Data Sets - Senses: The Lamb of God

If I understand correctly the way the Bible Sense Lexicon works an entry may have more than one original language word. For 'lamb (year old)' there are two entries — ἀμνός and ἀρνίον

The Bible Sense Lexicon has an entry for 'The Lamb', a theological title which refers to Christ as the sacrificial lamb for sin.

However in that entry it only lists the greek word ἀρνίον whereas, I believe, there should be also ἀμνός and πάσχα. From what I read the either of the words ἀμνός and ἀρνίον can be used interchangeably by NT writers for a lamb.

Every occurrence in the NT of ἀμνός (Jn 1:29, Jn 1:36, Ac 8:32, 1 Pe 1:19) has the sense of the the greek word ἀμνός having the (extra) meaning of 'Lamb of God', clearly and particularly in John.

For πάσχα, Paul obviously in 1 Corinthians 5:7 has made the connection and transition from the Jewish concept of the Passover (lamb), a year old lamb, to Jesus.

It would seem to me for the reasons above that the Bible Sense Lexicon entry for 'The Lamb' should include all three greek words.

Have I misunderstood the tool?

(Also I saw while researching this that the entry for sheep is also wrong as it lists ἀρνίον which is greek for lamb)

EDIT: Also while looking at Mark Barnes video I see in the Bible Facts tool for the entry for Jesus in the 'Referred To As' section that the verses from John are omitted.

Behold, the Lamb of God

²⁹The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, ^xthe Lamb of God, who ^ytakes away the sin ^zof the world! ³⁰This is he of whom I said, ^a‘After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.’ ³¹I myself did not know him, but ^bfor this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel.” ³²And John ^cbore witness: ^d“I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and ^eit remained on him. ³³I myself did not know him, but ^fhe who sent me to baptize ^gwith water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, ^hthis is he who baptizes ^gwith the Holy Spirit.’ ³⁴And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.”

Jesus Calls the First Disciples

³⁵The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples, ³⁶and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, “Behold, ⁱthe Lamb of God!”

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Keep Smiling 4 Jesus :)

Behold, the Lamb of God

Using Logos 5.0a Beta 2 on OS X 10.8.2 concur John is noticeably missing while Revelation has 27 references for ἀρνίον

Another example is missing many Hallelujah's (Praise Yah):

Keep Smiling [:)]

Adam Crafton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/427247#Comment_427247

How do I get this view? In the right panel I can't get the word graph you have. . .there is nothing below "The Lamb".

Keep Smiling 4 Jesus :)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/427286#Comment_427286

How do I get this view? In the right panel I can't get the word graph you have. . .there is nothing below "The Lamb".

Logos 5.0a Beta 2 has the view with graph that includes dots so can click on them to expand graphical sense:

Keep Smiling [:)]

MJ. Smith

For πάσχα, Paul obviously in 1 Corinthians 5:7 has made the connection and transition from the Jewish concept of the Passover (lamb), a year old lamb, to Jesus.

If you run the Bible sense on Paschal lamb you'll get the Corinthians and Luke occurrences. The Bible Sense Lexicon is a linguistic tool not an interpretative tool so that it does not make the leap from the grammatical language to the figurative language.

Mark Keaton

Hi, Patrick.

Let me see if I can address some of the issues you've raised.

First, the Bible Sense Lexicon team's convention about how to usefully describe the meaning of proper titles ("Lamb of God," "Word of God," etc.) was finalized around the time I started tagging Revelation. Thus, you'll notice a higher percentage of consistent tagging for such occurrences in the book of Revelation.

Second, that means our curators need to review the tagging of proper titles to ensure that it meets our new conventions (which is going to happen as we begin to tag verbs).

Third, that's why we love forum users who pore through our data sets to find inconsistencies like this, so we can fix them sooner rather than later!

As to your specific examples:

Jn 1:29 and Jn 1:36 definitely fit the convention for the sense, "The Lamb of God." I will add those to the database.

