TIP of the day: Why I don't use the Cross-Reference section of the Passage Guide - Part IV

We have now covered about a third of the branches in the types of cross-references mind maps in the first post. By now it should be clearly that I am building a Cross-reference Guide that improves upon the information provided by the Cross-Reference Section. At this point we have:

In addition we access certain interactive resources:

• New Testament Use of the Old Testament
• Parallel Gospel Reader
• Synopsis of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles

The largest hole thus far is the lack of a resource for Pauline Parallels such as:

• Pauline Parallels: A Comprehensive Guide by Walter T. Wilson
• Pauline Parallels (2nd edition) by Fred O. and J. Paul Sampley Francis
• Synopsis of the Pauline Letters in Greek and English by James P. Ware

In this segment I will cover what Newman calls "verbal cross-references". Elsewhere they are call word cross-references, phrase cross-references ... This area is particularly interesting as it reflects the advantages computer software brought to build study in comparison to hand build concordances, footnotes, and indices,

I invite you to read Use Wordle to expose key words in Scripture as I will assume, not repeat, its information.

What sorts of words or phrases in the passage ought we to consider for exploring cross-references?

• names of God
• structural words (such as toldot in Genesis)
• thematic words (such as words implying an inside/outside distinction in Mark)
• idioms
• repeating words
• technical terms especially theological terms
• terms referring to cultural concepts uncommon in our culture (such as unclean)
• rare terms
• terms used in a sense other than their common sense

How does cross-reference studies of words and phrases differ from word studies? They are concerned with identifying connotations and changes over time. Full word studies also consider things such as etymology, derivational morphology, cognates ...

1. There are several tools that assist us in identifying words or phrases we wish to explore. The Interesting Words Section of the Passage Guide provides Wordles. Note that you may want to run them on:

• the passage under consideration
• the entire book
• the entire corpus of the author

2. For phrases the only tool we have within Logos is Tools ==> Passage ==> Passage Analysis ==> Word Tree.

3.  Another source of frequency information for identifying repeating and rare words in the Concordance. Be sure to set it to view Bible text only.

4. Idioms are indicated by half-brackets in the LEB.

5. The translation wheel will show uncommon senses of a word.

6. Since the translation often hides the name or title actually used for God you may wish to make a visual filter or a collection as in the previous post to catch this possibility.

7. To identify the cross-references one can run a search. While one is constantly reminded that word cross-references can be a trap as the word may be used in a different sense, in logic your search argument can have two parts - word (lemma) and sense - minimizing this problem.

8. Additionalyl one can study words with the same sense but different words (lemmas) to see if the term used has specific connotations.

9. Some items such as structural words or theme words of a book or author one picks up from commentaries and monographs as one comes across them. When you find one, start a cross-reference note immediately rather than trusting that you will remember it when the time comes. The original note can be minimal - simply attachment point to your discovery and the related Bible verse. Yes it would be nice if we could copy and paste a series of references and have multiple attachment points automatically created.