MARK16 develops a new research model in digitised biblical sciences, based on a test case found in the New Testament: the last chapter of the Gospel according to Mark. The goal of the project is to create a virtual research environment, that will be the output website for textual criticism and exegesis of Mark 16, allowing to compare researchers’ hypotheses. SNF website: http://p3.snf.ch/project-179755

A research blog presents all the news about the project, and a VRE will be open in 2020: mark16.sib.swiss

Abstract

MARK16 is the first virtual research environment (VRE) focused on a biblical chapter and inaugurates a new research model for the digitised Humanities. The chosen topic is a famous enigma in New Testament studies: certain manuscript witnesses do not have an apparition of the resurrected Jesus at the end of the Gospel according to Mark. Presenting in the research matter historical order, this VRE will become the output place for textual criticism and exegesis of Mark 16, and will allow to visualise the «story of the winners and the losers», according to the French historian François Hartog’s expression. The material available in open access or with copyright, including the audio-visual material, will be presented on the VRE on a historical scale. A new interpretation tool will be created to allow the multimodal comparison of the hypotheses, including this one of the PI: the Gospel according to Mark had a previous ending, lost or destroyed, before the endings transmitted from the 4th century by manuscript witnesses. The complexity of the textual variants illustrates the ancient topos of people's emotions in front of post-mortem apparitions, and shows historically the tensions existing between Christian trends at the 1st century C.E. The project is supported by an international team of researchers: Leif Isaksen, Jennifer Knust, Valérie Nicolet, Laurent Romary, Joseph Verheyden et Peter Williams. This project coins the label Digital New Testament studies and fosters the digital turn of New Testament studies; it supports an academic reading of the Bible at a time in which the European research plays a crucial role in maintaining the social peace between religious communities.         

                                                Sara Schulthess                                                 Claire Clivaz                                                     Mina Monier                                  

                      DH Scientist                                                        Head of DH+                                         Post-doctoral fellow in Humanities                              

 

 

MARK16 is a PRIMA SNSF project hosted at the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, DH+ group