Ac 8:32 is a simile ("like a sheep"), meaning that the text is trying to make a comparison to a real-life sheep being sheared with real-life shears. If I change the sense to be the Lamb of God, then the simile falls apart. ("Like 'a title of Jesus Christ especially understanding Him as a sacrificial lamb' he was led to the slaughter"?)

The same goes for 1 Peter 1:19.

1 Cor. 5:7 is the most difficult case you've brought up, and I admit that I'm going to have to think about that one some more. I don't have a firm answer for you right now.

Thanks again! And let me know if you find anything else.

Tommy Miller

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/427804#Comment_427804

Thanks again! And let me know if you find anything else.

Mark,

Thank You for your response.

Another issue occurs in the Bible Facts tool under the entry "Jesus." The "Role" section only shows Jesus as carpenter, rabbi, high priest, prophet/seer, and teacher. But I am surprised that His role of "King" is not mentioned. The three great roles of Jesus as Prophet and Priest and King are fundamental to theology--far greater than His place as a carpenter to be sure. Was this merely an oversight or was there another reason for excluding this important Role of the King of all kings, and Lord of all Lords?

Patrick S.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/427590#Comment_427590

For πάσχα, Paul obviously in 1 Corinthians 5:7 has made the connection and transition from the Jewish concept of the Passover (lamb), a year old lamb, to Jesus.

If you run the Bible sense on Paschal lamb you'll get the Corinthians and Luke occurrences. The Bible Sense Lexicon is a linguistic tool not an interpretative tool so that it does not make the leap from the grammatical language to the figurative language.

Sorry but where do you get 'Pascal lamb' being one of the entries in the Bible Sense Lexicon (BSL)? It is not there...

Also if I do a BSL lookup on Passover lamb, there are only shown 2 entries where πάσχα is translated as Passover lamb...

but there are actually three in the NT (query = 'passover NEAR lamb') where it is directly translated as 'Passover lamb' — Mark 14:12; Luke 22:7; 1 Cor 5:7 — Mark is missed, so that seems another error — Logos please note.

The Bible Sense Lexicon tool is, as I see it, is not just a lexicon (of words) but is also clearly attempting taxonomy and classification, grouping entities into smaller & more specialised groups — similar to what is done by biological sciences. For example this diagram represents the taxonomy of living things.

and this, for example, is the taxonomy of humans.

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
Family: Hominidae
Genus: Homo
Species: Homo sapiens

I don't want to get into a side discussion of humanity, biological relations etc. suffice to say that the BSL tool is undertaking taxonomy.

By virtue of that it is unavoidably an interpretive tool because someone has to decide how to classify entities. I trust we can agree on that point.

In the BSL people (persons) have the following taxonomy classification:

entity
+ physical entity
++ object
+++ whole (assembly)
++++ living thing
+++++ person

Screenshot:

we don't see the whole taxonomy for the person entity as the BSL shows just four levels at once.

So if we agree that the BSL is, loosely, a taxonomy tool we can then look at what benefit it is looking to provide for us (I should say at this point that of course this is all my conjecture and understanding of what I think Logos is doing, I could be [way] off base).

Looking at the entity entry for 'person' on the left we see all the original language words which translate to (concept or actual translated English word?) 'person'.
Below that we see the hits list by Bible book
On the right we see all entities which Logos has classified under the parent taxonomy of 'person'

Obviously there is a lot of interpretive (and subjective) decisions which go into how to classify objects.

Where then can we see difficulties which can arise:

One of the entities classified under — entity | physical entity | object | whole (assembly) | living thing | person — is terror (object). Normally it would be difficult to classify an abstract entity like 'terror' as a sub entity of 'person'. One of the words used 'φόβητρά' is in Luke 21:11 "And there will be terrors and great signs from heaven"
Double classifications — under person there are the entities 'person age' & 'person quality'. Then 'person age' is also sub-classified under 'person quality'. Screenshot below. Apart from the difficulties of having an entity duplicated there is the fact that 'person age' is really objective, as in it just happens, whereas all the other entities — celibate, daring, empty head, forceful, good etc. — seem more subjective. Where there are these double entity situations I see that there is no original language list or hits graph on the left.

