Morris ProctorRecently a Logos blog post appeared showing how to research a hapax legomenon in the Bible. This Greek phrase literally means “something said only once” and it refers to a word which appears only once in a literary context or an author’s works. The blog correctly points out that numerous hapax legomena occur in the New Testament.
A Logos user then inquired of me:
Using Logos, how do I discover the hapax legomena in the Bible?
It may surprise you that the answer is incredibly simple with the Concordance tool!
- Choose Tools | Concordance
- Build a Concordance report for an interlinear Bible such as the ESV (Please be patient. The first time you build a report for an interlinear Bible takes 3-5 minutes) (A)
- Designate from the drop down list your desired verse range such as New Testament (B)
- Select from the drop down list Lemma as the reference to search (C)
- Type in the sidebar in the Count boxes 1 to 1 (D)
- Select in the sidebar Bible Text in the Field section (E)
- Notice the results section on the right displaying the Greek lemmas which only appear 1 time in the New Testament! (F)
Of course, you can change the verse range to Old Testament to find the Hebrew lemmas only appearing one time.
For even more fun, change the resource to search to any resource in your library to discover all of the words appearing only 1 time in that book.
The key is to always set the Count to 1 to 1.
For more detailed instruction on the Concordance tool, please check out the Logos 7 Training Manuals Volumes 1-3 in print or digital.
You can also attend an upcoming Camp Logos in Tampa, Akron, Minneapolis, or Phoenix for live hands-on training!
Jason Stone
Brian Collins
Mark Barnes