Search the Writings of a Specific Church Father?
Hello, brethren,
Using Logos 7, is it possible to search through the writings of a particular Church Father?
I understand that I can add this Father's books to a collection and simply search through that collection, but the problem is that many of these books are compilations of many Fathers. The NPNF, for example, might include the writings of 8 Fathers in a single volume.
What I am looking for is a way to isolate a specific Father so that I could search for every time St. Basil speaks about the Holy Spirit, for example.
Any help is greatly appreciated
I use Verbum with an 8-Core Mac Pro (2013) and a MacBook Pro (2017)
Comments
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try a dynamic collection such as author:Polycarp as what is to be searched ... imperfect but...
eOrthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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FrMoses said:
is it possible to search through the writings of a particular Church Father?
I don't know any specific way to do this. If it were possible to get a list of every reference range for whoever you are searching, then you could search within that range, but putting the list together would not be easy. I know there have been several threads requesting some sort of patristics interactive. If such a resource were ever created, Faithlife could use it to launch a search specific to whatever author is being studied.
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FrMoses said:
What I am looking for is a way to isolate a specific Father so that I could search for every time St. Basil speaks about the Holy Spirit, for example.
I first searched my Apostolic Fathers collection for mention of Basil and found Basil of Caesarea in a TOC; which had a link to an article; which in turn had a link to NPNF 2.8 with an article on the the Holy Spirit. I tried a few searches as there is <Basil> datatype but you can't formulate a search unless you know the article name!
A more focussed method is to search for the TOC and then look for an article e.g. basil AFTER "contents volume", "contents of volume", "table of contents" You can expand that to search for an article e.g. "spirit" AFTER basil AFTER "contents volume", "contents of volume", "table of contents"
Dave
===Windows 11 & Android 13
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Dave, I'm curious as to your results compared to my results:
My method:
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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I was curious what the best Logosian minds would produce.
My way depends how serious you are per author. I routinely copy text out of Logos, and apply more sophisticated searches/analytics. Takes very little time, and I often supplement from other sources, where Logos is light. And if you want, you can bring the authors stacked texts back in a PB for Logos style searches. Plus the PB per author is there for your later use.
That's actually why I got Logos in the first place ... efficient exports and then imports. Bob and Co have been kind to maintain this aspect.
"If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.
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Dave Hooton said:
e.g. "spirit" AFTER basil AFTER "contents volume", "contents of volume", "table of contents"
One search result has Basil in a Chapter 3 article and Spirit in Chapter 4. In contrast, can search for spirit in closer proximity to Basil articles:
([field heading,largetext,surface] spirit) AFTER 88 WORDS ([field heading,largetext] Basil)
Keep Smiling [:)]
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([field heading,largetext,surface] spirit) AFTER 88 WORDS ([field heading,largetext] Basil)
Refined search to "Basil of Caesarea"
([field heading,largetext,surface] spirit) AFTER 111 WORDS ([field heading,largetext] "Basil of Caesarea")
Results include resources not written by Basil with references to Basil of Caesarea.
Expanded search to include "Basil the Great"
([field heading,largetext,surface] spirit) AFTER 111 WORDS ([field heading,largetext] "Basil of Caesarea","Basil the Great")
Keep Smiling [:)]
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MJ. Smith said:
Dave, I'm curious as to your results compared to my results:
With resources having multiple authors there are many results where Basil is not the author, or the article is biographical; discussing his works, or it is a mention of "spirit" without discussion. I don't have books specifically authored by Saint Basil.
Dave
===Windows 11 & Android 13
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Dave Hooton said:
e.g. "spirit" AFTER basil AFTER "contents volume", "contents of volume", "table of contents"
One search result has Basil in a Chapter 3 article and Spirit in Chapter 4. In contrast, can search for spirit in closer proximity to Basil articles:
Refinement is the name of the game, especially as I don't have as many resources for Basil.
Dave
===Windows 11 & Android 13
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Thank you, everyone, for these wonderful replies. They are helping narrow the queries.
I was wondering, why don't milestone searches work here? If we have a datatype (i.e., GregoryNazianzen), why can't a milestone search parse through all of the writings that fall within that datatype? Sadly, it's not working for me. Shouldn't something like this be possible?
Christ WITHIN {Milestone <GregoryNazianzen>}
I use Verbum with an 8-Core Mac Pro (2013) and a MacBook Pro (2017)
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FrMoses said:
I was wondering, why don't milestone searches work here? If we have a datatype (i.e., GregoryNazianzen), why can't a milestone search parse through all of the writings that fall within that datatype? Sadly, it's not working for me. Shouldn't something like this be possible?
Dreaming of ANY wildcard for searching WITHIN {Milestone ... since currently need to specify milestone range: e.g.
(Christ WITHIN {Milestone <GregoryNazianzen Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 1-45>}) OR (gospel WITHIN {Milestone <GregoryNazianzen Gregory Nazianzen, Letter 1-202>})
Keep Smiling [:)]
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For a specific Church Father like Basil you could search here
http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/a_1010_Conspectus_Omnium_Rerum_Alphabeticus_Littera_B.html
for a doc File and create a Personal Book
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Keep Smiling for Jesus,
That is an awesome search! It covers many of St. Gregory Nazianzen's important writings and works across all of the collections in my library that contain his Orations. Thank you!
Now, if there was only that wildcard functionality for milestone searches... it would make things much more powerful!
I use Verbum with an 8-Core Mac Pro (2013) and a MacBook Pro (2017)
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