In my previous post, I talked about the Ancient Literature connections that Logos 6 introduced – which allows its users to see the important connections with non-biblical literature. In this post I want to explore some new features of Logos 6 that greatly advance word studies in the primary languages.
If you are a Logos user, you already know about the built-in word study assistant called "Bible Word Study" (and if you don't, you really need to get some Logos training). The first 3 features discussed below are part of the Bible Word Study guide (or any customized guide you create).
Clause Participants
The Clause Participants section of the Bible Word study has two modes, Grammatical roles or Semantic roles. Using the Greek verb εὐαγγελίζω, the following images show you the results:
I find this type of information especially useful for verbs, but the information is certainly applicable to other word types. Doing a search like this for εὐαγγελίζω, we see that Paul is the main "declarer of good news" in the NT. This type of information helps to widen the scope of our word studies, by seeing more of the information from their contexts, as well as related words and characters.
Sense Usage
A cool feature of the Bible Word Study has always been the translation wheel/pie chart, which allows you to see at a glance the various ways a word is translated in your English translation of choice. The new Senses section adds a new wheel/pie chart and builds upon Logos' unique work of the Bible Sense lexicon. In this chart, rather than seeing the words used to translate the word in question, the Senses chart shows you the various uses in terms of meaning (or sense usage). This is, ultimately, the more important question to ask when you are discussing the meaning of a word in its context – a word may be translated using the same English word but have different meaning from verse to verse.
Case Frames (Semantic Roles)
Building off of the incredible amount of work in semantics that Logos has done, the new Case Frames section of the Bible Word Study guide provides you with a break-down of semantic usage and relationships pertaining to your word. The example below shows that ἄρχω as a verb is primarily used in relation to events. Logos' presentation and easy to understand definition opens up the world of semantics to all Logos users.
Morph Charts
Morph charts offers a visual presentation of any hits you receive for a lemma. This information has also been present in table form in the past in a morph search, but these morphology charts are much more user friendly and easier to see the full picture. The Morphology charts are part of the new Interactive Media resources in the Tools menu, and is also accessible in the top of the Bible Word Study.