Intersection of search results and lectionary?
I'd like to research where a word or topic is addressed in a lectionary. I'm hoping some of you advanced users can point me in the right direction. Here's the scenario:
Let's say I'm studying grace. I can easily search my Bible for greek:χάρις and come up with a list of references to consider. Since my church follows the Revised Common Lectionary, it would be helpful to know which (if any) of the verses containing a hit will be read during worship at some point as we work our way through the lectionary.
If I were looking for just a single reference, it ought to be easy to search for that passage within the RCL and find any instances where it occurs. But I when I try this with passages I know are included in the lectionary, I get no results. Is my search formatted incorrectly? Regardless, I can't think of a way to take the results of a previous search and use them all as the references for a new search.
I also know it's possible to create Passage Lists from multiple searches, and then merge them. If I had a Passage List containing all of the references in the lectionary, I could use an Intersection merge to find just the ones that include the word χάρις. And really, when you think about it, lectionaries aren't much more than specialized Passage Lists. It ought to be easy to perform this sort of comparison, but if there's a way, I haven't thought of it yet.
So what do you say, search gurus? If there's a method to perform this, I'd love to learn from you. And if there's not, well... in that case, I guess I need to make a request for it, don't I? 
Thanks for your thoughts!
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Hi Bob
A couple of thoughts:
Bob Schaefer said:But I when I try this with passages I know are included in the lectionary, I get no results. Is my search formatted incorrectly?
When I try and execute your search string it seems to be tied to the NRSV - exactly what search string are you using?
Bob Schaefer said:If I had a Passage List containing all of the references in the lectionary,
What you should be able to do is use the Print/Export capability to export sections of the RCL to a text file and then generate a Passage List from that. You should then be able to do the intersection.
(I suggest sections of the RCL as the whole resource goes over the 100-page limit)
I tried this using the Advent section from Year A (2010-2011) and got some strange results!
It all seemed to work but the resultant passage list didn't contain any verse information. The first entry in the text file is Isaiah 2:1-5 but the first entry in the resultant Passage List is for Isaiah 2. I don't understand why this happened! Interested to see how you get on.
Graham
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Thanks for the reply, Graham.
Graham Criddle said:When I try and execute your search string it seems to be tied to the NRSV - exactly what search string are you using?
I noticed that, too. The string for that search was <BibleNRSV = Lk 2:7>. I didn't type that string in directly, since I couldn't recall the syntax. Instead, I pulled up the context menu for Lk 2:7, selected Reference and then Search entire library. That produced the query you see, with plenty of hits. From there, I changed the dropdown selector from Entire Library to the RCL. No hits this time.
It looks as though Logos includes the name of the Bible in the string when searching this way (i.e., <BibleLEB = Lk 2:7>), but the results are identical regardless of which Bible is chosen. For that matter, the string <Bible = Lk 2:7> also produces the same results. None of the above will provide any hits for the RCL, or any of the other lectionaries.
Graham Criddle said:What you should be able to do is use the Print/Export capability to export sections of the RCL to a text file and then generate a Passage List from that. You should then be able to do the intersection.
It's not a bad suggestion... just probably not practical, considering the scope of the three-year lectionary cycle. [:(]
Since you mentioned some weirdness in your resulting Passage List, I thought I'd try it out and see what happened. I copied the RCL for Advent (Year A) to the clipboard, and made a new Passage List from it. Mine had the proper reading from Isaiah 2:1-5... don't know how come your results were different:
So far, so good, at least for the limited test of searching the Advent readings.
Next, I ran a search for <Lemma = lbs/el/Χριστός> in the NRSV, which produced 499 hits. I exported these to a new Passage List. Finally, I merged my Advent Passage List with my search Passage List, using the Intersection method. This produced no results at all:
Clearly, this is not correct. There should have been four intersections here, from readings in Romans and 1 Corinthians.
I'm at a loss to explain any of this. Even the piecemeal workaround of exporting the lectionary a little at a time doesn't seem to work. Can others help clear this up?
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Hi Bob
Bob Schaefer said:Since you mentioned some weirdness in your resulting Passage List, I thought I'd try it out and see what happened. I copied the RCL for Advent (Year A) to the clipboard, and made a new Passage List from it. Mine had the proper reading from Isaiah 2:1-5... don't know how come your results were different
I tried copying to the clipboard - as opposed to a file - and it worked as for you. So let's leave that issue for now!
Bob Schaefer said:Clearly, this is not correct. There should have been four intersections here, from readings in Romans and 1 Corinthians.
Yes I got the same.
