Interactive Media: Psalms Explorer

What is it?

Explore all 150 Psalms like never before. With the new interactive Psalm Explorer you can find the answers you need quickly by filtering the Psalms by genre, structure, author, and theme. Discover every Psalm written by David, all the Psalms about trust, Psalms for weddings, and much more.

How does it work?

Doing a research paper or Bible study on a really specific topic? No problem—in seconds, filter out all the Psalms written by Asaph, in a petition form, and about thankfulness. You can also compare the Psalms side-by-side with the Hebrew text, expose the structure of the Hebrew poetry, and see the use of parallelism of each line of text.

The interactive Psalm Browser takes the guesswork out of Bible study, so you can find the answers you need, fast.

Where can I learn more?

Watch the Psalms Explorer in action.

How do I get it?

The Psalms Explorer feature is available in Feature Crossgrade and Gold level base packages and higher.

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Comments

jonB

If this was the only new feature in Logos 6, it'd be worth the money I just spent to upgrade. Being able to see what's happening in the Hebrew poetry is amazing. Great job guys!

spitzerpl

I beta tested L6 and thought this feature was pretty cool too.

DAL

I upgraded because of all the new resources on all of my Base Packages and because of this cool feature too. I'll start teaching selected psalms in two weeks and I already have an introduction and the psalms that I'll be teaching. This tool is going to add so much more to the teaching and learning experience for my sessions. I'm confident the audience will benefit greatly from this too!

DAL

Allen Browne

We were discussing the Psalms Explorer in another thread, where it was suggested I post here:

Psalms Explorer looks fascinating. Love the Overview mode! It's a great way to graphically show the balance of genres etc--something that's not easy to do in a collection as large as Psalms. I'll certainly use this tool when teaching Psalms next year.
.

Detail mode wasn't quite as intuitive for me, e.g. a) I didn't quite follow the coding for parallelism. b) The Go To box didn't always work as expected (e.g. if I type in Psa 89). c) Right-clicking and choosing Copy didn't give me a useful result when I pasted into MS Word. Hebrew alongside English was nice.

Rick Brannan replied:

... The bottom left corner of the Psalms Explorer has an "About & Bibliography" link.
There are some more details on the terminology there, as well as other sources to follow up on. Regarding parallelism stuff, Adele Berlin's article "Parallelism" in Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary has some more information (vol 5 pp. 155-161).

I look forward to experimenting with this new tool further.

Fr Devin Roza

Thanks for this. A couple of feature requests:

1. The ability to Print/Export

2. Please add a tag for "Chiastic Structure" to be able to filter by psalms that have a chiastic structure.

Also, it is strange that this interactive has the "Link Set" option and the "Send Hyperlinks here" option, but neither work.

GregW

2. Please add a tag for "Chiastic Structure" to be able to filter by psalms that have a chiastic structure.

[Y]

kimberly north

I just purchased the Logos 6 software and would like to know how to use the feature that shows you the chiasms that are in scripture. Would you know how to do this? Thank you. Kimberly

Schumitinu

Bob Pritchett asked the following question here: https://community.logos.com/forums/p/92701/652860.aspx#652860

What are you enjoying most -- the sorting of the Psalms and Proverbs by facet, or the structured analysis of the Psalms?
What specific behavior should we offer for other books/genres? (In addition to letting you sort/organize the whole Bible by genre and other facets.)

I don't know whether this got discussed further at a different place in the forums. As I haven't found anything, maybe we can further discuss it here.

Both aspects, the sorting by different facets and the structured analysis are very helpful. I'd like to see something like that done for one of the prophets. Isaiah would be my choice. It had a lot of themes that could be tracked/explored and it is written mostly in the form of poetry with some narrative in between. So this would lend some interesting material to do structural analysis with.

Schumitinu

Kimberly,

Welcome to the forum! The structure analysis is done for the Psalms in the Psalms Explorer (similarly you can sort the Proverbs according to Form in the Proverbs Explorer). The Psalms Explorer is in the Gold Base Packages and higher, or in the Logos 6 Feature Crossgrade.

