Confusion over intent of senses

MJ. Smith

In using the senses (BWS or Word Sense Lexicon) for the distinction between chronos and kairos, I became confused as to where the Greek division of senses (as opposed to English) steps in. My understanding:

Kairos: "The term then has the sense of a “decisive moment,” again with positive, neutral, or negative implications, though the positive one of fortune is the most common.

Chronos: "1. This word has first the general sense of “time” or “the course of time” or “the passage of time.”
2. a. It then means a “section” of time.
b. A related sense is a “measure” or “span” of time, a “limited time.”
3. A further meaning is a “point of time,” a “date.”"

Gerhard Kittel, Gerhard Friedrich and Geoffrey William Bromiley, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 389 (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1985).

What I don't see is where I'm supposed to see that branch in meaning in the sense diagrams. Is this a problem in the display or in my understanding of how Logos built the sense network?

Sean Boisen

This is a good example for illustrating how the Bible Sense Lexicon is organized.

In our analysis, chronos expresses two distinct senses (there's a third you'll see in the next update), whose labels in BSL are:

• time period (distinctive)
• time delay

The second is a more specific sense underneath the first, which is underneath (that is, "a kind of") the sense labeled "time period ~ day".

Kairos expresses three distinct senses: the relevant one here is "time period ~ day", defined as "a period of time; whether specified or unspecified". So the two senses expressed by chronos are more specific than this sense expressed by kairos.

The other two senses expressed by kairos (with labels "occasion (event)" and "festive season") are in a different branch altogether. The only way to see how the senses of chronos and kairos (as occasion) connect up is to walk up the two hierarchies. In this case, their common parent is "measure (quantity)", and they diverge as follows:

• measure (quantity) >  fundamental quantity > time period ~ day > time period (distinctive)
• measure (quantity) > moment (instant) > moment (point) > time (suitability) > occasion (event)

Some of these intermediate levels (like fundamental quantity) don't have source language lemmas that express them, but serve to organize the tree.  We're working on a graph-based visualization to make this easier to see and explore.