Browse and compare the books of the Bible by genre, group, author, length, and more with the Bible Books Explorer. When you open this interactive, Logos provides a birds-eye view of the unity and diversity of the biblical text.
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How to Use the Bible Books Explorer
Open the Bible Books Explorer
Just like the other interactives in your Library, you can open the Bible Books Explorer from the Library or from the Tools menu.
From the Library
After you click the Library icon , type Bible Books Explorer into the Search bar. Then, click Bible Books Explorer to open it in a new tab.
From the Tools Menu
Click the Tools icon and type bible in the search bar. This will filter your tools to those with Bible in the title. You’ll find Bible Books Explorer in the Interactive Media section. Click it, and Logos will open the interactive in a new tab.
How to Use the Bible Books Explorer
When you open the Bible Books Explorer, you’ll immediately see a graphical interface showing the Longacre genres contained in each book of the Bible. These color-coded genres (Narrative, Procedural, Behavioral, and Expository) allow you to see the composition of each biblical book.
Filter Books by Category
Click the double chevron in the upper left to reveal the Filters menu. From this menu, you can filter the books of the Bible by Corpus (Roman Catholic, Protestant, etc.), Kind (Church Epistle, History, etc.), Author, Recipient, and more.
Change the Display Mode
At the top of the interactive, you'll find several different options for how to visualize the available information about the biblical books.
Books View
The Books view lists the books in the current filter set as blocks. The width of a block represents its word count. Each block is divided into colored horizontal slices representing the proportion of the book marked with a given Longacre genre category. Hover over a segment to see the exact percentage.
Note: Percentage is counted based on verses, not words.
The blocks may be sorted in various ways:
- In Order lists the books according to the order of the Bible datatype.
- Ranked reorders the books by the number of times it is cited in Logos.
- Hebrew sorts the books based on their order Hebrew Bible followed by the other biblical books displayed in the same order as In Order.
- Words, Chapters, and Verses sort the books by the number of words, chapters, or verses, from greatest to least.
When you click a biblical book, Logos provides a snapshot of key information about the book. At a glance, you can see the key people, places, things, and events of the book, each of which is linked out to the Factbook.
Timeline View
The Timeline view shows each book in the current filter set as rows, with the composition date for each book shown as year ranges. Use the scroll bar along the top of the timeline to expand or contract the visible date range. Use the scroll bar along the right side of the timeline to adjust the number of books displayed.
Note: Dating the composition of biblical books is complex, and opinions vary.
Across the top of the Timeline view, you'll find controls to choose a resource. The timeline reflects the opinion expressed in that resource.
Note: The list of available resources is affected by the set of books selected by the current filter. To see dating for New Testament books, first select New Testament from the Testament facet in the sidebar, and the list of timeline resources will change in response.
Intertext View
The Intertext view presents data gathered from the New Testament Use of the Old Testament Dataset as a chord diagram.
Choose a kind of intertextual relationships using the view switcher at the top of the diagram (Citation, Quotation, Allusion, Echo, or All). The categories are the same as those in the underlying dataset, with the addition of an All category which represents the union of all the other relationships.
Ring segments are color-coded based on their kind, using the same color scheme as the Stats view. When an Old Testament book's material is used by a New Testament author, a ribbon of the same color as the Old Testament book runs from the Old Testament segment to the New. The width of the ribbon is relative to the number of uses so that wider ribbons reflect more instances of that relationship. The width of each book's ring segment is based on the width of all the ribbons leading to or from it, not the size of the book.
Hover over a ring segment to highlight just its intertextual relationships. This can help reduce the clutter in diagrams that have a lot of relationships. Click a ring segment to launch a search for the passages involved. This will return the list of references on the other side of each ribbon.
For example: Click the book of Genesis to find passages that cite Genesis, not the places in Genesis that are cited. To find which passages in Genesis are cited, click a New Testament book to find the Old Testament books it cites.
Stats View
The stats view shows an X/Y scatter plot of book sizes along the X-axis, with small books to the left and larger books toward the right, with other countable data along the Y-axis, placing books with fewer occurrences at the bottom, and more at the top.
List View
The List view shows a grid of select data points about the currently filtered books. Click a book title to show the information sheet for that book.