[sword-devel] Perseus Project

[Keith Ralston]

Perseus is a digital library of ancient Greek and Latin texts.  It is a
treasure for research work.  This site allows researchers access to primary
sources for researching definition.  In addition to having a large number of
texts on-line, they have research tools.  This is my source for doing
original language Greek research.  You can look up a work in Liddell Scott
Jones for definitions that contain links to the documents from which the
definitions derive their meaning.  You can also search for words or word
combinations in thousands of ancient documents.

I use the site to verify definitions I find in BAGD or TDNT.  Sometimes the
definitions cited here and in commentaries leave out a nuance.  This is the
best source I have found for researching Hapax Legomena found in the NT.

One recent example is research I have done on Paul's use of diatheke in Gal
3.15-25 (please forgive my poor transliterating I usually type in Greek).
Recent commentaries have surfaced the idea of a will or testament in favor
of the traditional OT covenant term for v. 15.  However, the word used for
ratify (kurow) is only found in Galatians and a few oxyrinchus fragments.
Predominantly, other language is used when diatheke means a will.

Looking the other way, how is kurow predominantly used in ancients
documents?  It is primarily used of legal contracts or of laws.  This is
also true of athetew which occurs in the same verse.  This leads me to
conclude that Paul is using diatheke in the sense of covenant in the verse
as he clearly does later on.

Having this type of material available electronically opens up research to a
level previously available to very few people.  This left researchers
dependent on the secondary and sometimes tertiary sources such as
dictionaries and lexicons.  This is not to say that they are not useful, but
nothing beats a primary source when you need to dig into a document.

I have asked them if they have a format for integrating.  If not, that would
leave URL generation as the only method.  Their URLs seem to be fairly
straight forward.  I have also asked them if they have something that
outlines their method for generating URLs as well.

I  know that Thesaurus Lingua Graecae has some integration with Perseus.  I
guess this means they may have some standardization.  I have asked them this
explicitly.

Let me know if this makes sense.

Keith

> -----Original Message-----
> From: sword-devel-admin@crosswire.org
> [mailto:sword-devel-admin@crosswire.org]On Behalf Of Martin Gruner
> Sent: Wed, November 12, 2003 1:19 PM
> To: sword-devel@crosswire.org
> Subject: Re: [sword-devel] Perseus Project
>
>
> Please explain more.
>
> Martin
>
> Am Mittwoch, 12. November 2003 19:54 schrieb Keith Ralston:
> > Has anyone given thought to integrating their UI with the
> Perseus project?
> > This would create an extremely powerful combination, especially
> for the web
> > based product.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > sword-devel@crosswire.org
> > http://www.crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel
>
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