Chronological Tagging

[Enoch]

It would be useful to have all works in Accordance tagged for date of authorship so that one could call up a chronological list of the works & activate the modules from that list.

 

Particularly that would be helpful with everything written before AD 200. Imagine for NT studies having in the library a means of bringing up all works written BC 200 - 200 AD in chronological order & being able to activate modules from that list.

 

One could read a history of a time period that way. Would it really be that difficult when adding a module to Accordance to add a time of authorship tag?

 

In doing a research search (for example) on "rogation days" one could get one's research to produce the list in chronological order, so what the "church fathers" said on that subject would come up in chronological order, enabling one to trace the history of a doctrine.

[EricC]

I have a suggestion that came to mind after reading Enoch's suggestion: how about some kind of tagging in Accordance whereby one can assign his own dates to things and then have them show up in a layer on the Timeline? One could tag events in the Gospels, etc., etc., and have a lot of fun with this. Of course, a robust system whereby one could "sandwich" events with ambiguous dates between specific dates that have been assigned would be really neat. Just dreaming …

[Alistair]

I just cannot see this working, bearing in mind the broad range of dates suggested for the composition of some texts.

We'd be back to the arguments we had regarding 'critical' and 'conservative' dates on the timeline.

Edited January 30, 2015 by Alistair

[EricC]

I just cannot see this working, bearing in mind the broad range of dates suggested for the composition of some texts.

We'd be back to the arguments we had regarding 'critical' and 'conservative' dates on the timeline.

Everyone

Edited January 31, 2015 by EricC

[Timothy Jenney]

It is possible to add events to the timeline. Here's the Accordance help link: http://file:///Applications/Accordance%2011.app/Contents/Resources/Accordance%20Help/Default.htm#topics/10_ref/db/tl_define_custom_lists_db.htm#kanchor877

[Enoch]

I am thinking that for most ancient classical documents, aside from the Bible, most of the dates are not greatly in dispute; like for Plato, Aristotle, Polybius, Diodorus Siculus, Plutarch. What percent do you think are in dispute? For those that are in dispute, probably no more than 2 or 3 various dates are claimed for over 99 percent of the documents; in which case they could all be used with a ? mark added or a D for disputed.

 

The concordance style results would have duplicates duly delineated -- some having 2 or three duplicate places in the list. And each place would give the alternative dates in parentheses.

 

This task would be quite laborious for every individual to do for himself with all his moduleson the timeline (& editing the timeline would not accomplish the desired search arrangement. But for Accordance to provide date-tagging for everyone would be a great help.

 

Imagine, for example, searching the Journals for sarx (flesh). One could get a list of the ariticles in chronological order to trace the history of the interpretation of sarx.

 

Imagine the same thing, searching for "election" in the Church Fathers.

 

If Accordance had all the ancient Greek literature, one could search for a Greek word & find it in concordance fashion to see how the meaning of a word changed over time.

 

The concordance style results would show dates in front of each result.

Edited February 3, 2015 by Enoch