Verbum Tip 4aj: Bible Browser: Classification part 1 -- Preaching Themes, Topics, Cultural concepts

MJ. Smith

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Facet: Preaching themes

The next several facets – Preaching themes, Topics, Cultural concepts, Systematic theology, Counseling theme, Catholic topical index – all impose a classification scheme on the text. These are the most subjective facets in the Bible Browser. One should neither accept them uncritically nor reject them without understanding why it was assigned.

Dataset

• DB:PREACHINGTHEMESPreachingThemes.lbsptd

Documentation

• Husser, Lydia. 2016. Preaching Themes: Dataset Documentation. Bellingham, WA: Faithlife.

Data

• <PreachingTheme = theme> is a simple datatype

Bible Browser

For the Bible Browser example, the selected facets are:

• Preaching Themes: Judgment
• Author: Jeremiah

Interactive

none

Context Menu and Information Panel

The Information Panel has a separate section for Preaching Themes:

Similarly, in the Context Menu, Preaching Themes is its own expand/contract section:

The actions available include:

• Open Factbook to the Preaching Theme
• Open Sermon Starter Guide to the Preaching Theme
• Standard Copy reference options
• Standard Search options

The Factbook option provides significant resources:

Search

Starting from the Bible Search option in the Context Menu produced a double argument, the datatype itself and the datatype wrapped in {Section <>} syntax: (<PreachingTheme = Judgment>, {Section <PreachingTheme = Judgment>}):

 

Facet: Topics

Dataset

• DB:LCV LCV.lbslcv

Documentation

• Husser, Lydia. 2017. Logos Controlled Vocabulary: Dataset Documentation. Bellingham, WA: Faithlife.

Data

• <Topic ~ topic>} is a simple datatype

However, the dataset contains a significant amount of data to support the Topic Guide. From the documentation:

[quote]The Logos Controlled Vocabulary is a growing dataset. So far, it has over 14,000 topics related to the Bible and Christianity. Faithlife curates LCV content by hand.

Data curated for each LCV topic includes:

•  Content aligned to the topic, like articles, images, videos, etc.

•  Preferred and alternate labels. These are the search terms that will find the topic. The preferred label is the principal term that displays in the Factbook and Topic Guide.

•  The topic type. Types include Animal, Belief, Deity, Language, Measure, Object, Person, People, Writing, or None.

•  Whether the topic is a proper noun. A proper noun is a specific person, place, object, or idea.

•  Whether the topic is a compound topic. A compound topic combines several distinct entities. For instance, John is a compound topic that combines several distinct people.

•  Whether the topic is extra-biblical. This means that it exists only outside of the Bible. Extra-biblical topics include:

•  Academic concepts

•  Non-biblical people, places, and objects

•  Non-biblical writings

•  Non-biblical events

•  Related Bible references.

•  Related LCV topics.

•  Related items from other datasets, like Preaching Themes, Biblical People, etc.^[1]

 

Bible Browser

For the Bible Browser example, the selected facets are:

• Topic: Divine judgment
• Author: Jeremiah

Interactive

none

Context Menu and Information Panel

The Topic entry appears to be missing in the Information Panel and Context Menu. However, Divine judgment does appear as a Cultural Concept – an option not available in the Bible Browser.

Similarly, the Context Menu points to a Cultural Concept.

 

Search

The search argument for the Topic: Divine judgment generated from the Context Menu is <Culture Divine judgment> from the Copy reference but {Section <Culture Divine judgment>} in the Bible search. However, a search can be built that selects on topic – an example is {Section <Topic Ability>}.

This also has odd behavior:

• The value is not listed in the Topic facet.
• The Topic item does not appear in the Information Panel.
• The Topic item does not appear in the Context Menu.

(Non)Facet: Cultural Concepts

The Cultural Concepts are tagged in several supporting resources. This makes them especially useful in determining the socio-cultural background of a passage. I suspect this is a greatly under utilized resource because the hierarchy doesn’t have a visual presentation to encourage the users to learn the power of the hierarchy supporting the tagging.

Dataset

• DB:SD-LCO LCO.lbssd

Documentation

• Witthoff, David, Jessica Parks, and Sean Boisen. 2015. Lexham Cultural Ontology Dataset Documentation. Bellingham, WA: Faithlife.
• Witthoff, David, ed. 2014. The Lexham Cultural Ontology Glossary. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

Data

From the documentation:

[quote]Each concept has a label and a definition, and many have links to other concepts based on conceptual similarities. Many of the concepts also have links to lexical senses from the Bible Sense Lexicon and these links are shown in the Factbook. Concepts are connected to resource annotations as well as dictionary annotations. Furthermore, we have linked Cultural Concepts with their equivalent LCV Concepts so that these concepts appear on the same Factbook page.

The list of concepts is organized in a simple ontology (a sort of blueprint for organizing entities within a domain of knowledge) that is based on a taxonomy of concepts. This means that each concept is organized by kind (e.g., a dog is a kind of animal). The ways concepts relate to each other is described as family relationships; concepts can be parent nodes, child nodes, and sibling nodes. Within the hierarchy, each concept has a parent node (e.g., CONCEPT>OBJECT>CROSS) and some concepts also have child nodes and/or sibling nodes (e.g., DOG and DONKEY are siblings under the parent node ANIMAL since they are both a kind of animal).

Some concepts are related to each other logically, but are not a kind of another concept (e.g., BRIDE is a kind of PERSON; MARRIAGE is a kind of RITUAL). To counter this separation, concepts that have some association, though they are of different kinds, are related by what we are calling a domain relationship. This kind of link appears in Factbook entries and helps facilitate discovery and learning by linking concepts that occur together in experience, but don’t strictly relate in the ontology. Thus, the concepts ARRANGING A MARRIAGE, BRIDE, and DOWRY are all in the domain of the concept MARRIAGE.^[2]

 

Bible Browser

Cultural Concepts appear under Topics in the Bible Browser. See above.

Interactive

none

Context Menu and Information Panel

Topics are identified as Cultural Concepts in the Information Panel and Context Menu. See above.

Search

As was stated in the Topics section, he search argument for the Topic: Divine judgment generated from the Context Menu is <Culture Divine judgment> from the Copy reference but {Section <Culture Divine judgment>} in the Bible search.

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^[1] Lydia Husser, Logos Controlled Vocabulary: Dataset Documentation (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2017).

^[2] David Witthoff, Jessica Parks, and Sean Boisen, Lexham Cultural Ontology Dataset Documentation (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2015).