My PARTICULAR Bible Word Study problem...

Carmen Gauvin-O'Donnell

Hey folks! I know there are a million videos out there showing me how to do a word study using Logos. My problem is this: I am no scholar, just an intelligent lay student, but when I click on a word and then "word study", I have no idea what it is I am looking at there. It's all Greek (or Hebrew!) to me. 

I see my word in a circle with a bunch of different meanings in different colours... I see terms like "morphology"... huh?

Are there any videos that explain what one actually does in a word study? And how to understand everything I am seeing?

Any help will be appreciated as I am now in a workflow that wants me to do a more in-depth study of some of the words in my text... obviously I can't really proceed until I understand what I'm doing...  

Thanks in advance! Hopefully there are others out there who have felt the same way and your responses will help them as well!

Graham Criddle

Carmen Gauvin-O'Donnell said:

Are there any videos that explain what one actually does in a word study? And how to understand everything I am seeing?

Some possibilities - apologies if you have already seen them

• Video 6 in https://support.logos.com/hc/en-us/articles/360017433892-Logos-8-Bible-Study-Series 
• Video 6 in https://support.logos.com/hc/en-us/articles/360017433952-Logos-8-Sermon-and-Bible-Study-Prep-Series 
• Video 6 in https://support.logos.com/hc/en-us/articles/360018345231-Logos-8-Academic-and-Theologian-Study-Series 

Terry Poperszky

You might also benefit from a greater understanding of some of the tools provided. I would recommend either https://www.logos.com/product/40499/greek-for-the-rest-of-us-2nd-ed or https://lexhampress.com/products/148891/biblical-greek-made-simple-all-the-basics-in-one-semester?utm_source=blog.logos.com&utm_medium=blog&utm_content=learngreekandlogos-lexham2019q1recentreleases&utm_campaign=lexham2019q1recentreleases

Phil Quigley

There's a good article on the TalkLogos site (article) that walks through what you're trying to do with a word study. Basically, you want to find a word in your passage that might be important to understanding what the author is trying to say. You look at all the ranges of meaning that particular word can take and see where else it is used. Then let that inform you.

Morphology refers to how words change based on usage. For example, in Greek, nouns have number, gender, and case. If you were to look in a lexicon, you would find the noun in the nominative case, but it can change depending on whether it is the subject, direct object, indirect object, addressee, etc. So, when you see the morphology of the noun it will indicate the gender, number, and case of that particular usage.

For the word circle, if you have a Greek or Hebrew word in the center then all the words around it are the various ways that it is translated in English. The opposite is true if the English word is in the center.

David Thomas

Carmen Gauvin-O'Donnell said:

Any help will be appreciated

Here is a BWS on the ESV usage of the word "debt"

1. There are 6 different Greek words that are translated as "debt" each original word (often called a "lemma") carries a little nuance [Think of a piece of spaghetti - I can call it "pasta", "noodle", "starch", "Italian food" etc. The different colors don't have particular meaning, they are just to indicate the segments. The size of the segment indicates how frequent that particular Greek word is translated as "debt" (4 lemmas appear 1, 2 lemmas appear 2x each).

[by hovering over a segment the Greek word moves to the middle of a ring in a pop-up window and the segments of that ring show all the English words (glosses) used to translate the meaning of the center word.]

2. The Big "8" tells me that the word "debt" occurs 8 times in the New Testament. by hovering over one of the bars in the graph I find that 5 of those 8 occurences are in Matthew

I could open the Hebrew wheel and find 4 Hebrew words translated as "debt" - notice in Hebrew we often have compound words and this ring shows the individual parts that make up the compound. The OT includes 4 places where the ESV translates a word/words as "debt. By hovering over the 4 bars in the graph I can find what books contain this word.

This is basic, but I hope it helps!

Other sections of the BWS will show references or how the word is used in a phrase.

Carmen Gauvin-O'Donnell

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1044846#Comment_1044846

Hey thank you all! There are some great resources in all these answers which  I know will help. Thanks again!

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Rodney Phillips

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1044926#Comment_1044926

Great Info Guys..   Thanks!