It looks as though they only match if the references are identical - not if one is a subset of the other. Does that explain what is going on?
Graham
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Graham Criddle said:
It looks as though they only match if the references are identical - not if one is a subset of the other. Does that explain what is going on?
I think you're right on the money here, Graham. To keep with the lectionary theme of this thread, I found a lesson where there is an opening verse, followed by several verses which are omitted - the Second Sunday of Easter in Year A. When exported to a Passage List, this produces a separate entry for the standalone verse, followed by another one for the remainder of the reading. (Not the most helpful way for Logos to handle this sort of a passage citation, I think, but so be it - it's helpful for testing your hypothesis.)
I then did a search for <Lemma = lbs/el/Πέτρος> in the NRSV, since Peter is named in the standalone verse, and created a Passage List from the results. After merging the lectionary and search Passage Lists, I had the following result:
Based on what we've attempted so far, there seem to be a number of separate issues preventing me from doing the search I'd like to do:
- There's no automatic way to do it. [:O] Seriously, though, having to create multiple temporary Passage Lists that need to be cleaned up afterwards just to do this sort of comparison is kludgy.
- There's no practical way to create a Passage List for the entire RCL, with which the search results can be merged.
- Even if it a complete RCL Passage List could be completed and merged with the search, it looks as though the merge behavior is problematic - it only counts a verse as intersecting if the range matches precisely. That will eliminate essentially all the intersection we're looking for.
- It's not even possible to search the lectionaries for a Bible reference the same way other resources can be searched, so the references can't even be checked manually, one at a time.
Now, if I've managed to list four reasons why I can't do what I want, the chances are better than average that there's a simple way to do exactly what I want, if only I weren't too dumb to see it. [:D] So if anyone has ideas, please keep them coming!
Thanks, Graham, and everyone else!
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Hi Bob
Bob Schaefer said:It's not even possible to search the lectionaries for a Bible reference the same way other resources can be searched, so the references can't even be checked manually, one at a time.
Sorry, I had missed this one - but I think this is possible as below:
Am I missing something?
Bob Schaefer said:Even if it a complete RCL Passage List could be completed and merged with the search, it looks as though the merge behavior is problematic - it only counts a verse as intersecting if the range matches precisely. That will eliminate essentially all the intersection we're looking fo
I guess the question here is whether this is how the PL intersection is supposed to work.
Graham
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Based on your results, Graham, I've posted a new question, since it's not directly related to this thread. I wanted to link to it, though, so that you were likely to see it: http://community.logos.com/forums/p/30169/223259.aspx
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Step 1: Highlight a portion of the lectionary - I highlighted a year at a time to avoid long waits
Step 2: Copy highlighted portion using right-click
Step 3: Paste into passage list (be sure to be in compact mode regardless of the screen shot)
Step 4: Enjoy results
Step 5: (optional) sort list
Step 6: build search and enjoy results
Note I just used Year A for the illustration - I got bored highlighting and, yes, I could search on the English "grace" but it looked like the Greek lemma is what you really wanted. You can make a separate passage list from the search which would be all the occurrences of the lemma in the lectionary. I'll spare you the details as to why the lectionary is not completely reliable as it is technical stuff that doesn't seem to bother most people.
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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Hi MJ.
Thanks for looking at this - I had forgotten about searching on a Passage List!
Graham
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Bob Schaefer said:
Based on your results, Graham, I've posted a new question, since it's not directly related to this thread. I wanted to link to it, though, so that you were likely to see it: http://community.logos.com/forums/p/30169/223259.aspx
Thanks Bob
Very interesting!
Graham
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MJ,
Thanks! Your technique of using a Bible search with the Passage List as the limiter does the trick. I wouldn't have ever come up with that.
My only question is how you managed to copy an entire year of the RCL? Going through the Print/Export menu only gave me the readings up until Easter for a single year, although I had selected the entire year. This is just the copy-protection limitation of this feature, I'm assuming.
So did you actually just click and drag through RCL until you had highlighted an entire year? I can highlight about four weeks per minute using this method, which means I'd be dragging for a good 13 minutes before I highlighted one whole year of RCL. I'm assuming I must have misunderstood how you managed to copy all this text - I sure hope you didn't spend that much time highlighting to come up with an answer for me!
Thanks for the clarification.
-B.
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I divided the year into two parts Advent to Easter day; Easter to end of year. I didn't double check to make sure I got everything so it may be safer to divide into 3 parts. You are correct that you can't do it all at once.
My mouse has a speed drag feature otherwise I would highlight an item, hold down the shift key and use my mouse on the scroll bar to quickly scroll to my break point.
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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