user that textual transmission of the Bible is
perpetual. One is, as it were, standing in it. As David Parker, a New Testament
textual critic, once observed after creating an electronic transcription of
Codex Sinaiticus: “...textual critics, under the
guise of reconstructing original texts, are really creating new
ones”
[
Parker 2003, 401].
[19] Parker
suggests that as technologies give more ability to the user to manipulate a
scholarly edition of a text (like the New Testament), “The result will be a weakening of
the status of standard editions, and with that a change in the way in
which users of texts perceive their tasks”
[
Parker 2003, 404]. Note, however, that even in Parker’s advanced software, Collate, there
is a smoothing over of textual materiality for the sake of the machine. This
“smoothing over” is the effect of any attempt to produce
a critical edition, creating the tension, described by Alan Galey, “...between the surface orderliness
of scholarly resources and the stubborn irregularity of textual
materials”
[
Galey 2010, 93].
How else might the “stubborn irregularity
of textual materials” be represented and their paratexts captured?
Images have for a long time been an important means of capturing the materiality
of manuscripts. Given the scope of this article, we limit ourselves to
considering
digital images. For a manuscript of more than a few
pages, most digitized versions present a series of images, one per page (of a
codex) or per section (of a scroll). For example, the Center for the Study of
New Testament Manuscripts provides a web interface that simply presents
thumbnail images of the pages of a manuscript.
[20] Clicking
on a thumbnail will open a larger version of the same image in a viewer in which
the user can zoom to view even greater detail. Other interfaces juxtapose
manuscript images, transcriptions, and translations. One Bible software program,
BibleWorks, links manuscript sigla, transcriptions, and images of select
manuscripts.
[21] In an
example of one of the more sophisticated web interfaces, the Codex Sinaiticus
Project displays a zoomable manuscript image (per codex page), a transcription
formatted in columns corresponding to the manuscript, and a translation in one
of a few languages — each linked to the other word by word.
[22]
Navigation is possible either by book/chapter/verse (like a
modern printed Bible) or quire/folio/verso-recto. The latter method is a good
example of a navigational paratext that captures the materiality of the
manuscript. In spite of the sophistication, however, the user’s relative
location within the document is not obvious. Contrast this limitation with a
series of digitized scrolls in The Digital Dead Sea Scrolls project by The
Israel Museum, Jerusalem.
[23] The Isaiah Scroll, for
example, can be read by moving a slider at the bottom of the window — a scroll
bar that is itself an image of the scroll, rolled out, and numbered, column by
column (
Figure 5). The greater part of the window
is taken by a zoomable image of the scroll, each end of which appears to be
unrolled or rolled up, depending on the direction of navigation. Hovering over a
line of the original text causes a shaded box to appear which, upon clicking,
displays a pop up English translation of the highlighted text. This interface,
more than any other I have encountered online, captures the original paratexts
of the object.
[24]
A final interesting example to consider is the British Library’s virtual display
of the Lindsfarne Gospels.
[25] Here individual
images of select pages of the manuscript appear to turn. Shading and lighting
effects are also used to create a 3D feel, not unlike the Isaiah Scroll
interface in Figure 5.
In summary, a number of paratextual features of the codex book form, especially
in print, obscure the textual history of the Bible by inviting assumptions about
the unity and cohesion of the various documents contained therein. Most digital
counterparts to the book similarly smooth over the variegated history of the
texts. Critical editions suffer from this tendency, even as they explicitly
represent the details of the text’s history. Digitized manuscripts, however, are
increasingly produced in a way that preserves their original paratextual
properties and material features, and may help overcome the tendency of printed
texts to obscure textual history. This leads us to consider the potential of two
image-based technologies, AR and VR.
The Potential of Augmented and Virtual Reality for Textual History
Growing interest in consumer VR technology since the release of the Oculus Rift
DK1 in 2012 has been matched by the development of many consumer VR applications
and VR (360) videos, including some that relate to the biblical text. During
roughly this same period, the proliferation of mobile devices with
accelerometers and ever-faster processing capabilities has been met with the
development of consumer-level AR applications, including some related to the
Bible. The trajectory of this 3D technology development suggests that scholars
begin seriously, if cautiously, considering its deployment for their own
activities.
