TIP OF THE DAY 7: Name.identify > Syntactic force concluded

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QUESTION: How do I know if syntactic force is information I should be using?

SOFTWARE: This answer is multipart.

Question a: Are you comfortable with grammar vocabulary either from linguistics or from a year or two of Greek?

Answer: If you are comfortable reading Lukaszewski, Albert L. The Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament Glossary. Lexham Press, 2007, then you have the necessary background to use syntactic force. If you aren’t comfortable with that resource, then read the Glossary together with one or more of the grammars to which it links. You may find it useful to copy & paste the Glossary onto cards for Anki to drill yourself on the unfamiliar vocabulary.

Question b: Do you discover additional information when using it in simple cases?

Answer: Use Lukaszewski, Albert L., Mark Dubis, and J. Ted Blakley. The Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament, SBL Edition: Expansions and Annotations. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2011 to choose a few examples where there is a single value. Make a T chart:

• Put the sentence or clause above the T with the word you are working with highlighted.
• On one side of the T, put the heading “I know” and on the other side, put “value added”.
• Now use all the skills you have to observe all you can about the word and its relations to other elements of the sentence. Put your notes in the “I know side”
• Now read the Expansions and Annotations on the word.
• Applying what you have just read and what you know about syntactic force, add notes to the “value added” side.

Question c: Does it help decide ambiguous cases?

Answer: Use Lukaszewski, Albert L., Mark Dubis, and J. Ted Blakley. The Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament, SBL Edition: Expansions and Annotations. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2011 to choose a few examples where there are multiple possibilities (i.e. search for “either”). Make a mult-column chart with one column for each option offered.

• Put the sentence or clause above the chart with the word you are working with highlighted.
• Label each column with each option. Draw a dividing line below making the top portion of the column the arguments for that option and the bottom portion of the column for the arguments against the option.
• Now read the Expansions and Annotations on the word and check your usual commentaries and study aids.
• Add notes to your chart using the font color (ink color) to distinguish what you already knew or knew how to find from that which you found or understood based on the concept of syntactic force.

At this point you should be able to say if:

• Syntactic force does not have enough benefit to use.
• You need to continue to work on your background knowledge in order to give it a fair shot.
• Hey, this is something useful.

QUESTION: If I decide that the syntactic force information is helpful, where do I find the data?

Software: There are several options you should be familiar with. Once you are comfortable with them, you can build them into you Bible study layouts.

1. Lukaszewski, Albert L., and Mark Dubis. The Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament: Expansions and Annotations. Logos Bible Software, 2009 has a Bible index. You can verify this from the book dynamic tool bar: Home > Information > Indexes. You can put the notes in a linked set with your Bible. However, most words will not have an entry in Expansions and Annotations; you also need a more global solution.

• In Expansions and Annotations dynamic tool bar select Home > Link Set > Choose a letter – one that is not already in use.
• Repeat in your Bible, using the same letter.

1. In your Bible, New Testament only, right click on a word to open the Context menu.

• Select either of the Lexham SGNT syntactic force on the tab (selection, left) side
• On the right side, the Look-up option will take you to the Glossary.
• Despite there being entries in Factbook, there is currently no link to Factbook on the action (right) side.

1. In the Word-by-Word section of the Exegetical Guide.

• Application toolbar > Guides > Bible Reference Guides > Word by Word (or type Open Word by Word into the command line opened via the application icon at the top of the toolbar.)
• Enter your Bible reference or pericope name
• Select from the drop-down selection list
• Hit enter
• Scroll to the word under study,
• Syntactic force appears after the pipe sign following the morphology.
• Hovering over the syntactic force opens a popup providing the definition from the glossary.
• Clicking on the syntactic force opens the glossary to the appropriate entry.

QUESTION: Can Pleins, J. David, and Jonathan Homrighausen. Biblical Hebrew Vocabulary by Conceptual Categories: A Student’s Guide to Nouns in the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017 or  Pleins, J. David, and Jonathan Homrighausen. Biblical Hebrew Vocabulary by Conceptual Categories: A Student’s Guide to Nouns in the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017 be used for semantic domains?

ANSWER: Unfortunately, no. No books are keyed to its classifications. It covers only nouns and lacks personal names. However, it may be useful for learning vocabulary in related blocks (semantic domains.)

QUESTION: What texts in Logos would help me understand lexical semantics/syntactics?

Answer:

• Silva, Moisés. Biblical Words and Their Meaning: An Introduction to Lexical Semantics. Revised and Expanded Edition. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994.
• Nida, Eugene A., and Johannes P. Louw. Lexical Semantics of the Greek New Testament. Edited by David E. Aune. Vol. 25. Society of Biblical Literature Resources for Biblical Study. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1992.
•  Wierzbicka, Anna.  Semantics: Primes and Universals (Studies in Classification Data Analysis). Oxford University Press, 1996. Not in Logos.
• Rydberg-Cox, Jeffrey A. Overview of Greek Syntax. Medford, MA: Perseus Digital Library, 2000.

Note that Anna Wiezbicka has written on the Sermon on the Mount and on the story of God. She reflects the direction that Logos could expand their use of semantic domains into more universal categories as has been done by cultural concepts. Jeffrey A. Rydberg-Cox is essentially the glossary for the Perseus library.