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Why is John 5:4 missing in all English Bible translations?


davidmedina

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I know that translators of the NIV and the ESV chose to omits John 5:4 but not the translators of the KJV, NKJV and the NASB95 all three have John 5:4.

 

Why did Accordance chose to omit John 5:4 on all English Bible spite been part of the original Bible translation?

 

I am very concerned about this "poetic license" taken by Accordance and I don't think is proper. I want my Bibles the way they are in print and were purposely presented by their respective translation/editorial teams.

 

For example, on the NASB95 there is a foot note that says that early mss does not contain the remainder of verse 3 and 4. The footnote is fine but because the text was not included by Accordance I do not know what is being omitted. If the version has it , Accordance should include it. Period.

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Edited by davidmedina
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Hi David,

 

5:4 is there in my Acc KJVS. And my NAS95S.

 

Thx

D

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I just added a screen capture to my original post. In Accordance for MAC latest version, John 5:4 is omitted in the NKJV, NASB95 and KJV. Not cool.

Edited by davidmedina
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The verses that are displayed are always dependent on your chosen search text, the one next to the entry box at the top. This is to help with the myriad of versification issues, such as missing/extra verses, different book or chapter order, etc. It seems that your top search text is one that does not include John 5:4?

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Not sure - don't have the NKJV but I checked the NASB as its there. So perhaps its an issue with the parallel. If you open one of them on its own and search for John 5:4 do you then find it ?

 

Thx

D

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Joel, my search was precisely for John 5:4. That is what is in the search box.

 

post-32482-0-92047700-1384753346_thumb.jpg

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Yes, it is an issue of the parallel.

 

What I noticed that makes a dinference is what Bible I have chosen for search. I changed it to the NASB 95 and now it shows it in the NASB95 and will show up in the NKJV and KJV too.

 

That said, it should make no difference what Bible I choose to search. It the Bible version has it it should show up regardless if the Bible I chose to search chose to omit the verse.

 

What Accordance is doing is conforming other Bible translation to the one chosen for the search. If that omits it, then Accordance will omit it in the others regardless if those other has the verse. That should not happens.

 

To me that makes Accordance parallel and the compare feature not trustworthy and useless because Accordance chose to omit John 5:4 in all the Bibles IF I happen to choose the NIV or the ESV as the main search Bible. Not cool.

Edited by davidmedina
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I can see how you don't understand the wisdom of how this has been implemented, but as one understands more of what's going on, it seems to me Accordance has implemented this perfectly.

 

In the standard search window, you only search one text at a time. You can also have additional panes (and tied windows) with other texts, references, tools, etc., which will scroll alongside the text-that-you-are-currently-searching.

But a search does not and should not find a verse or a word if it's not in the text you have designated as the one you're searching, regardless of what is displaying in parallel.

You are thinking too simplistically about the search window... texts in Accordance are not just a single list of whatever bible verses fit your faith tradition... they accommodate all kinds of texts/languages/reference schemes. (Qumran scrolls, papyri, Josephus, Philo, Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, etc). The defining list of "verse references" for any search window is the search text you have designated. It is not, nor should it be, a list of verses that you or I think of as canonical.

 

This is not an obstacle for what you want. If you want to compare verses between old-majority-text-based translations and modern-eclectic-text-based translations, then make sure to use one of the majority texts as your primary search text. Those verses that were only in later manuscripts are clearly important to you, so make one of those texts your default Search text.

 

Having said that, I do think that they should consider having the "Show all Context" apply to scripture texts in additional panes as well, so that they do show their entire content, including verses that don't have parallels in the Primary Search Text.

 

 

But David, your tone comes across as very rude, and clearly accusatory. How about instead asking, "I can't figure out how to use this reliably, can someone point me in the right direction?"

To call a tool "useless" simply indicates the user does not know how to use it. That's what the documentation and this forum are for—to help each other learn how to use it trustworthily (I just made that word up).

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I appreciate everyone help, but don't worry about dealing with this issue. It is obvious by what Joe wrote that it is only an issue for me. So It does not matter any longer. The truth is that I have given Accordance a try, I have tried to use it and like it, but instead I have grown dissatisfied with Accordance to the point that I do not care to use it any longer. The more time I spent with it the more I realize that is not right for me. If I could I would return it but sadly that won't happen.

 

Thanks everyone for all your patience and help.

Edited by davidmedina
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You made it clear you were already "put out" from the beginning.

And, I apologize if I underestimated your level of having read tutorials, etc. Since I hadn't seen you on the forum before, I assumed you were a new user, and still needed time to learn basics of the program. That you've watched their "library of over 80 titles and 30 hours" of podcasts at least twice is an impressive claim. Did you read the Accordance Help Manual? I've never had a question I couldn't answer there (I've never watched the podcasts).

