Ken Simpson Posted August 14, 2013 Share Posted August 14, 2013 (edited) Hi, I was reading Daniel Wallace's very helpful blog entry on the synoptic problem at bible.org and i saw this: "Mark’s brevity can be measured in terms of verses or words: MATTHEW MARK LUKE VERSES 1068 661 1149 WORDS 18,293 11,025 19,376 " So I thought - let's use accordance to check this... So I got my GNT-T and put in * <AND> [RANGE Mark] And I got 11312 hits. Puzzled me for a second, then I thought, ah! the longer ending of Mark must be included....and it was. As is clear the longer ending begins part of the way through a verse (16:8). I saw that the longer ending was bracketed (albeit in double brackets) so I ignored the bracketed words in the additional criteria section, and redid the search. The number dropped to 11232 and [υἱοῦ θεοῦ] in 1:1 was clearly excluded in the search (so it worked) but the longer ending was included. I noticed too that if I did this with John, there was no way to exclude the John 7:53ff interpolation (though it's a little easier to exclude it using verse ranges here). Is there a way to do this? Seems unfortunate to have to include those sections if you don't want to. Can it be included in the "bracketed words" part. Interestingly if I search for * <AND> [RANGE Mark 1-16:7] I get 11011 hits. then if I search * <AND> [RANGE Mark 16:8] <WITHIN 18 Words> [FIELD BEGIN] I get 19 hits (because FIELD BEGIN is counted as a hit, so it is actually 18 words, but that adds up to 11029 words (with bracketed words excluded) which is close to Dr Wallace's but not exactly the same. I guess he might be using a different text... (The numbers for Luke and Matthew are also different out of interest - the number of verses in Matthew differs by 2, Luke and Mark are the same - if the longer ending is not counted). Thanks for any thoughts on this.... Edited August 14, 2013 by Ken Simpson Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timothy Jenney Posted August 14, 2013 Share Posted August 14, 2013 Interesting question, Ken! Traditionally the "bracketed words" option has only been used to exclude modern editors' reconstructions of ancient texts, not sections of texts supported only by minority manuscripts. There are, however, a few* of the latter in the GNT. I suspect that is why GNTs usually distinguish these particular two sections with double brackets, rather than single ones. This is really an inconsistency in the way we treat these two texts, which is reflected in the way Accordance handles these double brackets. I suspect your observation will provoke some really interesting discussion. *There were many more than I expected. The NA28 has 517 occurrences of the character "[". Most of the brackets enclose more than a single word. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Λύχνις Δαν Posted August 14, 2013 Share Posted August 14, 2013 I was playing with this last night and could not find a way to enter the double bracket character to search for it. Does anyone know what that character is called and how to enter it ? I haven't so far been able to locate it. Tim your search above appears to be for the single bracket not the double but perhaps that's just how the character came out in your post. thx D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timothy Jenney Posted August 14, 2013 Share Posted August 14, 2013 (edited) Hi, Daniel! I just finished searching for the double bracket. As you indicate, it is indeed a separate character, not simply two single brackets. The double bracket characters are in the MSS font. Respectively, they are "option-," and "option-.". I cheated though and simply copied and pasted each one into my search field for this search. Turns out these two only appear [in aggregate] ten times in NA28-T. I've attached a screenshot of my search results. Edited August 14, 2013 by Timothy Jenney Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Λύχνις Δαν Posted August 14, 2013 Share Posted August 14, 2013 OK thanx. Yes before getting dragged off onto something else last night I'd cut and paste the char into a wordprocessor to check it out but had not found a font that rendered it. But you're right very simple to c & p the characters from Mark into the search box and I get what you get but in GNT-T. Now I'm looking for a search like dbl bkt <FOLLOWED BY> * <FOLLOWED BY> dbl bkt to try to count the words contained in such sections. So far no luck and now its time to stop having fun and go to work Thx D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Lawrence Posted August 14, 2013 Share Posted August 14, 2013 Hi, Daniel! I just finished searching for the double bracket. As you indicate, it is indeed a separate character, not simply two single brackets. The double bracket characters are in the MSS font. Respectively, they are "option-," and "option-.". I cheated though and simply copied and pasted each one into my search field for this search. Turns out these two only appear [in aggregate] ten times in NA28-T. I've attached a screenshot of my search results. Dr. J, I'm intrigued by this for some reason. However, when I attempt to type the double bracket in the search window I do not get the double bracket symbol. So, I used your cheat and copied the double bracket symbol at Mk. 16:8. However, when I search the "Click to select words" dialog pops up. I am sure I am doing something wrong and it is probably one of those "duh" moments. Any suggestions? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timothy Jenney Posted August 14, 2013 Share Posted August 14, 2013 Daniel: the search string is actually a period [=search for any character], followed by the double-bracket symbol, like so: .[ You probably thought the period was just a flyspeck on your monitor! Tony: Accordance does not currently permit character searches in scopes larger than a single verse. That means that these long sections cannot be automatically isolated. You could simply construct a custom range for these verses though, and then use an * search for words to give you the result. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Lawrence Posted August 14, 2013 Share Posted August 14, 2013 Dr. J, The flyspeck on my monitor was the missing element! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Λύχνις Δαν Posted August 14, 2013 Share Posted August 14, 2013 Hi Tim, yep I knew that but wrote my message without the dbl bkt char. (b/c it didn't render properly in the forum post) and not in true Acc syntax. But if correctly entered as this : .⟦ <FOLLOWED BY> * <FOLLOWED BY> .⟧ the result does not correctly highlight every intervening word (and thus count them) so I have work to do in refining it. Part of the problem seems to be the limitation of .char searches requiring verse scope. Not sure how to get around that. Thx D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ken Simpson Posted August 14, 2013 Author Share Posted August 14, 2013 You could simply construct a custom range for these verses though, and then use an * search for words to give you the result. Hi Dr J, the problem I have is also that constructing a range will always miss one half or the other of Mark 16:8, since the extra text adds half of that verse. BTW - I think I found a bug in the character entry palette. I'll start a new thread on that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timothy Jenney Posted August 15, 2013 Share Posted August 15, 2013 Ken, Yes, and I see no way around the limitation of search for character by verse only, unless one of our programmers would like to lend a hand... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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