Results matching “opentext” from Logos Bible Software Blog

For those faint of heart who would prefer to avoid another of my long-winded blog posts, just order this. The rest of you, read on.

When it comes to the Greek New Testament, Logos Bible Software has a great host of tools to help you see the trees. Lexical tags in the various tagged editions of the GNT (including the various interlinears and reverse interlinears) link to lexicons and help you find the range of meanings possible for a given word. Morphological tags in the same texts provide some contextual clues to help determine the meaning and use of the word in the particular instance under study. Learning grammars help students recognize the most common morphological and lexical trees for themselves.

But, while one can learn a lot of useful things by examining the trees, some of the greatest riches of studying the New Testament in Greek come when you can step back and see the forest. That is, at some point the student needs to look at things above the word level. ‘Syntax’ is the term we use for describing how words form into phrases and clauses, and how those structures are used to form sentences. Logos Bible Software has tools for working at the syntax level as well. Reference grammars tend to contain a lot of word- (tree-) level detail on areas like morphology (how words are formed) and phonology (how a language sounds), but they will frequently contain some good information on larger structures like phrases and clauses as well. But few reference grammars approach the Greek New Testament above the level of the sentence. Last year, Logos Bible Software released an edition of the OpenText.org syntax database, which graphs out sentence, clause, and phrase relationships and provides a powerful searching interface for working at the syntactic level. Other syntax databases for the Greek New Testament are also in the works.

There are, however, a growing number of scholars who are looking at much larger units of text than the sentence. The branch of linguistics dedicated to looking at larger blocks of text and analyzing how language is used to convey meaning on a much broader scale is ‘discourse analysis’. (‘Text-linguistics’ is another term sometimes applied to this field.) Recent posts on this blog by Dr. Runge have been giving you a taste of some of the data we’ve been working on to show discourse level features. But I wanted to call your attention to a new collection of books just posted on the prepub page. The Studies in New Testament Greek Collection contains a number of insightful books and essays on the topic of discourse analysis. The books provide some of the theories for how to analyze texts, and then apply the theories so you can see the results. This collection introduces other fields related to discourse analysis, such as ‘rhetorical criticism’ (an examination of how authors use various language elements to persuade or make an argument) and essays on how the cultural context of the New Testament should inform our exegesis. (For example, there are many essays on the topic of how bilingualism in 1st century Palestine should effect how we read the New Testament.)

If you skim the authors and editors of the volumes in this set, you’ll notice several by Stanley Porter (Author of Idioms of the Greek New Testament) and Jeffrey T. Reed (with Stanley Porter, one of the OpenText.org fellows) as well as D.A. Carson (author of Exegetical Fallacies), just to name a few. In addition to discourse and rhetoric, there are many essays in this collection that treat on other intersections between linguistics and biblical studies. This collection serves as an excellent introduction to the value of linguistics for interpreters of scripture.

The preorder price is only $240 for 16 volumes – I paid more than $100 for each of those Greek books in print! I’m very excited about this offer, and hope it generates enough interest to go into production quickly. Order yours today!

Awhile back over on the Logos Newsgroup for Greek, someone asked a question:

Someone has commented that there are 484 occurrences of the definite article occurring without a noun introducing a prepositional phrase, such as, "τα επι τοις ουρανοις." I wonder if someone would teach me how to search my GNT (N/A27) to confirm this statement?

The example is (I believe) from Eph 1.10:

εἰς οἰκονομίαν τοῦ πληρώματος τῶν καιρῶν, ἀνακεφαλαιώσασθαι τὰ πάντα ἐν τῷ Χριστῷ, τὰ ἐπὶ τοῖς οὐρανοῖς καὶ τὰ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἐν αὐτῷ. (Eph 1:10, NA27)

as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. (Eph 1:10, ESV)

Note that the same structure is used in "things on earth" in the same verse.

Anyway, the best way to find stuff like this — where you're really searching for a relationship between words and/or phrases even though it looks like proximity will get you close enough — is a syntax search. In this example, the relationship is between the article and the prepositional phrase. It is more than proximity (occurring close to each other or in sequence); it is functionally that the prepositional phrase in some way further modifies/qualifies/distinguishes the article (which, in cases like these, tends to function like a relative pronoun).

The OpenText.org Syntactically Analyzed Greek New Testament makes this relatively easy to find. Let's look at this portion of Eph 1.10 first to see how it is analyzed:

Here the word group contains a head term; the head term contains a word (τα) and the structure that modifies it. Here the structure is a relator. A relator is basically a prepositional phrase that functions adjectivally, modifying a substantive (instead of functioning adverbially, modifying the primary verb of the clause). So all we need to do is find where a relator modifies a word that that is an article.

There are two basic cases to consider. The first is like Eph 1.10, where the word is the root word of the head term, and the relator modifies it. The second case is where the word is a modifier itself, like in Mt 5.16:

Here note that τον is a definer, and the relator (adjectival prepositional phrase) modifies the definer.

These are the two cases to consider. A syntax search that looks like the following should account for both of them:

You'll notice I've used an unordered group to contain the word+modifier portion of the query. Why did I do this? Because I really want to find where a word and a modifier are siblings (occur at the same 'level' in the annotation) because this implies they are in relationship with each other. The containing structure(s) (here the head term or modifier at the root of the query) constrain the elements to already being in the same unit. The unordered group allows for this, letting you specify the elements you care about (here a word and a modifier), and it will run the permutations, including optional elements occurring between them, while it searches. It makes query specification a whole lot easier.

When the search is run, 298 occurrences are located. Here's a snapshot of the results dialog:

The different colors in the results come in because of the "OR" in the query. In this way you can tell that some results come from one half of the "OR". Here the greenish color represents the top half of the "OR" (word is a direct child of head term); the brown represents the bottom half (word is a direct child of modifier).

So, to answer the question posed on the Greek newsgroup; I'd respond that according to the OpenText.org Syntactically Analyzed Greek New Testament, there are 298 instances of the definite article occurring without a noun introducing a prepositional phrase.

We've given frequent attention to the OpenText.org Syntactically Analyzed Greek New Testament here on the blog. It's a tremendous collection of resources. The Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament, the other set of NT syntax resources, hasn't been in the spotlight quite as much, mostly because it is still a work in progress. At present it covers the following 11 books: Romans, 1 Corinthians, Hebrews, James, 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, Jude, and Revelation. (If you don't have access to all of them, make sure to update to 3.0d to get the latest LSGNT resources and syntax database. A revised version of the LSGNT that includes 2 Corinthians and Galatians is included in 3.0e, which is now in beta.)

But don't let its incompleteness keep you from taking advantage of the wealth of information available here. Unlike the OpenText.org resources, the Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament resources use the traditional syntactical categories that perhaps the majority of Greek students are familiar with, so it will likely prove to be the most helpful for students as they learn and teachers as they instruct.