It is perhaps unsurprising to find the Bible being taken up in these new
technologies in light of its own textual history. However, most of the
“biblical” AR and VR applications appear to be less
textual and more related to providing immersive experiences of
the stories of the Bible. For example, the Bible VRX Lite, a proof-of-concept
app available for iOS and Android devices, lets a user experience a handful of
relatively well known biblical scenes, such as the moment before Adam and Eve
eat the forbidden fruit, Moses facedown before the burning bush, Jonah submerged
in the sea with a whale-like creature nearby, or the nativity.
[26]
Similarly, in the Immersive Faith Project app, one can experience an imagined
scene from Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount”.
[27] One large publisher recently
developed an AR app for use with a Children’s storybook Bible.
[28] The mobile app is used to
scan an illustration from the physical book, thereby causing the illustration to
“pop up” virtually on the screen. Simultaneously, an
audio narration of the story begins to play. Likewise, a Shanghai company has
recently released a number of AR products for children, including the “Children’s First AR Bible,” a coloring book of 40
well-known biblical scenes that “come to life” with the
corresponding app.
[29] Another
company attempted a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for an AR app that
displays a short Bible text when one of its 3D printed objects (such as a cross)
is scanned.
[30]
Three other examples of AR and VR call for greater attention. First, and slightly
difficult to classify, is The New Jerusalem Virtual Reality exhibit by Michael
Takeo Magruder (
Figure 8).
[31] In a sense it is
unreal, an intentional “vitual unreality”
that attempts to represent both the text of Revelation 21 (a biblical text), as
well as a significant event described by that text: the descent of the heavenly
New Jerusalem, described in Revelation 21 as a cube-like city.
The biblical text was divided into 16 units and translated into 16
corresponding QR codes that, as the cube-shaped city descends, appear as 3D
skyscraper-like edifices through which the user can navigate. The kaleidoscopic
texture for the city is derived from Google map data of present day Jerusalem.
There is little indication of the text’s history — only the subtle clue that
textual information is contained in the QR codes. What is useful about this
example, however, is the challenge it presents us when considering how a text
may be represented and experienced. The exhibit is visual, multi-sensory, and
may tap into something of the
emotion of the biblical scene,
perhaps in a way not unlike the illuminations of ancient or medieval
manuscripts.
Second, the Museum of the Bible in the USA has contracted a Jerusalem-based
software developer, Compedia, to create an AR app that is designed to be used
with a Bible curriculum. This app has not been publically released, but a demo
available online indicates some of the ways that the textual history of the
Bible might be represented.
[32] In one example, a user scans a
printed icon in a textbook using the camera of an iPad, causing the printed
image of the 1611 King James Bible title page to transform itself on the screen
into a 3D 1611 King James Bible (
Figure 9).
In the video, the user then “flips” the pages using
gestures on the touchscreen, causing the pages to flip, bend, and fall
realistically. Eventually the Bible falls open to the New Testament title page,
slightly rounded as one would expect of a thickly bound book. Notice in
Figure 9 the ways in which the paratexts are
virtually presented: The binding, the thickness of the book, the presence of
other pages, etc. One can further imagine that in a VR environment, the relative
size of the object could be more realistically rendered by the added depth
perception.
In another example from the same app demo, a cuneiform prism is displayed and
appears to be “standing up” relative to the page displayed on
the iPad through the camera. The artifact is the Weld-Blundell Prism which
contains a Sumerian King-List on four roughly equal sides.
In Figure 10, notice the details captured in the AR representation of
the prism in contrast to the four 2D images on the textbook page.
Third, Adi Keinan-Schoonbae, a Fellow at the British Library who specializes in
Hebrew Manuscripts, has created a number of 3D models available on SketchFab, a
publishing platform for such projects (see
Figure
11).
[33] These models can be viewed and
manipulated on most digital devices, as well as rendered in VR on appropriate
mobile devices.
In early 2016, new models of ancient texts appear to be uploaded to
SketchFab every week, and major cultural institutions are beginning to explore
the platform. The Harvard Semitic Museum, for example, has recently uploaded a
number of models, including a Cuneiform tablet from its collection.
[35]
These models showcase the potential of creating publically accessible 3D models
of textual objects. One limitation is that, as far as I can tell, the objects
cannot be manipulated in a way that would represent the opening of a scroll or
the turning of the pages of a book.
[36]
Finally, it is worth imagining a few other possibilities that could be realized
given current technology. Stephen Smith, a developer for Bible Gateway, recently
envisioned the use of AR akin to Microsoft’s HoloLens, an untethered (wearable)
holographic computer.
