Skip to main content

ETCBC/dss (Dead Sea Scrolls)

  • Repository: ETCBC/dss
  • Maintainer: ETCBC (Eep Talstra Centre for Bible and Computer), VU Amsterdam
  • License: MIT — maximally permissive.
  • Suitability Score: ⭐⭐⭐ (3/5)

Coverage​

Format: Text-Fabric (custom graph-like annotation format), accessible via Python text-fabric package. Plain-text feature files in tf/ directory.

Biblical and non-biblical Dead Sea Scrolls transcriptions with word-level linguistic annotations (morphology, parallel passages). Based on Martin Abegg's transcription data. 34 releases, latest v1.9 (Aug 2023).

Quality​

High — active academic project (CACCHT, VU Amsterdam). 26 GitHub stars. Part of the broader Text-Fabric ecosystem (same framework used for BHSA Hebrew Bible).

Gaps Filled​

  • ✅ Dead Sea Scrolls (Gap #11) — structured text with linguistic annotations

Integration Notes​

  • Requires text-fabric Python package to query data
  • Would need a Text-Fabric → JSON ETL pipeline (QumranNLP project has existing example code)
  • Creates new :Manuscript and :Fragment node types in FalkorDB
  • Fragmentary nature of scrolls means incomplete verse coverage — this is inherent to the source material, not a data quality issue
  • Best suited for Phase 3 advanced scholarly features

Supplementary Source​

SQE Database (Scripta Qumranica Electronica) — MIT license, MariaDB format, focused on fragment reconstruction rather than reading text. Useful supplement for scroll fragment metadata and physical reconstruction data but not a primary reading text source.