word count

kjvman

kjvman

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I have heard several preacher over the years give wood counts from Scripture to try to prove a point. Ex. The word sin is mentioned so many time and the word blood is mentioned exactly the same number, so there is just enough blood to cover all sin. Plus other examples. Funny thing is that when I check them with your program, they are NEVER right. Also, when I check SS word counts with other Bible programs, they never match. Why? If all of these programs are using the KJV text, then the word counts should be the same. I can understand different editions of the KJV being a couple of minor words off, but 20, 30, 40 or 50!? How do you explain this?
For example I use SS and Bible Analyzer 4.2 and looked up both blood and sin. SS lists sin 389 times and BA list sin 448 times. SS has blood 375 and BA has it 447 times.
 
kjvman said:
I have heard several preacher over the years give wood counts from Scripture to try to prove a point. Ex. The word sin is mentioned so many time and the word blood is mentioned exactly the same number, so there is just enough blood to cover all sin. Plus other examples. Funny thing is that when I check them with your program, they are NEVER right. Also, when I check SS word counts with other Bible programs, they never match. Why? If all of these programs are using the KJV text, then the word counts should be the same. I can understand different editions of the KJV being a couple of minor words off, but 20, 30, 40 or 50!? How do you explain this?
For example I use SS and Bible Analyzer 4.2 and looked up both blood and sin. SS lists sin 389 times and BA list sin 448 times. SS has blood 375 and BA has it 447 times.
Click to expand...

Probably the preachers you heard may have made mistakes in searching or took someone else's word for it. I have heard things too like ps 118.8 being the middle verse of the Bible. That's wrong. It's Ps 103.1-2.

Sometimes people search the prescripts of Psalms and postscripts of Paul's writings. This would make a difference in the count.

The counts would differ if all the word forms were included.

Some people may count occurrences and others may be counting verses where the word or phrase appears.

The apostrophe as in 's makes a difference in counts if you count them the same as the underlying word or count them differently.

Finally, there are small spelling differences between KJV's that would account for other differences. There are not many differences between the 1789 KJV and the "Pure Cambridge Edition". The 1850 KJV is quite a bit different.

You can bet it's human error. I have checked the word counts for SS and am very confident in the results.
 
I've long seen the same kinds of issues, and proper Bible search results are an extremely high priority for me.

With regard to the sin/blood count, I researched this one myself, and found that the claim of the word counts being the same for the words is incorrect. I did multiple search methods inside SwordSearcher and also outside of it on the raw text with multiple programs just to be sure. I verified in different ways that SwordSearcher's word counts for blood and sin are accurate.

This is not to say that there couldn't be some error in the counting algorithm that needs correction -- I am always open to that, and fixing any confirmed problems with Bible searching is a top priority for me.

As Bill said, which KJV text one uses can make a difference, though the cases where this is a factor are going to be extremely rare if one is using a "1789 edition." SwordSearcher uses the KJV text printed by Cambridge University Press between 1900 and 1980 as the "standard" by which the text is held to. This is the most common printing of the "1789 edition" in history. I chose this because if the historical testimony of its use, and when someone reports an "error" in the SwordSearcher KJV text, I always check it with my printed copies of this edition so that I don't end up in a position of making personal "judgment calls" on corrections. It has been a very long time since anyone has found an actual error in the KJV text in SwordSearcher.

Anyway, I am confident in the word count accuracy in SwordSearcher, especially for straightforward ones like "blood" and "sin." (Using complicated search features like boolean/word forms/etc introduces lots of factors that diminish the usefulness of the word counts.)
 
I've heard preachers list a bunch of verses to make a point and have written down the references - guess what, when I looked them up, they may have contained the keyword, but didn't address the point at all in context. SwordSearcher makes checking up on these people a breeze! They count on their listeners being unable or too lazy to check up on them.
 
The SwordSearcher word count is indeed incorrect when counting words that are purely Scripture. It appears that SS includes the italicized notations that appear at the end of certain versus. Example- "church", 77 occurrences in scripture, 3 occurrences in italicized notes.