When I was in seminary I had the opportunity to teach elementary and intermediate Greek. I was always looking for more examples to show my students so they could learn the grammatical concepts that we were covering in class. Most grammars provide several examples—Wallace's Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics was especially helpful in this regard—but I was always running down additional examples to discuss in class or to use in handouts, exercises, quizzes, and tests.

How I wish that I had had access to the Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament when I was teaching the genitive absolute, the purpose infinitive, the dative direct object, the nominative of appellation, or the double accusative. In about 15 seconds, I can open the Syntax Search tool and generate a list of 55 genitive absolutes, 113 purpose infinitives, 122 dative direct objects, 26 nominatives of appellation, or 78 double accusatives—plenty of fresh material for in-class examples, handouts, quizzes, and tests. It's as simple as adding a Word to the query, checking the box next to the grammatical category for which you want to generate a list, and clicking Search.

What a time saver this would have been!

But these tools aren't just for teachers. Put them in the hands of your students and have them analyze all 68 of the attributive participles in John's letters or the 85 subjective genitives in Romans, for example. Simple access to so many examples will surely make grasping abstract grammatical concepts much more attainable.

So don't forget about the Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament. It is included in the top four base packages (Original Languages, Scholar's, Scholar's Silver, and Scholar's Gold). If you haven't yet upgraded, visit our upgrade page to see your options.

Check out our other blog posts dealing with the Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament:

• Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament Updated and Expanded
• Greek Syntax: Syntactic Force Annotations
• Syntax Search Example: Relative Pronouns
• Syntax: Glossaries of Terminology
• Greek Syntax: Lexham SGNT Expansions and Annotations
• Greek Syntax: Lexham SGNT Running Text
• Greek Syntax: Introducing the Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament

The Logos syntax databases and resources have revolutionized advanced searching and analysis of the Old and New Testaments in their original languages. As with most powerful tools, there is a bit of a learning curve to using them effectively. One of the best ways to learn how to use them is to reproduce the searches of others. This is easiest to do by seeing a series of screenshots or watching a video.

Learn by Example

To help you learn the ropes, we continue to provide you with blog posts and videos that discuss and demonstrate syntax searching. If you haven't been over to the video tutorial page at Logos.com recently, there are dozens of syntax videos that you can watch. I just updated it to include all of the syntax-related videos that have appeared here on the blog, so go take a look! If you have a slow internet connection, you may want to purchase the Syntax Demonstration Videos on CD-ROM.

Work Backwards

Another great way to learn how to perform syntax searches is to work backwards from one of the syntax resources.

• The Hebrew Bible: Andersen-Forbes Phrase Marker Analysis
• The OpenText.org Syntactically Analyzed Greek New Testament: Clause Analysis
• The Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament: Sentence Analysis

This is the method I used to perform my first successful syntax search (i.e., the Holy Spirit communicating). I (1) found a passage of Scripture that had something I wanted to search for (Acts 13:2), (2) looked up that passage in the OpenText.org Clause Analysis resource, and (3) reproduced it in the syntax search. This method will involve some trial and error, so most users will want to watch several of the demo videos before trying this.

Show Us Your Syntax Searches

We love to see the ways you are putting the syntax tools to use. I stumbled across a blog post where one of our users creatively used the Anderson-Forbes Syntax database to locate all of the occurrences of bears in the Old Testament. His search missed one (Pr 17:12, where the gloss was "she-bear" rather than "bear"), but it was an excellent example of how syntax searching can be a very quick and simple way to access a list of data that would have taken longer to find with an English search or a combination of Hebrew and Aramaic morphology searches. Nice work, Mike!

If you blog about creative ways to use the syntax resources, send an email to blog@logos.com and let us know. We'll add a link to your post below. If we think it's really cool, we may even take a whole post to show off your syntax skills! Just a hint: it should probably contain screenshots or video. (Check out Jing if you don't know how to capture video on your screen.) We're looking forward to seeing what you've got!

I've blogged a bit about the prepositional phrase εν Χριστω in 1Th 4.16. There are three previous posts in this series:

• Greek Syntax: First Thessalonians 4:16. This post introduces the problem and shows how to do searches for the prepositional phrase.
• Greek Syntax: First Thessalonians 4:16, Part II (with video). This post shows how to just search for adverbial instances, and those in relation to where the verb (predicator) stands in the clause. So, does the prepositional phrase come before or after the verb? Or is there even a verb in the clause?
• Greek Syntax: First Thessalonians 4:16, Part III (with video). This post shows how to search for articular and anarthrous instances of εν Χριστω.

Today's post, the last in the series, is a follow-up to Part II. We'll further explore how to search for εν Χριστω in relation to the verb (predicator) that it co-occurs with; only today we'll search for this with both adverbial (as in Part II) and adjectival instances. For those of you who can't wait, here's a link to the video:

• Video: Flash, 7.5MB, with sound, 5:30

In 1Th 4.16, εν Χριστω occurs before the verb, as shown below:

This instance is somewhat ambiguous (indeed, that's the reason why the JBL article was written); there are equally good reasons for the prepositional phrase to modify the subject or the verb. OpenText.org SAGNT annotates this as an adjectival relation, further modifying the subject. In order to examine like cases, we need to find where the prepositional phrase itself (whether the OpenText.org SAGNT annotates it adjectivally or adverbially) occurs preceding the predicator. Our earlier search in Part II only located OpenText.org's adverbial instances.

So today's video starts there and then shows how to search for where OpenText.org's adjectival instances precede the predicator. The combination of those two lists provides the whole set of instances where the prepositional phrase precedes the predicator.

• Video: Flash, 7.5MB, with sound, 5:30

Once the lists are available, the analysis can proceed. Examine not only the verbs, but also the other clausal components that are similar to 1Th 4.16. Which of these instances, like 1Th 4.16, appear to be genuinely ambiguous as to where the prepositional phrase can attach? And can those instances help in establishing reasons to prefer either adjectival or adverbial modification in 1Th 4.16?

Lastly, after surveying the material, you may want to do a reference search of your Greek grammars to see if any of them discuss the issue of how the prepositional phrase functions in 1Th 4.16; you may also want to check some of your commentaries (like NIGTC on Thessalonians, perhaps; or the WBC or ICC volumes if you've got 'em) to see what they say.

[NB: The update at the bottom of the article is new; if you've found this article useful please review it. Thanks! — Rick]

The most recent issue of the SBL's Journal of Biblical Literature (vol 126, no 3) has an article entitled "The Syntax of εν Χριστω in 1 Thessalonians 4:16" (pp. 579-593). SBL members are able to download the article from the Society of Biblical Literature web site.

The article's authors, David Konstan and Ilaria Ramelli, examine the question of whether or not the prepositional phrase εν Χριστω ("in Christ") attaches to the clause subject (οι νεκροι, "the dead") or to the clause verb (αναστησονται, "will rise").

