I am looking for a good search string that I can find all the places in the Scripture where God struck someone down with a sickness. I have been thinking and thinking but cannot find a search string that I can get to work. Please Help!
Go to a scripture where this occurs, right click and see on the RHS what topic, event, etc is offered, select it and search for it on LHS. I used Divine Punishment at Is 10.16 and modified the search to use (sickness, disease) WITHIN {Section <Culture Divine punishment>}. You could find an actual punishment in Exodus and try a similar search.
Thanks, Dave
Dave's method is spot on. That's how I always construct these kinds of searches.
However, what you'll often find is subtle differences in the way different passages are tagged. So you'll probably need to broaden your search. As a minimum:
(sickness, disease) WITHIN ({Section <Culture Divine punishment>}, {Section <PropositionalOutline = Divine-Action>})
That adds Genesis 12:17 and Psalm 106:15. But you'll probably need to look at other examples, and broaden the search terms still further. Take the tagging in Genesis 12:17 to add to what you already have, and you might end up with this:
(sickness, disease, <Thing Plague>) WITHIN ({Section <Culture Divine punishment>}, {Section <PropositionalOutline = Divine-Action>}, {Section <Culture Sanctions>}, {Label Miracle WHERE Agent=<Person God>})
This gives a LOT more results. Then add in some sense data, too. It always worth browsing the BSL tree to find the best sense to use. If you use the ~ operator, then you'll include sub-senses as well as the main sense. In this case, you'll end up with something like this:
(sickness, disease, <Thing Plague>, <Sense ~ sickness>) WITHIN ({Section <Culture Divine punishment>}, {Section <PropositionalOutline = Divine-Action>}, {Section <Culture Sanctions>}, {Label Miracle WHERE Agent=<Person God>})
You might want to look at the help file for the Miracle label too — the type and tags there might give you plenty of food for thought. Perhaps a simple search like {Label Miracle WHERE Agent ~ <Person God> AND Type ~ "Affliction"} might prove useful. It certainly picks up several passages the earlier search missed which you may want to include.
Dave's method is spot on. That's how I always construct these kinds of searches. However, what you'll often find is subtle differences in the way different passages are tagged. So you'll probably need to broaden your search. As a minimum: (sickness, disease) WITHIN ({Section <Culture Divine punishment>}, {Section <PropositionalOutline = Divine-Action>}) That adds Genesis 12:17 and Psalm 106:15. But you'll probably need to look at other examples, and broaden the search terms still further. Take the tagging in Genesis 12:17 to add to what you already have, and you might end up with this: (sickness, disease, <Thing Plague>) WITHIN ({Section <Culture Divine punishment>}, {Section <PropositionalOutline = Divine-Action>}, {Section <Culture Sanctions>}, {Label Miracle WHERE Agent=<Person God>}) This gives a LOT more results. Then add in some sense data, too. It always worth browsing the BSL tree to find the best sense to use. If you use the ~ operator, then you'll include sub-senses as well as the main sense. In this case, you'll end up with something like this: (sickness, disease, <Thing Plague>, <Sense ~ sickness>) WITHIN ({Section <Culture Divine punishment>}, {Section <PropositionalOutline = Divine-Action>}, {Section <Culture Sanctions>}, {Label Miracle WHERE Agent=<Person God>}) You might want to look at the help file for the Miracle label too — the type and tags there might give you plenty of food for thought. Perhaps a simple search like {Label Miracle WHERE Agent ~ <Person God> AND Type ~ "Affliction"} might prove useful. It certainly picks up several passages the earlier search missed which you may want to include.
Thanks, Mark. Anywhere in Logos I can find examples of these complex searches? I would have never been able to compile that string of searches.
Anywhere in Logos I can find examples of these complex searches?
The comma separated list syntax e.g. (sickness, disease, <Thing Plague>), the WITHIN operator and some illustrative search examples can be found in the Search help wiki. The context menu as described above gives you the basic queries e.g. {Section <Culture Divine punishment>} and {Section <PropositionalOutline = Divine-Action>} and {Label Miracle WHERE Agent=<Person God>}. <Thing Plague>, <Sense sickness> come from the Context menu on the word. Combining these elements produces the complex query Mark used.
I don't think you need examples — you need to learn the method of constructing them. The method is simple, because it's iterative. You build a complex query in simple, iterative steps. It's complex because the topic you're looking at is complex — to be sure of covering all the bases we'll need to look at the problem from several different angles. I'll talk you through the logic for this search, and you should be able to apply the logic to future searches.
You were looking for all the places where God struck down someone with an illness. So you want places where two things happen: (1) The illness. (2) God did it. You've immediately got two options: either a clause search, or a Bible search. A clause search might have been easier, but both types of searches will be useful. I can cover that in a separate post if you're interested.
So, back to a Bible search. As I said, we're looking for two things. The first thing to ask is whether the length of each 'thing' is likely to be a single word, or a large unit. Historically, if both are single words, then use (1) ANDEQUALS (2). If one is a larger unit use (1) WITHIN (2). Nowadays, you don't really have to remember that, and nine times out of ten you can just use (1) INTERSECTS (2).
So what goes in (1) and what goes in (2)? (1) is relatively straightforward, at least to begin. We can just use the word illness. Make sure you add synonyms too, so that gifts illness, sickness, disease. Put them in parentheses to group them, and separate them with commas or ORs to show Logos we only need one from the group. So far we have (illness, sickness, disease) INTERSECTS (2). Put that in a search panel, and we'll use that panel to build our query (this criteria won't work yet, of course, but we need the panel to iteratevely build our query).
