[sword-devel] Catholic versification

Fri Jan 26 08:10:16 EST 2024

Hello everyone,

I'm the person Cyrille mentioned, and I just joined the mailing list as I
thought I could maybe explain a bit more what I'm trying to do with this
new versification.

*1. Problem statement*

Simply put, my objective is to be able to align verse-by-verse the contents
of two bibles that use different versifications.
For example :
- I open Daniel 3 in a Catholic bible, it has 100 verses because the Prayer
of Azariah is included.
- I want to compare the translation verse by verse with, for example, the
KJVA. This means I want to see the Daniel 3 from KJVA, with all verses from
PrAzar included in the corresponding place.

There was already logic to perform such mapping in jsword, and I recently
included it to support deuterocanonical contents (on the AndBible fork,
since that's the only one where I got answers from the maintainer) :
https://github.com/AndBible/jsword/pull/13

Now, the problem is to be able to do the same with the deuterocanonical
additions to the book of Esther, because there are many different
"strategies" adopted by different bibles.
- Protestant bibles, when they have it, usually have it a separate books
(AddEsth in KJVA).
- Some catholic bibles have it as additional chapters at the end of Esther,
making Esther 16 chapters long : that's the existing "Catholic2"
versification, which maps to KJVA easily :
https://github.com/AndBible/jsword/blob/develop/src/main/resources/org/crosswire/jsword/versification/Catholic2.properties#L392
- Most catholic bibles actually have the additions integrated directly
within the original text, using lettered verse numbers (13A, 13B, etc., see
here for example : https://www.aelf.org/bible/Est/3 )

Currently, these catholic bible with the text integrated use the "Catholic"
versification, and ignore all the lettered verses (or include the letters
as raw text) : basically, Esther 3.13 with these additions becomes one
single very long verse. This makes it impossible to map properly with the
AddEsth of KJVA.

*2. Proposed solution (Catholic3 versification)*

With the proposed Catholic3 versification (except it needs a few
adjustments compared to the file proposed by Cyrille), what I'd like to
achieve is to give a unique verse number to each of those.
For example, Esther 3 goes from 15 to 22 verses, with the OSIS IDs becoming
:
- Esth.3.13 for verse 13
- Esth.3.14 for verse 13A...
- Esth.3.20 for verse 13G
- Esth.3.21 for verse 14
(Basically, the OSIS ID identifies the position of the verse; the actual
numbering from the bible can be preserved separately with the OSIS "n"
attribute or the "\vp" USFM keyword.)

would your use-case be served if canon_catholic.h was
> modified to increase the verse counts in Esther to 39, 23, 22, 47, 29,
> 14, 10, 41, 32, 14?

Since my objective is to allow mapping verse by verse, you'll understand
that I need the verse counts to be aligned with the actual usage. Having
the "versification" allow more verses than what's actually used defeats the
purpose.
In addition, I believe it's a very bad idea to make big changes to already
published versifications : the point of versifications is to give a unique
ID to a verse. Updating a versification will change all IDs for the verses
of already existing bibles that use this versification.
I really believe the best solution for the time being is to create a new
Catholic3 versification, as originally suggested.
I can provide the full definition very soon (though since I'm working with
JSword it will be in Java format first), and it should in theory be aligned
with Catholic and Catholic2 except for these differences in Esther. (I'll
check if there are more differences I missed).

*3. Modular versifications*

I think at some point it would be nice to have per-book versifications
> or some other way to deal with bibles that don't follow a "standard"
> versification

Agreed.
If everyone is open to the idea, I'd like to work in the next few months on
an extension of the OSIS standard to define "modular" versifications, ie.
versifications that can be built by composing other versifications and
applying a diff.
Then each bible could, in its document header, not only reference a
standard versification with refSystem, but include its own specific changes
and how they map to the standard.

Before I spend time on the topic though, is there anyone in particular I
should ask to approve the general idea, and who would be interested in
reviewing proposals on the topic ?

Thanks all and best regards,

Arnaud

Le jeu. 25 janv. 2024 à 16:35, pinoaffe <pinoaffe at gmail.com> a écrit :

>
> Hello,
>
> I don't know much about catholic bibles or sword, but just out of
> curiosity: would your use-case be served if canon_catholic.h was
> modified to increase the verse counts in Esther to 39, 23, 22, 47, 29,
> 14, 10, 41, 32, 14?  Or would the decreases in verse counts in other
> chapters of other books also be necessary?
>
> And would such a change be acceptable to others?
>
> The catholic bibles I've encountered "in the wild" are the dutch
> Willibrordvertaling of 1975 and the neovulgate.  Both of these appear to
> follow canon_catholic3.h everywhere except in Esther, where they have 16
> chapters
>
> I think at some point it would be nice to have per-book versifications
> or some other way to deal with bibles that don't follow a "standard"
> versification, but for now we'll have to make do with what we got
>
> Kind regards,
> pinoaffe
>
> Fr Cyrille <fr.cyrille at tiberiade.be> writes:
> > Hello,
> > Recently a person interested in the Catholic bible in French told me
> > about the mapping problems between Catholic versification and the kjva
> > concerning Esther. So I'm bringing up the question of a new Catholic
> > versification that could better deal with this kind of problem and at
> > the same time incorporate some of the errors in current Catholic
> > versifications. I should mention that two versifications for French
> > Bibles have been added since my proposal for a new Catholic
> > versification, which was made long before these versifications were
> > added, and which was not favorably received at the time. In our case,
> > the number of Bibles that follow this versification is simply
> > enormous, since the majority of Catholic Bibles do. I would also add
> > that the LXX versification is not entirely correct. There are no LXX
> > today that put 16 chapters to Esther. Ralph's already uses letters to
> > integrate Greek passages into the text.
> > In fact, Catholic versification simply follows Ralph's. So I suggest
> > that we seriously reopen this question with concrete suggestions.
> > For my part, the suggestion is simple: convert the numbers in the
> > Greek passages into verses and offset the numbered verses in the same
> > chapters. I'll copy you on what that might look like.
> >
> > Br Cyrille
> >
> > [2. text/x-chdr; canon_catholic3.h]...
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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>
>
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