Rusty Taylor
CV (PDF)

Rusty Taylor

Computational textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible.

Research Interests

Computational textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible, eclectic digital critical editions, scribal practice, translation technique, and linguistic variation across ancient witnesses. Current work on the Psalms.

Education

  • M.S. Computer Science  Georgia Institute of Technology2025

    Specialization in Artificial Intelligence  GPA 4.0

  • B.S. Computer Science  Western Governors University2020

    Excellence Award in Artificial Intelligence

  • M.A. Old Testament and Semitic Languages  Trinity Evangelical Divinity School2015

    Magna cum laude  GPA 3.83

    Thesis: “Translated Repetitions in Septuagint Proverbs” readers Eric J. Tully and Dennis R. Magary. ProQuest 1597036

  • B.A. Biblical Studies  Florida College2005

    Cum laude  GPA 3.5  Minor in Mathematics

Languages

  • ResearchHebrew Epigraphic, Biblical, Qumranic, Mishnaic  Greek Hellenistic  Aramaic Imperial, Jewish Literary, Syriac  Latin  Coptic Sahidic  Hittite
  • ModernEnglish native  French reading  German reading  Hebrew reading

Research Experience

  • Tehillim: Computational Analysis of the Psalms  tehillim.dev  github.com/rdtaylorjr/tehillim2026–present

    Collation of Judean Desert manuscripts and versions against MT. Statistical analysis of variants where multiple readings of consonants are possible. Hebrew poetry text-embedding benchmarks, similarity, and clustering.

  • Transcriber, Critical Edition of the Hebrew Psalter (CEHP)  Duke Divinity School2026–present

    Transcribing Bodleian Library MS. Huntington 591 (Kennicott 31) for the HBCE eclectic critical edition of Psalms 1–50, directed by Brent A. Strawn and Drew Longacre.

  • Graduate Research Assistant to Martin G. Abegg Jr. and Peter W. Flint  Trinity Western University2011–2013

    Transcription and morphological tagging of Mishnah manuscripts. Syntactic tagging of Dead Sea Scrolls texts. Indexing of Naḥal Ḥever Greek papyri for The Dead Sea Scrolls Concordance, vol. 2 (Brill, 2016). Research and drafting for edited volumes with P. Flint.

  • 3rd International Septuaginta Summer School  Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities2012

    “Current Issues in Septuagint Scholarship: New Insights and Debates. Readings in Proverbs.”

Publications

Conference Papers

  • Taylor, Russell, Benjamin Herbert, and Michael Sana. “Pun Intended: Multi-agent Translation of Wordplay with Contrastive Learning and Phonetic-Semantic Embeddings.” Pages 274–287 in Experimental IR Meets Multilinguality, Multimodality, and Interaction. Edited by Matthias Hagen et al. LNCS 17087. Springer, 2026. doi:10.1007/978-3-032-39150-6_20.
  • Taylor, Russell, Adam Brikman, and Prateek Awate. “Searching for Sound-Meaning Collisions: Graph-Based Affordance Retrieval and Multi-Evaluator Ranking for Pun Translation at CLEF 2026 JOKER Task 2.” Pages 4295–4306 in Working Notes of the Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum. CEUR Workshop Proceedings 4283, 2026.  First place, JOKER Task 2.
  • Taylor, Russell, Benjamin Herbert, and Michael Sana. “Pun Intended: Multi-Agent Translation of Wordplay with Contrastive Learning and Phonetic-Semantic Embeddings for CLEF JOKER 2025 Task 2.” Pages 2870–2888 in Working Notes of the Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum. CEUR Workshop Proceedings 4038, 2025.  Best of CLEF 2025 Labs.  First place, JOKER Task 2.

Publications continued

Conference Presentations

  • “Translation Technique and Lexical Choice in Greek Exodus.” Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting, IOSCS session, Chicago, November 2012.
  • “Syntactic Functions of the Particle כי in Qumran Hebrew.” Pacific Northwest Regional Meeting of the AAR/SBL and ASOR, March 2012.  First Prize, Graduate Student Paper Competition.

Publications continued

Book Chapters

  • Taylor, Russell. “‘Your Eyes Will Be Opened’: Inner-Biblical Allusion and Creation Language in John 9.” Pages 119–138 in The Works No One Else Did: The Miracles of Jesus. Edited by David McClister. Florida College Annual Lectures. Temple Terrace, FL: Florida College Press, 2019.

Book Reviews

  • Taylor, Russell. Review of Proverbs (The Story of God Bible Commentary), by Ryan P. O'Dowd. Books at a Glance, 2018.
  • Taylor, Russell. Review of Rediscovering the Dead Sea Scrolls: An Assessment of Old and New Approaches and Methods, edited by Maxine L. Grossman. Pages 455–458 in Perspectives on Hebrew Scriptures X: Comprising the Contents of Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, vol. 13. Edited by Christophe Nihan and Ehud Ben Zvi. Gorgias, 2017. doi:10.31826/9781463237646-034.

Teaching

  • Instructional Associate, CS 6601 Artificial Intelligence  Georgia Institute of Technology2026–present

    Wrote a new deep learning lecture series and accompanying quizzes. Assignment lead for a 1,500-student graduate course, responsible for academic integrity, student forums, office hours, and assessment.

  • Guest Lecturer, RELS 245 Elementary Biblical Hebrew  Trinity Western University2012–2013

    Lectured on Biblical Hebrew grammar for a course taught by Martin G. Abegg Jr.

Professional Experience

  • Senior Machine Learning Engineer  Spectrum2024–present

    Technical lead for real-time machine learning systems, model serving, and the pipelines feeding them.

  • Senior Software Engineer  Nielsen2021–2024

    Trained and evaluated classifiers over large-scale behavioral data.

  • Software Engineer  Accordance Bible Software2019–2021

    Built and maintained specialized right-to-left Hebrew and Aramaic datasets optimized for linguistic analysis. Parsed and normalized unstructured ancient-language text for downstream processing.

Skills

  • Digital PhilologyText-Fabric, TEI P5, IGNTP, CollateX, eScriptorium, Kraken, open-cbgm, teiphy, BEAST 2
  • Data AnalysisPython, PyTorch, Hugging Face, scikit-learn, statsmodels, Stan, PyMC

Memberships

  • Society of Biblical Literature
  • European Association of Biblical Studies
  • Association for Computational Linguistics

Last updated October 21, 2026