Find Passages with a High Frequency of a Given Word

Andrew
Andrew Member Posts: 359
edited November 2024 in English Forum

Hi,

I am trying to find passages with a high density/frequency of the English word "love" in the NT.  I would then use the identified passages to explore contrasts between the various Greek words for "love".

The closest thing I have found thus far is "Graph Bible Search Results" using the "Result Map," but I believe that is frequency by verse rather than word density (eg. 1 per 10 words). 

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Comments

  • Kiyah
    Kiyah Member Posts: 2,841 ✭✭✭✭

    Change the option in the dropdown from "Count per book" to "Frequency per 1,000 words in book," or "Frequency per 1,000 words in chapter" if you're doing it at the passage level.

    See below. I used the NRSV, it looks like the book of 1 John and specifically 1 John 4 is your winner, followed by 1 Corinthians 13 (no surprise there). You would have to use the translation of your choice to see if you get different results.

    per 1000 word in book:

    per 1000 word in chapter:

  • Andrew
    Andrew Member Posts: 359

    Kiyah said:

    Change the option in the dropdown from "Count per book" to "Frequency per 1,000 words in book," or "Frequency per 1,000 words in chapter" if you're doing it at the passage level.

    Thank you - I didn't realize that was customizable!

    I wish there was a "Frequency per 1,000 words in paragraph" (and yes, I do realize that paragraphs differ significantly between versions). 

  • Kiyah
    Kiyah Member Posts: 2,841 ✭✭✭✭

    Also, there's only one greek root for Love in 1 John 4: Agapao. Agapao (Love - verb), Agape (Love - noun), Agapetos (Beloved - adjective). Just to save you some time.

    From the Concordance tool (filtered to 1 John 4):

  • Mark Smith
    Mark Smith MVP Posts: 11,800

    One other thing you might find interesting or helpful (if you haven't already tried this) is to use the Analysis 'tab' in your search results. If you right click on the header of the table that opens up you can add a column for Chapter or for Book and see your search results aggregated to that level (not paragraphs, unfortunately).

    Pastor, North Park Baptist Church

    Bridgeport, CT USA

  • Andrew
    Andrew Member Posts: 359

    Kiyah said:

    Also, there's only one greek root for Love in 1 John 4: Agapao. Agapao (Love - verb), Agape (Love - noun), Agapetos (Beloved - adjective). Just to save you some time.

    Thanks!

  • Andrew
    Andrew Member Posts: 359

    One other thing you might find interesting or helpful (if you haven't already tried this) is to use the Analysis 'tab' in your search results. If you right click on the header of the table that opens up you can add a column for Chapter or for Book and see your search results aggregated to that level (not paragraphs, unfortunately).

    Thank you - I didn't know about the "group" feature.

    Is there any easy way to use Logos to get a word count for a specific passage (eg. John 21:15-22)?  I copy-pasted into Word in order to get a word count, but that involved manually removing all footnotes, verse numbers, etc.

  • Kiyah
    Kiyah Member Posts: 2,841 ✭✭✭✭

    One other thing you might find interesting or helpful (if you haven't already tried this) is to use the Analysis 'tab' in your search results. If you right click on the header of the table that opens up you can add a column for Chapter or for Book and see your search results aggregated to that level (not paragraphs, unfortunately).

    I never noticed you could group by Book and Chapter in the analysis tab. Thanks Mark.

  • Mark Smith
    Mark Smith MVP Posts: 11,800

    The only tool that I know of that gives word counts for a verse or range of verses is the Concordance Tool. How-some-ever it takes a long time to run the first time. Once you run it the first time on a specific translation you can then get results very quickly simply by changing your reference. (It tells me there are 69 Bible text words in that selection in the NASB95.)

    Andrew said:

    I copy-pasted into Word in order to get a word count, but that involved manually removing all footnotes, verse numbers, etc.

    You can change the format of how Logos copies verses to the clipboard using the Copy Bible Verses Tool. There are a number of built-in formats and you can create your own. This would allow you to eliminate the verse numbers, footnote indicators, etc. when you paste a verse into Word.

    Pastor, North Park Baptist Church

    Bridgeport, CT USA

  • Kiyah
    Kiyah Member Posts: 2,841 ✭✭✭✭

    Andrew said:

    Is there any easy way to use Logos to get a word count for a specific passage (eg. John 21:15-22)?  I copy-pasted into Word in order to get a word count, but that involved manually removing all footnotes, verse numbers, etc.

    You can just copy the text without all of the non-bible text like footnotes, verse/chapter numbers etc. using the Copy Bible Verses tool and set it to "Bible Text Only", and hit the "Copy" or the "Copy and Paste" to copy it into to Microsoft Word.

    OR

    You can use the visual filters in the bible pane to remove all non-bible text and then select, copy, and paste the text into word. To me, this was the quickest way. I don't know of a way to get Logos to count words in a passage for you. Not quickly anyway.

  • Kiyah
    Kiyah Member Posts: 2,841 ✭✭✭✭

    (It tells me there are 69 Bible text words in that selection in the NASB95.)

    I think the Concordance tool is only giving you unique words and not total word count. When I copied the NRSV passage into Word it counted 272 total words. (I got 272 words for the NRSV and 270 words for the NASB95).

  • Mark Smith
    Mark Smith MVP Posts: 11,800

    Kiyah said:

    I think the Concordance tool is only giving you unique words and not total word count.

    You are correct in what I reported. However, if I click on the facet "Field:Bible Text" and clear the check boxes for "Combine all word forms", "Omit common stopwords", and "Omit numbers" I get 270 words. So I just needed to pay a bit more attention, but the data is there.

    Pastor, North Park Baptist Church

    Bridgeport, CT USA

  • One other thing you might find interesting or helpful (if you haven't already tried this) is to use the Analysis 'tab' in your search results.

    Bible Search of Greek resources for loves (Match all word forms) followed by Analysis can show Greek lemma variety:

    Keep Smiling [:)]