The central concept of the WRR (Witztum-Rips-Rosenberg) literature is not so much a loose ELS, but convergence: two or more thematically related terms appearing as ELS in close proximity within the same passage.
This finding searches for the crossing between משיח (Mashiach, "anointed") and המשיח (HaMashiach, "the Mashiach"), the two central forms of the messianic term, within Genesis.
Reproduce in the search engine
Reproduce →Finding one word as ELS in a long text is not in itself surprising — the statistical probability is relatively high. The criterion that defines a significant finding is company: do other related terms appear nearby? do they form a thematic pattern?
We search both terms in Genesis with skips of 2 to 1000. The search engine finds all hits for each term and then filters by proximity: it retains only pairs where the letters of both words fall in a nearby window of the text.
The mere existence of a crossing does not mean it is statistically significant. The text is long, short terms are common, and there will always be some crossing. The right question is: how unusual is this crossing compared to random crossings in control texts? Rigorous evaluation requires Monte Carlo analysis with permuted texts — see our article on scientific evidence.
New articles in the series, findings and search engine improvements — no spam, in your language.