New sense searches and interpretation

Jim Snowden

Sorry if this question shows too much of my ignorance on how the new Logos 5 datasets work !

From my understanding the new datasets and associated clever searches are the result of a lot of human work to put together sensible associations between words etc. Because of that I am wondering how dependent these datasets and searches are on the theological persuasions/interpretive methods of the people involved in creating the data sets?  

I'm getting the impression the searches are not straightforward mechanical searches and I suppose would like to know a bit about the academic/theological credentials of those involved in creating them. Or perhaps the way the data sets etc are created does not depend on this at all?

Jim

 

Rich DeRuiter

Sorry if this question shows too much of my ignorance on how the new Logos 5 datasets work !

From my understanding the new datasets and associated clever searches are the result of a lot of human work to put together sensible associations between words etc. Because of that I am wondering how dependent these datasets and searches are on the theological persuasions/interpretive methods of the people involved in creating the data sets?  

I'm getting the impression the searches are not straightforward mechanical searches and I suppose would like to know a bit about the academic/theological credentials of those involved in creating them. Or perhaps the way the data sets etc are created does not depend on this at all?

Jim

Good set of questions.

All things Logos does should be considered to come from a mostly center-of-the-road US Evangelical position. That's a generalization, but as a generalization, it's generally true. I don't know what the credentials are for all who worked on the projects, but we do know that some in the Logos Biblical/Theological departments hold Masters and PhD degrees in their fields.

As far as the results go, most often theological bias doesn't come into play. It's quite certain that things like "Jesus said, '[something]'" will be attributed to Jesus. City names and places are generally connected to those places accepted by biblical archeologists. Where ambiguity exists this is often (but not always) noted.

Sometimes a judgement call is made about something in a data set, and later one of us disagrees with it. When we have made this known, Logos has shown an openness to include perspectives it does not always agree with.

You should also note that this is still a project in process. While much of it is done, some of it is still being finished. So this is a very good time to get the data sets, examine them and suggest changes, should you see any.