Search for the non-existence of a search term

Harry Hahne
Harry Hahne Member Posts: 948 ✭✭✭
edited November 2024 in English Forum

I sometimes want to be able to find instances where something does NOT exist. I don't believe Logos allows a NOT operator, except in combination with another search term.

Situation 1: Search for chapters of Bible NOT containing a word

I wanted to find all chapters of the Gospels that do NOT contain the Greek verb πιστεύω.

Since a Basic search searches by chapter in Bibles, I did the following search:

          (([field bible, content] <LogosMorphGr ~ N????>)

          ANDNOT ([field bible, content] <Lemma = lbs/el/πιστεύω>))

This search works, but it highlights all of the nouns in the chapter. Is there any cleaner way to do this?

Situation 2: Search for verses of the Bible NOT containing a word

I want to find all verses in the Greek New Testament without any verb (such as Matthew 1:1).

Again, the only way I can find is to search for a search term that exists (such as a noun) and then add the ANDNOT to exclude a verb. I did this with a Morphology search as follows:

          @N ANDNOT @V

This finds what I want, but it highlights all of the nouns. Is there a way to do a search for verses without a verb without highlighting the nouns?

My workaround for this is to create a passage list from the search results.

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Comments

  • Mark Barnes
    Mark Barnes Member Posts: 15,432 ✭✭✭

    You could potentially create passage lists from a basic search by exporting to Excel, and creating a new column based on the Reference column —the formula would be =LEFT(A2,FIND(":",A2)-1), although that would mess up single chapter books. You could improve that with an IF if you needed to, or just correct them manually. Then paste the new column into your passage list.

    Other than that, you're already doing the best that's possible.

    This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!

  • Situation 1: Search for chapters of Bible NOT containing a word

    ... This search works, but it highlights all of the nouns in the chapter. Is there any cleaner way to do this?

    Conjunctions occur less often than nouns so one idea to highlight fewer words is:

    ([field bible, content] <LogosMorphGr ~ C?>) ANDNOT <sense to believe (accept)>

    FYI: 155 chapters in the NT have <sense to believe (accept)> while all 260 chapters have conjunctions.

    Keep Smiling [:)]

  • Harry Hahne
    Harry Hahne Member Posts: 948 ✭✭✭

    " rel="nofollow">Keep Smiling 4 Jesus :) said:

    Conjunctions occur less often than nouns so one idea to highlight fewer words is:

    True. This would be helpful for a chapter search. But I guess I will have to stick to nouns for the verse search. I just wanted to find out if there was something I was overlooking about a true NOT search.