New Feature: Bible Browser

The Bible Browser presents Logos curated data in a new, easy to find manner. Whereas creating complicated search queries to answer specific questions is a huge advantage of Logos' search engine, some people either just don't know where to start or have difficulties constructing the appropriate search syntax.

The Bible Browser looks to solve this problem by providing users with an easy, faceted browsing experience for all the people, places, and things within the Old and New Testaments (you can also select the book of the Bible or standard pre set groupings of texts to limit your search).

To use the Bible Browser, navigate to the tools menu and select Bible Browser.

Please be aware that, because of the massive amount of data required to make this feature work, it is an online only feature.

Once the browser has opened, you will see two panes. The pane on the left loads with the faceting search options. The pane on the right loads with the search results.

With each selection in the left panel, the remaining faceting options are restricted. For example, once you choose “Abinadab (son of Saul)” from the person facet, “sheep” (and a whole host of other things) are no longer listed underneath the Things facet, because no sheep appear in any verses or pericopes where Abinadab also appears.

If you want to know where Jesus and water occur in the same verse but don't know the search syntax <Person Jesus> AND <Thing Water>, simply select the filters and get the results you're looking for.

Some other important things to note about functionality are below:

Type a word into the Find box at the top of the facet sidebar to filter the facets down to just those values that match what you typed. Note that the same word may appear under multiple facets, and will have different meaning depending on where it appears. For example, if you type “Judah” into the box, you’ll see a long list of people (including “Judah (patriarch)”, a long list of places (including “Judah (kingdom)”), and a short list of things (such as “Judah’s staff”).
Choose a different Bible version from the drop-down in the toolbar. This list is based on the versions that have thus far been imported into the database on the server, which may be a subset of the versions that you actually own. For now, we’re targeting reverse interlinear Bibles in order of popularity as best we can tell.
Navigate to a Bible reference from the toolbar. (You can also link this panel to another resource or tool panel to scroll them synchronously.)
Apply a visual filter by clicking on the “three circles” button on the toolbar. This is the same as the visual filter menu for the corresponding resource because the main content view is a real resource view.
Choose “Pericope” or “Verse” as the level of result to use to search and show results.

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Comments

Brian Crawford

Great feature! This is a much better way to start a search if you don't know how to parse together the search syntax.

However, the "Send these results" button doesn't do anything when trying to send the results to the search window. Having that functional would help users like me learn how to do more complex searches.

Alan Palmer (Logos)

the "Send these results" button doesn't do anything

Send to search should send the passages to the search panel where one can then perform a search on that collection of passages. For instance, you might use Bible Browser to narrow down your bible to pericopes in Genesis that refer to Oxen and then you want to do a search on those 22 passages as shown here:

While Bible Browser does operate in some situations where a user might have previously done a search, it is not a tool to generate a search query. I hope that helps if it was unclear before.

If you are seeing something different than I describe, please provide more details and I will investigate it as a potential bug.

Eli Evans (Logos)

However, the "Send these results" button doesn't do anything when trying to send the results to the search window. Having that functional would help users like me learn how to do more complex searches.

Hi, Brian. What "Send these results" does is sends over the set of passages that matched to the Search panel as the reference range to search through. So rather than sending your query to a Search panel, it sends the resulting passages over. Then you can search for anything else within those results. So it's more like a "Search within these results" feature than "transform this facet set into a search query" feature.

The reason we don't just send the query over to Search is that there isn't a 1:1 correspondence between the progressive filters you can create with the Bible Browser by selecting facets and queries you can run in Search. (They're very close, and may be exactly the same in some cases, but not in all cases). The Bible Brower can (or will be able to) do things that Search won't. For example, you can't search for a key participant in a biblical event in Search, but that is one of the available facets in Bible Browser.

I can see how the wording on the menu is misleading. We'll look into that.

Brian Crawford

Send to search should send the passages to the search panel where one can then perform a search on that collection of passages.

Ok, I see that now. I didn't see it limiting my search range - I was looking for the search syntax.

Yes, Eli, a change in the wording would help! Thanks guys.

Bill Cook

I was looking forward to this feature. But, it has display issues. It truncates words in the middle, then displays the chapter verse grouping header and then displays the rest of the word in the next line.