 

When you do a search that says "Show me every occurrence of John 1.1 in the NIV", that's precisely what Accordance does. Nothing more or less. We explained how the program works, that any parallel panes only display that which is in parallel to the search text, without being tied to the search criteria at all. I explained one aspect of the wisdom in how it works. And once you understand how it works, then you know how to get the result you want.

 

So, you [sorta] asked how to get the search to show verses only in the Majority Text, and we've explained how. Problem solved.

Your complaint at this point is a straw-man argument. Of course you need to be intentional about which search text you are searching to get the results you intend. To call that a "workaround" is just being argumentative.

 

Honest to goodness, we'll do provide a solution for any question you have, and kindly even.

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Don't worry Joe, I don't want to waste your time.

 

Simply put, Accordance is not for me. I just don't like how it does things, Too many things to go in detail here, but they are all over my posts in this forum and many others I have read. You and the others may see the wisdom behind Accordance and like the way it does things, but I don't.

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Yes, it is an issue of the parallel.

 

What I noticed that makes a dinference is what Bible I have chosen for search. I changed it to the NASB 95 and now it shows it in the NASB95 and will show up in the NKJV and KJV too.

 

That said, it should make no difference what Bible I choose to search. It the Bible version has it it should show up regardless if the Bible I chose to search chose to omit the verse.

 

What Accordance is doing is conforming other Bible translation to the one chosen for the search. If that omits it, then Accordance will omit it in the others regardless if those other has the verse. That should not happens.

 

To me that makes Accordance parallel and the compare feature not trustworthy and useless because Accordance chose to omit John 5:4 in all the Bibles IF I happen to choose the NIV or the ESV as the main search Bible. Not cool.

Hi David, before giving up on Accordance, think of it this way: if your search text were an English translation of the LXX and you searched for Romans 3:1, it would be quite strange for the rest of the texts to display a book and verse which did not exist in the search text. I just ran a search where I had the search text be LXX-B and I also had open the ESVS, HCSB, NKJV, etc. When I searched for Romans 3:1, Accordance gave me a dialog informing me that the book 'Romans' could not be found, which is what I would expect.

 

So, I guess all of the confusion could have been eliminated if, when searching within a text for John 5:4 that does not contain John 5:4, Accordance should not give any result other than a dialog indicating that John 5:4 did not exist in the search text. Does that make sense to other Accordance users?

 

Matt

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Hi Matt,

 

I ran a few tests on this while checking it out last night. I initially thought rather like Joe suggested above the context ought to be specific to the pane and thus with adequate context the parallel panes would show enough text that you'd see the differences. Not so sure now. One test I ran which was a simple verse search for John 5:4 with context of 0 which returned John 5:3 with no annotation (I will rerun the test to make sure I wasn't imagining anything tonight). Technically this is an incorrect result in that it does not match the entered search. But it may be functionally correct if verse searches follow the "closest possible verse matches" paradigm. With context greater than that it returns the surrounding versus which makes sense but only because verse 5:4 is expected to fall between 5:3 and 5:5. A purist might suggest that even this context is wrong because one does not in fact know where John 5:4 is if its not in the text and thus the context cannot be defined. Before commenting further on what I think would be possible without violating the principle of least surprise I'd want to test a few more cases.

 

Thx

D

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Matt, the behavior there is consistent in Accordance. It will display the nearest lowest available verse reference. Search for

John 5:99

and you get 5:47. This freedom has had applications in past searches, to not have to "know" the ending verse for each chapter while searching. I would not welcome a dialog box choking the search... by what it is displaying I can tell there's no verse 5:4.

 

Also, I think I retract my earlier suggestion that "All Context" should force parallel panes to show all. I think the parallel panes strictly show a parallel vs by vs for ever verse currently being displayed in the search text, and that consistency I am now thinking, is a good one.

If one wants each text to show in full, you can always tie windowed texts, instead of using panes.

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I am with Joe on this one. You can't have true parallel functionality otherwise.

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How is having pieces of the text true parallel? Don't get it.

 

Isn't true parallel the ability to compare versions? If something is missing because it is omitted how that allows me to compare them? What it does it to make the NASB to look like the ESV.

 

I am sure it makes sense to Accordance users because it is the way Accordance does it, but every other software does parallel without omitting parts of the text just because the first version does not have it.

