Abstract

A common challenge faced by historians and exegetes is interpreting the meaning of words or sentences according to what the texts were originally communicating. A hallmark of this challenge is biblical interpretation, which is hindered not only by time and cultural distance but also by religious presuppositions. The lack of appropriate tools for handling numerous sources often leads to reliance on heuristic categories—such as “Greco-Roman,” “pagan,” “early Jewish”—which aggravates the problem: they fail to capture the complex web of connections between beliefs, texts and material evidence in times like the Second Temple period (Fredriksen 2022, 362). Moreover, inferring meaning through “the lens” of a seemingly coherent group of sources based on shared features (such as beliefs or language) risks confirmation bias and the neglect of alternative possibilities. For example, the same language of “not to a god but to daimonia” in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 10:20) and in “Greco-Roman” philosophers such as Plutarch has led scholars to infer that those authors shared the concept of daimonia as lower pagan gods (Sharp 2022), overlooking the fact that similar language occurs also in Jubilees (Jub. 22:16–17, 10:3), where demons are the souls of the dead Nephilim of Genesis (Gen 6:1–4). The broad extension of the term daimonia across centuries calls for a timeline view to determine whether, in a given period or context, the term bore a more specific meaning or functioned as a superordinate term. For instance, a recent study of the diverse uses of daimon and daimonion in different LXX books proposes that they “cannot be reduced to a single plot point on the way to the NT and Christianity” but “an interconnected constellation with synchronic clusters of concern” (Reed 2023, 345). Therefore, I will:

i. Present the cognitive value of constructing a network using directed graphs that take sources as nodes and ideas—that is, the meaning of words, expressions or sentences of interest—as features to manage multiple sources and construct a history of interpretation or intellectual history. This will be illustrated through a test case: the interpretation history of the “sons of Elohim” and “the Nephilim” of Gen 6:1–4 (Tal 2016, 91^*–93^*), which can be part of a bigger network of the history of the idea of angels and demons in antiquity.

ii. Explore how network science, “a technique in search of a theory” (Chiesi 2001), can be applied to infer missing information in nodes (sources) based on their network connections. This will be illustrated through the problem of Paul’s cosmological stance on demons (1 Cor 10:20), to assess the extent to which Gen 6:1–4 may have influenced his idea of demons. I will discuss possible network constructions and measures, evaluating benefits and limitations in comparison with a phylogenetic network used to display genealogical connections in European folktales (Tehrani and d’Huy 2017) and a semantic network of “angels” in Augustine’s works (Vrangbæk and Vrangbæk 2025). Finally, the study will highlight prospects and challenges for future research.