Then we have the special case of Jesus where Jesus' words in Luke 9:18 challenge us afresh. If we look at the BSL entry for 'Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth' we see this:

Firstly: I know we may not want to be 'Bible thumpers' but really... the description of Jesus seems a bit watered down and 'post modernist' to me. Can we at least say something like that His death and resurrection form the bedrock of the Christian belief and faith.

Then how many attributes/entities can/do we ascribe to Jesus, should they be limited to His human form, pre and/or post resurrection, pre and/or post eschatological. Rear and forward prophetic titles - king, suffering servant, king of kings, Lord. All of these have actual words in the Old & New Testaments.

I think the Bible Sense Lexicon is a tool with great potential — I look forward to seeing where Logos (along with us users) can take it.

Patrick S.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/427804#Comment_427804

Hi, Patrick.

Let me see if I can address some of the issues you've raised.

First, the Bible Sense Lexicon team's convention about how to usefully describe the meaning of proper titles ("Lamb of God," "Word of God," etc.) was finalized around the time I started tagging Revelation. Thus, you'll notice a higher percentage of consistent tagging for such occurrences in the book of Revelation.

Second, that means our curators need to review the tagging of proper titles to ensure that it meets our new conventions (which is going to happen as we begin to tag verbs).

Third, that's why we love forum users who pore through our data sets to find inconsistencies like this, so we can fix them sooner rather than later!

As to your specific examples:

Jn 1:29 and Jn 1:36 definitely fit the convention for the sense, "The Lamb of God." I will add those to the database.

Ac 8:32 is a simile ("like a sheep"), meaning that the text is trying to make a comparison to a real-life sheep being sheared with real-life shears. If I change the sense to be the Lamb of God, then the simile falls apart. ("Like 'a title of Jesus Christ especially understanding Him as a sacrificial lamb' he was led to the slaughter"?)

The same goes for 1 Peter 1:19.

1 Cor. 5:7 is the most difficult case you've brought up, and I admit that I'm going to have to think about that one some more. I don't have a firm answer for you right now.

Thanks again! And let me know if you find anything else.

Hi Mark

Thanks for follow up — I saw your post while I was writing my (long) reply to MJ Smith. I am looking forward to seeing where the BSL goes to, it has great potential — but also great potential to become a lexical quagmire (so to speak). Good luck and all the best as you and the team work on it!

For your comments about not including similes, can see the difficulties, 'like' is not the same as 'is'.

For 1 Cor. 5:7 yes it's a tricky one because it moves into a concept and the other word πάσχα. However obviously there is the consistent, and developed, thought and concept of the Passover (Paschal) Lamb which was clearly ascribed to Jesus.

It's been around for a while [:)]

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/427963#Comment_427963

where do you get 'Pascal lamb' being one of the entries in the Bible Sense Lexicon (BSL)?

Sorry, I automatically switched to my standard vocabulary. You are correct

the description of Jesus seems a bit watered down and 'post modernist' to me.

This is confusing what the tool is intended to do. It is strictly linguistic. It does not "describe" Jesus at all - it gives the literal semantic meaning of words in the grammatical context of other words. It does not try to unpack the rhetorical tools used. In this case I don't know what you mean by "post modern" - this is a standard computational linguistic tool so I'd say post-computer.[:)]

Can we at least say something like that His death and resurrection form the bedrock of the Christian belief and faith.

We certainly can say that but not via this tool which is why I suspect that you don't quite understand the tool.