Why is this important? Basically the question the authors seek to answer is whether it is more appropriate to translate the clause "the dead in Christ will rise" or "the dead will rise in Christ"; important to the authors as they state:

The choice between the two versions is of considerable importance. On the first interpretation, only those who have died in Christ will be resurrected, whereas the second can be taken to signify that all the dead will be resurrected in Christ—the necessary premise for the thesis of universal salvation or apocatastasis defined by Origen and other patristics writers, including Gregory of Nyssa. (580)

At this point, I think it is worth stating that the way one answers the question may allow for an interpretation of universal salvation, but it surely doesn't dictate it. I should also note that the authors don't say that the way one answers the question dictates interpretation; I just thought I should make that clear.

I'm not going to interact directly with the article's argument; I just thought it would be helpful to use this as a springboard to talk some more about (surprise!) syntax searching. Because examining questions like this really is syntax searching.

The authors of the article locate all instances of the prepositional phrase (there are 84 instances)* and then work through many of them looking to see what light they shed on how the prepositional phrase is attached. Of course, if you've used the OpenText.org Syntactically Analyzed Greek New Testament, you know that you can at least get their reading on questions like this. Here is how they organize 1Th 4.16:

As you can see, the OpenText.org SAGNT read the prepositional phrase (εν Χριστω, "in Christ") as modifying the noun phrase, thus "the dead in Christ."

Next we can search to find all instances of the prepositional phrase εν Χριστω. As you can see, The OpenText.org SAGNT does not specifically mark items as prepositional phrases, but it does have consistent encoding. There are two ways that prepositional phrases are annotated, and it depends on if they are adjectival (modifying a noun) or adverbial (modifying a verb). As can be seen in the above example, when the prepositional phrase is adverbial, one has a modifier that contains a modifier that is a specifier followed by a word that is the prepositional object. This query could be expressed as follows:

Adverbial instances are different; Romans 9.1 is a good example:

Inside of the word group (wg), the head term contains the exact same structure as the modifier in the adjectival version above. This can be expressed in the Syntax Search dialog as follows:

If you combine both searches with an OR, you can get a list of all of the instances of εν Χριστω to follow along and consult as you read the article.

This essentially gives you a second opinion to check out while you follow the authors' argument. And for technical arguments like the sort made in this article; that can be helpful.

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* The authors' count is 84; however a syntax search returns 86 hits. There are two verses that have two hits apiece. First is 1Co 4.15, which has εν and Χριστω separated by a postpositive γαρ in the second hit of the verse. The other verse is Php 4.19, which has an ambiguous modification structure (εν δοξη εν Χριστω Ιησου) that causes searches to locate each εν as the basis of the hit. Therefore a Syntax Search provides evidence of 85 instances; as the authors of the article do not provide a comprehensive hit list, there is no way to tell where these lists differ. My guess is that their count is a count of verse instances (84) and not of hits (85), though they do phrase it as if the number 84 reflects instances and not number of verses in which instances are found—a subtle but important difference.

Update (2007-12-07): I've revisited my original syntax search and the hit count discrepancy (84 vs 85). I've determined that 84 is the proper number. In my original syntax search, I should have done two things differently. First, I should have stated morphological criteria for the lexical form χριστος; or I should have just searched for the inflected text Χριστω. Second, the anything objects were unnecessary. A screen shot of the revised query is below. This query returns 84 instances, and these are likely the same 84 instances cited by Konstan and Ramelli in their article.

Hopefully this clarification helps.

Logos will be at the Evangelical Theological Society's (ETS) National Conference in San Diego. A few of us are giving papers at the conference. Here are the details; if they sound interesting to you we'd love to see you drop by the sessions.

Of course, we'd also love for you to drop by our booth any time during the conference. So if you're in San Diego at ETS, come on by and see what we've been up to (like the Qumran Biblical Scrolls and also the Semitic Inscriptions project).

We'll see you in San Diego!

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Wednesday, Nov. 14, 4:10-4:50 PM
Garden Salon Two
Richard W. Brannan
Richard Bauckham and Eyewitness Testimony: Does His Narrative Device Occur Outside of the Synoptics?

A recent book by Richard Bauckham (Jesus and the Eyewitnesses) describes Marcan usage of something he calls the "plural to singular narrative device" (Bauckham 156-157). He defines the device using syntactic terminology: "a plural verb ... without an explicit subject is used to describe the movements of Jesus and his disciples, followed immediately by a singular verb or pronoun referring to Jesus alone" (Bauckham 156-157). Using this device, Bauckham posits Mark's usage of Peter's eyewitness testimony as underlying source for 21 different movements of Jesus (e.g. Mk 1.21).

Bauckham's exploration of this narrative device is limited to the synoptic gospels. But does the device occur elsewhere? This paper argues that if such a thing as the plural-to-singular narrative device exists, then Ac 18.19 should be considered an additional Lucan instance of the device.

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Thursday, Nov. 15, 11:10-11:40 AM
Sunset
Michael S. Heiser
The Professor and Mariamne: The Textual and Statistical Justification for Marooning James Tabor's "Jesus Tomb Theory" on Gullible's Island

(This session is part of the Near East Archaeological Society's general session)

On March 4, 2007 the Discovery Channel aired a documentary touting the discovery of the “Lost Tomb of Jesus.” Negative responses quickly followed from all quarters of academia, across the theological spectrum. There has been one notable exception among biblical scholars, Dr. James Tabor, Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Despite the fact that popular interest in the Jesus Family Tomb has declined steadily in the wake of the overwhelmingly unfavorable response, Tabor has defended the film’s thesis. The reason is straightforward: an identification of the Talpiot tomb as the Jesus Family Tomb would lend support to Tabor’s own theory about the historical Jesus. This paper overviews and evaluates Tabor’s ongoing arguments for a Jesus family tomb in support of his own larger thesis about the historical Jesus.

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Thursday, Nov. 15, 3:00-3:40 PM
Royal Palm Salon Two
Steven Runge
Teaching them what NOT to Do: The Nuances of Negation in the Greek New Testament

Most descriptions of negation are primarily concerned with highlighting the distinctions between ου and μη. Little attention is given to variation in the syntax of negation constructions. The biblical writers frequently used negation to describe what did not happen as a means of adding emphasis to what did happen. Emphasis can also be assigned by emphasizing a specific component of a clause rather than the entire negated clause. The purpose of this paper is to describe and illustrate the basic patterns observed in the Greek NT. Based on this description, representative examples will be presented that demonstrate the exegetical payoff of careful attention to negation.

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Friday, Nov. 16, 11:30 AM -12:10 PM
Royal Palm Salon Five
Michael S. Heiser
Did Jesus Allow for Reincarnation? Assessing the Syntax of John 9:3-4

In a 2003 article in the scholarly journal Filología Neotestamentaria entitled, “The True Meaning of Jn 9:3-4,” J. D. M. Derrett raised the possibility that Jn 9:3-4 (the man blind from birth) could plausibly be construed as evidence that Jesus was not opposed to the idea of reincarnation. Derrett argued that the disciples’ question about why the man was born blind suggests that the disciples were prepared to accept that the man had sinned in the womb or in a previous life. According to Derrett a specific syntactical structure (the “relative negative”— ου/μη [or any negative particle] . . . αλλα, followed by ινα) in Jesus’ response does not denote a categorical denial of the idea. This paper tests this assertion by means of Logos’ implementation of the OpenText.org syntactically-tagged database.

