Last week, I posted a link to something I called a Concordance of Three-Word Phrases in the Pastoral Epistles.

Time to follow up.

First, I spent some time talking with some friends about this work. One friend suggested the term “tri-log” to describe what I had called a “three-word phrase”. I had struggled with a label because inserting the word “phrase” has problems. These really aren't phrases in a linguistic sense, they're just three words that happen to occur next to each other. The term “tri-log” reduces ambiguity, so that's the term I'm going to start using; at least until a better option presents itself.

Second, I revisited the code today and noticed a huge, gaping bug. My counts were off (by more than half!) due to a sloppy, sloppy bug that I'm ashamed of. I've fixed it and have new numbers for the Pastorals: Out of 3270 potential tri-logs in the Pastoral Epistles, 141 occur more than once.

The page with A Concordance of Tri-Logs in the Pastoral Epistles has been regenerated and updated with this new information. In addition, it is even alphabetically sorted.

Third, I realize this information isn't really that easy to consult. I may generate a few different indexes to the concordance (by verse and by word) but not any time soon.