Take the sentence "He nailed it". This tool tries to assign a particular definition sense to the word "nailed"

Let's say that the sentence continues "he nailed it to the wall" - we then know it is sense 1 of the verb. Then the sense lexicon might say that "tapped" is a gentler version of "nailed" and make tap a child of nail. It might also say that "fasten" is a broader term than "nailed" and make nailed a child of "fasten". That is what the Bible Sense Lexicon does - exactly that and only that.

The Bible Sense Lexicon tool is, as I see it, is not just a lexicon (of words) but is also clearly attempting taxonomy and classification

Ultimately, I hope that Logos can include non-hierarchical functions as well as do most single language wordnets/sense lexicons

Obviously there is a lot of interpretive (and subjective) decisions which go into how to classify objects.

There is in the same sense that there is in building a dictionary. But the intent is not to go beyond what one would due for a dictionary. Think of it as taking all the senses given in a dictionary and connecting them via a limited set of relationships - is a part of, is a kind of, is the same as ... i.e. tagging as synonyms, antonyms, meronyms, hypernyms, ...

David Thomas

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/427994#Comment_427994

It does not "describe" Jesus at al

I believe this is the definition that prompted the concern

Patrick S.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/427994#Comment_427994

where do you get 'Pascal lamb' being one of the entries in the Bible Sense Lexicon (BSL)?

Sorry, I automatically switched to my standard vocabulary. You are correct

I thought you had slipped into Catholic and I was pretty sure the BSL was strictly evangelical [;)]

the description of Jesus seems a bit watered down and 'post modernist' to me.

This is confusing what the tool is intended to do. It is strictly linguistic. It does not "describe" Jesus at all - it gives the literal semantic meaning of words in the grammatical context of other words. It does not try to unpack the rhetorical tools used. In this case I don't know what you mean by "post modern" - this is a standard computational linguistic tool so I'd say post-computer.

Can we at least say something like that His death and resurrection form the bedrock of the Christian belief and faith.

We certainly can say that but not via this tool which is why I suspect that you don't quite understand the tool.

I am meaning specifically the description of Jesus on the left of the 'Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth' entry. It is the BSL describing Jesus with words that came from somewhere, nothing in this case to do with linguistics or lexicon. So I am saying that the BSL description of Jesus:

"a teacher and prophet born in Bethlehem and active in Nazareth; his life and sermons form the basis for Christianity"

(which is not taken from the Bible, someone wrote it, see my screenshot in previous post) is post-modernist in the sense that it sounds post-modernist giving the feeling that Jesus was a nice guy who said some nice things, but he was just a guy, there are gods but no GOD sort of feeling. My Jesus is quite a bit more 'awesome' than that description.

It's not even literally factual "active in Nazareth" — what, Jesus never did much outside of Nazareth?? I know He wasn't a jet-setter but I believe he was active further than Nazareth [;)]

I do believe I get the gist of the tool, I do also believe it is early days for it, and because I think it can/will be a good tool I am keen to get input into the Logos team.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/428013#Comment_428013

I believe this is the definition that prompted the concern

Ah .. well because of:

the linguistic nature of the tool
the usefulness of Logos to a non-Christian (read Jewish) market
history of the development of the understanding of the Trinity

I read over the definition with neery a blink. I can see a number of users having a very different response - but I still can't make it "post-modern". I'll blame that on Logos - I pre-ordered a book on post-modern theology which they later combined into a package. The package has been delivered but those of us who had ordered the single volume are still waiting. Maybe if I had it I'd see how the "post-modern" tag fit.[:D]

David Thomas

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/428033#Comment_428033

the usefulness of Logos to a non-Christian (read Jewish) market

The idea that one must use language that is intentionally broad and non-offensive (even at the expense of what I conclude to be Truth) is a concept that many evangelicals struggle with when we attempt to dialogue with "post-modern" (read as "truth is all relativistic") individuals.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/428045#Comment_428045

that is intentionally broad and non-offensive (even at the expense of what I conclude to be Truth)