I don't know offhand how many have installed the latest beta (3.0e RC 2 as of the writing of this post) of the LDLS; and I have even less of an idea of how many of those users have explored the Syntax Search dialog. But we added two new "objects" to the query model, and they're pretty nifty.

These objects are available for all syntax databases, though my example below is from the OpenText.org Syntactically Analyzed Greek New Testament.

• Group: Used to group things together. Order and structure matter in the group operator. This is best used when you want to use OR on groups of objects. Think of it like parentheses in other search/grouping syntax—it allows multiple things to be treated as one, as a "group".
• Unordered Group: One hindrance of the Syntax Search dialog in the past was the necessity to specify all possible options when component order was not important. Let's say I wanted to search for a clause with a particular noun as subject, and a particular verb as the predicator but I didn't care about the order in which the subject and predicator occurred. It could be S-P or P-S. In the past, I would've had to specify both orders and use the OR operator, as well as anything operators between components. Now the components (and their content) can be specified as an Unordered Group, and the software permutes the possible combinations.

Perhaps an example would help explain the Unordered Group object.

Just the other day I was reading J.H. Moulton's Prolegomena volume in the Moulton-Howard-Turner Grammar (which is on pre-pub, BTW ... make sure to get your copy while it is relatively cheap!) and on page 58 he mentions something called the σχημα Πινδαρικον, or the "Pindaric Construction". This is when a group of singular things in the subject have a singular verb in the predicate.

That's not exactly easy to understand; an example would help. A good example is Mark 4.41, " ... that even the wind and the sea obey him?" The subject consists of two singular nouns, but the verb is singular too. A more literal translation might be "the wind and the sea it obeys him". So the subject here acts as a single unit instead of as two things, and the verb is singular instead of plural ("it obeys" vs. "they obey"). Kinda weird. [NB: see the comments to this post for some important clarifications — RB]

Moulton gives five examples: Mt 5.18; 6.19; Mk 4.41; 1Co 15.50; Re 9.12. But I was curious to know how many more might exist in the NT. Moulton says "It is really only a special case of anacoluthon, no more peculiar to Pindar than to Shakspere (sic)." (Moulton, 58). Looking at Mark 4.41, we can see the structure in question:

Note the two word groups in the subject, each with a head term that is singular in morphological number. And also note the predicator, which contains a head term that is singular in morphological number. That's the structure, essentially. So what does it take to find further instances? Here's a screen shot of the query:

A few things to notice in the query.

First, note the use of the Unordered Group object. The contents are two clause components, one a Subject, the other a Predicator. These objects are what are permuted, so you're searching for the equivalent of ([subject]-anything-[predicator]) OR ([predicator]-anything-[subject]) though you didn't have to specify it.

Second, a general note. This query shows how syntax searching takes advantage higher-level phrase-and-clause annotation (clauses, subjects, verbs, groups, etc.) but also relies upon word-level morphological information. Morphology, lemmas, and other word-level information is important and foundational; but syntax searching takes the next step in building additional annotation upon that foundation and allowing interaction between all available levels.

Below is an example of some of the results. All told, there are 275 instances of this query located in the OpenText.org Syntactically Analyzed Greek New Testament.

Once results are available, they can be graphed. Below is an example of a graph charting hit density in chapters. (Or, you could export the hit data from here to Excel, and do your own charting/math/analysis/whatever). Interesting in the chart is Colossians 3, which is densest area listed. Here's the chart:

The hit density in Col 3 is a result of Col 3.11, which has a number of word groups in the Subject. You know, "Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free":

Anyway, queries that search for groups of things (most syntax queries do this to account for varying structures) should be easier now. And once you have that data, you can still do nifty things with it—reviewing highlighted hits, graphing the hits to check different measures of distribution, and the like.

Earlier I blogged on using multiple English translations to see how a passage is translated differently. In passages (such as James 4.5-6) where there are ambiguities, many times comparing English translations can help in understanding the best way to deal with the ambiguity.

With James 4.5, as we saw, translations are fairly evenly split in handling this passage. Recall the issues:

• Is it 'spirit' or 'Spirit'?
• Is [Ss]pirit the subject or direct object of its clause?

The first point is determined largely by context and how one reads the text. This means it is important to determine whether [Ss]pirit is the subject or direct object because this may assist in determining whether it is 'spirit' or 'Spirit'. This post digs into the second point above by digging down into the underlying Greek. Of course, this is problematic for the same reason: ambiguity.

I received an email from one of y'all with some further questions about word groups, head terms, clausal hierarchy and syntax searching.

Rather than writing something, it was easier to make a video to point out some of the different ways one can structure a syntax search — particularly if you've wondered what "Must be an immediate child of parent" does.

I'll warn you that I rambled a bit, the video is almost 13 minutes. Hopefully the information therein is usable.

• Video: Flash, 16+ MB, 12:47 min, with sound

Read the first five posts in this series: Intro | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4.

2Ti 4.1 offers an example of the Charge Form.

The discussion of this form is very much preliminary because Smith's recent book, Timothy's Task, Paul's Prospect is the first to propose this form. If Smith is right, it could affect how one interprets the whole book of Second Timothy. One should at least weigh this when working through the book of Second Timothy.

Description of Form

Smith defines the form as follows:

My research has identified four basic elements which comprise the charge: the Charge Verb, Person/s Charged, Authority Phrase, and Content of the Charge. A fifth element sometimes present in a charge is the Implications of the Charge, though this is not a necessary component.[1]

Smith provides more explanation of each of these elements:

• The Charge Verb: Could be διαμαρτύρομαι, παραγγέλλω, μαρτύρομαι, ἐνορκίζω, εχορκίζω, ὁρκίζω, κελεύω, παρακαλέω, ἐντέλλομαι.[2] Smith notes these are to be active apart from deponents, which will occur in the middle.[3]
• The Person Charged: A second person singular or plural, though third person singular or plural are possible. The case of the noun is either accusative or dative. This item is not always a part of the charge, sometimes it may be implied from context.[4]
• The Authority Phrase: Typically following the verb, it may or may not use a preposition. When no preposition is present, the phrase uses the accusative case.[5]
• The Content of the Charge: Typically in a ἵνα clause and a verb second or third person subjunctive, though it may be an infinitival clause or perhaps even a series of imperatives.

Because the charge verb and authority phrase are always present, those will be used as the basis of the query.

