Word-frequency counts in the Bible and other sacred texts

[Jobar]

Since we don't have a Biblical Crit forum, I'll put this here.

In another thread, seebs implies that criticizing the Bible because it can be cherry-picked to defend a malevolent God is not kosher, because the core message of the overall work is about a benevolent God.

Of course there are many ways to attack his position; but I want to find an online Bible (or any other holy book) that will give me quick word counts for the whole work, and possibly for each individual book. I'd like to get comparisons for how often 'good' is used, vs. 'evil'; 'heaven' vs. 'hell', 'love' vs. 'hate'; etc., etc.

Not that this in itself would allow us to reach any definite conclusions. If all mentions of 'hate' were in a context of how God decried it, then even if there were ten times as many uses of the word 'hate' it wouldn't show that the Bible encouraged hate; quite the opposite.

However, it would make a fine tool to seek out how the words are used in context. If all the uses of the word 'scorn' had God 'laughing [some human trait] to scorn', or any such direct contempt of humanity, then from that we could extract a powerful and fair argument that the Bible's core message is not one of benevolence.

So, all you net-savvy people- where can I find a fully-searchable online Bible to use for this?

Cancel that- found some at the Secweb Library. But what do you think about the relevancy of doing this?

[Garnet]

Jobar, try this:

http://www.e-sword.net/

It is free and you can download several versions of the Bible. I *think* it has a word count function when you search. Meaning something like, the search returns x occurences of word y.

ETA: www.blueletter.org does have a count feature with the search. And you don't have to download this one.

[Jobar]

I'm using http://www.biblegateway.com/keyword/.

So far, my results are:

heaven- 691 references
hell- 14

evil- 472
good- 614

love- 697
hate, scorn, fear- total 503

life- 589
death- 452

As I said, a simple comparison listing of these pairs-of-opposites tells us nothing significant. But since that site gives each reference, it's possible to quickly determine relevant contexts.

[seebs]

Interesting analysis.

A couple more points:
* I distinguish between advice given as to our behavior, and descriptions of our existing behavior. The statement "you hate people, but you should love them" strikes me as not at all being a wash.
* Not all books within the text are equivalent.

I should add a "count matches only" feature to my bible program.

[lpetrich]

A serious problem is that such a list will be very translation-dependent. Different translations use different words, and for best results, one ought to try to look at the original languages. Short of learning them, one can use a guide like Strong's Concordance, available in places like The Blue-Letter Bible (http://www.blueletterbible.org).

Let's take the words translated as "hell", which are listed with several translations in this chart (http://www.what-the-hell-is-hell.com/HellStudy/HellCharts.htm). It is easy to see that translations jump around a lot:

Old Testament:
H7585 - שאול - Sheol - pit, grave, death, hell - 65 times

New Testament:
G86 - ᾅδης - Hades - grave, depths, death, hell - 11 times
G1067 - γέεννα - Gehenna - hell - 12 times
G5020 - ταρταρόω - Tartarus - hell - once

That last one is a verb, meaning "to send <someone> to Tartarus". Its most literal translation is "to Tartarus <someone>".

It appears in 2 Peter 2:4, in "... but sent them to hell ..."; that literal translation would make it "... but Tartarused them ...".

ETA: there are also indirect references to hell, like the "fiery furnace" of Matthew 13:42 and 13:50 and the "lake of fire" of Revelation 20:14-15.

[Jobar]

Lpetrich, I've been thinking of the difficulty you mention as the 'synonym problem'. It's very hard to find all the verses that are speaking about hell because so many synonyms for it are used; I'd guess that this would be a problem even in the original tongues.

The sheer number of results I'm getting from these general terms means that determining relevancy and context is going to be a BIG job. For instance, there's more than a thousand total listings for 'good' and 'evil'- my method seems to be little use, as far as providing evidence about core meanings without major study of the text.

Oh well, it was worth a look.

[RexT]

...the Bible's core message is not one of benevolence.The bible has a core message?

[Ray Moscow]

I think lpetrich is right in that word counts and such need to be done in the original languages.

Now, translating what those words mean/meant in their contexts takes a lot of study. Understanding an ancient language means immersing oneself in not only those texts but other texts (if extant) in contemporary literature and history, history, history.

Amateurs like me just have to read what the translation experts say and compare their conclusions.

[Lucretius III]

Had a quick search myself and found this site

http://www.verselink.org/index.html?

It's not perfect for what you want from my brief trial with it but may be a starting point,the whole synonym problem as has been mentioned by others being possibly the biggest drawback.
This is in my limited experience the sort of thing that was being tried out in German Universities in the early to mid 1980's vast computer generated concordances of all sorts of literature ,including analyisis of where certain words appear in conjunction with others.
It is the sort of computer program that is designed to "prove" that Shakespeare was written by someone else for example .
Anyway IF there is anything that will do exactly what you need, I would say that the Germans will have done it.

Eta I found a downloadable version of Nave's Topical Bible if you want to follow that route here

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/nave/bible.html

Not d/led it myself yet

[Ray Moscow]

I'll expose my Christian roots and admit that I still find these books pretty interesting:

New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (http://www.amazon.com/New-International-Dictionary-Testament-Theology/dp/0310332389)

It's kind of a Kittle (http://www.amazon.com/Theological-Dictionary-New-Testament-Set/dp/0802823246) for those whose Greek is pretty limited, but they are very interesting for giving a good overview of the history and usage of particular words from the OT, pagan, NT and "extrabiblical" literature.

[Autodidact]

Here's what I want to know:

What percentage of the OT concerns either commandments to fight, conquer and commit genocide, or descriptions of the Israelites doing the same?

What percentage of the OT concerns directions for making animal sacrifices?

I contend that if you take these two out, it's considerably shorter.

[Lucretius III]

I just did a basic search on that verselink site I posted above for the words "Warfare " "Fight " and "Kill" and got 1189 "documents" in the OT and the NT,
Whether these references are exactly what you want I haven't checked (not all of them at least )

Verselink search (http://www.verselink.org/cgi-bin/perlfect/search/search.pl?p=1&lang=en&include=&exclude=&penalty=0&sort=&mode=any&q=warfare%2Cfight%20%2Ckill)

[Codec]

What percentage of the OT concerns either commandments to fight, conquer and commit genocide, or descriptions of the Israelites doing the same?

I'd guess only a tiny percent is actual commandments to do that. Most of the rest can be characterised as a historical view of various petty squabbles between communities, and one or two out right trashings/genocides (on both sides) with the blessing of God.

What percentage of the OT concerns directions for making animal sacrifices?

That would be Leviticus then, and part of Deuteronomy, and the odd smattering here and there of oblique references to the same.
So I'd say that was either 2/39 or 2/46 depending on who's version you go with - say 5%.

I contend that if you take these two out, it's considerably shorter.
Certainly would, and much more readable.

If I was redacting it for press, I think I'd take a large pen to most of Leviticus (that alter must have stunk something rotten giving the amount of blood splashing that went on), I'd merge chronicles and Deuteronomy into the first 10 books or so, severely hack Isiah and some of the similar works into something readable, put psalms, proverbs and song of Solomon as an appendix (or even a separate work) and probably bring Maccabees back into the fold to make a good transition to the new. At least that would be a start, and it would probably have an 18 certificate.