[[ Romans 16:27 To God only wise, be glory through Jesus Christ for ever. Amen .
Written to the Romans from Corinthus, and sent by Phebe servant of the church at Cenchrea. ]]

SS counts this verse in a search on "church" even though it is not in the Scripture here but is in the comment.

Is there a KJV bible 'module' or 'book' without the comments that could be added to the library? Thank you.
 
There is no version of the KJV SwordSearcher module that deletes the post and pre-scripts. [EDIT/UPDATE: please see the KJVm module that can be downloaded from SSModules which omits these.]

If you want to do a Bible search that omits these portions of the verses you can use a Regex Search and check the option "remove pre- and post- scripts from verses." But be careful doing so, as a RegEx is an extremely technical form of searching and will not get you the results you expect if you don't use it properly. I would recommend most people not bother.

Anyone trying to make a doctrinal application based on word counts certainly needs to diligently review each search result to be sure how they want to use the count. It's pretty easy to see in the Verse List whether or not a word has been counted as part of a post-script.

I will add to the feature request list an option to omit pre- and post- scripts from normal Bible searches in the Bible search window.
 
Here's the KJV 1769 version with no pre or post scripts. It's almost identical to the Pure Cambridge KJV circa 1900 version used in SS (i.e. spellings like ankle vs. ancle and a few more). It should work well for searching. If you have the compare version (in PREFERENCES / text display options) set up with the KJV, it should give you side by side results for the search. You may want to check your study click options and also the pop up version.

It's a simple Bible with no italics, red letters, etc. Just text.

https://sites.google.com/site/wsbones/KJV1769.ss5bible?attredirects=0&d=1
 
I'm with Marty............heard it preached many times and makes good preaching. I agree it should be consistent, but likewise when I use to use other Bible programs everybody is all over the place- so I just backed off trying to preach the exact number since people, programs have varying numbers. Like Bill-Brandon say we have to make sure what is being counted maybe as far as word occurrence or variant occurrences , verses and so on..............but you are right-- it bounces all over the place. To be honest I just thought it was me and I was not entering the word correctly in the right format as to the search I was asking.

I remember one time just to put it out there.......somebody preached what you are talking making the illustration (he was generalizing- not exact) when 1 of the brethren came back, looked it up on e-sword and really tried to discredit the person who preached it. The person who preached the message was just emphasizing the importance of the blood of Christ where the other person was getting doctrinally hung up not only on the number, but the numbers within the number. I don't know who he was trying to impress........... I'm not saying you are doing that:)

Good eye though and I would think should be important to everybody. Kind of like as a example when you look up the word Calvary, etc. and see it only occurs one time. The Holy Spirit did that for a reason...........

Hebrews 10:10 (KJV) By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Good to see people revere the King James.

marty said:
I've heard preachers list a bunch of verses to make a point and have written down the references - guess what, when I looked them up, they may have contained the keyword, but didn't address the point at all in context. SwordSearcher makes checking up on these people a breeze! They count on their listeners being unable or too lazy to check up on them.
Click to expand...
 
I have created a new add-on module on SSModules: King James Version Minimal (KJVm). This is the exact same KJV text as is included with SwordSearcher except that the pre- and post- scripts have been omitted. It also doesn't include the footnotes from the normal KJV module. It does have the red-lettering and italics. (Both of which can be disabled in File, Preferences, Text Display Options.)
King James Version Minimal

This edition of the KJV conforms to the text of the King James Bible printed by Cambridge University Press, from c.1900 to c.1980, except that the footnotes and pre- and post- scripts have been omitted.

Unlike the normal KJV SwordSearcher module, this text does not contain footnotes or pre- and post-script text for verses (such as titles in the Psalms or "Written to the Romans from Corinthus..." from Romans, etc.). Otherwise it is the exact same text as the normal KJV module. (Including red-lettering and italics.)

The purpose of this module is to facilitate searches that do not include matches in pre- and post-scripts.
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Wow- fast response. Much better than my inquiries to e-sword. I will definitely purchase your program as soon as I am able (on trial version now). Thank you so much and may God bless you and your endeavors.
 
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