Attn Denise

Good morning Denise,

I was curious about something. If you and I sat down for a cup of coffee, or something, and was casually chatting about Theology, I would ask you if you had a list of resources you have added in Logos that you would say are vital to your Theological studies? Would you share such a list?

Thanks.

I would also ask this question to others who always respond to scholarly or academic type questions.

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DAL

Is this your way of asking for a date? Because I saw her first, man! 😜

I’m just kidding 😁

Denise is probably busy compiling a book right now, because that’s probably how huge her list of resources is!

Denise, MJ and Rosie are not your average gals. They’re very smart and must of us have definitely learned a thing or two from them. I hope she’s able to share that list with all of us. 👍😁👌

DAL

EastTN

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/995502#Comment_995502

Denise, MJ and Rosie are not your average gals. They’re very smart ...

While I appreciate - and agree with - your sentiment about the three ladies, I suspect this didn't come out sounding quite the way you intended.

[;)]

Liam Maguire

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/995502#Comment_995502

Denise is probably busy compiling a book right now, because that’s probably how huge her list of resources is!

So true...

[:)]

DMB

Good morning Denise,

I was curious about something. If you and I sat down for a cup of coffee, or something, and was casually chatting about Theology, I would ask you if you had a list of resources you have added in Logos that you would say are vital to your Theological studies? Would you share such a list?

Thanks.

I would also ask this question to others who always respond to scholarly or academic type questions.

First, 'others' probably have a better answer. MJ, I've always wondered about.

But I hate to disappoint you; the answer is in a close reading of the text. In Bible college, many moons ago, and a course on 'evidences' (apologetics), I was impressed with just how thin the reasoning was. I thought, surely they had better than that.

And after retirement, I decided to see if artificial intelligence (neural nets, genetic algorithms, etc) could do a better job (case of authorship, dating). And as it turned out, fairly basic AI techniques can match decades of scholarship (no reflection on scholarship). But to do it, requires many, many, many passes through the text, re-coding the networks after each failure. And therein, one notices that the bulk of weak theology is associated, not with God, Jesus, or the text. Instead, it's the churchmen. Creeds, doctrines and layers of claims all presented as truth, which in earlier centuries, may have worked. But not these days. I do believe most of Bart Ehrman's success is in simply batting down the churchmen's claims; not the actual text.

To illustrate my own process, on Pentecost, the Acts writer assigns Joel as the lead-off proof-text. It's curious, because it dispenses with the expert religious leaders (direct Holy Spirit intervention). The unanswered dissonance, is who in their right mind (specifically Joel) would ever advocate for uneducated women, youngsters, slaves, and old losers (seniors like me) with the national diety's spirit?? Even today's pastors hedge on that. Need churchmen (or women) guidance. At some point, I may find the answer. It was revolutionary for 500 BC or so.

And for a really interesting resource:
https://www.logos.com/product/163088/non-canonical-religious-texts-in-early-judaism-and-early-christianity
This resource has a (very) detailed discussion of the Hebrews Gospel. It answered my note from years back. The Hebrew Gospel text shows up in Luke-only (not Mat or Mark), and multiple writers associated the Hebrews gospel with Matthew .... very much matching Papias' description of Matthew. Bingo. I'll leave out the implications.

Didn't answer your query. But I'm a big advocate of 'read the text', and then let (much) later book reading do periodic explaining. Which means journals, monographs, etc. Rarely the commentaries.

Rob Lambert

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/995545#Comment_995545

You mention "Bart Ehrman's success".... didn't he just give up his faith in Jesus????

AND.... the artificial intelligence comment is very interesting.... any suggestions on books, etc on that to get more info.

Thank you for your smart posts which I enjoy reading.....there are a lot of brainiacs on this board and you are sure one of them.... I appreciate it.

Rob

Bobby Terhune

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/995572#Comment_995572

I believe Bart shipwrecked on the issue of evil’s existence in the world and God allowance of it. He has said before that he wished he could recover his faith in God. I think there is still hope for him, IMHO.

