Digital cultural-scientific exegesis combines innovative hermeneutics with digital processing and presentation techniques so that substantially larger data volumes ("big data") can be processed, prepared and presented than with conventional exegetic procedures. The innovation potential thus lies in the manner in which scholarly biblical research is conducted but also in the presentation of results.

The cultural studies approach opens up a new perspective on early Christianity. As the focus is on the theory of cultural memory, models of social interaction in early Christian groups can be used that facilitate the formulation of hypotheses about change in collective memories and the associated change in media, and these hypotheses can then be verified using the available material (texts from the New Testament, early Christian texts and found manuscripts). This reveals early Christianity to be a heterogeneous movement that, in search of a common identity, underwent an abundance of social negotiation processes which are not apt to be described in anachronistic terms using categories such as "orthodox" and "heretic". Traditional approaches in biblical scholarship take a historical perspective and prefer to work with individual data items instead of models. By performing a computer-assisted "digital" exegesis, much larger databases can be assessed for different lines of inquiry than before. There are two benefits to using digital data processing systems in the form of new databases or databases programmed specifically for the intended purpose, where the material is tagged differently and additional characteristics such as place of discovery, place of creation or time of creation are taken into account as well: firstly, a different access to the available data is provided and, secondly, different presentation formats ranging from digital humanities graphs to video become available.

Digital cultural-scientific exegesis is interdisciplinary and international in its modus operandi. It harnesses the exchange and expertise of other researchers to generate and explore new perspectives and problems. For this, inspiring spaces for communal thinking are needed as well as infrastructure where new ideas and models can be explored and tested using the data material available (texts from the New Testament and early Christian texts). In the long term, it will become possible to generate new lines of questioning and research not only for bible scholarship but also for related disciplines.

The project Isaiah in the First Three Centuries, which combines the two dimensions of innovative hermeneutics and digital processing and presentation, serves as test case for digital cultural-scientific exegesis at the Chair of Exegesis and Biblical Theology.

This prototype of a database, which was programmed as a model for the reception of the Book of Isaiah using existing databases, collects assorted information on texts from the New Testament and early Christian texts dating back to the first three centuries and makes this information accessible again. As a result, larger data volumes can be evaluated specifically to reassess hypotheses for various scenarios of early Christian identity formation on the basis of cultural-scientific models.

The database prototype is available on the "Isaiah" webpages. A brief introduction to the underlying points of inquiry is provided in video format (https://vimeo.com/423170755/d3c2f79ad0) and in written form:

Huebenthal, Sandra: What’s Form Got to Do with It? Preliminaries on the Impact of Social Memory Theory for the Study of Biblical Intertextuality. In: David P. Moessner, Matthew Calhoun, and Tobias Nicklas (eds.), The Gospel and Ancient Literary Criticism: Continuing the Debate on Gospel Genre(s). WUNT 2. Tübingen 2020, 145-176.