Whereas I see the language as precise - reflecting only what is in the text. I see nothing untrue in the statement. Nor do I see the statement attempting to provide the whole Truth. Nor do I see "truth is all relativistic" as a defining characteristic of post-modern - I would define post-modern as "we can't experience the world outside of our sensory experience and our mind seeking to make sense of that experience." You can see why I often struggle to make sense of what many evangelicals are trying to say - despite having a father who was a long-term deacon and a grandfather who was a preacher in a Church of Christ Church. [Admittedly Dad's background also included a Finnish-Lutheran mother, an Irish-Catholic grandmother, and a good dose of Mennonite turned Church of Christ).

Patrick S.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/428033#Comment_428033

Ah .. well because of:

the usefulness of Logos to a non-Christian (read Jewish) market

If our Jewish friends can put up with the rest of Logos resources shouting from the rooftops that Jesus was/is the Messiah then I don't think a description of our Lord more befitting to Him in the BSL is going to turn them away from using Logos. [:)]

The idea that one must use language that is intentionally broad and non-offensive (even at the expense of what I conclude to be Truth) is a concept that many evangelicals struggle with when we attempt to dialogue with "post-modern" (read as "truth is all relativistic") individuals.

I wouldn't put faithful Jewish folk in the post-modern camp, our challenge reaching out to them is different, but as regards pernicious post modernist philosophy, as you say the tenet that 'truth is relative' is one of their core positions. Pontius Pilate (John 18:38) would feel right at home.

I am reading a good book on the topic at the moment — James R. Edwards "Is Jesus The Only Saviour" link.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/428063#Comment_428063

If our Jewish friends can put up with the rest of Logos resources shouting from the rooftops that Jesus was/is the Messiah then I don't think a description of our Lord more befitting to Him in the BSL is going to turn them away from using Logos.

I didn't make myself clear. If I were Jewish, as my cousin's wife is, I would expect a linguistic tool to be precisely that - linguistic. In the same sense, I expect algebra to be algebra not geometry.

Patrick S.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/428072#Comment_428072

If our Jewish friends can put up with the rest of Logos resources shouting from the rooftops that Jesus was/is the Messiah then I don't think a description of our Lord more befitting to Him in the BSL is going to turn them away from using Logos.

I didn't make myself clear. If I were Jewish, as my cousin's wife is, I would expect a linguistic tool to be precisely that - linguistic. In the same sense, I expect algebra to be algebra not geometry.

I feel we're digressing a bit here and I get the feeling that you may be misreading me. Without the possibility of face-to-face dialog to understand each other I believe it's best that we just agree that both of us basically, spiritually, are pointing in the same direction.

Regarding the BSL I also expect and want to see it be precise, and I trust it will achieve its goal. It's various linguistic and taxonomic points I was bringing up with the Logos staff member. Regarding the description of Jesus (which again is nothing to do with the linguistic and taxonomic function of the tool) I believe it can be improved. Given that it is a Christian linguistic and taxonomical tool I don't believe we should be apologetic in wanting to see a full and accurate description of Jesus.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/428098#Comment_428098

I believe it's best that we just agree that both of us basically, spiritually, are pointing in the same direction.

Agreed.

Sean Boisen

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/428120#Comment_428120

There's a lot of good discussion here. I'd like to respond to a few points.

