Sentiment Analysis applied to the Bible: Fascinating statistics work on a well-known corpus.
Sentiment analysis algorithmically guesses whether a given phrase in a given language on a given subject has a positive (‘I enjoy milk’) or negative (‘I am deadly allergic’) charge.
Companies often hire analysis bureaus to perform these analyses on Twitter and the blogosphere to get aggregate opinions on their brand and products — it should yield better results than polling.
What’s particularly interesting in this analysis is observing the trends as the Bible progresses — though it should be noted that the order of the books in the Bible aren’t always based on their chronological order of writing.
Also note that negative sentiment makes no moral judgment. “I hate gays” and “I hate racism” are both considered negative sentiments; “I enjoy long walks” and “I enjoy seeing my enemies driven before me” are both positive.
But sentiment analysis still provides insights into the attitude of the writer. Notice how Psalms is overwhelmingly positive, and Judges is very negative.
Source: openbible.info