The Form in OpenText.org SAGNT

Smith reports the following instances of the charge form: Mt 26.63; Mk 5.7; Ac 16.18; Ro 12.1-2; 15.30-32; 1Co 1.10; Eph 4.17; 1Th 4.1; 5.27; 2Th 3.6; 2Th 3.12; 1Ti 5.21; 1Ti 6.13-14; 2Ti 4.1-8.[6] The query follows:

• A primary clause with a first-person indicative charge verb as predicator. A second clause component, either an adjunct or a complement contains:
• “supernatural being or power” (Louw-Nida domain 12) as head term, or
• οικτιρμος, οικτιρμων or ονομα as the head term

This query, when run, returns 29 instances. Some are duplications based on the “OR” criteria in the word group of the second clause component.

• Instances from Smith located by the query: Mt 26.63; Mk 5.7; Ac 16.18; 15.30-32; 1Co 1.10; Eph 4.17; 1Th 4.1; 5.27; 2Th 3.6; 2Th 3.12; 1Ti 5.21; 1Ti 6.13-14; 2Ti 4.1-8
• Extras located by the query: Jn 14.16; 16.26; Ac 19.13.
• Instances from Smith missed by the query: Ro 12.1-2. This is due to a discrepancy in the annotation of Ro 12.1, where the prepositional phrase that functions as the authority phrase is annotated as modifying the following infinitive verb instead of the preceding indicative verb (the charge verb).

Bibliography

Smith, Craig A. Timothy’s Task, Paul’s Prospect: A New Reading of 2 Timothy (Sheffield: The Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2006).

Notes

[1] Smith, p. 27.

[2] Smith, p. 27, 29.

[3] Smith, p. 29.

[4] Smith, p. 30.

[5] Smith, p. 30

[6] Smith, p. 231-233

Read the first four posts in this series: Intro | 1 | 2 | 3.

Php 4.10 offers an example of the Joy Expression.

Description of Form

As with the Request/Petition form, Mullins has questioned if such a thing as the “Joy Expression” exists as a form in the New Testament. White describes the form as follows:

Five formal items may appear in joy expressions: (i) either the verb χαίρω (“I rejoice”) in the aorist tense (cf. Phil 4:10 and P.Giss. 21 in type 3), or the noun χάρις (“joy”) in the accusative case as the object of the verb ἔχω (cf. Philemon 7 in type 3); (ii) an adverb denoting magnitude (πολλήν, μεγάλως, λίαν in the examples diagrammed on p. 94); (iii) either a statement regarding the arrival of a letter or a statement concerning something which was heard; (iv) the object which was heard, introduced by ὅτι; and (v) the vocative.[1]

Mullins rightly takes issue with this based on White’s own examples. Mullins writes:

For the joy expression, [White] indicates five elements without saying which are essential and which are optional; he says they “may appear” in the form. Now, if a form is to be a form, there must be something about it which is basic. Presumably in the joy expression two elements are basic: first “either the verb χαίρω (“I rejoice”) in the aorist tense (cf. Phil 4:10 and P.Giss. 21 in type 3), or the noun χάρις (“joy”) in the accusative case as the object of the verb ἔχω (cf. Philemon 7 in type 3)” and, second, “the object which was heard, introduced by ὅτι”.[2]

To isolate instances of this potential form,[3] the two items Mullins understands as basic are used as search criteria.

The Form in OpenText.org SAGNT

Because Mullins’ first basic item has two relatively different options, two queries are necessary.

First Query[4]

• A primary clause with a first person aorist instance of χαίρω as the predicator.
• A secondary clause with the conjunction ὅτι.

Second Query

• A primary clause with a first-person instance of ἔχω as predicator and χάρις (or χαρά) as complement. The order may be predicator-complement or complement-predicator.

No comprehensive list of instances of the joy expression are given by either White or Mullins. Their own examples list Php 4.10 (exemplary of first query) and Phm 7 (exemplary of second query) among the NT instances. The following are located with the queries:

• Instances located by the First Query: 2Co 7.13; Php 4.10; 2Jn 4
• Instances located by the Second Query: 1Ti 1.11-12; 2Ti 1.3; Phm 7; Heb 12.28; 3Jn 4.

Bibliography

Mullins, T.Y., “Formulas in the New Testament Epistles”, JBL 91 (1972), pp. 380-390.
White, J.L., “Introductory Formulae in the Body of the Pauline Letter”, JBL 90 (1971), pp. 91-97.

Notes

[1] White, pp. 95-96.

[2] Mullins, p. 384.

[3] For the very reasons Mullins states, existence of this structure as a literary form are doubtful. At the very least, the definition needs to be worked over and supplemented with non-canonical examples from the papyri.

[4] Instead of two queries, the form could be located with a single query that uses OR to join the two separate queries. They are presented separately to isolate the differences in each portion of the overall query.

Read the first three posts in this series: 1 | 2 | 3.

1Co 1.10 offers an example of the Request/Petition form.

Description of Form

There is much debate between White and Mullins on this form. Smith, as the latest writer to review the debate, gets the last word. He sides with Mullins, thus Mullins’ formulation (as described by Smith) will be evaluated here. Smith writes:

According to Mullins, the petition form has three basic elements: the background, the petition verb, and the desired action and optionally the address (i.e. to whom the petition is directed) and the courtesy phrase (i.e. a form of ἔαν σοι δόξη, ‘if it seems good to you’). The background includes the recital of information which the petitioner deems necessary for the official to know so that the official will decide in the petitioner’s favour. The petition verb, which is always in the first person and the present tense, reflects the petitioner’s concern that the official act on his behalf. the typical verbs used are ἀξιοῦν, δεῖσθαι, ἐρωτᾶν and παρακαλεῖν. The desired action outlines the request of the petitioner, that is, what he wants the official to do on his behalf. [1]

No specific structural information is given regarding the “background” section, so this cannot be included in a structural search. The other “basic elements”, the petition verb and the desired action, can be structurally quantified.

The Form in OpenText.org SAGNT

The request/petition form involves consecutive clauses, each with different characteristics.

First Query

• A primary clause that has either ἀξιοῦν, δεῖσθαι, ἐρωτᾶν or παρακαλεῖν as its predicator in the first person and present tense. The verb is a first-person present indicative. This clause has a complement (or perhaps an adjunct) with an embedded clause. The predicator of the embedded clause is an infinitive verb. An example is found in Lu 9.38.

Second Query

• A primary clause that has either ἀξιοῦν, δεῖσθαι, ἐρωτᾶν or παρακαλεῖν as its predicator in the first person and present tense. The verb is to be a first-person present active indicative.
• A primary or secondary clause follows. This primary clause has an second person verb in the indicative, imperative or subjunctive mood as its predicator. An example is found in Ac 21.39.

Third Query

• A primary clause that has either ἀξιοῦν, δεῖσθαι, ἐρωτᾶν or παρακαλεῖν as its predicator in the first person and present tense. The verb is to be a first-person present active indicative.
• A secondary clause follows. This clause contains a subordinate clause indicated by the conjunctions ἵνα, γὰρ or ὅπως.[2] An example is found in 2Th 3.12. Note that other secondary clauses may intervene between the primary clause and the subordinate clause (e.g. Phm 10).

