Textual Criticism

Biblical text analysis with textual criticism support. An MCP server for morphological analysis, manuscript variants, and concordance searches across Hebrew and Greek biblical texts.

Features

• Text-Fabric Integration: Full morphological and syntactic analysis of Hebrew (BHSA) and Greek (N1904) texts
• Textual Criticism: Variant readings, manuscript data, apparatus analysis
• Concordance: Search by lemma, morphology, or syntax patterns
• Lexicons: BDB (Hebrew), Thayer's (Greek), Strong's numbers
• Multiple Translations: Public domain texts (KJV, WEB, ASV, YLT, Darby, BBE)

Installation

# Basic installation
pip install textual-criticism-mcp

# With MCP server support
pip install textual-criticism-mcp[mcp]

# With CLI
pip install textual-criticism-mcp[cli]

# Everything
pip install textual-criticism-mcp[all]

Quick Start

Python Library

from textual_criticism_mcp.lib import parse_verse, search

# Parse a verse with full morphology
verse = parse_verse("John 3:16")
for word in verse.words:
    print(f"{word.text} ({word.lemma}) - {word.pos}")

# Search for a lemma
results = search("word lex=ἀγάπη", corpus="greek")

MCP Server

Add to your Claude Desktop config (~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "textual-criticism": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-m", "textual_criticism_mcp.mcp.server"]
    }
  }
}

Or with uvx:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "textual-criticism": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["textual-criticism-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

MCP Tools

parse_verse

Parse a verse with complete morphological analysis.

parse_verse("Gen 1:1", detail_level="syntax")

Returns word-by-word breakdown with:

• Original text + transliteration
• Lemma and Strong's number
• Full morphological parsing (POS, person, gender, number, tense, voice, mood, case, state, stem)
• Syntactic information (phrase function, clause type)

search_lemma

Find all occurrences of a word.

search_lemma("ἀγάπη", corpus="nt", limit=100)

search_morphology

Search by grammatical criteria.

search_morphology(language="hebrew", pos="verb", stem="qal", mood="imperative")

get_variants

Get textual variants for a passage.

get_variants("Mark 16:9-20", include_manuscripts=True)

Returns:

• All variant readings
• Manuscript support (P46, א, B, etc.)
• Edition support (NA28, SBLGNT, TR)
• Variant classification and transcriptional analysis

get_passage

Retrieve passage text in multiple translations.

get_passage("Rom 8:1-4", translations=["KJV", "WEB", "ASV"], include_original=True)

Data Sources

• Hebrew Bible: BHSA (Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia Amstelodamensis) via Text-Fabric
• Greek NT: Nestle 1904 via Text-Fabric
• Apparatus: STEPBible TAGNT/TAHOT (CC BY 4.0)
• Lexicons: OpenScriptures BDB, Strong's, Thayer's
• Translations: wldeh/bible-api (public domain texts)

First Run

Text-Fabric corpora are downloaded automatically on first use (~300MB total).

from textual_criticism_mcp.lib.corpus import get_corpus_manager

# This will download BHSA and N1904 on first run
cm = get_corpus_manager()
cm.hebrew  # Downloads Hebrew corpus
cm.greek   # Downloads Greek corpus

Development

# Clone and install in dev mode
git clone https://github.com/yourusername/textual-criticism-mcp
cd textual-criticism-mcp
pip install -e ".[all]"

# Run tests
pytest

# Type check
mypy src/textual_criticism_mcp

# Lint
ruff check src/textual_criticism_mcp

License

MIT

Acknowledgments

• Text-Fabric - Corpus infrastructure
• ETCBC - BHSA Hebrew Bible data
• STEPBible - Apparatus and tagged texts
• OpenScriptures - Lexicons and morphology