Biblical Terms - find Hebrew lemma?

Question

I’m going to tip my hand here in terms of my ignorance of Hebrew, but I’m trying to figure out how to find something that I figure should be showing up in the Biblical Terms tool.
Ezk. 14:20 has the word בְצִדְקָתָ֖ם, glossed ‘by.their.righteousness’ in the “Source Language Text” window. A right click on the word in Paratext’s “Source Language Text” indicates it is composed of two parts: the preposition בְּ ‘in’ and the stem צְדָקָה ‘righteousness’ (definitions from “Abridged BDB”). Pasting the stem צְדָקָה in the search box of the Biblical Terms tool and selecting “Hebrew term” in “Find” returns the word–glossed ‘right, just’ in English–with 96 instances. Ezk. 14:20 is not among them.
Searching the “Source Language Text” for the stem צְדָקָה in Ezekiel returns 22 hits. Is there a reason those 22 instances of the stem צְדָקָה aren’t included in the Biblical Terms tool? Indeed, searching the “Source Language Text” for the stem צְדָקָה in “All books” returns 159 hits–significantly more than the 96 in the Biblical Terms tool. [NB Searching the Biblical Terms tool for English “righteous(ness)” misses צְדָקָה completely, as its gloss is ‘right’ not ‘righteous(ness)’…]
I was hoping that the Biblical Terms and Biblical Terms Renderings tools would help us with things like this, but maybe I’m going about it wrong? I’ve searched the Vimeo videos for anything to help, but haven’t found anything.

Answer 1

Thanks for the reply, CrazyRocky. But now I’m more confused… When I search for צְדָקָה with “Major Terms List” selected, I get 96 results. When I search for צְדָקָה with “All Terms List” I get 147 results. What accounts for the difference? Again, Hebrew isn’t a language I know–just wondering how to make the best use of the tools we have available…

Comments

anon044949:

Some things are so complex that they can only be covered lightly in the Help. All of the major tools in Paratext are this way.

That seems counter-intuitive to me… Especially in light of–

anon044949:

If you are unable to attend some training, I have some PowerPoints on Biblical terms form workshops that I could share with you.

I’ve never been able to attend a training session for Paratext… I’ve watched some of your videos, but your PowerPoints would be welcome! Especially if they go into more detail.

anon044949:

Things can get even more complicated when one tries to understand how Enhanced resources interact with the Biblical terms tool. We covered that topic in detail in a Webinar last June. That Webinar was recorded.

I’ve only dipped my toe into the “Enhanced Resources” pool; again, on my own, and–like you say–a bit complicated. Do you have a link for the recording of the webinar?

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OK, if we can get back to the original questions why do the lists and search of the BHS in the Source Language Tools (SLT) give different number of occurrences for [צְדָקָה].
Case 1 SLT verses All Biblical terms List
SLT says there are 159 occurrences, while the Biblical terms tool shows 150 verses.
Easy: Searching the the BHS gives the number of occurrences of a lemma, but the Biblical term tool shows the number of verses that have the lemma. Several verses have the lemma [צְדָקָה] two or more times, producing the apparent discrepancy.
Case 2 [צְדָקָה] is reported 150 times in the All Biblical terms list, but only 96 in the Major Biblical terms list
This discrepancy is because of errors in the Major Biblical terms list. Several occurrences in the Psalms and Isaiah are off by one verse. Worse than this, all of the verses with [צַדִּיק] from Isaiah 51:6 thru Malachi are missing from the Major Biblical terms list. That is 53 verses are missing. Unless, I am missing a reason that these 53 verses should not be included, this is a serious bug.

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Thanks for sleuthing that out, anon044949! Would you be willing to submit that as a bug to wherever it needs to go?

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Thanks, anon044949. Can you confirm that the tool only counts verses in books that have been created, rather than books included the “Project Scope”?

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Paul, I have gone through all 150 verses where sedaqah appears in the BHS, once using the All Biblical terms list, and another time with the Major Biblical terms list. I have made the bug report.

Answer 2

You need to use the All Biblical Terms list. The Major Biblical Terms List does not have all the places where צְדָקָה occurs. You can change the default list if you are an administrator for the project in the Project Settings. Otherwise you can change the list in the Biblical Terms tool every time you open it.
From the tool menu under Biblical Terms click Select biblical terms list … then choose All Biblical Terms

Answer 3

The NIV does not follow the UBS Greek text in all places, it has selected other manuscripts in places. I would not be surprised if the NIV OT translators did not also make some textual critical choices not to follow the BHS in places. Besides it is not a fair test to apply the Biblical terms tool to a published translation, the tool is intended for new translations where we have control over the textual critical choices that were made. A problem would be if looking at several different standard translation projects with the same Biblical terms list associated with them, gave different results. --Working with Biblical terms lists can be complicated, but I have never found it to not check what I wanted it to check.

Comments

Here is a PowerPoint slide I did explaining the two main supplied lists in Paratext:

image909×506 165 KB

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anon044949:

Here is a PowerPoint slide I did explaining the two main supplied lists in Paratext:

Yeah, I think one thing that really throws me off is the fact that the “All” list doesn’t include terms that appear > 500 times… That doesn’t constitute “all” in my world. Still confused, but I think I can move forward with viverechristus’s explanations.

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I will try and verify the count for the word [ צְדָקָה] in another tool and see if I can explain better what is going on with the lists. If there is a problem I will be able to write a meaningful bug report that would be actionable. As it is now, we are having a vague feeling that something does not add up and the Paratext team cannot solve a problem that is not clearly defined.

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I think the really common terms are typically not problematic and having them on the list is just clutter. Divine names are an exception to this. But yes, a different name might be helpful, if we could suggest one that is not really long such as “A list of Biblical terms bigger than the Major Biblical terms list but that does not include words that occur 500 or less times.” That would be a mouthful just to talk about.

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anon044949:

I think the really common terms are typically not problematic and having them on the list is just clutter. Divine names are an exception to this. But yes, a different name might be helpful, if we could suggest one that is not really long such as “A list of Biblical terms bigger than the Major Biblical terms list but that does not include words that occur 500 or less times.” That would be a mouthful just to talk about.

So I just sorted the “All” list on the “Count” column, and there are 24 terms that appear > 500 times, including YHWH, elohim, theos, adonai, kurios, king, priest… So the 500x doesn’t seem to apply (any longer?), and maybe it really is a list of “All” terms. If that’s the case, then the Help item “What Biblical Terms lists are built-in to Paratext?” really needs to be updated.

Answer 4

@Paul there are also some helpful training videos on Biblical Terms (and a number of other tools/topics) here: Effectively Using Paratext - 2019 Advanced Paratext Workshop - Video Outline - Google Docs.

They were made with Paratext 8, but the principals still apply and the tools are often still similar to what was recorded in the videos.

james_post

Comments

Thanks for the link, james_post. Lots of learning to do, but it’s great to know about available resources. In fact, someone just forwarded me some of the PNG “Biblical Terms” materials yesterday, so this is all very timely. Guess it paid to raise the issue!