Dubious links betwen Bible Sense Lexicon & Topic Guide

Whilst not related solely to BSL this nevertheless adds to my doubts about the veracity and usefulness of the Sense Lexicon (noting that it is not entirely about bible senses).

  • I started with a Topic Guide on Fellowship, and found there is no link to BSL
  • BSL offers Participation Fellowship with much the same verses as Related Verses in TG.
  • BSL links to TG Companionship & LN 34.5

LN 34.5 is koinonia, which is in the Lemmas section, but Companionship is a made up topic:-

There is no value in this topic with no definition and no (directly) Related Verses. BSL should point to Fellowship.

Dave
===

Windows 11 & Android 13

Comments

  • DMB
    DMB Member Posts: 14,632 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Those Bible references look suspiciously in sequence. This beta must be a massive update.

    "If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.

  • Sean Boisen
    Sean Boisen Member, Logos Employee Posts: 1,452

    Whilst not related solely to BSL this nevertheless adds to my doubts about the veracity and usefulness of the Sense Lexicon (noting that it is not entirely about bible senses).

    ...

    There is no value in this topic with no definition and no (directly) Related Verses. BSL should point to Fellowship.

    There are a couple of points to make here.

    • You don't have Topic Guide content for Companionship, but other people do: ISBE and "Where to Find It in the Bible" both have linked content, so i'm guessing you don't own these resources (if you do, there's a bug).
    • All of our topics are "made up" in a manner of speaking: they're derived from our analysis of > 50 dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other subject-oriented reference works. But there is no "right" collection of topics: only more or less useful ones. We're continually trying to improve the usefulness of this data set, so your feedback is helpful.
    • Like Louw-Nida, the Bible Sense Lexicon is an analysis of lexical semantics. That's a different beast than topics, with some overlap, but a lot of differences: for example, we have thousands of topics that don't represent biblical words at all. So any mapping between the two is bound to be a little noisy.
    • I agree that the BSL sense for "participation fellowship" should link to the Topic Guide for Fellowship. We'll correct that data (which is distinct from both senses and topics). I'm not trying to be pedantic here, only pointing out this is not a reason to lose confidence in either of those data sets.

    [Note to others: these BSL/Topic Guide links are in 5.1b Beta 1, so you may not see them. The 5.1b release for all users will probably happen by the end of the month.]

  • Dave Hooton
    Dave Hooton MVP Posts: 36,339

    • You don't have Topic Guide content for Companionship, but other people do: ISBE and "Where to Find It in the Bible" both have linked content, so i'm guessing you don't own these resources (if you do, there's a bug).
    • All of our topics are "made up" in a manner of speaking:

    I used the term "made up" because I have AYBD, both ISBE, both Harper's and 20 other "bible dictionaries" together with the Sept 2013 update of LCV, but there is no topic for Companionship. The Basic Search's Topic section only lists "Where to find it in the bible" and points to a TG on Companionship! However, that resource is a Concordance and they are not considered to provide adequate Definitions for TG, so that section has no resources. The Collections section has no resources because I don't include it in my collection (it needs to be rated  3 stars or better)!

    I agree that the BSL sense for "participation fellowship" should link to the Topic Guide for Fellowship. We'll correct that data (which is distinct from both senses and topics). I'm not trying to be pedantic here, only pointing out this is not a reason to lose confidence in either of those data sets.

    Clause Search & BSL really frustrate me (and others) because they are difficult to use or difficult to relate to actual/expected bible words. I appreciate that a bridge is being made with this beta but the links needs to be well chosen. To illustrate the point I expect to find other examples fairly easily, but it is quite discouraging to do so. Now, if you were to hire me for a few months I could easily clear up these issues together with all the outstanding metadata problems[:D]

    Dave
    ===

    Windows 11 & Android 13

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

    there is no topic for Companionship

    If you have ISBE, you should have this: logosres:isbe;hw=Companion

    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!

  • Dave Hooton
    Dave Hooton MVP Posts: 36,339

    there is no topic for Companionship

    If you have ISBE, you should have this: logosres:isbe;hw=Companion

    Ahh, no --> ISBE 1915  (Ages & Logos editions)

    Dave
    ===

    Windows 11 & Android 13

  • NB.Mick
    NB.Mick MVP Posts: 16,328

    there is no topic for Companionship

    If you have ISBE, you should have this: logosres:isbe;hw=Companion

    Ahh, no --> ISBE 1915  (Ages & Logos editions)

    Logos has (at least) three editions of ISBE 1915, which I found when looking at Reading List Kenosis last week:

    The current Logos edition (left) has much more indexes and search fields than the Ages edition (right)

    plus there's the Revised Edition Mark was pointing at.

    FWIW I'll copy the article (actually more like a concordance/mini word study entry for AV and NEB translations):

    COMPANION; COMPANIONSHIP [Heb qārôḇ] (Ex. 32:27); AV, NEB, NEIGHBOUR; [rā‘â] (Prov. 13:20; 28:7); NEB “mix with,” COMPANY; [rē‘â] (Jgs. 11.37f); AV also FELLOW; [rē (a)‘] (Job 30:29; Ps. 38:11; 45:14; 122:8); AV, NEB, also FRIEND; [meyuddā‘] (Ps. 88:8, 18); AV ACQUAINTANCE; NEB also FRIEND; [mērē (a)‘] (Jgs. 14:11, 20; 15:2, 6); NEB ESCORT, GROOMSMAN; [’allûp̱ (Ps. 55:13); AV, NEB, COMPANY; [’aḥ] (Jer. 41:8); AV BRETHREN; NEB “the others” [ḥāḇēr] (Ps. 119:63; Cant. 1:7; 8:13; Prov. 28:24; Isa. 1:23); NEB COMPANY, FRIEND, “confederate with”; “no better than” (Prov. 28:24); [ḥaḇereṯ] (Mal. 2:14); NEB PARTNER; [Aram ḥaḇar] (Dnl. 2:13, 17f); AV FELLOW; [Gk synékdēmos (Acts 19:29): NEB TRAVELLING-COMPANIONS. The Hebrew terms denote relationships of varying degrees of closeness. The verb rē‘â, on which several terms are based, means to “have dealings with,” while the verb ḥāḇar means to “be joined.” The companions of Jgs. 14:20 and Ps. 45:14 performed the specific duties, respectively, of best man and bridesmaids.

    G. WYPER (from: Geoffrey W. Bromiley, ed., The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Revised (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1979–1988), 754. )

    which is actually a bit confusing - nonetheless becaus there's a larger and more readable article on Fellow by Donald McKim (updating the old ISBE's entry on this)  

    Have joy in the Lord! Smile