Today on Twitter a friend of mine from seminary posted this question: "can I get a list of frequent words from a passage of scripture?" The question was for a particular class where the professor assigns different biblical passages for which the student must apply his hermeneutical method. I tried a couple quick searches for this in Genesis 22, and then posted a screen shot with my preliminary results. Since the screen shot needed a bit of explanation, I thought I would write a blog post to describe what I did.

In this example in the BHS text I ­started my search with any word *, and added two qualifiers linked with @ to exclude particles and specify a frequency count.

The first qualifier excludes all particles. To do this select Search > Enter Grammatical Tag > Particle... . In the dialogue box you can select all of them by leaving it blank, then click OK. Next, type a minus before the bracket: [PARTICLE]- @*.

Next, I added the COUNT (⇧ ⌘ U).  You can obviously tweak the frequency count here, but I assumed that if the word occurs 3 or more times, it is important.

I then added the range. But, note here that I defined a custom range (⌘ R) for Gen 22. The reason I did this is because I wanted the frequency count to be restricted to this passage only. If I had simply used the Range command with Genesis 22, it would have based the frequency count on the entire Hebrew Bible, which is not what I wanted. To use the the custom range, simply click the more options disclosure triangle and select it. Note, after creating a custom range it will automatically be selected.

Lastly, click on the Details button, then Analysis tab to view the results (I selected Sort Down as well). Here we can see the most frequently used words in this passage.

In this example in the HCSBS, I replicated the same search. (Hint: to duplicate a tab use the shortcut ⌘ D). Then, I just changed the search text to the HCSBS, and edited the qualifier.

Since this is a key number text, and only the more significant words in the Old Testament are assigned a key number, I qualified my word search to include any word with a key number. To do this select Search > Enter Command > Key. Then enter * for any key number. You can also use the shortcut ⇧ ⌘ K.

If this was in the New Testament (or with a non-key number text) it would include a lot of extra hits. You can easily eliminate these by adding the appropriate words in parentheses: -(a, and, the, but, to, in, with, he, I, you).

Now, just click on the details button, and analysis tab to view your results.

Whether you perform this search in Hebrew or English you can see that in a quick amount of time you can identify the most frequently occurring words in a particular passage. Oh, and if you're tempted to drool, just don't get any on your keyboard!

Over the weekend we released the newest key number tagged-text in our arsenal, the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSBS). With this release, we now offer seven key number texts; the greatest number offered by any Bible software company.

The HCSBS key number tagging was completed by its publisher, but optimized for use within Accordance to take advantage of Key Number highlighting with original language texts, and amplification to our dictionaries via triple-clicking. This text reflects the most recent revisions made by the translation committee, which are not yet available in the majority of print versions, making this the most up-to-date digital edition of the Holman CSB.

If you already have the HCSB in Accordance you should have noticed that we released an update to this as well, along with the Notes and Bullets. The most noticeable update to the notes is the addition of the pericope headings included in the text.

The ease of searching by key number, and displaying the text in parallel with your favorite translation or commentary will make this a popular choice for many. Pair this with a tagged original language text such as the Greek New Testament or Hebrew Bible to create a combination that far outweighs any interlinear available.

Instead of going into detail on how you can take advantage of the many benefits of a key number text such as the HCSBS, I will refer you to one of our recent podcasts on this exact topic.

For more information on the Holman CSB, see this article. Also, hot off the press is a blog post on This Lamp by Rick Mansfield with some highlights on the updates to the text of the HCSB.