To access the structure analysis in the Psalms Explorer open it. Then choose the Psalm of your interest by clicking on the bubble or type the reference into the reference box on top of the window. In the new window it now displays the text of the psalm. You now have several choices. First, next to the reference box you can change the Bible version to be displayed. Then next to the Psalms Title you find three options. The first one says "Hebrew". If you click on it, it opens the Hebrew text parallel to the English text. Clicking on "Parallelism" shows a visual filter with the parallelism markup in the text. And clicking on the "Structure" visualizes the structure of the whole psalm. Now if you open the side panel again you'll find at the very bottom a link that says "About and Bibliography". If you click there it opens a little guide to the Psalms Explorer. In there you not just learn some about different forms of parallelisms but also about the three main structure categories. Not all Psalms will have a chiastic structure.

Hope this helps. Enjoy Logos 6!

Greg Vruggink

Deleted. Issue resolved.

Scott Groethe

I interact with the Psalms daily while using the BCP Daily, and today Psa 97 was one of the choices.

Looking at the structure in Psalms Explorer for Psa 97 there is no chiastic structure, the lack of which I noticed in some commentaries. The structure that Logos suggests, that is one possibility for sure but maybe not the best one.

Acc. to bestcommentaries.com TOTC is the best for Psa 97 and they have this 1-5 (They fiery presence), 6-9 The prostrate gods, and 10-12 (The radiance of the righteous), which I think makes more sense.

WBC says the Psalm probably has two sections but could have three or even five.

Everyone has their opinions and sources but in my opinion, TOTC, WBC and even New Bible Commentary (though concise good at structure) are very good when discussing structure in Psalms.

Rick Brannan (Logos)

Thanks for the feedback, Scott. If the Psalms Explorer is helping with thinking through the options (and there are many for just about every Psalm) then it is meeting its primary goal.

On Psalms considered chiastic in the Psalms Explorer, we primarily referenced Alden's series of articles in JETS:

[quote]Alden, Robert. “Chiastic Psalms (I): A Study in the Mechanics of Semitic Poetry in Psalms 1–50” ( Journal of the Evengelical Theological Society vol. 17, issue 1, 1974, pp. 11–28)

———. “Chiastic Psalms (II): A Study in the Mechanics of Semitic Poetry in Psalms 51–100” ( Journal of the Evengelical Theological Society vol. 19, issue 3, 1976, pp. 191–200)

———. “Chiastic Psalms (III): A Study in the Mechanics of Semitic Poetry in Psalms 101–150” ( Journal of the Evengelical Theological Society vol. 21, issue 3, 1978, pp. 199-210)

We also referenced Terrein's commentary in the Eerdmans Critical Commentary series when considering strophic boundaries:

[quote]Terrien, Samuel. The Psalms: strophic structure and theological commentary (2003:Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.)

Scott Groethe

Is there a way to have Faithlife to be the author for Psalms Explorer so users can make suggestions or comments using the "Ask the Author" feature?

Pat Callahan

I'll add my vote for some way to export this. This would be an INCREDIBLE resource to be able to display, print, etc. when I am teaching a class.

EastTN

I'll add my vote for some way to export this. This would be an INCREDIBLE resource to be able to display, print, etc. when I am teaching a class.

I would too. I'm currently teaching a class on the Psalms, and I'm basically not using this tool because there's no way to produce visuals or handouts to use with the class. The information isn't unique - the ability to display it visually is. Unfortunately, if I can't share it with my class, it's essentially useless to me as a teacher.

Parker Windle

I like this tool but recently it hasn't been working. When I bring it up it's a blank screen and I've been trying to figure out how to bring up the content. Am I missing something obvious or is there a problem?

Graham Criddle

Hi Parker - and welcome to the forums

When I bring it up it's a blank screen and I've been trying to figure out how to bring up the content. Am I missing something obvious or is there a problem?

I've just tried it and it works fine for me.

This is quite an old thread so please start a new one in the Logos 7 forum (assuming you are running Logos 7) and we'll try to work out what is going on.

Graham