Commentaries Section of Passage Guide

Eugene Nowak

L9 provided enhanced commentary sorting in the Commentaries Section of Passage Guide.  The sorting options include the following:

• Resources can be sorted according to: 
  • Priority - your prioritization.
  • Series - series name
  • Author - author’s last name
  • Denomination - author’s denominational association
  • Type - Apparatus, Application, Exegetical, Expositional, Homiletic, etc.
  • Era:
    • Ante-nicene (AD 100-325)
    • Nicene (AD 326-451)
    • Byzantine (AD 452-1054)
    • Medieval (AD 1055-1516)
    • Reformation (AD 1517-1699)
    • Modern (AD 1700-1959)
    • Contemporary (AD 1960-present)

The complete list of Type that shows when my passage guide is opened includes the following:  Apparatus; Application; Bible Notes; Concise; Devotional; Exegetical; Expositional; Homiletic; Study Bible; Theological.

Apparently new in L9, as noted in Wiki, didn't really notice until L10.  Was wondering if anyone has criteria of how the commentaries are classified that they fall into the listed categories.  Era is nicely defined.  Looking for descriptors of the Types.  All the helps and digging done does not provide how the commentaries are classified.  I've looked at get exposed in those categories and could try and develop criteria, would be nice know how Logos folks classified them.

Thanks, in advance.

MJ. Smith

My weekly bumping of unanswered posts in hopes that they will get an appropriate response.

Richard L Dickson

Richard L Dickson

I have the same question. Team Logos, can someone please respond to this? Looks like it was originally posted in March 2023 and I think it deserves an answer. M.J., perhaps you could "bump" again. Thanks.

I have spent many hours trying to tag all of my commentaries with their type, but then my library keeps growing and it is hard to keep up. Also, I'm never quite sure if my tag is the proper one, as for many of the commentaries, I have not actually used them before and have to do a quick scan of the material in order to classify them - not exactly the best method, I know.

Richard L Dickson

Upon thinking a bit more about this, maybe someone could find some use of my personal effort at categorizing commentaries and other materials. I created these several years back and now can see they need more work. Seems to me that particularly with large libraries, the ability to drill down to the type of material you are accessing becomes more and more important. Now even single volume commentaries and study bibles have increased to the point where they are specialized and could stand to be organized, which makes the task more complicated. Anyway, here are mytags from several years ago:

Commentary
CommentaryApplicationVersified
CommentaryBibleBackground
CommentaryCatholic
CommentaryChurchFathersVersified
CommentaryCriticalVersified
CommentaryExegeticalVersified
CommentaryJewish
CommentaryLanguageVersified
CommentaryMultipleViews
CommentaryNonVersified
CommentaryPsalms
CommentaryReformed
CommentarySingleVolumeVersified
CommentarySurvey

Commentary1Samuel
CommentaryActs
CommentaryEphesians
CommentaryExodus
CommentaryGalatians
CommentaryGenesis
CommentaryIsaiah
CommentaryLeviticus
CommentaryNumbers
CommentaryRevelation
CommentaryRomans

Anthropology
BibleCanonTranslationsHistory
BibleHarmony
BibleOutlines
BibleScience
BibleStudyLessons
ChristianLivingAndDiscipleship
Christology
ChurchFathers
DevotionalCalendar
DevotionalNonCalendar
HomileticsAndSermonsAndLectures
SexRelationshipsCounseling
Suffering
TheologyAndDoctrine
Typology

Dave Hooton

@Richard L Dickson

The Passage Guide type has the appearance of methodology, but it does not satisfy my need and there are some overlaps e.g. what is a Concise commentary? Apparatus is needed only because some are classed as a Commentary. Devotional conveys very little to me e.g. Wright's "NT for Everyone"?

So I categorise commentaries according to their value to me using Tags and Ratings, and would urge others to devise their own system.

Commentary1Samuel
CommentaryActs
CommentaryEphesians
CommentaryExodus
CommentaryGalatians
CommentaryGenesis
CommentaryIsaiah
CommentaryLeviticus
CommentaryNumbers
CommentaryRevelation
CommentaryRomans

Why do you tag as above?

Multi-volume commentaries can be accessed using their Subject metadata e.g. type:bible-commentary subj:1-Samuel,
type:bible-commentary subj:Acts.
subj:bible-commentaries will identify single volume commentaries with all books of the bible.
Some exceptions will need tagging, though.

MJ. Smith

My mental classification is very simple:

• I ought to like but I don't
• I use a lot
• I find very interesting/provocative (often have a methodological bias)
• I find useful but booooring
• Beats me why others recommend this
• Trash

Richard L Dickson

Dave & MJ, thanks for your comments.

I agree, everyone should probably come up with whatever scheme works for them personally, and the software certainly has enough flexibility to do that. However, I find it helpful to see what others have done.

However, I still would like to know how Logos is assigning the "Type" to the various commentaries in the Passage Guide in order to display them accordingly. Perhaps in a resource metadata field? If so, is there a master listing of metadata fields for resources? How are commentaries that could be classified with multiple "Types" being handled? Surely they are not gathering this information from Community tags. Perhaps using AI in some way?

