L/V 10+ Tip of the Day #229 Context Menu: Labels: Theophany (Christophany, Angelophany, and "Paracle

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 #228 Context Menu: Labels: Turning Point - Logos Forums

Theophanies is the first label where the classification of the theophanies is a reflection of a theological position e.g. the pre-incarnation Christophanies are seen by others as Angelophanies. Some see "Paracletophanies" to be symbolism rather than theophanies. These differences do not affect the usefulness of the dataset only how you use the data.

The attributes available are:

Theophany

A theophany is a physical, visual, or audible manifestation of God in his full glory and power. The Theophanies dataset is a complete annotation across both the Old and New Testaments. Due to the complete coverage, manifestations of every person of the Trinity are recorded. So, while Christophanies are traditionally considered a subset of Theophanies, they are included here.

• time:... — The time of the theophanic event according to the narrative time. The labels are past, present, and future. Instances labeled as "Past" are those where theophanic events are remembered. Those labeled "Future" are events which are prophesied to happen in the future.
• beholder:... — The audience of the theophanic event.
• agent:... — The person of the Trinity who makes the theophanic appearance.
• manifestation:... — How God manifests in the physical realm.
• appearance:... — The physical form God uses in the manifestation. If there is no form specified, the label is set to Unknown.

For example:

• theophany:agent:Jesus

The standard layout exposes two differences with the preceding labels. The documentation does not include the actual data. The attributes do no provide a name for the event, therefore, the event does not appear in Factbook.

The Search pick up the parallels in the other Gospels with the standard search argument theophany:(agent:person:God AND appearance:Unknown AND beholder:person:Jesus AND manifestation:Audible AND time:Present)

For the first time, the Bible Browser includes the label in its facets:

And, for the first time, there is an actual book on the topic in addition to the documentation:

• Parks, Jimmy. Theophanies in the Bible Documentation. Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2018.
• Savran, George W. Encountering the Divine: Theophany in Biblical Narrative. London; New York: T & T Clark International, 2005.