But what goes in (2)? That's much harder to figure out. (2) needs to specify that the illness/sickness/disease was carried out by God. The easiest way to do this is to find examples, and see what tagging is used. If you can't think of an example, try guessing a few searches. In this case, searching simple for (illness, sickness, disease) in the NIV immediately brings up Genesis 12:7, so we can use that as our example. Open your Bible to that verse, and then open the information panel for the word disease.
In the panel, look at the Word Info and Other References sections. Word Info will give you other ideas of what could go in (1). Other References will give you ideas of what could do in (2). So, we could add the Hebrew lemma and sense info from Word Info. So right-click on the lemma in the info panel, and choose Search All Open Resources. We don't actually want to search, but doing this will give us the search syntax for this lemma. When the panel opens, copy the search string (<Lemma = lbs/he/נֶ֫גַע>), close the panel, and paste it into the search panel you created earlier. That panel now contains: (sickness, disease, illness, <Lemma = lbs/he/נֶ֫גַע>) INTERSECTS (2)
The sense data requires a little more work, because we can also check with other senses might be useful. Click on the sense to open the Bible Sense Lexicon. As you look at the chart on the right, you'll see that plague is a child of disease, which is a child of sickness. So sickness is a much better sense to use, because it covers much more ground. In the left hand panel, look for the relationships section, and click on sickness to regenerate the BSL to that sense. When you do so, you'll see that sickness is a child of ill health (unhealthiness), which also includes things like affliction, infection and injury. It's up you you to decide whether sickness or ill health best captures what you're trying to find. Let's assume it's ill health, so click on that, and then click on search for sense at the top. That gives us an additional search term that we can plug into the left hand side.
Do the same for the sense data, which will now give us (sickness, disease, illness, <Lemma = lbs/he/נֶ֫גַע>, <Sense ill health (unhealthiness)>) INTERSECTS (2).
Incidentally, the BSL is a good place to look for additional lemmas which you may want to specify in the search. Make sure you don't choose lemmas that are too broad, or you'll get lots of false positives.
Now it's time to look at the Other References section. Because this section generally contains tagging that belongs to units bigger than one word, things we find here will go in (2). Look for things that appear relevant. In this case: possibly the cultural concept of "sanction", certainly the semantic feature of "divine action", and certainly the label miracle with the agent God. At the bottom you've also got a sentence which says "disease" refers to "Plague". I don't know why this is in "Other References" rather than "Word Info", but it's obvious that if we're going to use it, it needs to go in (1), not in (2).
OK, let's add these things to our query:
Running that search in the NIV gives 22 results. If you want to expand your search still further, repeat the steps above for the next reference (Numbers 11:33), to see if additional tagging might be useful. It uses a different lemma, which you may wish to include, as does Numbers 12:10. The next reference, 1 Samuel 5:6, has "Divine Punishment" under Other references, which definitely seems relevant. Adding that to the search criteria results in: (sickness, disease, illness, <Lemma = lbs/he/נֶ֫גַע>, <Sense ill health (unhealthiness)>, <Thing Plague>) INTERSECTS ({Section <PropositionalOutline = Divine-Action>}, {Label Miracle WHERE Agent ~ <Person God>}, {Section <Culture Divine punishment>}). There are various lemmas that could also be useful, and a few more "Biblical Things" such as tumours. Add them if you wish, but by now we'll be experiencing diminishing returns for our labours, so you'll need to make a judgement about how comprehensive you want to be.
After clicking through several search results, I don't see any more potentially useful tagging, so I'd call my search fairly complete. Although it's taken a few minutes to create, and is now quite complex, you can see that it's been built in stages, and each stage is relatively straightforward.
You can apply these concepts to most searches, so I hope this example is helpful.
Mark, I pasted your tutorial where I can find it, when I try one of these. Thank you.
Adding that to the search criteria results in: (sickness, disease, illness, <Lemma = lbs/he/נֶ֫גַע>, <Sense ill health (unhealthiness)>, <Thing Plague>) INTERSECTS ({Section <PropositionalOutline = Divine-Action>}, {Label Miracle WHERE Agent ~ <Person God>}, {Section <Culture Divine punishment>}).
Noticed lemma search found Exodus 11:1 that was not in search results. Right Click included Preaching Theme of God's Wrath so modified search:
(sickness, disease, illness, <Lemma = lbs/he/נֶ֫גַע>, <Sense ill health (unhealthiness)>, <Thing Plague>) INTERSECTS ({Section <PropositionalOutline = Divine-Action>}, {Label Miracle WHERE Agent ~ <Person God>}, {Section <Culture Divine punishment>}, {Section <PreachingTheme = God: Wrath>})
Searching a collection of Bibles for Text Comparison found more verses in NLT and LEB so modified search some more:
(sickness,disease,illness,<Lemma lbs/he/נֶ֫גַע>,<Person A Leper>,<Sense ill health (unhealthiness)>,<Sense plague>,<Sense to strike>,<Thing Plague>) INTERSECTS ({Section <PropositionalOutline Divine-Action>},{Label Miracle WHERE Agent ~ <Person God>},{Section <Culture Divine punishment>},{Section <PreachingTheme God: Wrath>})
Added couple more senses to include a few more search results in Bible Compare English collection:
(sickness,disease,illness,<Lemma lbs/he/נֶ֫גַע>,<Person A Leper>,<Sense ill health (unhealthiness)>,<Sense plague>,<Sense to be leprous>,<Sense to burn (feel hot)>,<Sense to strike>,<Thing Plague>) INTERSECTS ({Section <PropositionalOutline Divine-Action>},{Label Miracle WHERE Agent ~ <Person God>},{Section <Culture Divine punishment>},{Section <PreachingTheme God: Wrath>})
Keep Smiling [:)]
I created a quick video that goes through the process in my post, above. If you're interested: Video Tutorial: How to create complex search criteria
