Hebrew Bible Study

I am a Hebrew Bible scholar having most of the Hebrew tools in my Logos 4.

As a test of Logos 4's ability, I would like advice and instructions as to how to get accurate information regarding the number of occurrences of the theological metaphor that relates to God as 'Father' eg Dt 32.6; 2 Sam 7.14; Psalm 2:7, showing all the applicable texts.

Does Logos 4 have this ability for scholarly research?

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

NetworkGeek

Welcome to the forums and Logos Rev. Norman!

I am not a scholar but until some of them see your post <g> I'll endeavor a starter of an answer. I am not sure exactly what you are trying to do, are you interested in searching a particular resource? Or the user of Father in specific grammatical ways?

To show you something, the attached graphic shows a couple of morph searches I did just by bringing up the ESV and the BHS, right clicking on father, and doing a morph search. If you have experience with other tools, if you can explain what specifically you are trying to accomplish it may help us non-scholars try and help with the tool. Have you used another tools morph search before? Are you looking for a particular lemma used in a specific grammatical way (the lemma search I dd below can be modified by many grammar types for example). Or are you more interested in a Strong's search for a particular lemma, also pretty easy to do?

If you have follow on questions I and others will try and help; Logos is very good and their morph and syntax searching does a lot!

Jacob Hantla

If you are looking for Logos to spit out a list of verses where YHWH is alluded to as father (or his people as sons/children), this isn't something that it can audtomaically do (as far as I know).

The way that I would tackle this would be to create a Passage List and start listing out what you already know.

Then simply with your Explorer window open, begin going to each on of those. Make sure your cross-references tab is open. Then start evaluating each one of those and adding them to your passage list. As you look at each one, you will end up with a pretty exhaustive list generated from other people's work.

Running a search like "Yahweh as father" OR "YHWH as father" of your whole library will then bring up some good articles like the following entry in TLOT: logosres:tlot;ref=Page.p_11;off=3272

Finally running searches of your Hebrew Bible for אָב, בֵּן, etc and individually looking at those would be helpful.

This isn't as simple as "running a search" because even then you would be dependent on the interpretation of whoever "tagged" those father, son, child, adopt, etc references to God. Logos is good at speeding up the work and making searches and skimming through your library efficient, but rarely will you want it to "do your work for you."

I hope this is helpful, and even as I wrote this and was interested in what I found, I discovered that I could come up with an exhaustive list (and add a "potential reference" list) very quickly without being wholly dependent on somebody else's work.

Dave Hooton

Does Logos 4 have this ability for scholarly research?

There is Syntax Search which in the OT allows us to search on "Deity", "Divine" as a semantic entity in conjunction with "father". Likewise in the NT, Syntax search allows us to search on Louw-Nida (LN) Semantic Domains (I had no time to explore results). Also use a Bible Search to look for father ANDEQUALS <LN 12> in a Greek bible that has LN numbers like LGNTI.

Jacob Hantla

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/208292#Comment_208292

In case you haven't ever used Passage Lists here's a boring video of me adding some passages to it

http://screencast.com/t/XXqFkXEb

Also, here's how you can create headings within your passage lists to help you organize the findings:

http://screencast.com/t/FuZCNM321vx7

Jacob Hantla

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/208303#Comment_208303

And then finally once you have a pretty good list, string that list together on a search of your library using AND operator like this:

And you'll then discover resources that list these in close relationship, which should immediately get you to discussions of biblical references of the fatherhood of God. You'll get a pretty good list of references to start sorting through: http://screencast.com/t/jArGwwUelYi7

I know this isn't as elegant as syntax searches, etc, but it reveals the power of Logos for the simple minded like me.

Robert Pavich

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/208307#Comment_208307

Dave,

what about the OT? LN numbers don't apply there....is there some OT equiv that you know of?

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/208376#Comment_208376

Dave,

what about the OT? LN numbers don't apply there....is there some OT equiv that you know of?

The Syntax Search is not very fruitful because "Father" is no where tagged as a metaphor for Deity.

Ron Corbett

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/208427#Comment_208427

This may be oversimplifying, but you can do a Search on Father (note the capital F) in Gen-Mal in (your choices of) BIBLES. If you click on the magnifying glass icon in the upper left part of the window you get a drop-down menu. On that menu is an option to match case. [Click on that.] I did a search like this and it returned the places where the Bible translators thought the passage might be referring to God.