"Hallelujah": we haven't done these kinds of verbal expressions yet
For 1 Cor 5:7, since we're primarily annotating senses at the lexical level, I'd argue the sense of πάσχα itself is still a "Passover lamb". The larger linguistic appositive phrase is a reference to Jesus (envisioned as the Passover lamb), but that's not the lexical semantic level. For the same reason, we've annotated that word as an instance of the biblical thing "sheep, ram, lamb".
for the roles in Bible Facts (which are distinct from senses in Bible Sense Lexicon), we've generally chosen roles that reflect recognized societal activities. Jesus clearly has many significant (and unique) roles, but few of those were recognized and accepted by his immediate contemporaries.
it's entirely correct to say that one of our goals has been a taxonomic classification of the senses in the lexicon (the "superstructure"). This does indeed involve some subjective analysis, and you don't have to accept our taxonomy (which is distinct to some extent from the individual senses, though it clearly influences them). We've tried, however, to make the hierarchy consistent with something that a thoughtful speaker of Hebrew or Greek would accept (for example, see the sense "small moving thing", which reflects the Hebrew conception expressed in the Genesis creation account). In addition, we've worked very hard not to lose those places where Greek and Hebrew have fundamentally different conceptions (different ways of expressing the ideas of soul and spirit are a good example). There are also places where we're still refining the hierarchy: BSL is still a work in progress.
because of the enormous amount of work involved in creating a "sense lexicon", we've built on the work of the WordNet project at Princeton, which has invested 20 years of effort in the task of creating a broad semantic description of English. Some of our definitions (like Jesus) still need revision beyond their WordNet starting points: no post-modernism is implied or intended.

Thomas Jackson

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/428889#Comment_428889

Sean,

For the record, regarding the BSL, does Logos view it as a Christian linguistic and taxonomical tool?

Thomas

DMB

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/428889#Comment_428889

Reading Sean's reply above, kudos!

When people say 'Christian' they very often don't think too far from the mainline groups. In this specific case, a young sheep of God probably isn't thought of as literal by a listener/reader in the 1st century. But there are few instances like this. 'Cross of Christ'. Literal or figurative?

As Logos proceeds to add codings, I can guarantee this is just the beginning, unless they keep a fairly tight lid on meaning vs implied meaning. Just reading through the apostolic fathers, quite often they're using a literal meaning and not 'ours'.

Sean Boisen

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/429138#Comment_429138

Sean,

For the record, regarding the BSL, does Logos view it as a Christian linguistic and taxonomical tool?

Thomas

I'd certainly say it's an appropriate Bible study tool that Christians can use with confidence, and there is no particular denominational or exegetical agenda driving it, so there's no reason to be nervous about it. Our primary goal has been to describe linguistic meaning at the word (and occasionally phrase) level, doing our best to analyze that as the readers of the biblical text would have done in their own contexts. For the NT, that's primarily Christians of course. But we haven't, for example, attempted to read a NT understanding back into the OT senses: that's the proper domain of deeper exegetical approaches like theologies and commentaries, not a semantic lexicon. Neither are we applying any "critical methods". In that respect BSL is like Louw-Nida's Greek Lexicon (only extended to Hebrew and with common senses across the entire Bible where that seemed appropriate), rather than TWOT or TDNT, for example.

I'd expect a valid exegetical approach of any flavor to start with an understanding of the narrow and direct meaning of the text (like BSL). From there I'd expect such theological resources to move on and bring together their OT/NT/modern/whatever perspectives with the text itself. But we're not doing that, and this is not a theological lexicon. There may still be cases where the Christian perspectives of the authors have leaked into the definitions, and i don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, it's just not our primary goal.

If there's something else behind the question, i'd like to know what it is, to ensure i'm answering appropriately.

Patrick S.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/429138#Comment_429138

For the record, regarding the BSL, does Logos view it as a Christian linguistic and taxonomical tool?

Well the tool is just a tool (quantitative), it is how the tool interprets the content that we get into subjective (qualitative) things. Like which 'Christian' (creed) are we referring to?

Like a car — it's tool in one sense, however you can have people drive it sensibly or drive it like a maniac.

Patrick S.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/429369#Comment_429369

Thanks for the clarification Sean.

The statements "there is no particular denominational or exegetical agenda driving it', and "Our primary goal has been to describe linguistic meaning at the word (and occasionally phrase) level, doing our best to analyze that as the readers of the biblical text would have done in their own contexts" make clear the goal of the tool and should help allay any fears regarding 'colouring' of content.