Archive - May, 2009

Eerdmans’ NICOT and NICNT on Pre-Pub!

  |  Fri, May 29, 2009   |  Products   26

The New International Commentary (NIC) is without a doubt one of the most respected conservative evangelical commentary series ever produced. For years our customers have been begging us and Eerdmans to produce a digital edition of it—we’ve probably received more requests for NIC than for anything else—but the timing just wasn’t right. Until now. The entire 40-volume set is finally available for pre-order, and in just a few days it exceeded the number of pre-orders necessary to send it into production.

The New International Commentary on the Old Testament (NICOT)

The NICOT features 22 volumes of detailed commentary covering 25 of the 39 books of the Old Testament Scriptures by leading scholars like Daniel Block, Peter Craigie, Tremper Longman III, O. Palmer Robertson, J. A. Thompson, Bruce Waltke, Gordon Wenham, and many others. The NICOT brings together 12,365 pages of the best evangelical scholarship on the Old Testament and is an essential tool for pastors, students, professors, and serious Bible students.

Visit the product page for a complete list of titles included and additional details about each volume.

The New International Commentary on the New Testament (NICNT)

The NICNT features 18 volumes of first-rate commentaries covering 25 of the 27 books of the New Testament Scriptures (everything except for 2 Peter and Jude) by prominent evangelical scholars like Leon Morris, F. F. Bruce, Douglas Moo, Gordon Fee, I. Howard Marshall, Robert Mounce, and many others. The NICNT brings together 11,467 pages of the best conservative Protestant scholarship on the New Testament, and our edition will include Gordon Fee’s forthcoming commentary on Thessalonians. If you’re only going to have one commentary series on the NT, this is the one to have.

Visit the product page for a complete list of titles included and additional details about each volume.

Having all of this material seamlessly integrated into your digital library means that it will always be as close by as your laptop or netbook, and access to any of the volumes is just a couple of mouse clicks or keystrokes away. Whether you’re on the road and need to prepare for Sunday’s sermon or just want the flexibility to write your next paper in the coffee shop instead of the library, having the NIC in your Libronix library is the perfect solution.

If you haven’t already, be sure to place your pre-order to lock in the lowest price.

Where’d My Strong’s Concordance Go?

  |  Thu, May 28, 2009   |  Products, Training   10

Many pastors and Bible students who have grown up using Strong’s numbering system for Hebrew and Greek are slow to switch to something unfamiliar like reverse interlinears. We believe that reverse interlinears are a far better technology and superior to the Strong’s system, but we understand that not everyone is ready to completely abandon Strong’s just yet. That’s why we’ve tried to retain our Strong’s functionality as new versions have come out.

James Strong is best known for his Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible in which every Hebrew and Greek word was given a number, all of the references where each word occurred were listed, and brief definitions were given for each word. Strong’s numbering system made it easy for people who couldn’t read Hebrew or Greek to look up words.

Last month we got a call from a customer who has been wanting to upgrade from version 2 of our software to version 3 for a couple of years now. The only thing holding him back was that he thought he’d lose his Strong’s Concordance. After we explained to him that all of his favorite Strong’s resources and reports would still work in version 3, he was overjoyed and quickly upgraded. This post is for anyone out there who might be in the same boat.

Resources and Reports

Sometimes there can be confusion regarding what is a resource or book that can be found in My Library and what is a report or part of the software’s functionality. So let’s start by setting the record straight.

Resources

There are several Strong’s lexicons or dictionaries:

Other lexicons like the Dictionaries of Biblical Languages w/ Semantic Domains include Strong’s numbers and will work as well.

There are a few Bibles with built-in Strong’s numbering both inline and interlinear.

The ESV and NRSV NT reverse interlinears also have Strong’s numbers.

Reports

Version 2 had an Englishman’s Concordance report that produced results like you’d find in Strong’s Concordance. Version 3 has a similar report under a different name.

  • Version 2: Englishman’s Concordance
  • Version 3: Search Analysis by Strong’s

Clarification: You can actually still run the Englishman’s Concordance report in version 3. See Where’d My Strong’s Concordance Go? Part 2 for the details.