The NASB returned 7 hits in 6 passages; The KJV 1900 only one (Isa 9:6); NKJV has 11 hits in 10 verses. [ESV: 7/6 w/out Deut32 reference; LEB: 0; NLT:11/10 - w/ false hits; NIV 10/9 - w/ false hits; HCB: 10/9 w/ a false hit ]

BTW - the ANALYSIS view in SEARCH is a great place to refine searches. You can drag column headings up to the top left and Logos will arrange your results in the order that you arrange them - with categories and sub-categories the way you design them. You can drag Lemma up there first and then Result so that every place where you have a different translation for a lemma it will be sorted under that lemma - with the ability to expand or collapse the different levels.

Robert Pavich

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/208433#Comment_208433

Ron,

that's what I did...it was pretty accurate; though not 100% but very very close.

NNic

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/208433#Comment_208433

Thanks Ron

That has proved helpful although I can't seem to see the ANALYSIS view in SEARCH

NNic

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/208303#Comment_208303

Hi Jacob

Any idea why I can't get sound on your screencast?

NNic

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/208433#Comment_208433

I actually got a result using the Analysis by dragging 'Lemma (Hebrew) and then Results to the top left.

Logos 4 gives 9 results using the ESV for 'Father' in the Analysis window

Kevin Becker

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/208452#Comment_208452

Hi Jacob

Any idea why I can't get sound on your screencast?

If you look at the lower left corner of the video you can see that his microphone is muted.

Jacob Hantla

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/208452#Comment_208452

Hi Jacob

Any idea why I can't get sound on your screencast?

The case sensitive search for "Father" is another good tool, but do not trust searches like that to generate the exhaustive list you are looking for. But it is a helpful tool as you generate your own verse list. There is far too much interpretation necessary in a search like this.

As for the no-sound issue; I was too busy listening to music to narrate the video. I figured it would be relatively self explanatory.

George Somsel

I am a Hebrew Bible scholar having most of the Hebrew tools in my Logos 4.

As a test of Logos 4's ability, I would like advice and instructions as to how to get accurate information regarding the number of occurrences of the theological metaphor that relates to God as 'Father' eg Dt 32.6; 2 Sam 7.14; Psalm 2:7, showing all the applicable texts.

Does Logos 4 have this ability for scholarly research?

I ran a morph search which brought up a bunch of stuff, but I don't think it's what you're looking for. It tend to be what Alt would have called der Gott der Väter and a few other matters such as God's promise to "your fathers."

(lemma:אֱלֹהִים, lemma:יהוה) NEAR lemma:אַב

NNic

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/208771#Comment_208771

Quite right Jacob.

There are no capitals in the Masoretic text and so has been down to someone's interpreation.

Ron Corbett

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/208911#Comment_208911

Quite right Jacob.

There are no capitals in the Masoretic text and so has been down to someone's interpreation.

No capitals ??? What about Jerusalem ???

Ron Corbett

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/208940#Comment_208940

BTW - There are some great videos on ANALYSIS view in the Learn Hebrew and Greek with Logos tutorial videos - which have been reworked and corrected as needed. If you have not gotten these, see what kind of price the sales people can offer you. Especially for one with language skills, these videos open an avenue into the amazing world of Logos' tools.

NNic

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/208940#Comment_208940

The Hebrew does not distinguish the consonant yod.

We're not talking about English Ron

Ron Corbett

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/209203#Comment_209203

Oops. Should have made it clearer that I was only joking

Well, serious (about not forgetting Jerusalem - Psa. 137:5,6), but making a play on words.

Sorry about the unannounced shift.

Jacob Hantla

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/208911#Comment_208911

Quite right Jacob.

There are no capitals in the Masoretic text and so has been down to someone's interpreation.

Not only is there interpretation in the capitalization, but there is also interpretation involved on when a passage is referring to God as a figure, especially when the word Father (or even God/Lord/etc) are not specifically mentioned in the verse.

Regardless, this question was a good example of where a single specific search (no matter how powerful) is probably not the solution, but using a combination of the searching tools, resource integration, and the Passage List feature can make generating the list (and then working with the list) much quicker and more efficient than any other means of which I am aware.

Ron Corbett

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/209827#Comment_209827

there is also interpretation involved on when a passage is referring to God as a figure, especially when the word Father (or even God/Lord/etc) are not specifically mentioned in the verse

I agree too. We would almost need A.I. (artificial intelligence) - which would still require interpretation / editorial skill.

BUT, in most of the passages that did show in the Father search, they DO seem to be fairly easy to judge (in this instance) according to the context. Multiple searches and cross-checking (as you suggest) is the best way to approach this in hopes of a comprehensive list.

Bishop Salamat Khokhar

Hello Mr. Norman

Shalom. Since you have mentioned that you are Hebrew scholar and you are into scholarly research. Do you use Skype? I would like to communicate with you. Appreciate.

Bishop Salamat