SUGGESTION: Passage relationships

One area of Bible study that I find Logos surprisingly non-helpful is the relationship between passages. There are many features that present them to me: cross-reference, key verses in topics, parallel resources, lectionaries, resources such as the Dictionary of Biblical Imagery or Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament and even search tools for finding words and phrases ... What Logos doesn't give me is a good place to store the relevant information:

the relationship name e.g. common topic
on relationships that are directional, the direction of the relationship
the relationship detail e.g. what the common topic is
source for the relationship/observation URL or Logos link
my personal notes on the relationship especially how it helps my understanding of the passages

I would like a new file type specifically designed for storing relationships - relationships involving two or more passages usually in an equal relationship. I would like easy access to this file initially in the cross-reference section of the Passage Guide but ultimately in the topic section as well.

Examples of the type of relationships I collect:

quotation
allusion
reference to (usually an event)
type / antitype [with supporting detail in note portion, including Bible references]
shared image
shared use of technical or uncommon word or phrase
shared topic
shared theme
apparent contradiction
contrasting perspectives on same topic
parallel passage
deuterograph (duplicate passage)
members of the same set (usually lists of ...)
pericope/mesopericope
prophecy / fulfillment
x is an illustration of y
x is a supporting detail of y
components in a rhetorical form (inclusio, same level of chiasm, parallelism ...)
x assumes knowledge of y
shared liturgical use
implied lectionary relationship
statement / supporting statement
general statement / detailed statement
shared (uncommon) structure - literary, syntactical, rhetorical

As it is at the moment, I either don't capture the information and repeat the same work over and over or I try to stuff the information into a note format where it functions poorly because notes were not designed for relationships between texts - they were design for short comments on a single passage.

PS. I know my list of relationships is not exhaustive. I'd be very much interested in what others think should be in such a list.

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Comments

garry Hill

Hi,

I agree this would be very usefull as i am also trying to do this with notes and its not going too well. What might be a great tool for this would be a pictorial tool, so that you can draw relationships visually and add notes to the appropriate link to explain the relationships. Then an index of the relationships in a document so you can browes through them. This coould be done with something like a mind mapping tool or database relationship tool. It could also be linked with the highlighting tool so that the same colours are used for the same subjects. I guess the highlighting tool/visual filters can do most of this already appart from the diagram displaying the relationships pictorialy.

Thank you

Garry

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/157385#Comment_157385

What might be a great tool for this would be a pictorial tool, so that you can draw relationships visually and add notes to the appropriate link to explain the relationships.

Two great minds ... [H]

A visual form more similar to VisuWords would be much better:

Yes, this is where I'd really like to see Logos take it - where you can easily change the focus from one passage to another ... perhaps with a display at the top of the relationships in Logos that are not in your file - things from cross-references, study Bibles, ...

DominicM

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/157385#Comment_157385

MJ,

I dont understand why making notes in the relevant sections of a Passage gude wont work for this.. (or am I missing something?)

Gary

What might be a great tool for this would be a pictorial tool, so that you can draw relationships visually and add notes

you can use the sentence diagrammer for this..

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/157387#Comment_157387

I dont understand why making notes in the relevant sections of a Passage gude wont work for this.. (or am I missing something?)

There are several things that make notes / passage guides a less than ideal solution:

Here one has multiple passages usually in an equal relationship. A passage guide is on a single passage and there is no reasonable criteria as to what Passage Guide one would put a particular note in
Passage Guides are designed primarily for a pericope level item. While a few of these relationship are at that level most are at the verse or partial verse level. Logos file selection structure would become completely unusable if you had a Passage Guide on every verse.
Logos does not support a search on only Passage Guides (or more usefully, sections of a Passage Guide) so there is no practical way to gather up the relationships you have already defined when you begin working on another verse. In fact one has to search you entire library to even get the My Content searched.
To create the relationship diagrams with the sentence diagram tool requires that you maintain a separate diagram for each verse you have created a Passage Guide for. Each time one updates the Passage Guide one must update the sentence diagram. Of course, the volume of diagrams would only add to the already unworkable file structure (from the Passage Guides).
Every change would have to be made 4 places - Passage Guide and Sentence Diagram for each verse (or part thereof)
One would have to manually maintain the link between the Passage Guide and the Sentence Diagram ... hopefully you never need to change a file name.

I could go on but I think this makes the point.

Believe me, I have been working this puzzle since L3. I had expected L4 to permit the linking a note to more than one passage which would have improved the situation dramatically. In L4 I keep expecting the ability to search My Content independently which would help a bit. The whole "study one passage at a time" bent of Logos is foreign to me except in an academic or lectio divina context - I'm used to a multi-text liturgical style of scripture explicating scripture that is not the Logos style. In general, I make do. On this, I really think everyone would reap benefits.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/157393#Comment_157393

An old discussion on a still relevant topic ... although much has changed in the intervening decade esp. in my understanding of Bayesian networks and how AI can be applied to the issues discussed here.