 

I am sorry but it just do not make any sense that just because I happen to choose the ESV or NIV95 as the primary search Bible that the verses that the NASB no KJV have just disappear. If I choose the ESV and then add the NASB in parallel is because I want to see the difference but if the berate is also omitted in the NASB then, there is no difference and parallel failed.

 

Call me rude all you want, but if I can't use something the obvious way but have to follow a specific path that it is not obvious - like using NASB95 just because it may be the one that has all the verses - then that software is not that intuitive.

 

What is the NASB95 omits something that the ESV includes? What then? Am I suppose to keep changing the search version in order to catch all the omissions? I am sorry, but that does to make any sense to me.

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Matt, the behavior there is consistent in Accordance. It will display the nearest lowest available verse reference. Search for

John 5:99

and you get 5:47. This freedom has had applications in past searches, to not have to "know" the ending verse for each chapter while searching. I would not welcome a dialog box choking the search... by what it is displaying I can tell there's no verse 5:4.

 

Also, I think I retract my earlier suggestion that "All Context" should force parallel panes to show all. I think the parallel panes strictly show a parallel vs by vs for ever verse currently being displayed in the search text, and that consistency I am now thinking, is a good one.

If one wants each text to show in full, you can always tie windowed texts, instead of using panes.

Then what is the purpose of parallels? Am I not suppose to put Bibles in parallel in order to use the compare function? Isn't that the obvious way?

 

I am sorry, but Just because Accordance does something in certain way it does not automatically makes it the right, or the best or the wisest way.

 

I am glad that Accordance has a distinctive way of doing things, but if the way defeat the intended purpose, then there is something that need to change instead of looking for ways to make it work the right way.

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David, your argument is a straw-man argument. You are making up your idea of "parallels" and what they should do, and claiming that the "panes" function should accomplish this, but that's not what the panes are for. What you are wanting is not accomplished using the new panes feature. If you don't like panes, stop using them. Opening a pane means that those panes are only displaying verses that match with your primary text. If the function was conflated as you wish, then it would negate all kinds of searches and comparisons that I like to make, using just the verses in my primary search text. This way, I can get the results I want by my intentional choice of search text.

 

What you are wanting, for your idea of 'parallel' can be achieved (as we explained) using panes and an informed choice of search text, or you can simply have two separate texts/tabs open and have them tied together, where they scroll in parallel.

This is what you want. This is how you should use Accordance. This was always the way to set up full texts that scroll in parallel in Accordance, where the second text window is not changed by the original's search criteria. This was always how Accordance functioned long before the panes function was added. See the screenshot.

 

post-16-0-77206000-1384799495_thumb.png

 

These two texts in the screenshot will always scroll to match each other, and they can each have their own search criteria, even. Pretty cool.

So, if you want parallel texts to show in full, regardless of each other's search criteria, then set up two tied windows/tabs side by side. Stop using panes.

 

EDIT: I love how I called it the 'new' panes feature, which must be 10 years old now.

Edited by Joe Weaks
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Listen, I am not doing this just to argue with you or anyone nor to probe a point. I am doing because I am trying to accomplish something very basic, a comparison of bible texts with Accordance. And the obvious way does not work properly.

 

I need to compare Bible versions. See image to see how Logos 5 does it. You will see that under the ESV John 5:4 is omitted but under the NASB it is not. I am able to look two bible next to each other and see the differences.

 

 

Next, See the Accordance screen capture where I am trying to do the same thing and you will see that Accordance omits John 5:4 in both ESV and NASB (unless I use the NASB as the search Bible and I already addressed the problem with that).

 

And when you look at the difference report that Accordance creates for John 5:1-6, you will see that John 5:4 is omitted on both Bibles without any explanation. That should not be as it is not a proper comparison. And this is why: unless I know before hand that the ESV omits John 5:4 and the NASB does have John 5:4 I was just lead astray by Accordance Software into a wrong understanding of the Bible. I need to know that there is a difference so I can studied further. But according to Accordance results there isn't any difference between the ESV and the NASB as far as John 5:4 as it is omitted in both.

 

The only reason I know that the ESV omits that verse is because Mounce told me in a class I am taking. Otherwise I would have encountered this and unless I knew before hand that the NASB did not omit the verse I would have assume that the NASB also omits the word or figure that something is wrong.

 

I am not making this up. If you look at Accordance explanation of how to compare Bible text it says:

 

"You can compare the differences between the first two texts, or multiple texts, of each language displayed in the panes of a Search tab. Differences can be displayed either as highlights in the text, or as a text report."

 

 

 

How can I see the difference if the biggest one is omitted? As you can see from the Accordance Difference report, that BIG difference, the omission of one verse and half of the other is not shown nor explained but assumed that whoever is using Accordance will know. This is a constant thing I see with Accordance: it assumes that the user knows why.

