Laurence Mellerin: Biblical quotations in Patristic Texts

This workshop aims to enable research teams from different countries, whose work involves the identification and analysis of biblical quotations in Patristic texts, to share experiences and allow the audience to have an open discussion about methodological problems. Both patristic and biblical scholars will take part in this workshop, to consider how common tools could be developed to serve different purposes, such as the history of exegesis or a critical edition of biblical texts.

Laurence Mellerin: "Biblindex, online Index of Biblical Quotations in Early Christian Literature"; Hugh Houghton: “Patristic Evidence in the new edition of the Vetus Latina Iohannes”; Bas ter Haar Romeny: Biblical quotations in Syriac commentaries (exact title to be specified); Claudia Wick: The language of the Bible in the Thesaurus linguae latinae.

BIBLINDEX. This paper will present a new online tool for patristic studies developed by Sources Chrétiennes in Lyon (France), Biblindex, http://www.biblindex.org: this is an online index of biblical references found in Christian literature, both Western and Eastern texts, at present covering the four first centuries: the eventual goal is to cover the whole Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, in order to renew the study of the interpretation and history of biblical texts. It seeks to link:

- A corpus of Bibles, collections of scriptural books which were originally written in the various languages of the Ancient East and translated early in their history. Quotations in ancient authors show these texts in the process of development;

 - A corpus of ancient and medieval authors, who refer to the Bible as a fixed entity yet at the same time contribute through their quotations to the form and concept of 'the text'.

Numerous methodological issues have to be solved during the project development, so that an effective XML-TEI schema for both biblical and patristic texts can be built: e.g., how to define the difference between allusion and quotation? How to distinguish and typify the Church Fathers’ ways of introducing and changing the biblical texts? How to decide where a quotation begins and where it ends? Through a few case studies, we’ll present Biblindex solutions and submit them to discussion.