A couple of years ago, Logos Bible Software introduced a significant break through in Biblical language studies. The creation of Databases such as,
Opentext.org Syntactically Analysis Greek New Testament
The Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament
and Anderson-Forbes Analysis of the Hebrew Bible,
should have revolutionized the study of the Greek and Hebrew in the Old and New Testaments. Unfortunately, taking advantage of the databases for searching for various constructions has not been as easily as one might have hoped. The search apparatus is somewhat complex and determining how to run a search is often a process of trial and error more than anything else. My first searches with Opentext.org, the database I’ve used the most, were rarely successful. Though since I was writing a paper for this contest last year, I got things figured out for the most part. But I would like to let you in on a few little secrets for searching.
Narrow, Broad, Narrow.
What does that mean? Well, start with the specifics. Begin with a particular construction that you’re curious about in a specific verse. Try to reproduce what you see in Opentext.org’s clause analysis. Do not try to reproduce the entire clause or verse, just those elements that you are interested in. Also in the first narrow, we focus only on the book in which you’ve found your construction.
The “Broad” expands the search range to the entire NT.
The second “Narrow” looks for patterns in our results. This last one is search specific and is not always necessary depending on the previous search results.
So for the next several posts, we’ll word through building a search and analyzing it. Finally we’ll end with a conclusion and summary. I hope this will help some people out there. The links below will become live as I post them.
Summary & Conclusions
Koine-Greek 