Timeline - Unacceptable "Biblical" tagging

When Logos 5 was just released the first thing I did is to check timeline. After I pressed on Biblical, I saw only few results; no birth of Jesus, and other major Biblical events. Understanding the L5 was just released I gave a break hoping that after the short period of time it would be fixed. After a year past by, 5.1rc3, has still the same issue, I must admit that it is unacceptable anymore. Sorting so many events, I CANT JUST LOOK AT BIBLICAL EVENTS ALONE...

Here are examples of Jeremiah:

"All" events through filter

Here is Jeremiah with "Biblical"

Now, lets see the life of Jesus through "All" filter

And here is the Life of Jesus by pressing "Biblical"

Notice, NO BIRTH OF JESUS. It was mentioned on the forums before, but nothing is fixed. If the birth of Jesus is unbiblical what else could be Biblical???

LOGOS TEAM PLEASE MAKE "BIBLICAL" TIMELINE USABLE. THANK YOU!!!!

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Comments

Milford Charles Murray

Peace and Blessing, Wild Eagle! *smile*

By opening the timeline and using Ctrl-F (windows!) ... the software took me to three(!) possible dates for Jesus' Birth

Rick

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/502158#Comment_502158

By opening the timeline and using Ctrl-F (windows!) ... the software took me to three(!) possible dates for Jesus' Birth

Did you have the Biblical filter clicked? My program shows the same results as Wild Eagle's when it is selected. To clarify, it does not appear (according to the timeline) that Jesus' birth was a Biblical event.

Wild Eagle

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/502158#Comment_502158

Peace and Blessing, Wild Eagle! *smile*

By opening the timeline and using Ctrl-F (windows!) ... the software took me to three(!) possible dates for Jesus' Birth

Peace and Blessing, Milford, please press on "Biblical" and then try to search. The point is that I do not want to use search to see Biblical data, I just want to press on "Biblical" and see it there, then otherwise what is the point of "Biblical" function? So far its useless

Milford Charles Murray

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/502165#Comment_502165

Blessings, Rick! *smile*

I had "All" checked ...

Here is a screenshot of one of the three I found ...

Milford Charles Murray

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/502169#Comment_502169

Thanks to both of you! *smile* I DO -- INDEED! -- see what you mean ....

have to go now and will "reflect" on this later ........... however, this seems to be --at the very least-- "a work in progress"

Thanks much for sharing!

Psalm 29:11

Rich DeRuiter

And here is the Life of Jesus by pressing "Biblical"

Notice, NO BIRTH OF JESUS. It was mentioned on the forums before, but nothing is fixed. If the birth of Jesus is unbiblical what else could be Biblical???

This looks like a bug.

The timeline data is gathered from data in sources you have on your system that are tagged as time-line data. Whatever Logos is using to filter out all but "Biblical" is not working as designed. I can see from perusing the data (and following the links), from the two schemes that some data from one source (Tyndale Bible Dictionary), includes some data from a table (on p.277) in the "All" scheme that is not included in the "Biblical" scheme. That is, part of the data is included in the Biblical scheme, some isn't. In fact my copy of that resource shows a corrupted table display there (see below).

But there are other resources that also contain some data for "All" that is not included in "Biblical." In the cases I checked, there is an issue of multiple dates being suggested. It's possible that the algorithm used to extract the data for the Biblical display is excluding ambiguous dates.

If the issue is not a bug in the data tagging/mining that Logos does, the only other explanation is that Logos is making some conscious editorial decisions here. I would not expect that to be the case, but it is possible.

In any case, this is something that needs to be addressed.

Milford Charles Murray

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/502177#Comment_502177

Peace, Wild Eagle and Rick and Richard!

Methinks this is indeed a problem; and I urge Logos to begin to correct it!

Peace and Blessing to all!

*smile*

Joseph Turner

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/502177#Comment_502177

Maybe the biblical data is made up of hard dates found in resources labeled as "Bible," while all other data comes from secondary resources. Just a thought; I haven't really played with the timeline.

Rich DeRuiter

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/502185#Comment_502185

Maybe the biblical data is made up of hard dates found in resources labeled as "Bible," while all other data comes from secondary resources. Just a thought; I haven't really played with the timeline.

If you hover your click with mouse cursor over the right place on the circle or extended line, the source(s) for the data is given. Click on the link and you are taken to the place in the resource the data comes from. In the example I gave above, it seems that in at least one place, data from a single table is both included and excluded from what Logos displays as "Biblical."

So however Logos is generating that data, it doesn't seem to be resource specific. Either the data is being manually tagged as "Biblical," or an algorithm is determining this. In either case, something isn't working as expected.

EDIT: fixed a typo.

Joseph Turner

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/502188#Comment_502188

I see now. [Y]

Mark Barnes

When you choose the "Biblical" filter in the timeline, you are asking the tool to only display the timeline events that are linked to any event in the Bible Facts tool. Although the tools are very similar in their use, they've been created quite differently.

The events in Bible Facts have been created manually by Logos editors going through the Biblical text and pulling out the important events and trying to put them in chronological order, and grouping them together. They don't try and put dates to any of those events.

The events in the Timeline have been culled from entries in Biblical dictionaries and similar resources. The criteria for inclusion in the timeline is that one of the supported Bible dictionaries suggests a date for that event. If there's no date, it's not included (which is why many events in the Bible Facts tool are not included in the Timeline).

So you therefore have two separate databases that contain similar pieces of information, but aren't directly related. Logos have therefore attempted to create links between these two databases, and have done so for 180 events. These are the events that you see when you choose the Biblical filter in the Timeline.

So, why is "Birth of Jesus" not included when you choose the Biblical filter in the timeline? That, I can't tell you. There's an event "Jesus is born in Bethlehem", but it's not linked. I can only guess at possible reasons. It could be that the linking happened semi-automatically and the names of the events in the Timeline and Bible Facts tool are too different for the algorithm to spot the similarity. But I don't really know. But what is clear is that Logos need to put some work into linking these two databases properly, in order that they can be properly utilised.

Sean Boisen

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/502199#Comment_502199

Mark's account here is correct: there are two different sets of time-aligned data, created by different processes, and then linked together. When they're linked, you'll see "Open Timeline" in the Bible Facts panel

and in the Timeline popup, you'll see a description of the event.

Clearly "Jesus in born in Bethlehem" in Bible Facts and the Timeline Event of the same name should be connected: sorry for this omission. We'll review these connections to add any that obviously belong together (many don't line up given the different sources of the data).