A Taxonomy for Proverbs

Proverbs as a book of wisdom is divided into chapters and verses. Unlike I-Ching, the thoughts are not organized into major topics and keywords. With my work on knowledge management, cognitive learning and taxonomy, it makes good sense and a good exercise to develop a taxonomy on proverbs.

The tools I used to construct the taxonomy is Mindjet mindmanager software. It is a top range mind-mapping software. I use the Text-Marker feature to create a Categories to store the tags (or keywords like love, God, evil, lie etc). Unfortunately, the text-markers only allow a linear list. I have to create my own hierarchical list for the taxonomy tree manually.
Using e-sword, I can past the entire proverb text into the mind-map of mindmanager. For every verse, I assign tags.  So a verse like

• A fool despises his father's instruction, but whoever heeds reproof is prudent. Pro 15:5

can be assigned tags of ‘fool’, ‘instructions’ (using instruction for reproof as well), ‘wisdom’ (using wisdom for prudent) , and ‘despise’.

The software automatically consolidate the assigned tags into a list without duplicated keywords.

I use another mindmanager software add-on ‘ResultManager” to generate another mind-map with the tags as main branches and the relevant verses as sub-branches. Hence, a tag like fool, will have all the verses assigned as fool as sub-branches. I can then study the verses on ‘fool’ and reorganize them to gain a comprehensive understanding of fool from Proverbs.
With the list of unique tags (keywords), I need to construct a taxonomy. Where can I begin? We can follow the “Facets” method of Ranganathan – which classify into 5 facets of Personality (Main Topic), Matter (the What, things), Energy (actions), Space (locations), Time (periods). This system seems to be an overkill for this proverb exercise. It could be useful for future work especially for the study of the Bible. For the time being, I choose a simple tree structure that work well with the mind-mapping software. The result is as follows:
The main tree:

 
The ‘Good’ branch expanded to show greater details:

 The ‘Bad’ branch expanded to show more details:

 
And a study on ‘Fool’ is shown below:
Are we behaving like a fool? We can check the map below to see....

Here is the list of additional topic:

• Wisdom from Proverbs - The Righteous
• Wisdom of Proverbs - Cause and Effect
• Wisdom of Proverbs - Timing

Will post more on the details of other key words as I study them.

Worship: Can't Sing so what ....

Some of us are not musical and vocally inclined. We are a bit tone-deaf and sing out of tune. We are told by people to sing softer. But do nont let your lack of ability to sing stop you from truely worshipping God. True worship of God is found in your behaviour and not just our singing on Sunday Worship Service.

Avodah H5656 is a Hebrew word used in the Bible whose root has three distinct yet intertwined meanings: work, worship, and service. It the service in the Worship Service see Exo 12:25, The Passover Service. Exo 30:16 35:21 the Service in the Tabernacle.

See  Ephesians Chatper 5 Walk in the New Life Part 3 Roles in Life - Discussion
for how we should worship God in our behaviour.

This can be cleary seen in Jesus' statement in Mat 25:40  And the King shall answer and say to them, Truly I say to you, Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brothers, you have done it to Me.

The best worship we can give to our God is simply our behaviour - living out His life through us. Mat 5:16  Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in Heaven.

Those who appeared to sing well during Sunday Worship Services and yet live out a different and non-biblical standard of life are just hypocrites. How are we behaving when our church members are not around, such as in our office and in our family?

Worship to God is more than our mouth. It is in our heart shown forth in our behaviour whether people are watching or not.

Mat 12:50  For whoever shall do the will of My Father in Heaven, the same is My brother and sister and mother.

Mat 21:31  Which of the two did the will of his father? They said to Him, The first. Jesus said to them, Truly I say to you that the tax-collectors and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you.