Distant Reader - subject-theology-freebo

Introduction

This is a Distant Reader "study carrel", a set of structured data intended to help the student, researcher, or scholar use & understand a corpus.

This study carrel was created on 2021-05-25 by Eric Morgan <emorgan@nd.edu>. The carrel was created using the Distant Reader zip2carrel process, and the input was a Zip file locally cached with the name input-file.zip. Documents in the Zip file have been saved in a cache, and each of them have been transformed & saved as a set of plain text files. All of the analysis -- "reading" -- has been done against these plain text files. For example, a short narrative report has been created. This Web page is a more verbose version of that report.

All study carrels are self-contained -- no Internet connection is necessary to use them. Download this carrel for offline reading. The carrel is made up of many subdirectories and data files. The manifest describes each one in greater detail.

Size

There are 157 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 13,439,990 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 86,153 words long. If you dig deeper, then you might want to save yourself some time by reading a shorter item. On the other hand, if your desire is for more detail, then you might consider reading a longer item. The following charts illustrate the overall size of the carrel.

Readability

On a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 is very difficult and 100 is very easy, the documents have an average readability score of 93. Consequently, if you want to read something more simplistic, then consider a document with a higher score. If you want something more specialized, then consider something with a lower score. The following charts illustrate the overall readability of the carrel.

Word Frequencies

By merely counting & tabulating the frequency of individual words or phrases, you can begin to get an understanding of the carrel's "aboutness". Excluding "stop words", some of the more frequent words include:

god, christ, will, may, man, shall, one, us, men, yet, must, things, good, lord, faith, first, therefore, gods, life, covenant, church, now, word, spirit, world, much, great, many, also, sin, holy, made, without, make, say, time, doth, law, true, come, thing, though, see, nature, grace, heart, death, saith, way, might

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are Mysterium & medulla Bibliorum the mysterie and marrow of the Bible, viz. God's covenant with man in the first Adam before the fall, and in the last Adam, Iesvs Christ, after the fall, from the beginning to the end of the world : unfolded & illustrated in positive aphorisms & their explanation ... / by Francis Roberts., A golden chaine: or The description of theologie containing the order of the causes of saluation and damnation, according to Gods word. A view whereof is to be seene in the table annexed. Hereunto is adioyned the order which M. Theodore Beza vsed in comforting afflicted consciences., and A systeme or body of divinity consisting of ten books : wherein the fundamentals and main grounds of religion are opened, the contrary errours refuted, most of the controversies between us, the papists, Arminians, and Socinians discussed and handled, several Scriptures explained and vindicated from corrupt glosses : a work seasonable for these times, wherein so many articles of our faith are questioned, and so many gross errours daily published / by Edward Leigh..

The most frequent two-word phrases (bigrams) include:

holy ghost, jesus christ, iesus christ, new covenant, let us, every one, god will, new testament, must needs, holy spirit, every man, let vs, gods word, old testament, one another, wee must, god doth, will make, may see, right hand, eternal life, lord jesus, vnto vs, good works, man may, tells us, every thing, one thing, good things, gods covenant, wicked men, nothing else, take heed, two things, early english, english books, shall come, many things, shall see, humane nature, gods name, lord iesus, take away, whole world, will give, will never, true god, good men, will say, lords supper

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are A brief vindication of three passages in the Practical catechisme, from the censures affixt on them by the ministers of London, in a book entitled, A testimony to the truth of Jesus Christ, &c. / By H. Hammond D.D. The exceptions of Mr. Edwards in his Causes of atheism against the Reasonableness of Christianity, as deliver''d in the Scriptures, examin''d and found unreasonable, unscriptural, and injurious also it''s clearly proved by many testimonies of Holy Scripture, that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the only God and Father of Christians., and A view of some exceptions to the practical catechisme from the censures affixt on them by the ministers of London, in a book entituled A testimony to the truth of Jesus Christ, &c. / by H. Hammond..

