Introduction
Evidence-Based Biblical Studies (EBBS) proposes a method for examining texts based on the rigor of data, clarity of argumentation, and conscious control of context. Its starting point is not interpretation, but rather the source material: language , textual variants, structure, and reception . EBBS assumes a clear distinction between data and conclusions and requires that any thesis be proportionate to the quality and scope of available evidence. In this sense, it represents an attempt to transfer the standards of evidence-based research to the field of textual analysis.
Although this method was developed and illustrated using biblical material, its significance extends beyond this context. It can be applied wherever text serves as a source of knowledge about beliefs, norms, and social practices. For the social sciences, EBBS offers a tool for systematic discourse analysis, allowing for the examination of how texts shape interpretations of reality, legitimize actions, and influence social processes.
This is particularly important in the study of media texts in the age of artificial intelligence, when algorithmically generated content requires source verification, contextual control, and credibility assessment. In this environment, data hierarchy, the principle of deferred harmonization, and the explicit reporting of uncertainty become tools to protect against manipulation and overinterpretation.
EBBS introduces a discipline before interpretation. It does not eliminate hermeneutics, but embeds it within the structure of evidence. This allows it to become a bridge between humanistic sensibilities and the analytical rigor inherent in the social sciences and contemporary media studies.
In the EBBS model, the Bible is studied not for confessional reasons, but for its textual and historical properties. It is a corpus with an exceptionally extensive manuscript tradition, encompassing thousands of testimonies in various languages and periods. At the same time, it is a text of immense cultural significance, which for centuries has shaped social norms, public language, and the collective imagination.
Evidence can disrupt theology.
From the EBBS perspective, the Bible is also a space where the role of translation is particularly evident. It functions primarily through translation, that is, through decisions that are not purely linguistic, but interpretive. In this model, translation becomes a specific form of scientific interpretation, not merely a transfer of meaning between languages.
Studying the Bible therefore allows us to analyze the process by which manuscript and linguistic data are transformed into a structured interpretation with broad social consequences. This text serves as a methodological laboratory: it demonstrates how easily the boundary between observation and interpretation can be blurred and how crucial it is to consciously maintain it.
Therefore, the choice of the Bible as a research subject in the evidence-based paradigm is not only justified but exemplary: it demonstrates that even a text of immense cultural significance can and should be subject to the same evidential discipline as any other source material.
Main Methodological Stages
- Epistemic Framework
- Research Question Design
- Data Identification
- Primary Data Analysis
- Base Translation
- Diagnostic Constraints
- Documentation of Tensions
- Controlled Interpretation
- Interpretive Synthesis
- Audit and Revision
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