Verbum Tip 5b: Bible Search -- add Bible version; sequence and proximity operators

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modified 26/1/2021 per Dave's notes

Bible Search – add Bible version

Add a version to results

This function does not search an additional version, rather it shows the results in a second version. Think search the Greek and display Greek and an English translation.

Click on “+ Add Versions” and add translation(s):

This results in three columns:

• NRSV which was searched and provides the resulting references
• NABRE readings for the NRSV verses
• ESV-CE readings for the NRSV verses

Sequence and proximity operators

From Verbum Help:

[quote]Sequence Operators

Sequence operators force the query terms to be in a particular order within the result:

BEFORE this BEFORE that — The left term must appear before the right term in the result.

AFTER that AFTER this — The left term must appear after the right term in the result.

WITHIN love WITHIN <Culture Marriage> — The smaller left term must appear within the bounds of the larger right term. The left term his highlighted in results and the right term is not.

ANDEQUALS this ANDEQUALS that — The left and right side are both present, and indexed to exactly the same location. ANDEQUALS is useful for searching interlinears and reverse interlinears.

It is also useful for joining together constraints consisting of the lemma, root, and/or morphology to match a single word within a morphologically tagged resource.

•     <Lemma lbs/el/ἀπόστολος> ANDEQUALS <LogosMorphGr ~ NNSM?> — Find words whose dictionary form is apostolos and are marked noun, nominative, singular, masculine

Note that the Morph Search has specific shortcut syntax for this very common kind of search: lemma:ἀπόστολος@NNSM.

NOTEQUALS love NOTEQUALS lemma:ἀγάπη — Find terms that are not at the same location. This is useful in reverse interlinear Bibles, for example, to find places where a word in translation does not arise from a given lemma or morph.

Proximity Operators

Proximity operators force the query terms to be a certain distance apart within the result. They may also imply a sequence. The distance between two terms is specified with a number and a unit.

Available units are:

•     CHAR or CHARS — Counts characters from the end of the left term to the first character of the right term. So, two words separated by a single space are 2 CHARS away from one another.

•     WORD or WORDS — Counts words from the end of the left term to the position of the right term. So, two adjacent words are 1 WORD apart, and “son” and “man” in “son of man” are 2 WORDS apart.

The number of CHARS or WORDS can be specified as either a number (2 CHARS) or as a range of a minimum number and maximum number (1–10 WORDS). Note that the count is inclusive of the right term, so a distance of 1 CHAR means the right term begins the very next character after the left term ends, that is, zero intervening characters. (This is useful for searching for Hebrew morph segments, such as inseparable/prefixed prepositions.) A distance of 1–10 WORDS means the right term is as few as one or as many as ten words away. (I.e. There can be as few as zero or as many as nine words in between the left and right term.)

The proximity operators are:

BEFORE _distance_ son BEFORE 2 WORDS man — Will match “son” before “man” with one word in between.

AFTER _distance_ man AFTER 2 WORDS son — Will match “man” after “son” with one word in between.

WITHIN _distance_ suffering WITHIN 1-10 WORDS glory — Will match “suffering” and “glory” in any order with zero to nine words in between.

NEAR suffering NEAR glory — Equivalent to WITHIN 1–48 CHARS (within 8 or 10 words on average).INTERSECTS {Speaker <Person Jesus>} INTERSECTS faith — will find everywhere Jesus talked about faith.

Example: Find a sequence of lemmas that corresponds to the phrase “in Christ Jesus”:

In Morph Search: lemma:ἐν BEFORE 1–4 CHAR lemma:Χριστός BEFORE 1-4 CHARS lemma:Ἰησοῦς

In Bible or Basic Search: (<Lemma = lbs/el/ἐν> BEFORE 4 CHARS <Lemma = lbs/el/Χριστός>) BEFORE 4 CHARS <Lemma = lbs/el/Ἰησοῦς>^[1](mismatched parens corrected)

The most common mistake in using the proximity operators is to forget what the count is against. From Dave Hooten:

[quote]The count of words or characters is always against the manuscript/surface words; whether an original language bible or a translation. The same applies to the order of words. Character count (CHARS) includes spaces and punctuation, so the minimum count between words is 2 CHARS.

