Searching and filtering Biblical Terms

Question

As a part of the pre-publication work, I want to check for accuracy/consistency in things like weights/measures/money. But it’s not very straightforward. The video that I watched about filtering Biblical terms doesn’t answer my questions, so here I am.

I’ve chosen the Major Biblical Terms as my list. The category filters work fine (names, attributes, etc), but I’m not sure how to filter for measurements (weight and distance). The domain “weight” doesn’t do much. There are no domain words for distance or length. Am I missing something? Is domain filtering the tool that I should be using?

I’ve also tried searching for specific measurement words, but that’s also not very straightforward. Searching for “talents” and “denarius” turns up a useful list, but not, for example, “kilometer” or “mile” or “yard” or “pound” or “kilogram” or “shekel” or “cubit”.

Any advice? How would you suggest that I go about checking the whole NT for these types of terms before I send the project to a typesetter?

Answer 1

We handled this is a slightly different way, by building a custom list by tagging each term as a description added to the term, for example, we use a description, “weights/measures” to tag all of our project weights and measures. We did this for both OT and NT. For the NT, some of the weights/measures are found under the category “Realia” but several are not, such as fathom, pound or quart. So we used both Greek and Hebrew as the source text, and also used the NASB to double check our search. We then tagged each term in our target language with a rendering description, “weights/measures.” Terms that were not in the Biblical Terms list, we added to our project Biblical Terms list. With this method of adding a rendering description to the term(s) and adding the term(s) to our project Biblical Terms list as needed, we were able to build a couple of other lists, such as a list for the Divine Names in the OT and a list for our Core Key Terms. Whenever we want to check our text for consistency, outside of the categories already in PT, we then pull up the list by searching in the rendering description box. Because the list is based on the Hebrew/Greek source text, using this method you would be able to find missing renderings in your target language. We found this method helpful for pulling up our lists for quick reviews of our consistency throughout our work. I trust this helps!

Answer 2

Unfortunately there are not good lists for these topics. One way to do this is to search for a term in a resource that you trust and then use the search tool in your text, but instead of creating a new list use the option to “Remove from list”. This should show you any place where you don’t use the term that is used in the resource.

Answer 3

Have you looked at the Biblical Terms “Numbers” list? While it doesn’t focus on what is being measured, it looks at all the numbers and would be a good start in finding the measurement terms themselves.

Blessings,

Comments

Thank you very much for the good idea.

Answer 4

@anon196787 Thanks for weighing in here! It sounds like you have created some very good resources that could be used by others in the BT community. I wounder if you would be willing to share these more widely? You could do this by creating a custom list or lists that could be added to projects by interested people.