The Stuttgart Electronic Study Bible

The Stuttgart Electronic Study Bible (SESB) is a software package designed for scientific Bible studies of theologians. It was published by the German Bible Society in Stuttgart.

SESB includes numerous Bible texts and translations as well as additional tools designed according to the requirements of Bible scholars. It comprises the Bible editions of the German Bible Society in the original languages together with the text-critical apparatuses, which are made accessible via linguistic data bases and complemented by dictionaries some of which have been newly developed.

More information about the Stuttgart Electronic Study Bible:

www.sesb-online.de

Implementation of the linguistic search by IAI

In 2003, IAI analyzed and lemmatised the four German editions of the Bible on behalf of the German Bible Society (Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft Stuttgart). The data acquired are used in the new edition of the Stuttgart Electronic Study Bible to enable the user to conveniently carry out queries within the German translations. The user can enter the basic form of a word (e.g. Vater) and obtains all phrases that contain a form of this word (Vater, Väter, Vaters, etc.).

Users can also carry out a linguistic search within the Hebrew original to search for parts of speech and certain syntactical patterns (nouns, pronouns, interjections, noun phrases in the dative case, etc.).
Thanks to IAI’s work, since the 2005 edition this kind of search can also be carried out within the German version.

In 2007, IAI performed a similar task with the additional CD-ROM that includes further Bible translations as well as with the Bible translation package containing the German Menge Bible and the German Good News Bible and with the Zurich Bible used in Switzerland (on behalf of the Zurich Bible Society).

In 2008, the songbook of the German Protestant Dioceses was adapted according to the new German spelling rules in order to be reissued. This assignment is a service provided by IAI. The songbook presented some particular difficulties that had to be dealt with, arising from the use of old German spellings, place names and verse arrangements.