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  • From: "David C. Hindley" <DHindley AT compuserve.com>
  • To: corpus-paul
  • Subject: Re: Neumann review
  • Date: Sat, 8 May 1999 12:52:35


On 05/03/99, ""Stephen C. Carlson" <scarlson AT mindspring.com>" wrote:

>> I am interested in this topic because a few
years ago, I attempted to classify the NT documents on the basis of
computer-analyzable stylistic criteria, in my case, the number of
shared three-word sequences between two documents.<<

>> Basically, my conclusions cohere with what are presented to be
Neumann's. I found that Eph, Col, and 2 Thess were more similar
to Paul than to any other writer in the NT corpus and that there
was little stylistic basis according to my criterion to exclude
them from the other, non-disputed Paulines (e.g. Romans). I also
found that the Pastorals and Hebrews were quite different from
the rest of the Pauline corpus.<<

Steven,

There must be caution, I think, in applying only one statistical measure to
the determination of authorship, as authors will employ combinations of
characteristics that individually may not be meaningful. That is why I was
happy to see multileveled multivariate analysis performed by Neumann.

However that is, I had input the statistical data on sentence length found
in the appendix to Morton & McLeman's _Paul, The Man and the Myth_ (1966),
and then calculated the coefficient of correlation between books. Sentence
length was measured in "spons", which were defined as "THE NUMBER OF GREEK
WORDS BETWEEN FULL STOPS (.), COLONS (RAISED PERIOD), OR INTERROGATION
SYMBOLS (;) AND CAN BE SEEN AS A TYPE OF SENTENCE." (Sorry about the caps,
as I cut and pasted from a spreadsheet document and was not in a position
to reformat the text). The results are as follows (and I apologize in
advance for the length of the results):

