Abstract
It is classic problem to interpret holistically a collection of texts written to communicate some particular school of thought. This paper proposes a new scientific method of approaching that. The method utilizes multiple variant texts that overlap in terms of content, and creates a network of the relationships between small text elements within the texts, and finally analyzes the resultant network by extracting edge dense parts as definite hierarchical clusters. Through this process it is possible to extract the central editorial messages within the collection, which differ from the central messages normally obtained through text analyses. The method was applied to the Gospels of the New Testament using the pericopes as small text elements, and four central editorial messages were extracted. In addition, the paper shows numerically how central Christian teachings depend on the combination of the Gospels, by analyzing the Gospel of Thomas which has been regarded as a heretic text with the traditional Gospels. Based on the analysis, we conclude that the Gospel of Thomas is a neutral Gospel and that it did not change the central Christian message from the perspective of the central editorial messages.
