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Analysis of Greek terms for an English word?


Simon Cozens

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There's got to be a way to do this but I can't work it out.

 

Given a search for, say "word" in English, I'd like to know how many times that's "rhema" in a particular Greek text and how many times it's "logos", (Or similar searches for words where I don't happen to know both Greek terms!) preferably as an analysis chart. I have GNT-NA and GNT-TRS but I'm happy to get GNT-TR if it makes this and other cool things work.

 

Thanks in advance!

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To do this you need to use a "Key number" text i.e. the KJVS, NAS95S or NIV-G/K. You have the first two of these.

 

Simply search on the English word, click the Details button, and click Analysis unless it is already open. The default should already be set to list and count the words in the original languages that are translated by that word. Go to Set Analysis Display (Display menu) to set the options and defaults for this window.

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To do this you need to use a "Key number" text i.e. the KJVS, NAS95S or NIV-G/K. You have the first two of these.

 

Thanks! I had just this minute found that myself - I was trying on the Greek texts, not the English.

 

Brilliant!

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Of course, you know what they say about de-skinning cats...

 

Just for thoroughness, if you don't use "strong's numbered" texts, you can do this with the "Contents" command.

In a Greek text such as GNT-T, search for "logos"

Then in your English text, search for

"word*" <AND> [CONTENTS GNT-T]

 

The results represent every occurrence of "word" and "words" that has "logos" in the same verse.

 

Using a negative [not] would offer occurrences of logos NOT translated with "word".

 

Of course, doing this with a tagged text is most meaningful... otherwise you'd have to spell out all the word variations.

And, of course, this method won't be exact. Just consider Mat 12.36 and Acts 10.44 which have forms of logos and rhema in the same verse.

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The results represent every occurrence of "word" and "words" that has "logos" in the same verse.

Using a negative [not] would offer occurrences of logos NOT translated with "word".

 

Neat, thank you! I think that gives you the English words which translate a given Greek word, which is sort of the inverse of what I was after, (Greek words translating a given English word) but still a handy trick! (I didn't really understand the [CONTENTS] quantifier before.)

 

For bonus points, is it possible (to be honest I doubt it but I've been pleasantly surprised so far) to do a phrase analysis? When I search for "word" in KJVS as Helen suggested, I get my pie chart showing me the 176 instances of "logos" versus the 24 instances of "rhema", but when I search for "word of God", even in quotes, I would love to see the distribution of "o logos tou theou" versus "rhema theou" versus "o logos tou kuriou" (Acts 19:20, odd choice by KJV translators...), but instead my pie chart treats each word separately.

 

I don't know if that's even a sensible thing to want, because it would be very complex, but it would be very cool.

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For bonus points, is it possible (to be honest I doubt it but I've been pleasantly surprised so far) to do a phrase analysis? When I search for "word" in KJVS as Helen suggested, I get my pie chart showing me the 176 instances of "logos" versus the 24 instances of "rhema", but when I search for "word of God", even in quotes, I would love to see the distribution of "o logos tou theou" versus "rhema theou" versus "o logos tou kuriou" (Acts 19:20, odd choice by KJV translators...), but instead my pie chart treats each word separately.

 

I don't know if that's even a sensible thing to want, because it would be very complex, but it would be very cool.

Simon,

This is not complex at all, at least not with Accordance, especially if you have a tagged text. The real benefit here of a tagged text is you can search by lexical form... so just put in logos and it'll find logos, logou, logw, etc. To browse the example results you suggested, one way is to use a tagged Greek text and simply search for

rhma <FOLLOWED BY> <WITHIN 2 Words> (qeos@[NOUN genitive])

It shows all 5 verses that have any form of "rhma" followed within 2 words by the genitive of "theos", which will catch it with or without an article (BTW, it is Luke 3.1-2; John 3.34; 8.47; Eph 6.14-17; Heb 11.3).

 

Contrast that with 61 verses found using "logos".

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Simon:

 

As I understand it, you are asking to do two separate things here: search for phrases with key numbers, and plot the distribution of the hits for each phrase.

 

You can search for phrases with key numbers, but we deliberately did not automate that as we found there were very few hits since the common words without numbers always got in the way. For example:

the "phrase" [KEY G3056] [KEY G2316] finds zero verses

so we make the search default to

[KEY G3056]
[KEY G2316] which gives 70 verses but many are not relevant

you can edit this argument to narrow your search

[KEY G3056]
[KEY G2316] gives 40 verses

[KEY G3056] of [KEY G2316] results in accurate 38 verses for word of God where word is
logos
and God is
theou

Now, to plot the hits and compare them, you must understand that the Graph does plot words not phrases. The best way to compare phrases is to search each phrase separately, display the regular Graph after the first search and hit the Keep button, then do the second search and you will see both results on the same graph. This is not available for the pie chart, though. For that you would need to constsuct a search like this:

([KEY G3056], [KEY G4487]) of [KEY G2316]

and the chart will show logos and rhema and theou.

 

As Joe says, the best way to look at these texts is to use a tagged text, though you can also derive a lot from the GNT-TRS using Strong's numbers in the same way.

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I think Joe meant looking for the Greek word logos, not using Logos software.

 

Too early this am.. Please delete the gif as well as my comment.

 

Thanks!

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