Any plans for a unified Names list in Biblical Terms Tool?

Question

Has anyone created, or is anyone currently creating, a custom Biblical Terms Tool list that has every name in the Bible, with each name associated with all references containing that name in both Old and New Testaments?

Tracking items marked as “Name” in Major Biblical Terms is great for checking consistency within the OT and NT, but not across both – that has to be done on a case by case basis. One can, of course, manipulate the lists for easy comparison, by filtering for Names and showing terms from both testaments, then sorting by the English column. That makes it relatively straightforward to find the “same” name used across testaments:

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But I think a better solution would be a separate list that does the combinations ahead of time. A few challenges:

1. Keeping names separate that refer to different people (as is currently done in the Major Biblical Terms list)
2. Matching only those names across testaments that refer to the same person (related to #1)
3. Problems of names that seem to refer to the same person but are spelled two+ different ways in Greek or in Hebrew (better to split or to glom? - I suspect it’s better to glom, and if translators are committed to reflecting differences, they can hand-pick the relevant items from a Hebrew or Greek list and unstar the name in the Unified Names list)

And no doubt there are other problems I’m not thinking of. But in spite of the challenges, I think such a list would be helpful.

Answer 1

Clear Bible (formerly Global Bible Initiative) have published two sets of data that contain all the Biblical Names (and all other words) of the Hebrew OT. They have labelled every word with a semantic domain, a part of speech, Strong’s number and renderings in English and Greek.
That is all based on the text of the Westminster Leningrad Codex, released into the public domain by the Groves Center, and available at tanach.us.

All the data is available with a creative commons licence from their github repository Clear Bible Hebrew data

Similarly they have labelled all the words in the Nestle 1904 Greek New Testament Clear Bible Greek data.

The data is in XML. I have found the software from basex.org useful for managing the data. It can create a database out of the multiple xml files and then can query them using XPath or XQuery expressions.

I thought that it could be useful to have a paratext project that includes both of these. I don’t know whether it is possible to have one project with multiple languages though. Then this data could be included as a Terms list.
I’ve been working on extracting just the names from those two lists this week. Perhaps those interested could form a working group to see how we can make best use of the data?

Answer 2

Yes please! A way to “link” two or more key terms for shared equivalent(s) would be very helpful. Another use case is in the Hebrew Bible where one individual is referred to by two forms of the same name: Micah and Mikayahu.

Comments

There is a Paratext project called BIBNAMES that is being developed by Shegnada , John Macaulay and others that has a Biblical terms list such as you are describing. Maybe they will see this post and comment. Otherwise, if you contact them and ask to be made an observer on this project, then you will be able to use the project Biblical terms list from BIBNAMES in your project.

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Oh, a work around/hack that can be almost as good as this list is to sort the Biblical terms list in the Biblical terms tool by the English/French/Spanish etc glosss. This will put the Hebrew versions of names side by side with the Greek versions. Many people find this tip good enough.

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I am not involved in the BIBNAMES list. I am instead working on a Biblical Terms list for creating maps. It includes all map terms for our InDesign maps, including extra-Biblical terms so that they can be extracted from Paratext directly into our maps. The system is functional but not in its final form and not available to translators now except through a typesetter participating in the testing.

Blessings,

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Sorry Shegnada. My mistake.

Answer 3

In some of my spare time I’ve been working on a same identity/different name list (primarily different names in Greek & Hebrew, but also two or more different Greek names or Hebrew names), and it has a list of references for each name (except for the very common ones). Not sure when it’ll be complete, since I haven’t worked on it for a few months. I’m willing to share what I have if you’re interested.
bbrollier , PBT

Answer 4

Thanks all to all your effort in development of tools related to this issue. I think the idea of being able to link Biblical Terms is a great idea. Beyond Biblical Names it could serve to link other key biblical terms as well (ex. temple, sacrifice, priest, etc). It might need to start small, such as Biblical Names/Places, but if it was built to be extensible, then later it could include other key biblical items. My suggestion would be that a linked Biblical Term would automatically enter a “Guessed Rendering” into the sister term thereby giving the translator the hint at the connection, while also giving the alternative to spell it differently if wanted.