Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Kirk Lowery <KirkLowery AT xc.org>]

Steve Thompson wrote:

> Dale Wheeler has just announced that he has finished the "fixed MorphBHS"
> for a particular version of Bible study software.  What is this, and how
> does it relate to the Michigan BHS text, and what sort of "fixing" has he
> done to it?

I guess I ought to respond, since MorphBHS comes out of this office! :-)

Dale Wheeler is the better person to ask about the details of the upcoming
Version 3.0 (Dale, are you out there?). Dale and Alan Groves (Prof. of OT here
and Director of the Computer Center) are co-editors.

MorphBHS is the morphologically tagged Hebrew Bible. It is the raw database
which underlies all the US-produced "Bible" software which offer access to the
parsed Hebrew text. The "fixing" Dale was referring to was (1) the 
normalization
of all lemmas and roots using Koehler-Baumgartner (3rd ed) as the authority, 
(2)
distinguishing of homonyms, (3) the addition of Todd Beal's semantic data on 
the
verb. In addition there have been a lot of miscellaneous corrections and
"fixes."

Version 3 is not yet released. Here's an extract from Version 2.5 (1 Kgs 1:1) 
--

>1k1:1
1k1:1,1.1 W: W@Pc
1k1:1,1.2 HA H@Pa
1k1:1,1.3 M.E^LEK: MELEK:@ncms
1k1:1,2.1 D.FWID^ D.FWID@np
1k1:1,3.1 ZFQ"^N ZQN@vqp3ms
1k1:1,4.1 B.F^) B.W)@vqp3ms
1k1:1,5.1 B.A B.@Pp+Pa
1k1:1,5.2 Y.FMI^YM YOWM@ncmp
1k1:1,6.1 WA W@Pc
1k1:1,6.2 Y:KAS.U^/HW.^ K.SH@vpw3mpX3ms
1k1:1,7.1 B.A B.@Pp+Pa
1k1:1,7.2 B.:GFDI^YM B.EGED_2@ncmp
1k1:1,8.1 W: W@Pc
1k1:1,8.2 LO^) LO)@Pn
1k1:1,9.1 YIXA^M XMM@vni3ms
1k1:1,10.1 L/O^W L@PpX3ms

The fields are variable length: field 1 is the verse reference, word and part 
of
word, field 2: BHS text, field 3: lemma (up to the "@"), field 4: (from @ to 
end
of line or "X") morphological parsing, field 5 (if "X", then from there to end
of line) pronominal suffix, locative he, etc. The "/" is a morphological 
marker
for prefixes and suffixes.

It is human readable, although you may prefer to click your mouse on a Hebrew
word and getting the parsing in a pop-up window! MorphBHS is the data alone, 
no
software to access/search/manipulate it.

Blessings,

Kirk
________________________________________________________________________
Kirk E. Lowery, Ph.D.                              voice: (215) 572-3845
Associate Director of Academic Computing             fax: (215) 887-5404
Westminster Theological Seminary              email: <KirkLowery AT xc.org>
Philadelphia, PA 19118