Implementation of rabin-karp algorithm to determine the similarity of synoptic gospels

Abstract

The Synoptic Gospels have been a mystery for several hundred years in the study of the New Testament. One problem that stands out is the similarity of the content inside. Not only the order of the story but also the order of the words. To analyze this issue, this research used Rabin-Karp Algorithm to determine the similarities of the first three Gospels in the New Testament. The algorithm is perfect for searching multiple patterns in two documents. There are several stages in this calculation process: first, verses in each same categories will be splitted by x letters called substrings. Second, each letter in the substring will have a hashing process and produce a series of numbers. Third, a set of number combinations will look for unique numbers called fingerprints. Finally, comparing the fingerprints on document A and B before calculating the similarity using dice similarity coefficent. The results are both Matthew and Luke have a close relationship with Mark. As a conclusion, Matthew is closely related to Mark (59.13%) based on their contents compared to Luke (52.85%) or Mark against Luke (54.41%).