Ways to search the writings of the Church Fathers

anba bola · March 2011

I was planning to post this here for at least 1 month and I kept forgetting so here it is...

We have made a very simple google search code (its just the same thing as going to advanced search except this way it is copy pastable) that allows you to search all of the patristics on orthodoxebooks.org. It is very useful when trying to see what the Church Fathers have to say about a topic

Just go to www.google.com/books and paste each of these two codes after your query (what you want to search). You'll have to do two separate searches (one with the first set and one with the second) for each query, if your search is more than 4 words because google limits how many words you can search.

So simply (because to be honest I could barely understand what I wrote above):
1)If your search is more than 4 words first search it with the first code pasted after what you want to search and then search it with the second code pasted after what you want to search

2) If it is less then 4 words you only have to do one search with both of them together and just replace the "inpublisher: orthodoxebooks of the first part with "OR" (don't use quotation marks and make sure they're both caps, it'll become a | when you actually search)

So here is the code:

inauthor:"St. Alexander" | inauthor:"St. Athanasius" | inauthor:"Clement" | inauthor:Cyril | inauthor:"Gregory" | inauthor:"Justin" | inauthor:"Chrysostom" | inauthor:"Ignatius" | inauthor:"Polycarp" | inauthor:"Irenaeus" | inauthor:"Basil" | inauthor:"Cyprian" | inauthor:"Ambrose" inpublisher:orthodoxebooks

inauthor:"Asheia" | inauthor:"Papias" | inauthor:"Benedicta" | inauthor:"Mathetes" | inauthor:"Samaan" | inauthor:"Barnabas" | inauthor:"Theonas" | inauthor:"Theophilus" | inauthor:"Peter" | inauthor:"Hippolytus" | inauthor:"Dionysius" inpublisher:orthodoxebooks
[hr]

If you go to ccel.org (which has 37 volumes of Patristics) you can search for scripture references. So if a Church Father even quoted a verse you can find what they said about it. Just go to the search button at the top of the page and paste in

title:(ANF* OR NPNF*) AND scriptureRef:"Bible verse(s) here"

just replace whats in quotation marks with the Bible verse... so for example title:(ANF* OR NPNF*) AND scriptureRef:"1 Peter 3:2"

You can also search through all of the Church Fathers library by typing title:(ANF* OR NPNF*) AND .......

anba bola · April 2011

God willing, I will update the authors in the above post as we add more.

Also if anything look at the second half of my post. That half is the more important.

ilovesaintmark · April 2011

I followed you on the first half of your post, but I'm not getting the second half.

anba bola · April 2011

Sorry ilsm,

I'll put it in steps because that seems to help me organize my thoughts

To search for a certain verse quoted by the Church Fathers

1) go to http://www.ccel.org/search/fulltext
2)paste this: title:(ANF* OR NPNF*) AND scriptureRef:"x"
into the search bar
3) replace x with the verse(s) of the bible you want
4) You can see what the Church Fathers have to say about this verse

Bonus (search words, the orthodoxebooks search is better but it doesn't have all of the patristic works yet):
1) paste title:(ANF* OR NPNF*) AND x into the search bar
2) replace x with the word(s) you want to search

anba bola · April 2011

Remnkemi · April 2011

anba bola · April 2011

Yes. You don't need quotation marks on the search term unless it is a specific phrase (Your example is, but I'm writing this just in case someone thinks you need quotation marks). It seems that none of the Church Fathers as far as I can tell refer to it as the Prayer of Azariah as it didn't return any relevant results on either search. However it does appear that the Church Fathers did quote it.

Howdy, Stranger!

Categories

Ways to search the writings of the Church Fathers

Comments