DMB

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/995572#Comment_995572

You mention "Bart Ehrman's success".... didn't he just give up his faith in Jesus????

AND.... the artificial intelligence comment is very interesting.... any suggestions on books, etc on that to get more info.

Thank you for your smart posts which I enjoy reading.....there are a lot of brainiacs on this board and you are sure one of them.... I appreciate it.

Rob

Success; apparently his goals. It does bug me that his charges are so easily made. And if you read him closely, for whatever reason, he doesn't even use most of the available evidence in his logic-flow. We used to joke, he was planning more books.

Most of high-end computing in recent years, has been manuscript tracing. However, I'd bet Google (neural nets) will roll-out Bible textual analysis, long before the Bible scholars wake up. Time's a wasting, and it won't be pretty.

The AI journal articles on the manuscripts is very slow going (reading). But the recent book by Wasserman & Gurry is worth the pain (Kindle: New Approach to Textual Criticism). When I analyzed the author styles of NA, they were very thin (should be much stronger), with the opposite effect in the Byzantine 2005. So, the new approach will be interesting.

Rob Lambert

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/995593#Comment_995593

Thank you.... new reading!

Appreciate it.

Rob

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/995593#Comment_995593

Wasserman & Gurry is worth the pain (Kindle: New Approach to Textual Criticism).

Thanks for the reference.

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/995519#Comment_995519

Denise, MJ and Rosie are not your average gals. They’re very smart ...

I appreciate the compliment, but you're essentially saying average gals are not very smart. Hmm...

Thanks EastTN for noticing and commenting on it too. Sorry I had to go and be more blunt in my response, but I couldn't let that stand. (I guess I'm not your average gal. I speak my mind. [;)])

DAL

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/995611#Comment_995611

Denise, MJ and Rosie are not your average gals. They’re very smart ...

I appreciate the compliment, but you're essentially saying average gals are not very smart. Hmm...

Thanks EastTN for noticing and commenting on it too. Sorry I had to go and be more blunt in my response, but I couldn't let that stand. (I guess I'm not your average gal. I speak my mind. Wink )

I still don’t get it, but I will some day 👍😁👌

DAL 😜

Michael S.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/995593#Comment_995593

Most of high-end computing in recent years, has been manuscript tracing. However, I'd bet Google (neural nets) will roll-out Bible textual analysis, long before the Bible scholars wake up. Time's a wasting, and it won't be pretty.

Im trying to imagine beyond what CBGM is doing, what you are speaking towards.

Veli Voipio

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/995545#Comment_995545

And after retirement, I decided to see if artificial intelligence (neural nets, genetic algorithms, etc) could do a better job (case of authorship, dating). And as it turned out, fairly basic AI techniques can match decades of scholarship (no reflection on scholarship)

Have you tried self-organizing maps?

MJ Bale

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/995611#Comment_995611

Denise, MJ and Rosie are not your average gals. They’re very smart ...

I appreciate the compliment, but you're essentially saying average gals are not very smart. Hmm...

Thanks EastTN for noticing and commenting on it too. Sorry I had to go and be more blunt in my response, but I couldn't let that stand. (I guess I'm not your average gal. I speak my mind. Wink )

Don’t mean to upset all your gender sensitivities, but sometimes I do wonder...

Suppose that DAL had said something like:

“Mike Binks, Mark Barnes and Dave Hooton are not your average guys. They’re very smart and capable. They know Logos back to front.”

Would we then assume that all ’guys’ were dumb and incapable?

Would the boys be offended?

I suppose we wouldn’t, would we

My mamma used to say “Don’t be so quick to take offence.” She too was one smart girl.

And life goes on...

DMB

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/995642#Comment_995642

And after retirement, I decided to see if artificial intelligence (neural nets, genetic algorithms, etc) could do a better job (case of authorship, dating). And as it turned out, fairly basic AI techniques can match decades of scholarship (no reflection on scholarship)

Have you tried self-organizing maps?