While often deemed superficial or sophomoric, rudimentary frequencies and their associated "word clouds" can be quite insightful:

Keywords

Sets of keywords -- statistically significant words -- can be enumerated by comparing the relative frequency of words with the number of times the words appear in an entire corpus. Some of the most statistically significant keywords in the carrel include:

god, christ, lord, church, spirit, law, father, scripture, gospel, gods, faith, word, world, holy, christian, saviour, man, tcp, saints, ghost, son, religion, life, cor, apostle, grace, psal, king, covenant, soul, rom, truth, doctrine, power, scriptures, nature, divine, devil, matth, earth, body, angels, testament, chap, sun, roman, paul, men, iesus, churches

And now word clouds really begin to shine:

Topic Modeling

Topic modeling is another popular approach to connoting the aboutness of a corpus. If the study carrel could be summed up in a single word, then that word might be god, and The pious communicant rightly prepar''d, or, A discourse concerning the Blessed Sacrament wherein the nature of it is described, our obligation to frequent communion enforced, and directions given for due preparation for it, behaviour at, and after it, and profiting by it : with prayers and hymns, suited to the several parts of that holy office : to which is added, a short discourse of baptism / by Samuel Wesley ... is most about that word.

If the study carrel could be summed up in three words ("topics") then those words and their significantly associated titles include:

If the study carrel could be summed up in five topics, and each topic were each denoted with three words, then those topics and their most significantly associated files would be:

Moreover, the totality of the study carrel's aboutness, can be visualized with the following pie chart:

Noun & Verbs

Through an analysis of your study carrel's parts-of-speech, you are able to answer question beyonds aboutness. For example, a list of the most frequent nouns helps you answer what questions; "What is discussed in this collection?":

man, things, men, life, faith, time, thing, sin, way, heart, word, world, death, people, nothing, others, day, nature, self, reason, power, words, part, hath, p., body, truth, place, grace, end, sins, scripture, doth, name, glory, works, soul, children, hearts, love, cause, manner, sinne, light, none, will, one, spirit, knowledge, hand

An enumeration of the verbs helps you learn what actions take place in a text or what the things in the text do. Very frequently, the most common lemmatized verbs are "be", "have", and "do"; the more interesting verbs usually occur further down the list of frequencies:

is, be, are, was, have, were, do, had, did, being, made, make, say, come, see, said, been, know, let, take, called, according, done, hath, give, given, put, am, set, think, believe, taken, concerning, makes, find, bring, haue, having, go, speak, came, doth, brought, live, consider, call, pray, bee, receive, found

Proper Nouns

An extraction of proper nouns helps you determine the names of people and places in your study carrel.

god, 〉, ◊, 〈, christ, lord, thou, covenant, church, c., gods, hath, spirit, law, holy, faith, ●, heaven, father, wee, cor, rom, est, gospel, de, jesus, world, word, new, paul, christs, s., chap, son, grace, man, doe, divine, ye, abraham, l., christian, christians, yea, haue, psal, moses, ghost, israel, iesus

An analysis of personal pronouns enables you to answer at least two questions: 1) "What, if any, is the overall gender of my study carrel?", and 2) "To what degree are the texts in my study carrel self-centered versus inclusive?"

it, his, he, they, we, i, their, them, our, him, you, us, my, thy, me, your, himself, themselves, her, its, thee, she, one, ours, theirs, mine, ye, vp, yours, itself, vnto, ''em, ourselves, s, u, ''s, non, whereof, em, yee, herself, thou, l, f, †, whosoever, elias, us''d, o, hee

Below are words cloud of your study carrel's proper & personal pronouns.

Adjectives & Verbs

Learning about a corpus's adjectives and adverbs helps you answer how questions: "How are things described and how are things done?" An analysis of adjectives and adverbs also points to a corpus's overall sentiment. "In general, is my study carrel positive or negative?"

such, other, good, many, great, own, same, true, first, more, much, holy, whole, little, second, last, saith, new, least, wicked, particular, necessary, full, greater, most, present, better, former, perfect, very, common, able, best, spiritual, old, dead, natural, right, free, false, eternal, greatest, outward, divine, like, godly, certain, proper, wise, sure

not, so, then, therefore, more, now, also, only, as, most, yet, thus, up, here, well, very, first, out, never, much, even, ever, onely, that, is, away, there, indeed, rather, too, all, again, forth, still, far, together, in, down, secondly, thereof, vs, else, off, no, long, before, often, especially, once, hence

Next steps

There is much more to a study carrel than the things outlined above. Use this page's menubar to navigate and explore in more detail. There you will find additional features & functions including: ngrams, parts-of-speech, grammars, named entities, topic modeling, a simple search interface, etc.

Again, study carrels are self-contained. Download this carrel for offline viewing and use.

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