Find Everywhere Jesus Discusses a Subject

A friend and fellow Logos user called me recently with the following scenario:

I’m studying in Matthew 12 where Jesus referred to the Pharisees as a “brood of vipers.” It made me think of the fact that Jesus often referenced animals in his speech. How can I locate occurrences of His mentioning animals?

The answer is found in a Bible search utilizing 2 datasets: Reported Speech and Biblical Word Senses. To set up the search keep in mind a team at Faithlife identified and tagged speech (conversation) in Scripture with both the Speaker and Addressee in the speech. These diligent workers also suggested contextual meanings (senses) for the words in the Bible.

So the following search will locate verses in which Jesus is the Speaker using words with the Sense, animal.

• Click the Search icon in the upper left of the program
• Select Bible as the search type (A)
• Select from the drop down list a verse range (B)
• Select from the resource to search drop down list a Bible with the interlinear option like the NASB (C)
• Place this search string in the Find box: {Speaker <Person Jesus>} AND <Sense animal> (D)
• Press the Enter key to generate the search results
• Click Aligned to justify the results for easier viewing (E)

After working awhile with the Bible Sense Lexicon on the Tools menu, pretty soon you can locate where Jesus spoke about most any subject:

For example in the above search query change animal to:

• vegetation to discover where Jesus used plants and trees in His teaching
• money to see what Jesus said about finances
• relationship person to find where Jesus discusses fathers, mothers, brothers,, etc.

For more detailed information about Searching, check out the Camp Logos Training Videos or attend the live upcoming Camp Logos in Washington, DC.

Morris Proctor is a certified trainer for Logos Bible Software. Morris, who has trained thousands of Logos users at his two-day Camp Logos seminars, provides many training materials.