 

I am sorry, but Accordance assumes too much. As you clearly states, Accordance requires the user to do "an informed choice". That may work well for Scholars but not for the common believer like me that is no expert in Biblical scholarship but just want to study God's Word and be transformed by it.

 

The way you suggest does NOT allow me to use the Compare function as it will be greyed out not can I do a Difference List as it is also greyed out. What you suggest is a work around to accomplish what the Bibles in Parallel pane are suppose to do, according to Accordance.

 

I am a graphic designer and photographer, I use software that it is way more complex than Accordance and I know that each one has a learning curve. I have spend over a month learning how to use Accordance and I spend more time trying to figure out the software than using it for what I bought it: to study the Bible. Maybe for you is easy, intuitive and makes sense. But every time I open Accordance committed to use it I find myself closing it and using Logos. I don't even use Accordance mobile app anymore. Too frustrated with its backward way of selecting text and highlighting.

 

So this is not a matter of not willing to listen or to learn. Nor arguing about which one is best or my ways vs your way not=r about winning an argument. It is a matter of not being able to compare Bible text nor trust that comparison because I am not sure if all the text will be included in the comparison.

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Edited by davidmedina
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And the obvious way does not work properly.

 

This is the problem right here. Even if there are good reasons why Accordance is not intended to work the way David expects, parallel panes + compare text does seem to be the obvious way to accomplish what he's trying to do. There are other ways to accomplish this, but they're somewhat less intuitive even if they make sense to an experienced Accordance user. Thus, it may be worth reconsidering how best to display all of these additional verses specifically in the context of comparing texts.

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I think I've always understood your desire. You state the program should function a certain way. I'm just a user who disagrees with you, and is happy Accordance works the way it does.

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I see both sides here. David, you're an experienced Logos user; you know it better than Accordance. You like the way it does things in a lot of cases. That's fine, and expected. We see that a lot. And in a lot of cases I've seen features changed, or even added to accommodate some of these expectations. My advice is not to give up. You've spent a lot of time learning Accordance, but it's still been, what, a couple months at max? Surely there are some positive reasons to continue learning.

 

I also want to push back a bit to a point you've made here and in at least one other forum thread: that we assume scholar-level knowledge. We do not. Maybe 10 years ago that may have been a valid assumption, but today the majority of our users (at least the active ones here on the forum) are just like you: pastors or serious students of the Bible. I'd say the vast majority of features are developed with you in mind.

 

Lastly, on this point of the differences in the texts, I actually think we could improve it. Here's why: When you compare the NAS95S to the ESVS in a parallel pane, you will see a double-dash in the ESVS pane indicating that verse 4 is missing in the ESVS.

 

post-5629-0-33485500-1384805979_thumb.png

 

When you reverse that, you have no visual indication that verse 4 is contained in the NAS95S. I think we could change this to include a double dash to show it has been hidden (or maybe include the verse in brackets). Double dashes would at least alert the user to know that they need to look further. However, I still agree with the logic of comparison in parallel panes: when the ESV is the base, it is illogical to compare verse 4 since verse 4 does not exist in the base text. There's nothing to compare it to (or nothing to sync with).

 

So maybe there's a happy medium to discuss?

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Jonathan, I appreciate the way you answered the original poster's concern. You showed grace and kindness in your response.

 

Soli Deo Gloria,

Randy

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Hi Matt,

 

... One test I ran which was a simple verse search for John 5:4 with context of 0 which returned John 5:3 with no annotation (I will rerun the test to make sure I wasn't imagining anything tonight). ...

 

Thx

D

Hi Daniel, that's the same test I ran, and I agree it is a bit confusing!

 

Matt

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Matt, the behavior there is consistent in Accordance. It will display the nearest lowest available verse reference. Search for

John 5:99

and you get 5:47. This freedom has had applications in past searches, to not have to "know" the ending verse for each chapter while searching. I would not welcome a dialog box choking the search... by what it is displaying I can tell there's no verse 5:4.

Hi Joe, I'm just a newbie when it comes to Accordance, so I do not have the broad understanding that a long-time user would have. From my inexperienced perspective, I find the fact that searching in the LXX-B for Romans 3:10 gives me a dialog stating that the book of Romans does not exist in my target search text to be helpful. I would also find such a dialog to be helpful for the same reason if I searched for John 5:4 in a text that does not have John 5:4. That being said, I would not expect that Accordance throw all established paradigms to the wind simply because I, as a new user, didn't understand how Accordance is meant to work. Perhaps, this could be handled via a user preference?

 

Matt

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