MJ, I get the point of your classification system, but with hundreds of different commentaries, how do you mentally keep up with all of them? Heck, I'm an old man now and sometimes forget why I went to a certain room in the house!!! My solution is to go back to where I came from and the purpose usually comes back regarding what I was doing. LOL

Dave, I believe my original thinking on classifying commentaries according to each book (e.g. "CommentaryRomans") was mainly to be able to gather material for book monograms, especially those where the title may not even contain the book name. Then I can use that tag in to form Collections for use in queries.

Dave Hooton

@Richard L Dickson asked:

I still would like to know how Logos is assigning the "Type" to the various commentaries in the Passage Guide in order to display them accordingly. Perhaps in a resource metadata field? If so, is there a master listing of metadata fields for resources? How are commentaries that could be classified with multiple "Types" being handled? Surely they are not gathering this information from Community tags. Perhaps using AI in some way?

The Type comes from a resource metadata field (commentary-purpose) that is only exposed to users in Passage Guide and Factbook. So it is independent of Community Tags. Volumes can have multiple metadata fields for Type and they are listed under the appropriate Type heading in PG and Factbook e.g. my 13 NIGTC volumes are each listed under Apparatus and Exegetical.

The NIGTC series Foreword states "They will attempt to treat all important problems of history and exegesis" and states elsewhere that "The textual symbols employed are those used in the apparatus of this edition of the text.", referring to the apparatus of a specific Greek New Testament.
A Smart Search of the series for "Are these books exegetical" reveals that "some of the books or texts being discussed are indeed exegetical in nature" and an "…apparatus" Smart Search states "they do contain information related to textual apparatus in biblical scholarship". I imagine that an external AI Search would be more definitive, but I doubt that AI was used by Faithlife.

AFAIK there is no master list for the Type metadata, but it would be easy to compile from PG.

Dave Hooton

Dave, I believe my original thinking on classifying commentaries according to each book (e.g. "CommentaryRomans") was mainly to be able to gather material for book monograms, especially those where the title may not even contain the book name. Then I can use that tag in to form Collections for use in queries.

My Q related your use of Tags when the information is in the Subjects metadata.

Richard L Dickson

Oh, I see it now. You could make a collection directly from a library search of, for example, entering the following text string into the Library "Find Books" box: type:bible-commentary AND subj:romans. You would not have to identify each resource individually like my method requires. Nor would you have to update your collection when new resources get added that meet the specified criteria. Cool!!!

This text string also gives the same results, but you must enter the first text phrase in quotation marks: "type:bible commentary" AND subject:romans. How did you know to enter "bible-commentary" with a dash between the words? Will using the dash (" - ") always work as a replacement for a space between multiple words (which I guess the query syntax cannot handle).

So now I will go back and clean up all those tags and collections.

Am also now seeing that the Library sidebar can also be used:
Select Type "Bible Commentary"
Select Subject "Bible N.T."
Select Subject "Romans"

Thanks for the tip. Should have figured this out myself, but that's one reason why the forums are so great . . .

Richard L Dickson

Dave, in your 4:06pm post you stated:
The Type comes from a resource metadata field (commentary-purpose) that is only exposed to users in Passage Guide and Factbook.

I am assuming that it is not possible for a user to directly query the resource metadata to find out what value(s) are in the "commentary-purpose" field, correct? But indirectly we can know from the groupings in Passage Guide and Factbook.

Is there a master listing somewhere, available to users, of all of the resource metadata fields?

Oh, and if you don't mind me asking, how do you do the neat trick of identifying text from another post with the grey vertical bar to the left of the text?

Thanks again for your help.

Dave Hooton

To enter the name of the person you are addressing:

Type @ followed by their profile name. Select the appropriate name from those suggested i.e.

@Richard L Dickson

To quote part of a Comment:

1. Copy and then paste the text:

This text string also gives the same results, but you must enter the first text phrase in quotation marks: "type:bible commentary" AND subject:romans. How did you know to enter "bible-commentary" with a dash between the words? Will using the dash (" - ") always work as a replacement for a space between multiple words (which I guess the query syntax cannot handle).

2. Click the paragraph symbol outside the Comment box (which now appears as an X)

3. Click the double inverted commas and then click Quote

Using the dash (" - ") will always work as a alternative for a space between multiple words in metadata values. Space can substitute for AND and some field names can be abbreviated e.g. type:bible-commentary subj:1-Samuel instead of type:"bible commentary" AND subject:"1 Samuel"

See this wiki for more info.

Dave Hooton

@Richard L Dickson said

I am assuming that it is not possible for a user to directly query the resource metadata to find out what value(s) are in the "commentary-purpose" field, correct? But indirectly we can know from the groupings in Passage Guide and Factbook.

Correct and Yes!

Is there a master listing somewhere, available to users, of all of the resource metadata fields?

See the wiki link in my previous Comment.