Finding the Strong’s Report in Version 3

So where do you find Strong’s Concordance in version 3? If you’re looking for Strong’s Concordance in My Library, you won’t find it because it’s not a book or resource. It’s a report. Concordances (as resources) don’t make a lot of sense in Bible software because you can generate a concordance on any word or phrase by simply running a search.

To get the Strong’s Concordance report in version 2, you’d use the Englishman’s Concordance. The same basic content is still available in version 3. Here’s one way you access it:

1. Do a Bible Speed Search or a regular Bible Search using the KJV or the NASB (or another Bible with Strong’s numbering) on a word like marriage.

2. In the search results window, click “Search Analysis by Strong’s” in the top right hand column at the bottom of “Other Tools.” You’ll see this report.

This will show you all of the underlying Hebrew or Greek words for the English word you searched on. You can arrange the results by root word or by reference. You can also do the reverse of this. See the follow-up post for details.

For more on Strong’s, see:

For more on reverse interlinears, see:

See Where’d My Strong’s Concordance Go? Part 2 for more on using Strong’s in Logos Bible Software 3.

Seminary Professor Switches to Logos and Loves It

  |  Wed, May 27, 2009   |  Community, Products   1

Jeff Straub, a seminary professor at Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Plymouth, Minnesota, shares in two posts how he’s made (and continues to make) the transition from a print library to a digital library with Logos Bible Software and why he loves it.

It was a hard sell for me. After more than 25 years in ministry, tirelessly searching for books anywhere they might be found, hoping against hope to find good books at cheap prices, I finally switched . . . to a digital library . . . to Logos. And I love it! I travel a bit, sometimes overseas, and I love the portability of my digital library.

He goes on to talk about the “back-breaking task” of moving more than 100 heavy boxes of books to Minneapolis. I remember doing the same thing about a year and a half ago, but thankfully with only 40 boxes.

On the bright side, at least Jeff discovered Logos before his next move, and at least he didn’t have as big of a print library as Rousas Rushdoony did. According to Wikipedia, Rushdoony had more than 60,000 books in his personal library (and read nearly half of them). Imagine what 1,600 boxes of books would do to your back!

Find out more about why Jeff is lovin’ Logos in these two posts:

Creating Study Folders

  |  Tue, May 26, 2009   |  Training   1

Tips & Tricks blog SetToday’s guest post is from Morris Proctor, certified and authorized trainer for Logos Bible Software. Morris has trained thousands of Logos users at his two-day Camp Logos training seminars.

When I studied with print books, paper, and ink I created numerous study folders. For example, I would take a file folder and label it Forgiveness. Then as I read books, articles, etc about the subject I would place copies of the articles or notes to myself in the folder. In the future when I studied forgiveness I could return to the folder for all of my previous research.

In Libronix, you can create electronic study folders called Favorites Folders. Choose Favorites | Organize Favorites. Click New Folder. Name the Folder and click OK.

To place a Favorite (bookmark or link) in that folder, open the desired resource to a specific location. Choose Favorites | Add to Favorites. Click the specific folder to place it in. Click OK.

To open the Favorite, choose Favorites | the specific folder | the specific favorite.

For more tips like this, be sure to visit Morris Proctor’s Tips & Tricks blog or subscribe to the RSS feed.

Logos Bible Software for Catholics

  |  Fri, May 22, 2009   |  Products   28

For years we’ve had several quality Catholic products available, like the popular Collegeville Catholic Reference Library. You’ve asked for even more, and we’ve listened. If you follow our Pre-Pub (RSS) and Community Pricing (RSS) pages, you’ve probably noticed the many new Catholic collections now available for pre-order:

If you haven’t already, I’d encourage you to check them out and place your pre-orders for the ones that interest you.

Catholic Product Guide

With the addition of all of these new titles, we decided it was time to build a Catholic Product Guide, which contains an exhaustive list of all of the Catholic titles we currently have for sale or pre-order. We’ll keep it up to date as we make more Catholic resources available, so be sure to bookmark it and check back regularly. You’ll find it at www.logos.com/catholic.

As always, we invite your suggestions for additional titles you’d like to see. Just email them to suggest@logos.com, and we’ll see about putting them on Pre-Pub or Community Pricing.