Mullins reports the following instances of the Petition Form: Lu 8.28; 9.38; 14.18-19; 16.27; Ac 8.34; 21.39; 26.3; 28.22; Ro 12.1; 16.17; 1Co 1.10; 16.15; 2Co 2.8; 6.1; 10.1, 2; Ga 4.12; Eph 4.1; Php 4.2, 3; 1Th 4.1, 10; 5.12; 2Th 2.1; 3.12; 1Ti 2.1; Phm 9, 10; Heb 13.19; 22; 1Pe 2.11; 5.1.[3]

• Instances from Mullins located by the First Query: Lu 9.38; Ac 26.3; 28.22; Ro 12.1; 16.17; 2Co 2.8; 6.1; 10.2; Eph 4.1-3; Php .4.2; 1Th 4.10-11; 5.12-13; 2Th 2.1; 1Ti 2.1-2; 1Pe 2.11-12.
• Extras located in First Query: Ac 24.4; 27.34; Ro 15.30.
• Instances from Mullins located by the Second Query:[4] Lu 8.28; Lu 14.18-19; Lu 16.27; Ac 21.39; Ro 12.1-2; 16.17; 1Co 1.10; 16.15; 2Co 5.20; Ga 4.12; Php 4.3; 1Th 4.1; 5.12-13, 14; Heb 13.22
• Extras located in Second Query: Jn 17.15
• Instances from Mullins located by the Third Query: Lu 16.27; 1Co 1.10; 1Th 4.1, 10-12; 2Th 3.12; 1Ti 2.1-2; Phm 10-13; Heb 13.19; 1Pe 2.11-12.
• Extras located in Third Query: Jn 17.15; Ro 15.30-32; 2Jn 5
• Instances missed by all three queries: Ac 8.34; 1Pe 5.1.

In the instances missed by the queries, the syntax is not as easily ascertained as in the others. In Ac 8.34, the substance of the desired action is not stated at all; it is implied by asking a question—a question that is formally three short clauses. The petition, then, is to answer the question; it is not explicitly stated at all. In 1Pe 5.1, a complex verbless clause consisting of a subject with embedded participles intervenes between the petition verb and the desired action (stated in a primary clause with an imperative verb).

Alternate Query

An alternate method would be to simply find where a present tense, singular form of the petition verb occurs as the predicator of a primary clause. These would logically have a high probability of being examples of the petition form.

This method, completed in a single search, locates all of the instances supplied by Mullins. The query additionally locates the following false positives: Jn 17.9, 15, 20; Ac 24.4; Ro 15.30; 1Co 4.13, 16; 1Th 5.14.

Bibliography

Mullins, T.Y., “Formulas in the New Testament Epistles”, JBL 91 (1972), pp. 380-390.
———, “Petition as a Literary Form”, NovT 5 (1962), pp. 46-52.
Smith, C.A., Timothy’s Task, Paul’s Prospect: A New Reading of 2 Timothy (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2006). pp. 10,
White, J.L., “Introductory Formulae in the Body of the Pauline Letter”, JBL 90 (1971), pp. 91-97.
———, The Form and Structure of the Official Petition (Missoula, MT: Society of Biblical Literature, 1972).

Notes

[1] Smith, 47.

[2] White 1971, p. 93.

[3] Mullins 1962, p. 54. Note that Mullins has two typos. “2 Corinthians XX 2” should be “2 Corinthians X 2” and “2 Corinthians V 20; V 1” should be “2 Corinthians V 20; VI 1”.

[4] These instances include overlapping matches between all three queries; this is not a unique list.

Read the first two posts in this series: 1 | 2.

Romans 16 has several examples of this form. Verse 3 offers a good sample:

Description of Form

Mullins describes the components of the greeting form as follows:

The elements of the greeting are: 1. the greeting verb (some form of ἀσπάζεσθαι); 2. indication of the person who is to do the greeting; 3. indication of the person who is being greeted; 4. elaborating phrases. The first three are the basic elements of the greeting. The fourth is optional. These elements may be expressed differently in the three types of greeting. In the first-person and second-person type of greeting, elements one and two are accomplished at the same time by the verb.[1]

As noted in the above quotation, Mullins identifies three different types of the form, one for each grammatical person of the greeter. Thus there are first-person, second-person and third-person forms. Because component 2 can be done with either grammatical person of the verb (first and second person) or a pronoun (third person), the pronoun is essentially optional when considering a syntax-based query. Therefore a syntactic search only need attend to two criteria:

• The greeting verb (ἀσπάζομαι)
• Indication of the person being greeted.

Mullins does not provide a definitive list of New Testament instances, but he does mention epistles that contain instances of the greeting form: “It appears in the letters of Paul, extensively, and in the Pastorals, Hebrews, I Peter, and II and III John.”[2]

The Form in OpenText.org SAGNT

Locating the greeting form involves searching for clause-initial instances of ἀσπάζομαι (as a predicator component) that also have a complement clause component. The complement denotes what completes the predication, thus direct objects are included in the sorts of things that complements encode.[3] Including the complement therefore includes an “indication of the person being greeted”.

This query returns 69 instances, though the results are not perfect. Instances in Mark (15.18) and Acts (21.7, 19; 25.13) are returned in addition to hits in Paul, Pastorals, Hebrews, First Peter, Second John and Third John.[4] Romans, with an extensive greeting section in chapter 16, contains the bulk of the matches.

Bibliography

Mullins, T.Y., “Greeting as a New Testament Form”, JBL 87 (1968), pp. 418-426.

Endnotes

[1] Mullins, p. 419.

[2] Mullins, p. 424.

[3] An aside: One could limit greetings to those that list personal names in the complement by restricting the complement to containing a head term word that is also tagged as Louw-Nida domain 93, the “personal name” domain. But this would skip over other valid instances of greetings like Php 4.22, “All the saints greet you”.

[4] Based on Mullins’ article, my guess is that only the Mark and Acts references are extraneous; the rest are valid.

Read the first post in this series...

An example of the disclosure form is found in 1Th 4.13:

Description of Form

Smith provides a concise summary of the structure of the disclosure form as identified by Mullins:

Mullins has isolated the disclosure form, as a distinct literary form which is used in the NT. He examined the form in terms of structure first. By doing so he observes that this form has four constituent elements: verb of wishing, infinitive of a noetic verb, person addressed and information disclosed. Next he examined the form in terms of content and observed that the verb of wishing is typically θέλω, the infinitive of a noetic verb used is typically γινώσκειν (the tense varies) or ἀγνοεῖν, the person addressed is either second person singular or plural and the content of the information disclosed is diverse and usually found within a ὅτι clause.[1]

White discusses the form briefly in his article:

This form may be delineated in terms of its three principal elements: (i) the verb of disclosure, often a two-membered unit consisting of a verb of desiring (θέλω or βούλομαι) in the first person indicative, and the verb of knowing (γινώσκω) in the infinitive form; (ii) the vocative of address (ἀδελφοί, “brothers,” in the five examples from Paul); and (iii) the subject to be disclosed introduced by ὅτι.[2]

The common points of these descriptions include:

• verb of wishing/desiring
• verb of knowing, in the infinitive mood
• a ὅτι or ἵνα clause further explicating the subject to be disclosed.

