Studying the Primary Writings of the Church Fathers

Andrew
Andrew Member Posts: 359 ✭✭
edited November 2024 in English Forum

"Passage Guide" has a "Ancient Literature" section...I am wondering if it is possible to do that in reverse?  Find the Scripture passages that a Church Fathers passage is quoting, alluding to, etc?

I would also REALLY like to be able to find the most cited passages in a given work.  For example, what is the most cited passage in 1 Clement?

Is there a resource that provides outlines for various Church Father writings?  And/or a commentary-style resource for such writings?

Comments

  • Rick Brannan (Logos)
    Rick Brannan (Logos) Member, Logos Employee Posts: 1,862

    For your first question, perhaps check out this recent thread:

    https://community.logos.com/forums/t/160835.aspx 

    Rick Brannan
    Data Wrangler, Faithlife
    My books in print

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

    Andrew said:

    Find the Scripture passages that a Church Fathers passage is quoting, alluding to, etc?

    I would also REALLY like to be able to find the most cited passages in a given work.  For example, what is the most cited passage in 1 Clement?

    Is there a resource that provides outlines for various Church Father writings?  And/or a commentary-style resource for such writings?

    1. Adding to Rick, easiest is a Power Lookup panel next to your apostolic or church fathers resource. Most are footnoted with refs.

    2. I assume the Concordance tool? I've never tried it!

    3. The best organized is Pratscher's Apostolic Fathers: An Introduction. Rick's resource also has good intros. For church fathers, usually you need to read the intro sections, at best. You might also like Oxford Society's New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers. Quite good.

    For a commentary, the price goes up. Hermeneia has a series of resources; best choice. Then Joseph Lightfoot for more depth. Both apostolic. Don't know a commentary on church fathers

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

  • Andrew
    Andrew Member Posts: 359 ✭✭
    1. Thank you this link looks very useful: https://community.logos.com/forums/t/160835.aspx ...And the footnotes in The Apostolic Fathers in English are also really helpful.
    2. Unless I am missing something, the Concordance tool seems to compile the given resource's references and citations rather than indicating which resources cite the given resource.  I am trying to find the most cited passages in a given work rather than the resources the work most cites...Not sure if that can be stated more succinctly
    3. Hermeneia has some very interesting extra-Biblical commentaries - Thank you.  Do you have a link to the apostolic Lightfoot commentaries you are referring to?
  • Mark Barnes
    Mark Barnes Member Posts: 15,432 ✭✭✭

    Andrew said:

    I would also REALLY like to be able to find the most cited passages in a given work.  For example, what is the most cited passage in 1 Clement?

    This question is ambiguous.

    If you mean "what is the passage that 1 Clement cites most often", you can do that from the Concordance tool. (Change the resource to one that contains 1 Clement, and change "Word" to "Reference".

    If you mean "which 1 Clement passage is most cited in other resources", you can't do that. (I've been asking for similar functionality for years.) The best you can accomplish at the moment is:

    1. Do a "By Count" search for <1 Clement> to find which resources cite the book most often.
    2. Run concordances for resources you're interested in. Make sure you have "Reference" selected again, and sort by Heading.

    * For many of the Fathers, you need a more complex reference than just <1 Clement>. The easiest way is to run the search from the right-click menu of a reference you're interested in, and then modify it. I can't give an example at the moment because 7.14 beta 2 keeps crashing for me.

    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!

  • Andrew
    Andrew Member Posts: 359 ✭✭

    If you mean "which 1 Clement passage is most cited in other resources", you can't do that. (I've been asking for similar functionality for years.)

    It is unfortunate that such functionality isn't possible - Is there a feature suggestion somewhere to which I should add my vote?

    The best you can accomplish at the moment is:

    1. Do a "By Count" search for <1 Clement> to find which resources cite the book most often.
    2. Run concordances for resources you're interested in. Make sure you have "Reference" selected again, and sort by Heading.

    Thank you for your suggested solutions.  As you note, these unfortunately don't quite accomplish what I am seeking unless I manually compile the results of your second suggestion for various resources.

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

    Andrew said:

    It is unfortunate that such functionality isn't possible - Is there a feature suggestion somewhere to which I should add my vote?

    Not really, sorry. The closest suggestion on UserVoice is this one, I think: https://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-7/suggestions/16019644-improve-cited-by-to-support-books-cited-by-page. Perhaps you should create one! 

    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!

  • Andrew
    Andrew Member Posts: 359 ✭✭

    Andrew said:

    It is unfortunate that such functionality isn't possible - Is there a feature suggestion somewhere to which I should add my vote?

    Not really, sorry. The closest suggestion on UserVoice is this one, I think: https://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-7/suggestions/16019644-improve-cited-by-to-support-books-cited-by-page. Perhaps you should create one! 

    I have created the following suggestion: https://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-7/suggestions/33611698-cited-passages

  • Andrew
    Andrew Member Posts: 359 ✭✭

    Denise said:

    For a commentary, the price goes up. Hermeneia has a series of resources; best choice. Then Joseph Lightfoot for more depth. Both apostolic. Don't know a commentary on church fathers

    Hermeneia has some very interesting extra-Biblical commentaries - Thank you.  Do you have a link to the apostolic Lightfoot commentaries you are referring to?

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

    Andrew said:

    Denise said:

    For a commentary, the price goes up. Hermeneia has a series of resources; best choice. Then Joseph Lightfoot for more depth. Both apostolic. Don't know a commentary on church fathers

    Hermeneia has some very interesting extra-Biblical commentaries - Thank you.  Do you have a link to the apostolic Lightfoot commentaries you are referring to?

    This is the collection:

    https://www.logos.com/product/27506/classic-studies-on-the-apostolic-fathers 

    But they also have individual volumes (and PDFs at Archive.com. Though older, Lightfoot goes into depth on mss’s, and so forth.

    As I noted above, Rick’s resource is good for quick phrasing matches with NT. When you do a word study, it’s included:

    https://www.logos.com/product/3935/apostolic-fathers-in-greek-and-english 

    EDIT: I have that collection (above). But one volume I hadn’t noticed (and affordable too):

    https://www.logos.com/product/45766/a-literary-history-of-early-christianity-including-the-fathers-and-the-chief-heretical-writers-of-the-ante-nicene-period-volumes-1-and-2 

    This one’s unique, since he weaves the theology shifts among both the fathers, and the heretics.

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