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Department of Old Testament Bible Studies
The various search methods of a “Bible Passage” search
 

It is necessary to define your search according to one of the following three options. Only one of the three may be selected. Activating one will disable the others:

 

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The default setting is "Advanced Search". It is mostly to be used, especially when you are producing lists of publications. The "Exact Search" option is situated to the far left because it provides the smallest number of results. In the middle is the "Limited Search". How, though, are the search methods differentiated?

 

With the Exact Search, only those titles will be given that were joined in the database with that specific passage. It may be that you wish to conduct such a search in certain cases, and therefore, the opportunity is there. If, for example, you've only entered "Deuteronomy 1,6", you will receive only the literature categorized under this verse.

  

This much should be made clear: the results of the Exact Search will not include all of the literature in which your text is treated. Deuteronomy 1:6, for example, is also addressed in sources that deal with the passage from 1:6-8. Since this literature may also be necessary for your work, two additional options have been developed: that of the Limited Search and the Advanced Search.

 

With a Limited Search, still not all of the relevant titles will be listed. Rather, a selection will be offered which in certain cases is meaningful. Presupposing that the biblical text in question spans several verses, the Limited Search will produce the results of an Exact Search on the whole passage and on each of the individual verses of the passage, then, what is more, also the results of an Exact Search on each of the possible subsets of those verses. This type of search is particularly useful when a group of verses constitutes a relatively closed unit, clearly demarcated from the surrounding text. Consider, for example, the Ten Commandments, the Shema Yisrael, the "small historical creeds," or the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32. In such cases, there will be many titles which are relevant only to the textual unit in question and to their parts. One must, however, be aware of the limitations of this option. In searching for articles on the Decalogue, for example, relevant titles on the whole of chapter 5 would not be listed. If you want full information about a verse or a piece of text, the third search option is needed: the Advanced Search.

 

In the Advanced Search, the results will include all of the following:

 

1. The titles in the database to which the indicated section of text exactly is joined (= Exact Search).

 

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2. The titles which accord with any subset of the indicated section of text. If you enter 1,6-8, titles regarding, for example, 1,7 will be listed (= Exact  + Limited Search).

 

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3. Titles touching on the indicated section of text only in part. If you enter 1,6-8, articles will be listed which address, for example, 1,5-6 or 1,8-19.

 

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4. Titles covering a broader literary unit than the passage searched for. If you enter 1,6-8, you may receive an article that takes into consideration a larger unit, like 1,1-40.

 

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This last method ensures that no article which addresses any portion of the indicated text will be omitted. Of course, the size of the resulting display may be significantly large. Neither is it certain whether all of the titles listed will take seriously into consideration the section of text which you've indicated. This, however, is the price of completeness. It would appear, in any case, much easier to trim a lengthy display than to search out articles later on that may have missed the first time around. For this reason, the default search method of a "Bible Passage" search is always the Advanced Search. If you wish to make use of the other options, you will need to indicate this expressly.

 

 

more >> How do I go about a "Keyword" search?

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