L/V 10+ Tip of the Day #331 Logos tagging - contextual meaning.

MJ. Smith
MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 53,270
edited November 21 in English Forum

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: various

If I search an untagged Bible for Eve, I get the results on the left; if I search for the Logos tagging of person:Eve, I get the results on the right.

How did we go from 5 hits in 5 verses to 89 hits in 28 verses?

The Factbook entry for Eve shows us:

28 times a pronoun refers to Eve. In grade-school terms, the antecedent of the pronoun is "Eve".

27 times the implied subject of the verb refers to "Eve"

2 times in Hebrew and 3 times in Greek, the name "Eve" is used.

The remainder of instants are divided to two types:

  • words or phrases that are synonymous with Eve e.g. "mother of all", "mother of all living"
  • words that take their meaning from the context e.g. "his wife", "woman"  (the linguistic term for this is deixis)

So what does Logos tagging do for us?

  • When the same name is used by multiple people (people & places), Logos assigns the "right one"
  • When a group name is used e.g. disciples, Logos assigns the "right individuals"
  • Where a pronoun is used, Logos assign the "right antecedent"
  • Where an implied subject is used, Logos assigns the "right subject"
  • Where a descriptive phrase is used as a synonym, Logos assign the right "base synonym"
  • Where a term or phrase is used that is context sensitive, Logos assigns the "right referent"

In each case, there may be ambiguity - Logos shows only one option which you may disagree with.

In each case, there may be a layer of Christian theology added to the Jewish text which you may disagree with or simply find unhelpful.

In each case, there is the possibility of Logos making an error in the coding.

WARNING: LOGOS CODING NOT BIBLE TEXT should mentally be applied to most Logos results.

And realize that this coding is what makes Logos so powerful, and texts so expensive.

Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."

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