Bible Software Applied to Exegesis
Cyber-Chapel Blog is a project run by H. Van Dyke Parunak that sets out to “collect examples of particular exegetical problems and techniques, with particular emphasis on those for which Bible study software can be helpful. I will focus on BibleWorks (BW) because that is what I use in my daily expository work, but wherever possible I will show how a freeware package such as e-Sword can be used to address the same issue“.
It hasn’t been updated for the last few months, but it includes some entries you may want to check out. I have spent some time with the first one, which tries to elucidate how many many women were standing by the cross according to John 19:25 (three — in which case, Mary the wife of Cleophas would be Mary’s sister — or four). Van Parunak uses BibleWorks in order to find the different uses of asyndeton and apposition in Johannine literature (i.e., John, 1-3 John and Revelation). It is a good test for a graphical-based search. He builds a Graphical Search Engine query where he tries to find a sequence consisting of three different nouns agreeing in case and a καί intervening between the second and the third. Further constrains are set by not allowing any verb to be present between any of the elements of the search. Finally, no καί can appear between the first and second noun either. The query looks like this:
I decided to put Accordance and Logos to work. The very same search would take the following form in an Accordance Greek Construct window (keep in mind that “At most 5″ in BW is the same as “WITHIN 6″ in Accordance):
Finally, the equivalent Logos Graphical Query would be something like this (again, notice the “0-6 words,” just like Accordance):
After going through the 43 verses containing hits, Van Parunak’s conclusion is:
These results suggest that John does not use asyndeton in conjoined lists. If he associates two nouns without a conjunction in between, he means us to identify them. In 19:25 he intends to call our attention to three women, not four, at the cross.
Interestingly, the comma johanneum (the trinitarian verse in 1 John 5:7 in Stephanus’ NT, BW text STE) does use asyndeton, which in the light of our results is an interesting confirmation of other abundant evidence that the verse was not written by John.
Anyway, I hope you find this little exercise interesting. If you have access to any of the three programs mentioned here you should be able to recreate the search queries with relative ease. And let us not forget that the goal of Bible software is to become a tool for exegesis. This doesn’t mean, of course, that all problems will be solved and that we’ll all agree on any given point, but at least it will be a great asset in our study of the Scriptures.
