Search Examples for Search Query Builder

We're doing some product design work on a possible search query builder, and we're looking for lots of real world examples that you'd want a search query builder to make easy to build and find.

Is there something you'd like to be able to find in Logos but aren't sure how to find it—or would just like to make finding it a lot easier?

Please share you real-world examples (and ideally why you're trying to find what you're looking for). If there's already a discussion here on the forums or elsewhere, please link to it.

Thanks!

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Phil Gons (Logos)

Here are a couple of recent examples that might benefit from a search query builder:

God referred to as Father: How can I "find all the places in the Bible where the word father refers to God only?" (Cf. also this thread.)
God compared to a father: "How would I find every place God is compared to being a father? Not necessarily being called Father."

Graham Criddle

Thanks for asking, Phil

Some time ago I was preparing for a preaching series on the Trinity and wanted to explore actions one member of the Trinity took in relation to another. For example:

The Father loving the Son / Spirit
The Son loving the Father
The Father sending the Son / Spirit
The Son sending the Spirit

The Clause Search supports this well but being able to build the searches in a query builder would be helpful

Beloved Amodeo

We're doing some product design work on a possible search query builder, and we're looking for lots of real world examples that you'd want a search query builder to make easy to build and find.

Is there something you'd like to be able to find in Logos but aren't sure how to find it—or would just like to make finding it a lot easier?

Please share you real-world examples (and ideally why you're trying to find what you're looking for). If there's already a discussion here on the forums or elsewhere, please link to it.

Super excited about this prospect. The Search feature of Logos is my most used feature. I use it devotionally, searching for scripture related to what the Lord has laid on my heart. Recently I was meditating on righteousness and I had a dickens of a time finding the scripture the Holy Spirit directed my attention to. I was finally able to find it by doing a proximity search on two of the terms I was able to recall and by searching in the likely source version for my scripture.

You can see the result of my labor in my recent post here https://community.logos.com/forums/p/182251/1054242.aspx#1054242

Kiyah

I was trying to find all of the passages in Paul's letters that mentioned Christ giving himself/being given for us, or Christ dying for us. Not just him dying/giving/being given but where it mentions specifically dying "for us/you/me" (on behalf of, gk: υπερ). I had built two Morph queries for it and saved them but somehow the data in the morph queries is now missing when I reopen them. [:@] Not sure what happened.

But I wondered as I was building the morph queries (my first time trying to use them) if there was an easier way to do this search. It took me forever to figure it out and lots of tweaking after running them repeatedly to get all the results I thought I should be getting. Of course now I can't remember what I did and the saved queries are blank. [:@]

Mark Barnes

Is there something you'd like to be able to find in Logos but aren't sure how to find it—or would just like to make finding it a lot easier?

By far the biggest help you could give me would be to allow searching Biblical Entities by metadata - so we could do searches for all the speech made by women to Jesus, or all the times God appeared on a mountain, and so on.

Mark Barnes

Here are some recent forum threads where people struggled to create a search:

Bible search for all verses where Moses prays/calls/speaks to God (Numbers/Deuteronomy)
Search for the non-existence of a search term
Please help with difficult search ("Holy Spirit" with a verb)
search (all references in the NT that have "faith" or "believe" as the only requirement for salvation)
Searching - What can I do to make it work?! (anything on the Sermon on the Mount)
All speech from angels (this hit the problem I refer to in the previous post)
Search Every mention of Resurrection
Search… [for] Writer
Help searching NA28 for LXX references

There's also a long-standing bug that needs fixing when using INTERSECTS or WITHIN in conjunction with a proximity search: Reproducible Bug: Logos mangles a valid INTERSECTS search. Presumably a search builder wouldn't create a search the interpreter couldn't understand. So that would be a good test.

John Fidel

One of the challenges for me is the syntax required for any somewhat complex search. When and where to use { } or [ ] or( ). It is obvious that the formulas were written by someone used to programming. Not exactly what you were asking for, but if you can simplify that it would go a long way.

Reuben Helmuth

if you can simplify that it would go a long way.

+1 for simplified search syntax! I think this is as important as a query builder...

