TIP of the day - oldies weekend: Clause search issues

MJ. Smith

How can I search all the passages that state "God chose" and also find the passages that God instructs "man to choose"?

Sean Boisen said:

Speaker search probably isn't the best way to find passages where God is choosing: I'd recommend clause search for that. In particular, this clause search

agent:God verb-sense:to choose

captures passages where God is doing the choosing, and captures various more specific senses for "to choose" like "to choose by lot", "to elect", and others. This search is for the NT: you'll have to repeat it to find OT passages. 

Clause search for

verb-sense:to choose ANDNOT agent:God 

will approximate your second example, though without the criteria of God instructing it (note that this is a precise search where Jesus and God are distinguished as agents, which may not be what you want). 

Sean Boisen said:

If you want passages where the agent is neither God nor Jesus, you want

verb-sense:to choose ANDNOT (agent:God OR agent:Jesus )

to capture the logical grouping correctly.

Is there a way to search for every instance of biblical people or places in a Bible passage?

Sean Boisen said:

Explorer shows all the annotated people, places, etc. in a passage: here's the list for Hebrews 11. This should work equally well for the OT.

Why does a search Logos recommends yield no results?

Ryan Gano said:

The recommendations you'll receive when entering a clause search are for valid search terms. These may or may not actually yield results in a search. It was a design decision to allow users to auto-complete searches even though they may not yield results. The goal of the decision was to help with the FSD process.

Once subject:Places Jesus went didn't work for me I went and tried "place:Places Jesus went" instead.

How can I search all the passages that state "God chose" and also find the passages that God instructs "man to choose"?

Sean Boisen said:

Speaker search probably isn't the best way to find passages where God is choosing: I'd recommend clause search for that. In particular, this clause search

agent:God verb-sense:to choose

captures passages where God is doing the choosing, and captures various more specific senses for "to choose" like "to choose by lot", "to elect", and others. This search is for the NT: you'll have to repeat it to find OT passages. 

Clause search for

verb-sense:to choose ANDNOT agent:God 

will approximate your second example, though without the criteria of God instructing it (note that this is a precise search where Jesus and God are distinguished as agents, which may not be what you want). 

Sean Boisen said:

Michael S. said:

I tried the second recommendation you gave and it of course yielded passages that was Jesus.  So can I add to the end, OR Jesus?

If you want passages where the agent is neither God nor Jesus, you want

verb-sense:to choose ANDNOT (agent:God OR agent:Jesus )

to capture the logical grouping correctly.

Sean Boisen said:

Justin Gatlin said:

Although, the very first result obviously has God as the untagged chooser. 

Oops, we once again overlapped in our answers!

In its broader context, we understand that in the first result (Luke 9:35) God is the one who chose Jesus. But clause search is only searching within clauses, and grammatically this participle has no expressed subject, as this data from the Case Frames section of Bible Word Study shows.

Sean Boisen said:

Michael S. said:

How on the first search clause command do I search both God OR Jesus?

verb-sense:to choose  (agent:God OR agent:Jesus)

Why no results on Hebrew clause searches?

Dave Hooton said:

Raymond, try to get missing resources/datasets using the command update resources (type into the command box at top of your window).

Dave Hooton said:

In your Help >> About window you should see two clause datasets as below. Also check you have the Lexham Hebrew Bible in Library. If missing they should have been made available via Update Resources. What version of Logos do you have?