On this page, you can do several main kinds of searches:
Phrase Searches:
To search for a whole phrase, just type it in, like this:
and click Search. The software will find exact matches for your phrase.
If you have logical "operator words" in your phrase, i.e. "and", "or", or "not", then they will be active by default. If you want to de-activate them, put your phrase in double-quotes, like this:
"thou shalt not steal".
Boolean Searches:
Boolean "operators" are logical expressions, like "and", "or", "not". (They're named after George Boole, the English mathematician who described them.) They let you do fairly precise searches. Here's are examples of each of these 3 main types:
- And: Moses and Aaron - In this both words, Moses, Aaron, must occur in the passage, verse, etc. (all words, in regular Advanced Search)
- Or: John or James - either James or John, or both, must occur. (any word, in regular Advanced Search)
- Not: Zion and not daughter -- Zion must occur, but filter out any occurrences that also contain "daughter. (zion !daughter, in regular Advanced Search)
OK Variations:
- John and James and Peter - all 3 words must occur.
- boat or net or fish - any of these words occurring will be an included result.
- (John and James) or Peter
- Lazarus and (Mary or Martha)
Proximity Searches:
Adam w/10 Eve - Find results where Adam occurs within 10 words of Eve
OK Variations:
- tower not w/5 Babel - Return results where tower does not occur within 5 words of Babel. (NB: This one is not symmetrical; it looks for tower first, then excludes Babel)
- (David w/10 Jonathan) w/10 arrow
- (Jacob and Esau) w/10 (Isaac)
- (new and Jerusalem) w/20 bride adorned
Ambiguous ones won't be executed.
Using special characters to modify your searches:
- ? is a wildcard that matches a single character. Example: Mar? matches Mary or Mark. It can be used anywhere in a word, and more than once.
- * matches any number of characters. Example: Mar* matches Mary or Martha. It too can be used more than once in a word.
- ~ triggers the use of stemming. Where a word's stem is known, the entry is trimmed back to its stem, and the various forms it can take will be searched for. Example: apply~ would match apply, applies, applied.
- ~~ looks for numbers in the stated range. Example: 12~~24 matches 12, 18, 22, etc..