I would like the query builder to be able to find things that currently only possible in Syntax Search (if at all). For example:

Arg1 follows Arg2 within 2 words and Arg1 & Arg2 are the same (any) Lemma, while optionally constraining either or both Arguments by part of speech. We'd, of course, need variable arguments for this.
Arg1 is separated from Arg2 by "a certain phrase/lemma phrase."

Basically, I want to be able to easily find "structures" (only optionally constrained to verse boundaries). Two reasons for wanting this are 1. to verify/check scholarly claims about the purpose/effect of a particular structure and 2. (once verified) to create a visual filter to alert to this structure (particularly helpful in translation, but useful for any exegetical work).

Dave Hooton

Arg1 follows Arg2 within 2 words and Arg1 & Arg2 are the same (any) Lemma, while optionally constraining either or both Arguments by part of speech. We'd, of course, need variable arguments for this.

Arg1 is separated from Arg2 by "a certain phrase/lemma phrase."

Basically, I want to be able to easily find "structures" (only optionally constrained to verse boundaries).

I agree.

Using a slightly adapted Libronix syntax (where wildcard * was allowed):

1. * BEFORE 2 WORDS *; Lemma:#1 = Lemma:#2 i.e. first lemma = second lemma

That could be simplified ---> lemma:* BEFORE 2 WORDS lemma:*; #1 = #2

2. justice WITHIN 0 PHRASE liberty i.e. within the same phrase (not a grammatical phrase in Libronix)

A Query builder should be able to use a grammatical PHRASE, or CLAUSE

Dave Hooton

One of the challenges for me is the syntax required for any somewhat complex search. When and where to use { } or [ ] or ( ). It is obvious that the formulas were written by someone used to programming.

A way to understand, where to use { } or just < >

use {Section datatype} if you know that it will return a section of text e.g. {Section <Event The Israelites cross the Red Sea>};
the following will return a word(s), or phrase, so don't require { }

<Person xxxxx>
<Place xxxxx>
<Thing xxxxx>

<Sense =~xxxxx>

[ ] would be rarely required. You see them most when you type a term in Morph Search and click onto Bible/Basic Search e.g. ([field bible, content] wilderness) is the expansion of wilderness. The ( ) isn't required for such a simple term, so [field bible, content] wilderness would suffice (and it's the same as bible:wilderness). But wilderness is OK in a Bible/Morph Search, where the result is restricted to bible text.

land OR wilderness AND the is ambiguous, as it is not clear which terms are being OR'ed. But (land OR wilderness) AND the will likely get the result you were after; as opposed to land OR (wilderness AND the).

Fr Devin Roza

Hi Phil,

I've thought a lot about what the most important searches people need to learn to build are, which led eventually to the Advanced Search training videos, where I ran through those, trying to explain the logic behind them to offer a comprehensive overview of search on the platform. Always built off real life examples of what I or others I know actually have been interested in finding.

I'll send you an email with the scripts from those videos. The videos were pretty comprehensive, so if the search builder is able to address all or almost all those searches, you should be pretty well off.

John Fidel

One of the challenges for me is the syntax required for any somewhat complex search. When and where to use { } or [ ] or ( ). It is obvious that the formulas were written by someone used to programming.

A way to understand, where to use { } or just < >

use {Section datatype} if you know that it will return a section of text e.g. {Section <Event The Israelites cross the Red Sea>};

the following will return a word(s), or phrase, so don't require { }

<Person xxxxx>

<Place xxxxx>

<Thing xxxxx>

<Sense =~xxxxx>

[ ] would be rarely required. You see them most when you type a term in Morph Search and click onto Bible/Basic Search e.g. ([field bible, content] wilderness) is the expansion of wilderness. The ( ) isn't required for such a simple term, so [field bible, content] wilderness would suffice (and it's the same as bible:wilderness). But wilderness is OK in a Bible/Morph Search, where the result is restricted to bible text.

land OR wilderness AND the is ambiguous, as it is not clear which terms are being OR'ed. But (land OR wilderness) AND the will likely get the result you were after; as opposed to land OR (wilderness AND the).

Thanks Dave,

I have reviewed this but still can seem to get it right without looking it up. Maybe your computer background makes it easier.

I appreciate the summary.

