BSL Interpretive question

Just saw this, while exploring the BSL:

The example given is "the fear of Isaac" yet at that place (Gen 31:42, 53), the Sense (in the RI) is given as "dread (cause of)." One wonders how to pursue this sense from the BSL back to the Scripture text, or even if it exists in the OT text (notice 0 hits). Since it doesn't, why it is reported as an option here?

I would also question the appropriateness of the designation "The Fear God." Certainly in Gen.31:42,53, "fear" is a metonym for God, but how it functions that way, via the idiom "fear of God" is not represented well by this designation (IMHO).

But then, maybe this is a left-over from an earlier, now discarded schema, and just needs to be removed from the database.

BTW, I would also question "dread (cause of)" there, perhaps the other designation "fear (respect)" would be better.

Off topic (a bit): I'd even question whether "fear (respect)" is the best way to understand how the idiom "fear of God" actually functions in the Hebrew and by extension Greek texts. I would argue that it has more to do with "yielding to the authority and power of" than the more accepted idea of "awe," or "respect," since the context is typically in reference to obedience, and rarely in reference to prayer or worship. But that would be a long and laborious discussion.

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Comments

Jeremy Thompson

Our convention about whether or not we were going to deal with proper nouns was a bit in flux at one time because we didn't want to overlap with Biblical people. I don't remember if this may have been from around that time or not, but it could have been. I've gone in and made the definitions of "dread (cause of)" and "The Fear (God)" a little clearer in terms of the reverence aspect as well as tagged "The Fear (God)." It wasn't clear that reverence is part of what we meant by the words "fear" and "dread" in our current definitions.

As per the 0 results, in some cases, we have been leaving those in as possible meanings for word study purposes. Especially in the case of rare words, there may be more than one possible meaning suggested in current lexica and we wanted to be able to provide those in case someone looks at our tagging feels like we were incorrect.

On the off-topic part of the post, as you mention, I think respect or awe is probably widely accepted. Since we were doing data curation, if there was a generally accepted view, that is what we followed in the vast majority of cases. It was a great temptation, though, to get pulled into many long discussions. [:)]

Rich DeRuiter

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/409562#Comment_409562

As per the 0 results, in some cases, we have been leaving those in as possible meanings for word study purposes. Especially in the case of rare words, there may be more than one possible meaning suggested in current lexica and we wanted to be able to provide those in case someone looks at our tagging feels like we were incorrect.

What's difficult to do from the BSL is to pursue a particular sense in a word study type of environment. I can do a BWS from an original language term, but I'm not sure how to do a study on a particular sense. Perhaps this feature is still in development.

On the off-topic part of the post, as you mention, I think respect or awe is probably widely accepted. Since we were doing data curation, if there was a generally accepted view, that is what we followed in the vast majority of cases. It was a great temptation, though, to get pulled into many long discussions.

I'm sure. And I agree that it's best to stick with the most widely accepted ways of rendering this idiom (even if it's not my the best way [:P]).

Jeremy Thompson

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/409567#Comment_409567

I think the part of BSL that is still in development is the sense concordance feature - the ability to choose a sense and see everywhere that we've tagged a word or phrase as such. Once that is available, the BSL will be like a dictionary (definition), thesaurus (the set of Hebrew and Greek words that express the meaning in the definition), hierarchy (where each sense inherits the meanings of all the senses above it in its own particular hierarchy), and concordance (all the places we've tagged a particular sense) all rolled up into one.

Rich DeRuiter

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/409573#Comment_409573

I think the part of BSL that is still in development is the sense concordance feature - the ability to choose a sense and see everywhere that we've tagged a word or phrase as such. Once that is available, the BSL will be like a dictionary (definition), thesaurus (the set of Hebrew and Greek words that express the meaning in the definition), hierarchy (where each sense inherits the meanings of all the senses above it in its own particular hierarchy), and concordance (all the places we've tagged a particular sense) all rolled up into one.

That will be amazingly cool, as well as extremely useful. Can't wait!

Jack Caviness

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/409573#Comment_409573

Sounding good.