TIP of the day: textual boundaries

As I appear to have already packed Windows on Jesus: Methods in Gospel Exegesis  by  Wim Weren , so I will paraphrase his list of textual features indicating pericope (or mesopericope) boundaries. I'm sure I won't remember them all.

• change of topic
• change of place or time
• change of characters
• completion of structural unit such as concentric pattern, chiasm, inclusion or parallelism
• appearance of a structural marker (such as the toldot of Genesis)
• appearance of begin/end or transition discourse marker ...

A useful way to study scripture is to notice the differences in text division by various references within Logos. For my example I will use the division of   Gen 1:1-2:25:

• ending the pericope at Gen 1:31 makes mankind the pinnacle of creation and emphasizes the two parallel group of three days each
• ending the pericope at Gen 2:3a makes the Sabbath the pinnacle of creation and emphasizes the progressive element of the parallel days. It also preserves a series of elements repeated 7 times in the first pericope.
• making Gen 2:1-3 a a separate pericope separates the creation of the Sabbath from either the 7 days of creation or the story of the creation of man & woman.

I will show you how to use Logos to find which resources support which divisions. It is up to the user to examine the text to determine the most reasonable division of the text - and to consider the ramifications of alternative divisions.

1. We will use two tools - the Compare Pericopes tool in the Passage Analysis tool and the Bible Outline Browser interactive.

2. The Pericope Comparison shows the Sabbath attached to the 7 days, the Sabbath standing alone, and the Sabbath attached to the making of man & woman.

3. One controls which Bibles are shown by checking or unchecking items in the Pericope Sets drop down menu. Note that the Pericope comparison portion of the tool is selected on the lower left.

4. Note how the pericope boundaries have been extracted from the corresponding translation.

Hover over the title of the pericope shows the text; clicking opens the Bible (if not already open) and positions it to the beginning of the pericope.

5. However, pericope has another meaning - older than headings inserted into Bible texts. Logos does not provide a pericope comparison tool for lectionaries.

6. There is an academic group specifically studying pericopes in this second sense.

7. This site has a useful pericope search tool both of their site and of the broader web.

8.Now let's turn our attention to the Bible Outline browser. While an outline does not necessarily go down to (or stop at) the pericope level, the boundaries of an outline normally correspond to boundaries of pericopes or mesopericopes.

9.Hovering over the column abbreviated heading translates it into a recognizable resource name.

10.Hovering in a column display not only its title but also the titles of elements up the outline chain.

11. The tool has been shown in Compare mode. To switch modes, select the desired mode in the upper right.

12. In read mode, one selects the resource in the left column. Clicking on an item on the right side, expands it.

13. On the final node of the outline, the scriptural passage is shown.

14.SIDEBAR: I had assumed that all Bibles with pericope headings showed them in the table of contents. In preparing this post, I have discovered that is not true but I can't resist showing a case in which it is true.