This recorded presentation by M. David Litwa introduces stylometrics—the quantitative measurement of an author’s idiolect—by outlining its theoretical basis (cognitive fingerprint, unconscious markers such as word‑choice, word‑length, sentence‑length, conjunctions, spelling, and punctuation) and the emphasis on function words in computational analysis. It then applies this methodology to the early Christian corpus, arguing that the Marcionite edition of Paul’s letters (circa 140 CE) predates the canonical texts and can be supported by stylometric evidence.
Bears on: authorship & stylometry · concepts & methods · the letters