Search for statements by author

Jimmy Akin

I want to search across the whole Bible for all occurrences of "to this day" that are made by the AUTHOR of a book (as opposed to a figure in the narrative).

For example, when the authors of Genesis, Exodus, Matthew, etc., refer to things being the case "to this day."

I've tried {Speaker <Person Author>} but it doesn't seem to work.

What syntax should be used?

Thanks, and God bless you!

Graham Criddle

Hi Jimmy - and welcome to the forums

Jimmy Akin said:

What syntax should be used?

There isn't any mechanism I am aware of to do this. And one of the challenges would be we don't know who wrote some of the books (and there is debate over some of those we think we know who wrote them!)

For example, there are 12 occurrences of "to this day" in Joshua and 5 in Judges. And, to the best of my knowledge, we don't know who wrote these books.

How would you want to address results from books that fell into this category?

Initially, with 69 results across the entire Bible, I think the best option is to simply work from that list and draw your deductions from that

Graham

Andrew Batishko

This search should work in the New Testament, but not the Old Testament.

"to this day" NOT INTERSECT <LDGNT = Reported Speech>

Although this will not catch places where the author of the book is quoting himself. It will just catch non-quoted material.

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1149220#Comment_1149220

Andrew Batishko (Faithlife) said:

This search should work in the New Testament, but not the Old Testament.

"to this day" NOT INTERSECT <LDGNT = Reported Speech>

Try

"to this day" NOT INTERSECT <LDHB = Reported Speech>, <LDGNT = Reported Speech>

for OT/NT.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1149246#Comment_1149246

Don't you need to exclude INTERTEXT quotations separately?

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1149918#Comment_1149918

MJ. Smith said:

Don't you need to exclude INTERTEXT quotations separately?

Fortunately, the NT results are not INTERTEXT quotations. The full query would be:

("to this day" NOT INTERSECTS <LDGNT = Reported Speech>, <LDHB = Reported Speech>) NOT INTERSECTS {Label Intertext WHERE Source~ <Gen-4Macc>}  for NRSV. But it takes 7x longer than not checking for Intertext.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1150196#Comment_1150196

And you are still including non-canonical quotations which do occur in the NT

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1150266#Comment_1150266

The OP has no stipulation for Intertext quotations, but I accommodated your suggestion to see if it could be done.

MJ. Smith said:

And you are still including non-canonical quotations which do occur in the NT

Are you saying that the NT results are non-canonical quotations?

• "to this day" occurs 7 times in the NT
• Mt 27:8, 28:15; 2 Cor 3:14,15  are the only NT results that satisfy the OP's requirement
• Acts 2:29 is the only possible Intertext 'quotation' (from 1 Kings 2:10)
• it can be excluded as Intertext with  {Label Intertext WHERE Source~ <Gen-4Macc> AND Relationship=Quotation} because the phrase "to this day" is not part of the source text.
• <Gen-4 Macc>  can be amended to <Gen-Mal>

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1150280#Comment_1150280

Dave Hooton said:

MJ. Smith said:

And you are still including non-canonical quotations which do occur in the NT

Are you saying that the NT results are non-canonical quotations?

No, I am saying that the NT includes non-canonical quotations. Therefore, it the search does not screen them out, the user needs to review the results manually for this condition.

SineNomine

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1149246#Comment_1149246

Dave Hooton said:

Try

"to this day" NOT INTERSECT <LDHB = Reported Speech>, <LDGNT = Reported Speech>

for OT/NT.

In the RSVCE, this search returns a quote in 1 Maccabees 13:32. That's the only bad result I identified out of the 73 that Verbum returned. Not bad.

Jimmy Akin

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1150288#Comment_1150288

Thanks to all who have commented! Very helpful! God bless you all!