Verbum Search through Tip of the Day #11

MJ. Smith

Tip 11: Concordance, navigation, and Bible search

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The use of concordances

Let us consider the early text, Gataker, Thomas. 1627. Abrahams Decease A Meditation on Genesis 25.8. Deliuered at the Funerall of That Worthy Seruant of Christ, Mr. Richard Stock, Late Pastor of All-Hallowes Bread-Street: Together with the Testimonie Then Giuen Vnto Him. By Thomas Gataker B. of D. and Pastor of Rotherhith. London: Iohn Haviland for Fulke Clifton, and are to be sold at his shop on New-fishstreet hill, vnder St. Margarets Church, at the signe of the holy Lambe. From just the citation for the sermon, one knows a search cannot depend upon standard spellings or modern punctuation styles. When the search function is unable to provide the answers one wants, especially on older or foreign texts, the Concordance tool may help.

The use of the concordance and its deficiencies with regards to user-controlled merging and n-grams will be covered in detail later in the series. Simply keep in mind that there is a concordance function which may serve as the search of last resort

Navigation by Search results

To return to the example of Abraham: the Basic search has “Match all word forms” set. Search Bible Text in All Passages in the NRSV  (1)for (Abram, Abraham) INTERSECTS <person Abraham> (2). This yield 331 results in 127 articles (pericopes) (3) displayed by pericope name (4), reference for first verse of the pericope(5), the number of matches in the pericope (b), with an extract of the text including at least one match. All matches are highlighted.

Clicking on Abram in the Descendants of Shem pericope opens the NRSV resource to the appropriate location – a bit before the occurrence of “Abram.”. As expected, the open resource shows the results highlighted in the same color as in the Search panel.

The Search results can be used for navigation:

Step 1: Open the Panel Menu (1).

Step 2: Select Show locator bar (3)

Step 3: On the locator bar, open the selection menu for navigational unit.

Step 4: Select “Search Results”

Step 5. The navigation arrows for previous occurrence (1) and next (occurrence) now move between search results, generally putting the next result on the top line. A moving red circle draws one’s attention to the highlighted term.

Bible vs. Basic search

To this point, the basic search has been used with its basic unit of article. For Bible resources, “article” translated to either pericope or chapter. In a Bible search, the basic unit is verse. What for Abram/Abraham was 331 results in 127 articles (pericopes) in a Basic search becomes 331 results in 299 verses in a Bible search (1).

The most significant difference, however, is in the display of the results. Rather than three sort order, one is offers four formats for the results – grid, verses, aligned, and analysis (2). One can add other Bible translations to the result (3), a miniature text comparison. One can display the result in several graph formats (4). These options will be slowly introduced as alternative ways of requesting a Search are explored.