[37] With the
HoloLens, a user looks through a lens, seeing the real world, while the computer
projects images upon the lens in 3D, creating a holographic effect. In Smith’s
example, a physical desk upon which sits an open Bible is overlaid with
holographic digital texts and tools that a user can manipulate (
Figure 12). It is not difficult to also imagine a
holographic display of a scroll, a codex, or even the site of a manuscript’s
discovery.
Imagine a virtual reading room in which is stored all of the extant manuscripts
of the biblical text that have been digitized — a kind of virtual critical
edition. The user, seated at a desk, can “open” and read any
of the objects, perhaps using a printed Bible in translation as the
point-of-entry. When selected, Codex Sinaiticus appears on the desk, rendered in
3D and in true-to-life relative size to the Bible, the desk, and, say, a measure
on the desk. If a particular manuscript is, in reality, distributed in various
parts across different libraries, then in the virtual world, a user could either
view each part separately or view a virtual reconstruction of the whole. A fully
fledged critical edition seems technically feasible, although the computing
power required may be beyond the capacity of today’s personal VR devices.
What these real and hypothetical AR and VR examples suggest is that these
technologies have the potential to capture textual history in a way that current
book technologies do not. These also show that the employment of AR and VR for
the texts creates engagement that is not only more visual (in the sense of added
depth perception and dimensionality) but auditory and kinesthetic.
Conclusion
This exploration leads us to make some practical suggestions. First, we must not
underestimate the
meaningfulness of paratexts, not least on our
apprehension of the text’s past. Thus, when creating any representation of a
text or manuscript (a digital representation, a critical edition, etc.), care
should be taken in preserving the original paratexts, and consideration should
be given to the new paratexts created in the production of the digital
representation. For digitized manuscripts especially, representations should
attempt to imitate the original paratexts as closely as possible (an excellent
example is the Isaiah Scroll in
Figure 5 above).
Second, those undertaking digitization projects should consider cutting edge
technologies and their future trajectories and, accordingly, capture as much
information as possible in their digitization work. Along these lines, David
Parker says:
In transcribing Codex Sinaiticus, I
found myself seeking new ways of indicating just what I found. ...Should
I indicate which letters were written smaller at the end of a line? How
should I indicate punctuation, paragraphing, the Eusebian apparatus, and
the running titles? ...At the end of this process it was clear that the
activity on which I was engaged was quite different in character from
collating. I was trying to decide what features in the manuscript I
could and should represent in my transcription, and then finding ways of
doing so. And I was thinking not only about the possibilities
immediately available to me, but also about possibilities that might be
available to scholars at a future date, if only I had the forethought to
set out my material in such a way that they could capture it for their
own ends.
[Parker 2003, 398]
In view of AR, VR, and other 3D applications, this means that digital
photos of manuscripts and books should include the outside of the book at
multiple angles. Related to this, efforts to establish digital standards that
directly or indirectly affect texts (e.g., protocols, file types, markup
languages, etc.) would likewise benefit from such future-looking considerations.
Third, textual critics should consider the potential of 3D technologies like AR
and VR for the analysis of textual objects. VR and holographic AR especially
have the potential to represent manuscripts in a compelling real-to-life and
true-to-size manner. Fourth, we have seen that many AR applications are used in
educational contexts. Educators will thus want to think critically about how AR
and VR may enhance and restrict the learning experiences they wish to create,
and for texts, the ways in which the technology captures or obscures textual
history.
Finally, design specialists should have a crucial role in the productions of
digital texts. As Alan Galey rightly says:
If textual scholars tend to position
themselves at the threshold between the surfaces of texts and their
mysterious depths...then digital materials may lead them to new kinds of
thresholds. As in bibliography, questions about preserving and reading
digital artefacts lead inevitably to the topic of their design. Reading
the human presence in a digital artefact requires knowledge of markup,
encoding, and even programming, raising the problem of negotiating
multiple fields: on the one hand, textual scholarship (which some take
to include book history, or at least to overlap substantially with it);
and on the other, interface design as a catch-all term for
a practice that brings together human-computer interaction, information
design, usability studies, and programming. Textual scholarship’s close
ties with book history significantly complicate its relationship with
design — though such complexity can be productive.
[Galey 2010, 107]
In sum, we have sought to demonstrate a few ways in which technology
means. This was done by observing some of the ways that book
technologies, by virtue of their paratexts, convey meaning about their texts’
histories, often obscuring that history. In real and hypothetical examples, it
was suggested that AR and VR technologies have great potential for overcoming,
or at least offsetting, some of the limitations of common textual technologies.