Donnie Hale

A question regarding this feature... Is the reference box, to the right of the Bible selection dropdown, supposed to provide any interactive functionality for the feature? Or is it merely to display the currently-displayed reference range? I ask because I tried entering a reference range into that field, and I expected the available facets on the left to shrink to just those which applied to the range I had entered. However, nothing changed with the facets at all, nor did anything appear to happen as a result of me entering the range. And as soon as I clicked something in the list of facets, the range I had entered was replaced with the result of what I had clicked.

I didn't try the feature out much further because I couldn't understand that behavior. But based on the description I see in this thread, it seems like that reference field is effectively for display purposes only. If that is the case, it might be helpful if you disabled the ability to type something into it.

Thanks,

Donnie

Mark Barnes

A question regarding this feature... Is the reference box, to the right of the Bible selection dropdown, supposed to provide any interactive functionality for the feature? Or is it merely to display the currently-displayed reference range? I ask because I tried entering a reference range into that field, and I expected the available facets on the left to shrink to just those which applied to the range I had entered. However, nothing changed with the facets at all, nor did anything appear to happen as a result of me entering the range. And as soon as I clicked something in the list of facets, the range I had entered was replaced with the result of what I had clicked.

The reference box allows you to jump to another part of the Bible, just as it does in a normal Bible resource. So if I had Elijah as my filter, I could type in Mark 9, and the Bible Browser would scroll to the verses/pericopes in Mark 9 that mention Elijah.

If you want to restrict your search to just a certain part of the Bible, you need to use the Bible Books filter instead.

Donnie Hale

So if I had Elijah as my filter, I could type in Mark 9, and the Bible Browser would scroll to the verses/pericopes in Mark 9 that mention Elijah.

In this example, what's the behavior if the reference you enter contains no "mentions" of the filter?

Thanks,

Donnie

SineNomine

I think that this feature is going to be very, very popular. [:)]

Mark Barnes

In this example, what's the behavior if the reference you enter contains no "mentions" of the filter?

It does the best it can, and scrolls to the nearest place.

Scott Worron

I know other Bibles are going to be added, but I see some screenshots from people where their Bible is the ESV or LEB, yet I don't see those as choices in my list. Are those two supposed to be available yet?

MJ. Smith

This has been answered in other threads. New versions of these Bible were released to the users. They will not appear in the Bible Browser until the database is updated.

Rick Ausdahl

To use the Bible Browser, navigate to the tools menu and select Bible Browser.

Jacob, does this thread belong in Logos 7 or does it belong in Logos Now? I have the full Logos 7 feature set and don't see the Bible Browser in the Tools menu.

Matt Hamrick

It's part of Logos Now Rick.

Don Awalt

This has been answered in other threads. New versions of these Bible were released to the users. They will not appear in the Bible Browser until the database is updated.

What does "database updated" mean?

I could swear I was working on the Bible Browser in ESV, this morning in fact, and then I went to check some other translations - when I clicked the drop down, there is no ESV or LEB any more! Where did they go?

Also - if I select NAB, I do not have all the sections - only 1 section shows in the left pane, "Reported Speech". Is that correct or should it have all the browsable sections like the other Bibles?

Don Awalt

I found a more complete explanation of "databases updated" from Bradley if others were confused as I was:

Bible Browser fetches results from a Faithlife server; if the server is using a different version of the Bible than your computer, then results will be incorrect or misaligned (as show in this screenshot: https://community.logos.com/forums/p/129323/840733.aspx#840733). These updated Bibles will be temporarily unavailable in Bible Browser until the server data is updated.

I am still wondering if the NAB only showing "Reported Speech" is the same issue or a different issue. Thanks.

Graham Criddle

Also - if I select NAB, I do not have all the sections - only 1 section shows in the left pane, "Reported Speech". Is that correct or should it have all the browsable sections like the other Bibles?

I don't see that

Please start a new thread regarding this so it can get individual attention

Bradley Grainger (Logos)

Also - if I select NAB, I do not have all the sections - only 1 section shows in the left pane, "Reported Speech". Is that correct or should it have all the browsable sections like the other Bibles?

Since NAB doesn't have a reverse interlinear, it can't support the sections that are based on word-level tagging (People, Places, Things). It should support all the tagging that is performed at a passage level: Events and Reported Speech, as well as Bible Books.