I have been trying on and off for some time to create a Visual Filter that would identify anarthrous Greek nouns (nouns that are not governed by an article).
I realize that the best way to find these is to use a Syntax Search or the Morphological Query Engine (in Logos Now). But I would like a way to quickly highlight anarthrous nouns using a Visual Filter.
Since Logos does not allow specifying agreement in command line searches or Visual Filters, it is not possible to do this perfectly. However, the new NOT search operator allows a pretty decent way of finding them, although with a few false hits.
Here is the Visual Filter I have created for the Greek New Testament and LXX:
@N NOT AFTER 2 WORDS @D
I used 2 WORDS rather 1 WORDS to reduce false hits when the article is separated from its noun by a post-positive conjunction such as δὲ (e.g. ὁ δὲ καιρὸς in John 7:6).
For Reverse Interlinears (RI) this does not work as well, since if the article is not translated, the RI tags the Greek article and the noun with the English word. For example, in John 1:1 the word "God" in the clause "the Word was with God" is tagged as the translation of the 2 Greek words τὸν θεόν.
For Reverse Interlinears, this Visual Filter solves this problem:
(@N NOT AFTER 2 WORD @D) INTERSECTS (@N NOT INTERSECTS @D)
This excludes nouns such as "God" in "the Word was with God" (John 1:1), where there is an untranslated Greek article. The ability to use INTERSECTS and NOT INTERSECTS enables a much better result for this type of Visual Filter than was available previously in Logos.
Both of these Visual Filters will falsely label as anarthrous nouns any noun with a distant article, such as the second article in a Granville Sharp construction. Thus it is important to verify in context that each noun is truly anarthrous.
Nevertheless this Visual Filter is a wonderful way to quickly visually mark up the biblical text.
I would appreciate any feedback on these Visual Filters or suggestions on how to improve them.
I hope that the time will come soon when Logos will add morphological agreement to command line searches and Visual Filters.
