Today I was playing with grammatical constructions in the context menu and was very pleased with the implementation taking me from text to definition to grammars for an explanation. Unfortunately, that very positive experience made my next "follow the data" attempt even more of a let down. The limited data would lead me to a likely inaccurate interpretation of the text. My path:
- I am reading the first pericope of Matthew i.e. the genealogy of Jesus Christ.
- I note that there are four women in the genealogy who break the repetitive pattern indicating some level of importance to the author
- I look for common features among the four
- I notice several foreigners - which I can easily verify by their Factbook records
- I start building an interpretation based on their being Gentiles and therefore indicative of the universality of Jesus' mission.
- Sound good, right? ... something worth sharing ... except there is one gaping hole because Logos has not tagged the rabbinic canonical literature nor the pseudepigrapha ... both of which are significant elements in the context of the text
- What did I miss? the tradition that at least two of the women were converts to Judaism not Gentiles.
I happened to open the right commentary in my library to discover my mistake before I embarrassed myself but it illustrates how Logos as a tool is anything but comprehensive. We have many books that don't get fed into our research. Besides the literary context, weaknesses are present in literary/rhetorical forms, images and symbols, traditional interpretations (typology and senses) . . .