You can use this to get a different context for "Lord Jesus Christ" e.g. Lord BEFORE 3-3 CHARS Jesus BEFORE 1 WORDS Christ will retrieve results with punctuation after Lord.

For translations with a reverse interlinear, results for <Lemma = lbs/el/ἐν> BEFORE 4 CHARS <Lemma = lbs/el/Χριστός> BEFORE 4 CHARS <Lemma = lbs/el/Ἰησοῦς> will be affected by word order. For example, NRSV translates Gal 5:6 as "For in Christ Jesus"  vs "in for Christ Jesus" (Greek word order). The NET translates Phil 2:5 as "Christ Jesus had" rather than "in Christ Jesus" (where NRSV = Greek word order).[2]

To illustrate how these functions, we will use the elements that will be used in the post’s search.

Basic elements:

• Jesus (the actual word not a reference to the person)
• <Person Jesus> (reference to person)
• Christ (the actual word)
• <Person Christ> (reference to person)

Jesus occurring before Christ

Let us begin by reminding ourselves of the difference between the text search term “Jesus” and the datatype search term <Person Jesus>.

Before example on text terms:

Before example on datatype terms:

It should be obvious that for our purposes we need to use the text search argument. This is a good example on why running partial searches to prove your work is useful.

Christ appearing before Jesus

These two search arguments have the same results:

• Christ BEFORE Jesus
• Jesus AFTER Christ

Jesus and Christ separated by another word

First, I must determine how to Identify Jesus and Christ not separated by another word. I can think of two options:

• “Jesus Christ” OR “Christ Jesus”
• (Jesus WITHIN 1 WORDS Christ)

Using the text phrases yields:

Using WITHIN

Notice the count of results has doubled because Jesus and Christ are counted separately. Both search find the same results in the same 215 verses -- they just count differently.

For the purposes of finding occurrences such as “Jesus the Christ”, I use an arbitrary 5 word to be close enough that I should consider it. This yields:

On could also use NEAR which is within 48 characters, i.e Jesus NEAR Christ. Remember that Bible searches are limited to verses so “near” may be considerably less than 48 characters. This yields:

NEAR picks up one more verse than WITHIN 5 WORDS – but it isn’t a case of interest so either proximity operator will work.

For cases of Jesus near Christ but not adjacent, I can use:

• (Jesus WITHIN 5 WORDS Christ) ANDNOT (Jesus WITHIN 1 WORDS Christ)
• Jesus WITHIN 2-5 WORDS Christ

Which yields:

As a user, I am now in a position to make an informed decision about how I want to handle these two cases.

Search 2: Build searches to find number of times “Jesus Christ” is used vs. “Christ Jesus”.

After having done my homework, I decide that I am not interested in the non-adjacent cases. I might have made a different decision if my Bible was NJB or ESV-CE. Ignoring the non-adjacent cases makes the best searches the simple phrases “Jesus Christ” and “Christ Jesus”. This yields:

“Jesus Christ” is used 138 times compared to “Christ Jesus” being used only 86 times. For personal use, one can bypass the effort of showing your simple search is complete. For quoting the numbers in papers, sermons, or lesson, you need to verify the results are accurate.

One reason that the Logos search seems overwhelming is that there are often multiple ways to get to the same results. If you are building up a search piece by piece, when you have an element working, don’t worry about other ways of doing it. Yes, eventually you may need to factor in performance factors but most users never get to that point.

^[1] Verbum Help (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2018).

[2] From forums Verbum Tip 5b: Bible Search -- add Bible version; sequence and proximity operators - Faithlife Forums (logos.com) first comment