No, Veli, I haven't. I'm afraid, when you have a hammer, every problem is a nail, as the saying goes. It would definitely be interesting, if the theology were coded. Once I coded all the theology words in the NT, and then 'dated' them to see if the theolgy shifted. But it made bad assumptions.

DMB

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/995637#Comment_995637

Most of high-end computing in recent years, has been manuscript tracing. However, I'd bet Google (neural nets) will roll-out Bible textual analysis, long before the Bible scholars wake up. Time's a wasting, and it won't be pretty.

Im trying to imagine beyond what CBGM is doing, what you are speaking towards.

I'll be offensive, and pre-apologize. Since the mid-1800s, the problem has been to try to locate God's Word, since no single ancient manuscript matches up. The early 1900s noticed copy patterns, and thense families of manuscripts. The subsequent problem is the copiers apparently not only mixed and matched by Bible book, but then mixed and matched within Bible books. So, much of the computing research has been to try to trace a progressively complex series of copy patterns. And quite successfully too.

The CBGM tries to dump the family challenge, and make judgements within the book (instance to general), combined with a vote from the scholar(s). The technique is not particularly new (used in image processing, etc), but acts to either over-smooth, or return to scholar guesswork.

Author-style (neural networks) takes a different approach. First, it learns the style (with degrees of error), and then can go back to resolve the manuscript choices. The problem facing the theologians, is that author style is easily done, across authors, dating, genre, etc. and applicablte to many industries. So, when it's applied to the Bible, it's not easy to argue with.

To give you a flavor, neural nets can isolate 'Paul' within the pastorals ( 2 Ti), or demonstrate Galatians and 2 Cor are very close matches (less likely to have subsequent editing). It can also show what the less likely word choices were (a nice addition for pastors).

DMB

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/995652#Comment_995652

Don’t mean to upset all your gender sensitivities, but sometimes I do wonder...

I'm confident Rosie can reply better than me. But (no offense), you play like the guys and gals have been on equal footing for quite some time.

- I was the first to reach executive status in our corporation. It wasn't a case of the guys being smarter (though promotion always confirmed their suspicions). It's just that none of the 50,000 plus women were quite smart enough.

- My grandmother couldn't legally sit on a jury. She wasn't smart enough (maybe too emotional)

But these are the past. More to the present, I get really tired of religious-guy put-downs that I'm well aware, are not in the text. Using God for their personal pleasures. I'm not (remotely) referring to you ... just explaining.

EDIT: I just realized, in all fairness, I should add, DAL spends a lot of effort whacking MJ (smiling comment). I assume he was tring to make amends (again, smiling).

Michael S.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/995666#Comment_995666

I'll be offensive, and pre-apologize.

Im sorry, Im slow quite often, but I did not recognize your offense.

This is interesting, I think it would be even more interesting to see the two collaborate with a yet third computer analysis- CBGM and the neural network. But of course, as anyone who deals with large data, one must be careful to not make the results carry more weight than is proper with the conclusions.

Rob Lambert

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/995674#Comment_995674

Guys (offensive???), I have a question. I have seen the power of super computers of old in searching for bad dangereous guys. The Government knows or can discover virtually anything and everything about your behavior using this powerful data churning software and hardware.

Now, anybody with a few thousand dollars (100K) can duplicate the speed and capacities of super computers of yore (a few years ago).

With that said, I have often wondered if somebody with a lot of computer and Bible experience as well as money could harness this data crunching power to dig deeper into the Bible... are you saying that people are really doing this?????

It seems so.

Rob...

PetahChristian

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/995684#Comment_995684

are you saying that people are really doing this?

OpenBible.info has been one of my favorite sites that crunch Bible data in interesting visual ways.

Long before I knew about Logos, Sean Boisen had a site that did some interesting visual mapping. It's apparently gone now, but I imagine that many of those ideas became Logos tools/features.