List of Greek toponyms in the LXX, how to create one?

Hi Logos,

Recently I bought Logos Bible Software Platinum and till so far I have enjoyed working with the software. However, one of my reasons for acquiring the software was my intention to use it within my PhD research and I expect it will suit that purpose very well. Unfortunately, I have a very specific challenge for an article I am currently writing, which I hoped to use the software for. But I was not able to do the magic for this specific issue.

Context

My specific issue is this: I am on the way writing an article for an academic journal. The research question is can we estimate the probability of palaeographical confusion of letters in textual variants? As a case study I use the list of nations in Acts 2:9 and esp. the occurrence of Judea (for which a lot of discussion exists). In a previous study, I developed a computer algorithm which can estimate the probability of palaeographical confusion by scribes (see here if you are interested). For the present article, I would like to ‘reverse engineer’ this process and therefore I need toponyms from the New Testament, Classical resources and the LXX (which is used by the writers of the New Testament as Scripture).

Issue

The issue is the following: I tried to create a list of all toponyms occurring in the Septuagint. Therefore I queried the Analytical LXX on Swete’s edition but I found it very difficult to see whether my results were comprehensive, neither was I able to create a list with word forms in nominative and accusative form (I need the last for my analysis).

I am aware of the Biblical Places Dataset (and that it is indirect available, i.e. embedded / tagged to a number of resources). However, it would be very helpful to either receive a dump of all the Greek toponyms you have tagged in the Swete’s Analytical LXX in nominative and acusative form or to receive a step-by-step guide to create one myself.

Is there an easy way to do this?

It would be really appreciated, if you can lend me a hand!

Vincent van Altena, the Netherlands

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Comments

Martin Wetzel

Hi,

maybe the concordance-tool (biblical entities->places) can show you, if your list of places is comprehensive.

For single places, morph search is useful, e.g. all results for 'Jerusalem' in acusative form: root:Ιερουσαλημ INTERSECTS <LogosMorphGr ~ NA???>

Vincent van Altena

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1069367#Comment_1069367

Thanks Martin,

Concerning the Concordance tool: I went that path already, but to my surprise I found out that depending the version I use, the concordance tool yields very different results:

The LXX Swete seems most promising to me (considering Lexham's own versions are closest in number).

? Does someone know how to perform a morph search on multiple instances (all 1056 at once)?

Mark Barnes

Does someone know how to perform a morph search on multiple instances (all 1056 at once)?

Vincent,

You've bumped into one of the more frustrating limitations of the Biblical entities dataset — that it's not possible to use wildcards (e.g. we can't just search for all mountains, or all places). The concordance is the workaround.

In the NT we could use Louw-Nida ranges to give us a list of all places — but that's not available in the LXX.

So how can we get a list? I have two suggestions, depending on whether you want explicit on implicit places included (e.g. if the text says "the mountain" but means Sinai, do you want it included or not?)

If you want only explicit places, my suggestion will require a fair bit of manual work in step 3, and may leave some gaps:

Do a search for indeclinable proper nouns: <LogosMorphGr ~ XP>.
Save to a Word List.
Delete the non-place names (use the list in the Concordance tool to help you if you're not sure of some names).
Export the word list to Excel.
Copy the Lemma column to the clipboard, and paste into Word as text (or use a Text Editor).
Search and replace all the line endings with ", lemma:" (without the quotes). In Word you should put "^p" in the Find box (without the quotes).
Manually edit the first lemma to the same format.
Paste the resulting text into your Logos Morph search and execute the search.

If you're happy to include all places, the methodology is similar:

Do a Concordance and filter by place names.
Export to Excel.
Copy the "Biblical Entity" column to the clipboard, and paste as text into Word (or your Text Editor).
Search and replace all the line endings with ">, <Place " (without the quotes).
Manually edit the first and last place name, and remove the header text.
Paste the resulting text into a Bible search and execute the search.

I tried method two, and got some strange results. For example, συναγωγή in Genesis 1:9 is tagged as "Any Place". It might be an idea to delete that entity, along with "Any Region", "Any City or Town" and "Any Village" from your list before you do the find/replace.

<edit>You could combine the two searches. This seems to work very well.</edit>

Put the search criteria from method 2 in parentheses (it's easier to do this in Word).
Append " INTERSECTS <LogosMorphGr ~ XP>" (without the quotes).

If you want to compare the tagging in different versions, you could export these searches to Word lists or Passage lists, and then merge them.

Rick Brannan (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1069390#Comment_1069390

I tried method two, and got some strange results. For example, συναγωγή in Genesis 1:9 is tagged as "Any Place". It might be an idea to delete that entity, along with "Any Region", "Any City or Town" and "Any Village" from your list before you do the find/replace.

Just remember: Faithlife have not tagged the Hebrew canon portions of the LXX with person/place/thing (BK) data, when you search you're searching the person/place/thing analysis of the Hebrew text that is aligned to the LXX. Many times they represent the same entity, but there is no guarantee they will or that they will even make sense.

Mark Barnes

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1069417#Comment_1069417

Just remember: Faithlife have not tagged the Hebrew canon portions of the LXX with person/place/thing (BK) data, when you search you're searching the person/place/thing analysis of the Hebrew text that is aligned to the LXX. Many times they represent the same entity, but there is no guarantee they will or that they will even make sense.

That's the sort of thing that MUST be properly documented. (There's currently no formal documentation for Bible Knowledge data.)

The data itself also needs to be fixed if Logos is going to continue to be used in the academy. Logos' reverse-interlinear data is going backwards with regard to differences between versions.

Vincent van Altena

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1069440#Comment_1069440

Thank you Mark and Rick for your help and caveats. For my specific use case, this approach will do.

However, I do agree with Mark's remarks about proper documentation of the limitations of BK datasets as well as his plea for providing reliable datasets suitable for academic research.

Joseph Sollenberger

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1069442#Comment_1069442

Vincent, thank you for providing the link to "Spatial Analysis of New Testament Textual Emendations Utilizing Confusion Distances." That quick read made my morning. In the past I did a bit of work applying similar visualization tools to computational chemistry data sets— it brought back wonderful memories. If I were age 20 again, I could imagine that the kind of work you are doing would grab my attention as a possible career path. Well done, sir.

Shalom,

Joseph

Vincent van Altena

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1069445#Comment_1069445

Thank you, Joseph!