L/V 10+ Tip of the Day #140 Context Menu: word information group: Bible Knowledgebase elements

MJ. Smith

Another tip of the day (TOTD) series for Logos/Verbum 10. They will be short and often drawn from forum posts. Feel free to ask questions and/or suggest forum posts you'd like to see included. Adding comments about the behavior on mobile and web apps would be appreciated by your fellow forumites. A search for "L/V 10+ Tip of the Day site:community.logos.com" on Google should bring the tips up as should this Reading List within the application.

This tip is inspired by the forum post: L/V 10+ Tip of the Day #139 Context Menu: word information group: Sense (and nyms) - Logos Forums

The final item in the word information group, a group that expands/contracts together, is Biblical person, Biblical place, and/or Biblical thing. These are known for historical reasons as Bible Knowledgebase items, BK items, Factbook items ... Each has its own documentation:

• Parks, Jessica. Biblical People Dataset Documentation. Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2021.
• Parks, Jessica. Biblical Places Dataset Documentation. Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2021.
• Parks, Jessica. Biblical Things Dataset Documentation. Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2021.

This data is curated in the sense described by Sean Boisen in Bible Knowledgebase – Blogos (semanticbible.com). This data is an early example of Logos' use of ontologies although not named that in the documentation. Knowledgebase+ontology+inference system = expert system (artificial intelligence); knowledgebase+ontology+user interface = user access to facts rather than raw data. [Yes, this is a gross oversimplification but an illustration of the use of AI techniques within Logos.]

Some basics about this data:

• this tagging in Bibles (via the reverse interlinear) is what allows all references to a person, e.g. alternative names, pronouns, implied subject of verbs, to be found by a search
• this tagging selects a single interpretation in cases of ambiguity; this is also done in translations
• this tagging is sometimes anachronistic e.g. reference to Holy Spirit in Genesis
• this tagging is not always specific e.g. the cannibal mothers 2 Kings 6:24–33
• Factbook tags allow the users to extend the books to which the tags are applied but not to create new tag values

Three actions are common from a "Factbook tag" in the context menu: Factbook, Search, and Lookup.

Examples of the Context menu:

Person not proper name:

Person, proper name: note the variation in names in the Lookup list

Place, proper name: Note the addition of the Atlas option in actions.

A thing: Note the variety of entry headings for lookup

Each of these BK entries is a datatype so the search arguments take the form of:

• person:"A Prophet"
• person:Isaiah
• place:Jordan
• thing:Waistband

An example search. Note the results that are not the word "Jordan".

This is a good time to review the difference between the text search for Isaiah and the datatype search for the person:Isaiah.

The Factbook entries for these elements are worth becoming very familiar with. They provide you with many quick answers and eliminate the need for many searches and guide sections. This data is generally complete and accurate as the original Factbook was based on these.