Network Science in Biblical Studies: Introduction

Abstract

The notion of a network is ingrained in contemporary culture. In everyday English parlance, we casually talk about television networks, computer networks, professional networks, telephone networks, and so on. Even though the word has a technological flavor, the idea of a network is purely mathematical at its core. A network (or graph in mathematical language) is an abstract model that consists of two kinds of elements: nodes connected by links. The nodes of a network can represent social actors, cities, molecules, computers, words, and basically anything we want to think about in terms of network theory. A link represents some connection between two nodes, such as the friendship between two people, a piece of wire connecting two machines, a shared characteristic of two entities, a web link from one page to the other, or a flight route between two cities.1 Figure 1 shows a widely used example of a small social network, the friendship network of Zachary’s Karate club, with nodes standing for members of the club and links representing friendship ties between them. Once we decide what the nodes and the links stand for, an abstract model of the underlying real-world phenomenon can be built that lends itself to further analysis (see below).