Friday, June 13, 2003
Using Strongs Numbers for Reducing Lexical Ambiguity

Laura Gibbs also points out the interlinear Bible at Crosswalk that is thoroughly hyperlinked like my hyper-concordance, though interspersing lexical entries using the Strong's numbering system. (i wasn't able to get the fonts working properly, though)

The really useful thing about Strong's from a textual analysis perspective is that it can help mitigate the problem of lexical ambiguity. To take a standard example, the English verb "love" has two common correlates in the New Testament, agapao ("to welcome, to entertain, to be fond of, to love dearly ") and phileo ("to approve of, to like, sanction, to treat affectionately or kindly, to welcome, befriend"). Perhaps the most interesting interplay between these two definitions is the lakeside conversation between Jesus and Peter after the resurrection in John 21:

15 When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Feed my lambs.” 16 He said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” 17 He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.

I've used red to represent agape, and blue to represent phileo. 

As i wrote in The New Testament Hyper-concordance, linking by words alone doesn't group things by meaning because of this kind of lexical ambiguity. One of my Grand Ideas is to index the content words in a modern English translation (KJV just doesn't cut it) against the Strongs numbering system. By using an XML representation, you could then really group verses by their meanings, not just by word strings.


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Blogos in Polish

Laura Gibbs from XPLANA comments that "blogos" turns out much better in Polish, where it's related to "bless". (see "Blogos is the #1 Google hit for ... Blogos!." for more) So i guess this blog is best viewed from a Polish perspective, rather than a Lithuanian one.

However, i see in the dynamic world of web popularity, i've slipped out of the #1 spot and back behind another "blogos" at Blogger, someone whose name is Blogos Gregorio. I'd include a link to his web site but then i'd be helping his cause :-)


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