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Original Language and English Simultaneous Searches


EthanTripodi

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Hello,

I am wondering if it is possible to do searches of Biblical texts, in both English, Greek and Hebrew at the same time. If it is possible, how would one do it, and what resources would be needed?

 

For example, I would like to be able to search for every b-preposition in the Hebrew text. Then, I would like to bring up all those verses in essentially literal English texts (NASB, ESV, KJV, YLT). Then, I would like to find every occurrence where ALL of the English versions translate the word "among" or "amongst" due to the preposition. So if only one version translates "among", I don't want to know about it. I only care if all of my selected versions translate it a similar way. As an added benefit, it would be good if I could choose not to require all the versions to translate b-prep as "among" - in this case, even if only one version uses the word "among" for the Hebrew b-prep, I would still want that verse to come up in my search.

 

Another example in the Newer Testament is as follows. I want to find every Greek Present Imperative in a Greek text. I then want to bring up all these verses in select essentially literal translations, e.g. NASB, ESV, KJV, YLT. I then want to search through all those verses, and see whether the word "let" has been translated into those English texts with the verb that is a present imperative. What would also be helpful is, as before, only bringing up results where there is an intersection in what the English texts do.. So for instance, a verse will only come up as a search result if all the English texts translated the word "let"; if one of them didn't then the verse won't come up. (E.g. Phil 4:6 - "... let your requests be made known... (NASB)", the word "let" translated and the verb "to make known" in Greek is a present imperative here - so I would want this to come up in a search because the word "let" is used in the same in the KJV, ESV, and YLT).

 

Is this possible? I have considered trying to do simultaneous construct searches but this has not worked for me.

 

**Side note - is it possible to export a list of verses that result from a search?

 

Thanks in advance,

Ethan

 

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Hi Ethan,

 

That's an interesting question. I think the short answer is no, but you can get close for some searches and maybe someone else will have additional ideas.

 

One of the problems is that the words you're trying to match to the Greek/Hebrew just aren't handled well by the Strong's numbering system. Your Hebrew example isn't working because prepositions often aren't tagged in English translations. Phrase tagging based on G/K numbers does a better job at matching all the English words to the underlying text, but the NIV is the only common translation with that so far. In your Greek example, "let" is part of the way the verb is rendered in English since we add all kinds of helping words to create tenses etc, but only the main word ("known" in Phil 4:6) is tagged. Thus, searching the ESVS for  [GNT28-T  [VERB present imperative] ] @let finds every word in ESV translated as "let" that corresponds to a present imperative verb in the Greek text, but there's only one hit (Acts 1:20). YLT also isn't tagged at all, so it's not possible to search that text based on the Greek/Hebrew words.

 

The closest I can get to your query is searching ESVS [GNT28-T  [VERB present imperative] ] <WITHIN 7 Words> let. This isn't perfect but allows the translation to have the word "let" in close proximity to the tagged verb. (Setting the words to be closer, like within 5 words, reduces the false positives but loses some hits like Acts 2:36 or Rev 22:7). You could add parallel panes for the other texts you want to compare. The parallel panes won't have hits highlighted but you look at them manually to see if they satisfy your criteria. One other way to compare the texts would be to do recursive searches across multiple tabs. Set up a search in ESVS for [GNT28-T  [VERB present imperative] ] <WITHIN 7 Words> let, then set a new tab with KJV to search  [CONTENTS ESV with Strong’s] <AND> let. That will take the verses from the ESV search and search them again in the KJV for "let". You can then iterate that by searching NASB for KJV contents, and YLT for NASB contents (that doesn't require Strong's tagging in the YLT!). This isn't exactly what you want since it would require you to set up all these tabs, but it should get you pretty close to the list of verses you want. 

 

If you're searching for something that's more a main word, like "church" or "love", then [GNT28-T  [VERB present imperative] ] @love followed by the contents searches should work pretty well.

 

Finally, yes you can at least export the list of verses. You can copy all of the verses in a pane and paste them into another document. Alternatively, you can right-click and add the verses to a reference list one at a time as you look through the verses and confirm they meet your criteria.

 

Hope that helps.

Jonathan

Edited by JonathanHuber
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You could use the TEXT and LINK commands to set this up. One caveat is that it will only work with Key Numbered texts, so Young's wouldn't work. It will give you a warning if the word doesn't appear in any of the translations.

 

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