1 CLEM 2 CLEM 0.988
1 CLEM EXHORT 0.938
1 CLEM RICHMAN 0.916
1 COR JAMES 0.987
1 COR GAL 0.975
1 COR 2 COR 0.968
1 COR 1 CLEM 0.964
1 COR 2 CLEM 0.930
1 COR 1 TIM 0.914
1 COR HEB 0.906
1 COR PHIL 0.892
1 COR 1 THE 0.887
1 COR RICHMAN 0.874
1 COR PHM 0.873
1 COR 2 TIM 0.864
1 COR EXHORT 0.847
1 COR COL 0.833
1 COR 2 THE 0.796
1 COR TIT 0.789
1 COR EPH 0.685
1 THE HEB 0.968
1 THE 1 TIM 0.947
1 THE 2 CLEM 0.945
1 THE EXHORT 0.935
1 THE PHM 0.923
1 THE 1 CLEM 0.918
1 THE 2 THE 0.909
1 THE JAMES 0.887
1 THE RICHMAN 0.845
1 THE 2 TIM 0.832
1 THE TIT 0.800
1 TIM 2 CLEM 0.980
1 TIM 1 CLEM 0.970
1 TIM EXHORT 0.968
1 TIM HEB 0.964
1 TIM JAMES 0.950
1 TIM 2 TIM 0.940
1 TIM TIT 0.928
1 TIM RICHMAN 0.903
1 TIM PHM 0.889
2 CLEM EXHORT 0.964
2 CLEM RICHMAN 0.896
2 COR JAMES 0.978
2 COR 1 CLEM 0.978
2 COR GAL 0.969
2 COR 2 CLEM 0.967
2 COR 1 TIM 0.963
2 COR EXHORT 0.935
2 COR RICHMAN 0.934
2 COR HEB 0.932
2 COR 1 THE 0.926
2 COR PHIL 0.915
2 COR COL 0.910
2 COR 2 TIM 0.906
2 COR PHM 0.897
2 COR 2 THE 0.883
2 COR TIT 0.879
2 COR EPH 0.784
2 THE EXHORT 0.951
2 THE 1 TIM 0.916
2 THE HEB 0.915
2 THE 2 CLEM 0.902
2 THE PHM 0.891
2 THE 1 CLEM 0.876
2 THE TIT 0.856
2 THE RICHMAN 0.844
2 THE 2 TIM 0.844
2 THE JAMES 0.824
2 TIM TIT 0.963
2 TIM 1 CLEM 0.943
2 TIM 2 CLEM 0.938
2 TIM JAMES 0.925
2 TIM RICHMAN 0.919
2 TIM EXHORT 0.916
2 TIM HEB 0.886
2 TIM PHM 0.794
COL EXHORT 0.980
COL HEB 0.963
COL 1 THE 0.959
COL 2 CLEM 0.956
COL 2 THE 0.952
COL 1 TIM 0.948
COL 1 CLEM 0.919
COL 2 TIM 0.893
COL PHM 0.886
COL TIT 0.878
COL RICHMAN 0.874
COL JAMES 0.860
EPH EXHORT 0.932
EPH COL 0.921
EPH PHIL 0.899
EPH TIT 0.896
EPH 2 THE 0.890
EPH 1 TIM 0.884
EPH 2 CLEM 0.883
EPH 2 TIM 0.879
EPH HEB 0.876
EPH 1 CLEM 0.843
EPH 1 THE 0.827
EPH RICHMAN 0.792
EPH JAMES 0.749
EPH PHM 0.692
GAL 1 CLEM 0.986
GAL 2 CLEM 0.977
GAL JAMES 0.973
GAL HEB 0.970
GAL PHIL 0.961
GAL 1 TIM 0.957
GAL 1 THE 0.931
GAL EXHORT 0.913
GAL COL 0.905
GAL 2 TIM 0.894
GAL PHM 0.884
GAL 2 THE 0.870
GAL RICHMAN 0.858
GAL TIT 0.836
GAL EPH 0.799
HEB 2 CLEM 0.979
HEB 1 CLEM 0.957
HEB EXHORT 0.954
HEB JAMES 0.914
HEB RICHMAN 0.831
JAMES 1 CLEM 0.981
JAMES 2 CLEM 0.952
JAMES RICHMAN 0.910
JAMES EXHORT 0.885
PHIL HEB 0.991
PHIL 2 CLEM 0.972
PHIL 1 TIM 0.966
PHIL 1 CLEM 0.955
PHIL COL 0.952
PHIL EXHORT 0.949
PHIL 1 THE 0.942
PHIL 2 TIM 0.917
PHIL JAMES 0.914
PHIL 2 THE 0.913
PHIL PHM 0.885
PHIL TIT 0.873
PHIL RICHMAN 0.828
PHM HEB 0.902
PHM JAMES 0.870
PHM 2 CLEM 0.865
PHM EXHORT 0.863
PHM 1 CLEM 0.853
PHM RICHMAN 0.806
RICHMAN EXHORT 0.909
ROM 1 COR 0.996
ROM JAMES 0.986
ROM 2 COR 0.981
ROM GAL 0.974
ROM 1 CLEM 0.970
ROM 2 CLEM 0.938
ROM 1 TIM 0.924
ROM HEB 0.909
ROM 1 THE 0.900
ROM RICHMAN 0.899
ROM PHIL 0.890
ROM PHM 0.871
ROM EXHORT 0.869
ROM 2 TIM 0.866
ROM COL 0.851
ROM 2 THE 0.816
ROM TIT 0.806
ROM EPH 0.705
TIT EXHORT 0.929
TIT RICHMAN 0.919
TIT 2 CLEM 0.908
TIT 1 CLEM 0.900
TIT JAMES 0.867
TIT HEB 0.844
TIT PHM 0.746

I never got around to determining the level of significance, but as you can
see, the relationship between the sentence length distributions of these
letters (1.00 being complete correlation) produced some interesting
results. Hopefully they will illustrate the pitfall of using too few
measurements.

Dave Hindley
Cleveland, OH
Dhindley AT compuserve.com




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