A Digital Complutensian Bible

Multilingual reading for all in a digital environment.

Overview

This project is developing a digital multilingual Bible modelled on the sixteenth-century Complutensian Polyglot. The Complutensian included numerous aids for “those who do not have a perfect command of (each) language”¹ while pushing the limits of print technology to support novel kinds of scholarly research.² Its six volumes supported:

1. comparative, multilingual reading of texts
2. lemmatization coordinating texts and lexica
3. morpho-syntactic alignment for cross-lingual analysis

We are implementing the same functionality digitally, to explore ways we can support the Complutensian’s goals of aiding those without extensive background in the Biblical languages, and facilitating innovative cross-lingual scholarship.

Presentations

• Society of Biblical Literature (San Diego, November, 2024)
• AIA/SCS (Philadelphia, January, 2025)

Footnotes

1. In the words of the editors’ preface: qui non integram linguae cognitionem adepti sunt

2. Again, the editors’ explicit aim: studiosis vtillisimum fore credimus