Verbum 9 Tip 8v: Faceted interactives: Bible Book Explorer part 1

MJ. Smith

Docx files for personal book: Verbum 9 part 1; Verbum 9 part 2; Verbum 9 part 3; Verbum 9 part 4; Verbum 9 part 5; Verbum 9 part 6; How to use the Verbum Lectionary and Missal; Verbum 8 tips 1-30; Verbum 8 tips 31-49

Reading lists: Catholic Bible Interpretation

Please be generous with your additional details, corrections, suggestions, and other feedback. This is being built in a .docx file for a PBB which will be shared periodically.

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Bible books browser: books

Note: there is no single glossary to provide definitions for the facet values in this resource or this view.

The facets appear in a sliding panel that partially covers the results when open.:

• A << in the upper left allows one to slide the panel open or closed
• The facets my be shown in either count or alphabetic order; there is no search function
• The facet categories do not expand or contract; the “more” option is used for long lists
• Available facet categories:
  • Kind
  • Genre
  • Corpus
  • Author
  • Recipients
  • Language
  • Biblical era
  • Key people
  • Key places

The data shown is the Longacre genre data. Mouse over has a popup that distinguishes the meaning of the two subgroups under the major genre. Unfortunately, it is coded in a way that doesn’t allow capturing in the screenshot.

From Longacre Genre Analysis of the Bible Dataset Documentation: [quote]

•  Narrative

•  Story

•  Future events

•  Procedural

•  How it was done

•  How to do it

•  Behavioral

•  Evaluation

•  Hortatory

•  Expository

•  What things are or were like

•  What things will be like^[1]

The eight colors of the chart represent these search queries:

• {Section <LongacreGenre = Narr: Story>}
• {Section <LongacreGenre = Narr: Future>}
• {Section <LongacreGenre = Proc: How done>}
• {Section <LongacreGenre = Proc: How to>}
• {Section <LongacreGenre = Behav: Eval>}
• {Section <LongacreGenre = Behav: Hort>}
• {Section <LongacreGenre = Expos: What were>}
• {Section <LongacreGenre = Expos: What will be>}

Note the screenshot for the data also shows the six available sort orders.

The default display:

Mouse over the book in the display provides the following data:

• Book name
  • Number of chapters
  • Number of verses
  • Number of words
  • Genre for the colored layer
    • Percent the genre represents of the entire book

Clicking on the book opens an information page.

Note that the text in blue are links to resources and tools withing Verbum.

An example of use: Moses as author

Selecting Moses under the author facet one gets:

The first five books are traditional associated with Moses as author although this is not the critical opinion. I have heard of Job attributed to Moses but the Psalms? I must assume that what is meant is that there is one or more psalms associated with Moses. This is quickly confirmed by the Psalm Explorer:

An example of use: Historical fiction

Selecting historical fiction under kind one gets:

Based on Senior, Donald, John J. Collins, and Mary Ann Getty, eds. The Catholic Study Bible, 2nd Ed.: Notes. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011 I would expect to see Esther included in the group. I find no way to adjust groupings that fail to meet the users’ definitions. The obvious solution is to seek the Verbum definition which is aligned with Factbook usage.

Unfortunately, I can find nothing resembling a definition, rather simply a list repeating the assertion that these books constitute historical fiction.

Note also that two major categories I would expect to see (Deuteronomistic history and Chronicler’s history) that are not offered.

An example of use: John as author

Johannine as a subkind contains only four books, omitting Revelation. Selecting John in the author column produces the full list of five books.  Sorting these by number of verse, gives one a quick view of the genres rarely used by John as well as the relative length of his five books.

In this case, the values that remain in the Recipients facet illustrates the detail available paralleling the detail of Moses as an author of a psalm.

Example of the genre of Narrative: Future Events in the Biblical era of Fall of Judah

One masters tools such as this by setting aside time to “play” with it – please explore.

Two additional items:

1. The opening of the Concordance in the datasheet opens the tool, the user still needs to run it against an appropriate resource.
2. I haven’t found the expected link(s) to Factbook.

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^[1] Jeremy Thompson, Longacre Genre Analysis of the Bible Dataset Documentation (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2016).