Chris Lane

Phil, one of my current desires is to see expanded capabilities of the corpora within which we can execute searches & visualize our results. I believe that you and I messaged about this in the Faithlife search group (apologies, can’t find a way to link the thread)–desiring to see expanded capabilities within corpora such as the Fathers, Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, etc. I realize that this is more of a tangential response to the OP, but I wanted to proffer the comment in case it were to be seen as applicable or were able to gather any traction while FL is focusing on searching issues.

More directly related, I have had some trouble searching for multiple Lemmas simultaneously and have not had much resolution with IT–maybe this is a feature that can be sured up and made a bit easier.

I often use the Heading:_________ command to recall articles in bible dictionaries and the like that might help me introduce myself to a topic. This seems to bring better results than the Factbook or Topic Guide. Potentially this might be of interest re: your present line of inquiry.

As always, thanks to you and your team for continued diligence in your efforts to improve Logos and its functionality.

Dave Hooton

I have had some trouble searching for multiple Lemmas simultaneously and have not had much resolution with IT

You can't select multiple lemmas in a resource. If this is still an issue then address it in a new thread, providing more information/examples, etc.

Chris Lane

Though you can search for multiple lemmas, correct?

Doc B

Please share you real-world examples (and ideally why you're trying to find what you're looking for).

I can manage basic (not "Basic") searches, often with a little help from the good folks here on the forums. Where I struggle with constructing them often relates to compound searches, such as...

...finding all the times (mostly imperatives, but not all) God says to "remember" (positive side) or "don't forget" (negative side) [Bible search].

...finding all the idioms for (X) [Bible search].

...finding discussions of certain theological terms (these sometimes not found in the theology index thingy) in the context of (X) [Basic search].

...any complex morph or syntax search at all.

(I realize these aren't high-end searches, but I suspect most of the frustration with the search engine comes from lower-end users, not power users.)

You mention other discussions on the forums...I don't have the time to go digging because I didn't tag most of these, but it would be worth your time to have someone go digging because there are quite a number of good discussions on how to do a specific search for which a good answer was never found. It seems I see these on the forums on a weekly basis.

HTH.

John Brumett

The ability to search for all the cities in the book of Acts or all the kings in the book of Daniel.

All the women in the bible. This shows up in the concordance but not in the Bible search.

This would include the ability to search all kind, subkind and role categories. I think Mark was asking for a similar ability.

John Brumett

I would like to see the ability to search for headwords in BDAG.

Keep Smiling 4 Jesus :)

I would like to see the ability to search for headwords in BDAG.

Please elaborate on BDAG headword search desire.

{Headword g:logos

offers many Greek words, but not know how many of them have Headword entries: e.g. fourth one has no Headword results in my Library, while the first two find many Headword entries:

Keep Smiling [:)]

Dave Hooton

Though you can search for multiple lemmas, correct?

Yes.

T. L. Brown

One of the searches that I've never been able to figure out is how to find every instance of prepositions in relation to Christ, Jesus, etc. E.G. "in Christ, unto Christ, with Christ"

Thanks Phil!

Keep Smiling 4 Jesus :)

One of the searches that I've never been able to figure out is how to find every instance of prepositions in relation to Christ, Jesus, etc. E.G. "in Christ, unto Christ, with Christ"

Morph search can find a preposition @p in close proximity to Christ

@p BEFORE 3 WORDS root:Χριστος

Keep Smiling [:)]

Cynthia in Florida

We're doing some product design work on a possible search query builder, and we're looking for lots of real world examples that you'd want a search query builder to make easy to build and find.

Is there something you'd like to be able to find in Logos but aren't sure how to find it—or would just like to make finding it a lot easier?

Please share you real-world examples (and ideally why you're trying to find what you're looking for). If there's already a discussion here on the forums or elsewhere, please link to it.

Thanks!

Just seeing this, but I'll contribute for sure! This makes me do the happy dance!!!

Karl Fritz Jr.

Is this search query builder still in the works? A simplified (graphical?) interface would be nice, but is that what is meant? I noticed another software has what appears to be an ability to select text and automatically build a search query based on that selection, which can be further modified from there. I assume this proposed Seach query builder has broader goals, but a graphical interface seems helpful.