Finding instances where (the Holy) πνευμα is the object of a preposition

[mgvh]

Accordance is my primary Bible software, but I do also use Logos. Someone on their forum was trying to find all the instances in the Greek NT where the Holy Spirit is the object of a preposition.

Logos has created additional tagging so that references to πνευμα are also tagged as referring to the Holy Spirit or not. That sort of tagging can be very helpful, but it is also subjective. (Using the Accordance search attached I found four instances missed by Logos where πνευμα by itself may indeed be referring to the Holy Spirit.)

Creating the search in Logos is rather complicated (at least for me).

I can use a Construct search in Accordance like the one attached which starts by looking for a phrase with a preposition and the lexeme πνευμα in the singular is a complement.

(Adding the singular gets rid of instances of "spirits," of course, which I do not want. Also note that for Phrase, I got best results using "all types," "one segment" and default depth of 2.)

Now the Accordance search will expectedly return some false hits where spirit does not refer to the Holy Spirit.

It took quite a bit of experimenting with the "depth" of the search to get rid of a lot of false hits where both a preposition and πνευμα appear in the verse, but πνευμα was not the object of the preposition. (I'm still not entirely clear on how depth works...)

BUT, here are my questions:

1) The search returns 2 Cor 6.4-6. The only true hit is in verse 6. I couldn't figure out how to eliminate verses 4 and 5. Is this due to the scope needing to be set to Chapter?

2) More importantly, the search missed four verses I'm thinking it should have found:

• Acts 4.25
• 1 Cor 6.11
• James 2.26
• 1 John 3.24

I can't figure out why those didn't appear, but from looking at the syntax trees, it may be due in part to odd or faulty syntactical tagging.

 

Am I missing something? Is there a better way to run the search to get the desired results?

Thanks!

 

ObjectPrepSpirit.accord

[darrylmy]

Hi mgvh,

 

I just tried building a construct for the challenge of it; but I'm very far from having a complete understanding of construct searches. With that disclaimer out of the way, I built the following construct:

 

 

The construct finds Acts 4:25 and 1 Cor 6:11 (but I didn't compare any discrepancies in the full list of hits with your construct). In order to find James 2:26 I had to add the Improper Preposition tag. Regarding 1John 3:24, I'm wondering if isn't being found because there is a tagging issue (if the search is using the syntax module). If you look at the image below the preposition is syntactically tagged as being part of a different clause. I'm thinking this has to be a mistake.

 

 

 

Hope that helps!

 

Darryl

[Λύχνις Δαν]

Acts 4:25 isn't found because of the tagging. It's tagged as U, unknown syntax. And looking at the verse it is a little odd.

Acts 4:25 ὁ τοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν διὰ πνεύματος ἁγίου στόματος Δαυὶδ παιδός σου εἰπών·
    ἱνατί ἐφρύαξαν ἔθνη
        καὶ λαοὶ ἐμελέτησαν κενά;

Regardless without some specific handling in the syntax search you won't get this hit.

 

1Cor 6:11 isn't found because you need depth=3.

 

James 2:26 is an improper prep (adverb) as Darryl points out

 

And 1 John 3:24 definitely looks incorrectly tagged as Darryl said. You should report a correction for that I think so that it can be double checked and fixed.

 

As a cross check it's worth trying something like   [preposition] <FOLLOWED BY> <WITHIN 3 Words> πνεῦμα@ [noun singular] .

This shows such hits as Acts 4:25, 1 John 3:24 but otherwise seems to accord well with the construct. Luke 1:13 is new though.

 

Thx

D

[mgvh]

@darrylmy and @Λύχνις Δαν Thanks!

First, that's good to know about improper prepositions. I did not even think about such things. Good to remember.

• In my mind, each prepositional phrase is a discrete phrase. I thought about using the WITHIN limit to get rid of hits like Luke 23.46 and that pile up in 2Cor 6.4-5 where the only true hit is 2Cor 6.6.
• OTOH, the WITHIN limit misses Luke 10.21; John 7.39; 1Cor 12.9; Gal 6.18.
• As for Acts 4.25, yes, it looks like that "unknown" syntax messes that one up. (The syntax is complicated, but I reported and suggested changing the Unknowns to Complements or Adjuncts)
• Adding depth did the trick to find 1Cor 6.11.
• And 1John 3.24 does look incorrectly tagged. I just reported that.

I suppose this is simply a reminder that we have incredibly powerful searching capabilities at our fingertips. but we are dependent on the underlying tagging.

[darrylmy]

@mgvh I just adjusted the depth as @Λύχνις Δαν mentioned, which does find 1 Cor 6:11. But oddly enough, Acts 4:25 show up. I'm still trying to get my head around how Depth affects the the search results, but this is how I modified my search:

 

 

- Expanded the Within command from 1-7 (a range of any wider didn't produce any further results).

- Negated any intervening prepositions to remove a false-positive.

- Negated intervening characters to artificially restrict the search boundaries and remove a false-positive.

- Increased the depth to maximum.

 

And of course, 1 John 3:24 still isn't found. And I agree that it's important to remember just how dependent we are upon the tagging (for better or for worse).