Smith reports Mullins determines the following references as containing instances of the disclosure formula: Ro 1.13; 11.25; 1Co 10.1; 11.3; 12.1; 2Co 1.8; Col 2.1; 1Th 4.13.[3]

Because the third item (ὅτι or ἵνα clause) is variable as Mullins’ reported instances demonstrate, candidate instances of the disclosure formula can be located simply taking the first two items into account.

The Form in OpenText.org SAGNT

Locating the disclosure form in the OpenText.org SAGNT involves searching for clauses that contain a Predicator with θέλω and that also contain an embedded clause (infinives are typically encoded as embedded clauses) with lexical forms of either αγνοεω or οιδα.[4] Below is the query that will find Smith and Mullins’ reported instances.[5]

Search results in Logos Bible Software are presented in both Greek and English, with respective structures highlighted in each language. In this particular search, the silver background represents the content of the clause; the orange represents each clause component. Bibliography

Mullins, T. Y., “Disclosure: a Literary Form in the New Testament”, NovT 7 (1964), pp. 44-50.
White, J.L., “Introductory Formulae in the Body of the Pauline Letter”, JBL 90 (1971), pp. 91-97.
Smith, C.A., Timothy’s Task, Paul’s Prospect: A New Reading of 2 Timothy (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2006). pp. 10,

Endnotes

[1] Smith, 10.

[2] White, 93.

[3] Smith, 11.

[4] Andrew Pitts, in a forthcoming review of Logos Bible Software 3.0 to be published in the Journal of Greco-Roman Judaism and Christianity, uses a similar search with similar results as an example of the capability of the OpenText.org SAGNT.

[5] As of November, 2006, this is not strictly true. 1Co 12.1 is erroneously tagged in the current version of the OpenText.org SAGNT. This error has been flagged for correction and should be updated in a future release of the database.

During the SBL national meeting in Washington DC, we'll be doing a session on Syntactically Annotated editions of the Greek New Testament. Here's the info:

Session: 20-101 — Syntactically-Tagged Databases of the Greek NT: Overview & Training Seminar
Date: Monday — November 20
Time: 4:00 - 6:30 PM
Room: Bulfinch - GH
Description: Exegesis in the Greek New Testament concerns far more than semantics and parsing. Take the quantum leap with software that allows you to search for grammatical/syntactical structures and usage in the Greek New Testament.

During that session, I hope to run through a few examples of things I've been working on with syntax searching in the area of epistolary form criticism. That sounds a bit high-falutin', I know, but it has direct import on exegesis of New Testament epistles.

Think about it. Even today, we have certain "forms" that we use in particular types of communication. When we write a letter, we have a "Dear ______" salutation, we have a signature (e.g., "Sincerely, Rick" or something like that). Those are what could be called "forms". If you write a memo in your office, chances are you do it a particular way.

The same thing happens with ancient letters. There are particular "forms" for opening a letter. There are also forms closing a letter. And there are, some think, forms for other things in between.

If you're working through an epistle, wouldn't it be important to know if there are potential examples of these "forms", and to also be able to find where other instances of them are in the epistles? Might that not have an effect on exegesis?

This post introduces the idea in a little more detail. Subsequent posts in the series (I believe there will be five, though some may be broken up depending on size of post) will work through the structure of some proposed forms (see bibliography below) and examples of syntax searches designed to locate those forms. I hope to post once a week, but I may get off that schedule since we'll be in the holidays.

OK, bonanza might be a bit of an overstatement...but the good doctor has done some "hard time" in our video production studio so that you might reap the benefit.

As part of our ETS/SBL marketing materials, Dr. Heiser, academic editor for Logos, created a number of videos demonstrating the syntax tools and resources in Logos 3.

Crafting these videos can be a painstaking process and, wow, that small room can get hot...but I hope you'll agree that it was worth the effort. We've posted a few of the syntax videos to our Video Tutorials page and I've included direct links to each video below.

How do these differ from the other videos we've done on syntax?

Here Mike takes the gloves off and pits morphology vs. syntax to show some very specific things you can do with syntax searching that are simply not possible with morphological tagging alone.

Mike calls syntax the "new frontier" in Bible software and says, "These video presentations show searches that are well beyond the reach of Bible software as you've known it."

Or in the words of Walt Disney, "It's kind of fun to do the impossible."

Greek & Hebrew Syntax Videos

Hebrew

Search Video #1: Andersen-Forbes Analyzed Text of the Hebrew Bible (8:10, 9MB) Compound subject in agreement with a singular verb across verse boundaries.

Search Video #2: Andersen-Forbes Analyzed Text of the Hebrew Bible (5:55, 4MB) Verb-Subject-Object (VSO) order vs. Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) order in clauses in the Pentateuch generally, and by Eissfeldt source (P, J).

Greek

Search Video #1: OpenText.org Syntactically Analyzed Greek New Testament (15:23, 14MB) Accusative noun or pronoun as subject of an infinitive, when the infinitive also takes an accusative object.

Search Video #1: Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament (4:25, 3MB) Finding double accusatives in the Catholic Epistles.

Update 11/10, 11:05am - If you have limited access to the Internet, you can download the syntax videos as a zip file (46MB). Save the zip file to your hard drive, CD-ROM or other media. To run the videos, unzip all contents to a single folder, then launch each HTML file in turn to view the Flash videos.

Some of the most exciting events we attend each year are the national meetings of Evangelical Theological Society and Society of Biblical Literature held in mid-November, this year in Washington, DC.

We'll have a booth at each meeting where you can meet a number of Logos staff. It's an exciting time for us to meet and hear from the academic crowd and show off new products and features that are in the works or recently shipped.

Beyond just stopping by the booth, you can also attend more than a half-dozen sessions that relate to Logos Bible Software! Some of the sessions are presented by Logos staff, and some are presented by scholars who are using our software or developing new databases for Logos.

ETS events are listed first, then SBL...

ETS Papers by Logos Staff

---

Thursday - November 16

10:10-10:50 am

• Michael S. Heiser (Logos Bible Software), You’ve Seen One elohim, You’ve Seen Them All? A Critique of Mormonism’s Apologetic Use of Psalm 82

11:00-11:40 am

• Rick Brannan (Logos Bible Software), Subjects and Predicates and Complements, Oh My! Searching the New Testament with Sensitivity to Syntax
  This paper examines different sorts of syntactic searches that can be pursued from the starting point of a word. Questions like "When is [word] used as a subject?" or "What verbs are used when [word] is a subject?" will be examined and discussed.

SBL Papers & Presentations by Logos Staff, Users, and Project Contributors

---

Saturday - November 18

18-107 : Syntactically-Tagged Databases of the Hebrew Bible: Overview & Training Seminar
4:00 - 6:30 PM     |     Room: Bulfinch - GH

• This seminar will overview the latest quantum leap for computerized research and teaching in the Hebrew Bible: textual data bases tagged for syntactical force and structures.

Sunday - November 19

S19-60 : Computer Assisted Research
1:00 - 3:00 PM     |     Room: 103A - CC

• Theme: The Bible and Media
  Mark Dubis, Union University, Presiding
  Jens Bruun Kofoed, Copenhagen Lutheran School of Theology; Learning, Liberty, and Libronix: How Multimedia Changes the Study of Ancient Israel's History (30 min)
  The paper will present an outline of the theoretical arguments for using multimedia to enhance the learning process with a number of examples from the Danish Ancient Israel's History Multimedia Project...The project takes advantage of the Libronix Personal Book Builder which allows users to create Libronix compatible books that integrate seamlessly with the Libronix Digital Library System.

S19-105 : Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics
4:00 - 6:30 PM     |     Room: 204C - CC

• Matthew Brook O'Donnell, OpenText.org, Presiding
  Rick Brannan, Logos Bible Software. Modifiers in the Pastoral Epistles: Insight for Questions of Style? (10 min)
  This paper examines modifier usage inside of epistolary prescripts in epistles traditionally attributed to Paul. The goal is to show that components of epistolary prescripts use modification for different purposes. This conclusion is well known, but by reaching the conclusion using only the OpenText.org Word Group Analysis, the subsequent value of the OpenText.org annotation for the analysis of style becomes evident.

Monday - November 20

S20-86 : Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy
1:00 - 3:30 PM     |     Room: 142 - CC

• Michael S. Heiser, Logos Research Systems, New Implementations of Digital Resources for the Study of the Language and Literature of Ugarit (30 min)
  Scholars who work primarily in the Hebrew Bible, the Greek New Testament, and other classical material have long had the capability of studying the grammar, morphology, and literature of their text corpus via commercial software programs. Efforts to move the study of Ugaritic into the electronic world to date have focused on digital reproduction of tablets and information storage and retrieval. The prodigious achievement of Laboratorio de Hermeneumatica (Instituto de Filologia) of Madrid, accomplished under the leadership of J. L. Cunchillos, J. A. Zamora and J. P. Vita, paved the way for new implementations of their data in a sophisticated, user-friendly software package. This presentation offers attendees the first look at the result of a recent licensing agreement between the Laboratorio and Logos Bible Software. The new software package not only allows searching of the Ugaritic corpus, but the results of those searches are fully integrated with digitized print works relevant to the study of Ugaritic.

20-101 : Syntactically-Tagged Databases of the Greek NT: Overview & Training Seminar
4:00 - 6:30 PM     |     Room: Bulfinch - GH

• This seminar will overview the latest quantum leap for computerized research and teaching in the Greek New Testament: textual data bases tagged for syntactical force and structures.

Tuesday - November 21

S21-6 : Computer Assisted Research
9:00-11:30 AM     |     Room: 103A - CC

• Sheila McGinn, John Carroll University, Presiding
  Albert L. Lukaszewski, St. Andrews, Scotland, Finding Discreet Sentential Structures in the New Testament (30 min)
  Considers how to use the Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament "to find discreet structures in the syntax of New Testament Greek. The sentential structures highlighted will include the internal syntax of subordinate clauses, frames of dialogue, the use of quotations, and the intertwining of relative and participial clauses as manifest in the Catholic Epistles."

I'm in a small group home Bible study, and we're studying Colossians. My Father-in-Law leads the study, but he and Mom were on a short vacation last week so that means I got to sit in the hotseat. Our text was Col 2.1-7.

So Col 2.2 was one of the verses we looked at. Here it is, in the ESV:

that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, (Col 2:2, ESV)

The text has the words "God's mystery". One of the first things I wondered about had to do with what other types of "mysteries" are mentioned in the New Testament. In OpenText.org-speak, what this means is that I wanted to find what sorts of things qualify the word translated "mystery" (μυστήριον).

I've detailed this sort of search before (see blog post Syntax Search Example: What "Qualifies" another Word?), complete with video.

That's cool and all ... but what if I didn't want to go to the trouble of creating a syntax search? Well, I could just run the Bible Word Study (BWS) report. One of the Grammatical Relationships examined for the OpenText.org Syntactically Annotated Greek New Testament involves qualifiers.

Specifically, it is the "Words and phrases used to further qualify (word)" relationship.

So I just ran the BWS by right-clicking μυστήριον and selecting the Bible Word Study option. Of course, if I was in a reverse interlinear, I could've just right-clicked. Here's the list I retrieved:

Now, assuming you have Logos 3 and the syntax databases, you try it. Here's my question for you: What kinds of "Kingdoms" are mentioned in the New Testament?

Go to Mt 13.11 in your ESV New Testament Reverse Interlinear, which mentions "the mystery of the kingdom of heaven", right-click on "kingdom", and run the right-click option for Bible Word Study.

When it's done, scroll down to the Words and phrases used to further qualify βασιλεία. It should look something like this:

Watch out ... now you're using syntax in your study of the New Testament!

If you've studied NT Greek, you've likely heard of something called the "Granville Sharp Rule".

If you've been around Bible software, you know that many folks use "finding Granville Sharp" as a sort of litmus test for the capabilities of their Bible software.

The OpenText.org Syntactically Analyzed Greek New Testament gives us an opportunity to examine what the Granville Sharp rule really is and to think about new ways to find instances of it.

Awhile back I wrote a paper for internal use here at Logos examining what "Granville Sharp" is and how to find it using the traditional "morphology+proximity+agreement" approach. This approach has problems because one must approximate relationships between words using morphological criteria (i.e. part-of-speech data), morphological agreement (i.e. terms 'agree' in their specified case), and word proximity (i.e. words are within N words of each other).

Then I examined finding Granville Sharp using the OpenText.org SAGNT. With the syntax annotation, you're freed from approximating relationships with morphology+proximity+agreement and empowered to actually specify relationships that the syntax annotation encodes.

The 17-page PDF document linked below is that paper. It has explanation and screen shots of the queries, graphs and whatnot so it should help in thinking about how to go about isolating syntactic structures via searching the OpenText.org SAGNT. It might even help get the juices flowing for those considering the Logos/SBL Technology Paper Awards.

I've also included the two syntax queries discussed in the paper. I just tested them on 3.0b Beta 2, so if you have that version installed, you should be fine. I would think it would work on any flavor of 3.0, but why not upgrade if you're not up to date?

Copy the queries to your My Documents\Libronix DLS\Syntax Queries folder and then load them as you would any other syntax search, from the Load ... button in the Syntax Search dialogue.

• Paper (PDF): Granville Sharp's First Rule and Syntax Searching
• Syntax Query #1: OpenText: Complex Granville Sharp
• Syntax Query #2: OpenText: Granville Sharp Participles