Free Catholic Lectionary

To kick off all of these new Catholic offerings, we’ve partnered with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) to give away a new Catholic lectionary to everyone who has our Lectionary Viewer Addin, which is included in all of our Windows base packages except for the Original Languages Library. To get the new Catholic lectionary, simply run Libronix Update from the Tools menu in Libronix or run the 3.0f Auto-Update Script. You’ll find additional details and help on our Lectionaries page and in a prior blog post.

5 Free Copies of the Collegeville Catholic Reference Library, Version 2

Collegeville Catholic Reference Library, Version 2.0If you appreciate these new offerings and want to see more, it’s largely up to you to make it happen! We need the help of all of our Catholic users to reach a broader audience so we can produce even more quality Catholic titles. As a thanks for helping us spread the word, we’ll be giving away 5 free copies of the Collegeville Catholic Reference Library, Version 2.

Here’s what you need to do to enter. You only need to do one, but you can do them all if you want to increase your chances of winning.

On Your Blog

  1. Write about our new Catholic titles, the free Catholic lectionary, etc. on your blog and link to both the Catholic Product Guide and this blog post.
  2. We’ll search for links to both and enter you in the drawing, but if you want to be sure that we don’t miss yours, provide a link to your post in the comments below or in an email to blog@logos.com with the subject “Logos Bible Software for Catholics.”

On Facebook, Twitter, etc.

  1. Share the news about our new Catholic titles, the free Catholic lectionary, etc. on your favorite social networking site and link to both the Catholic Product Guide and this blog post (might be difficult to get both links in on Twitter, but we think you can do it!).
  2. We’ll search for links to both and enter you in the drawing, but if you want to be sure that we don’t miss yours, provide a link to your post in the comments below or in an email to blog@logos.com with the subject “Logos Bible Software for Catholics.”

Via Email

  • Send an email about our new Catholic titles, the free lectionary, etc. with the subject “Logos Bible Software for Catholics” to 5 people you know who you think would be interested and carbon copy blog@logos.com on the email.

At the end of June, we’ll pick out the five winners and send out the free copies of Collegeville Catholic Reference Library, Version 2.

People behind the Product: Meet Jana Gering

  |  Thu, May 21, 2009   |  Company   8

It’s been a while since the last post in our People behind the Product series, but you should start seeing more in the months to come. In this brief interview, you’ll meet Jana Gering, the project manager for our Electronic Text Development department, a past guest blogger here, and the winner of this year’s chili cook-off.

YouTube is currently being a little finicky. If you get the message, “An error occurred, please try again later,” try clicking the little HQ button, which should launch the video in high quality.

The Best Mojito Chicken Chili Around

  |  Wed, May 20, 2009   |  Misc   Comments Off

Last Friday we enjoyed our annual chili cook-off here in the office. We had about a dozen different entries, and they were quite tasty! But three stood out from the crowd.

By popular vote, the winners were:

  • 1st Place: Jana Gering’s Mojito Chicken Chili (#2)
  • 2nd Place: John Barry 8 Bean Fit n’ Lean Turkey Chili (#6)
  • 3rd Place: Dave Dunkin’s Basic Chili (#1)

Jana has graciously allowed me to share her winning chili recipe with you, our readers. So be sure to download the PDF and give it a try. It’s sure to please!

Searching across Verse Boundaries

  |  Tue, May 19, 2009   |  Training   2

By default, searching a Bible for multiple terms will find those words or phrases only when they occur in the same verse. So a search for grace “in Christ” in the ESV will return all of the verses where the word grace and the phrase in Christ occur in the same verse (i.e., Rom 3:24; 1 Cor 1:4; Eph 2:7; Col 1:2; 1 Tim 1:14; 2 Tim 1:9; 2:1; 1 Pet 5:10), but won’t return the places where one of the search terms occurs in the preceding or following verse, even if that verse is part of the same sentence (e.g., Eph 1:1–2, 3–6, 7–10, etc.). That’s because the default search unit is verses, as you can see in the image below.

Normally you’ll get plenty of targeted search results this way, but sometimes you may want to see results that cross verse boundaries, especially when a sentence spans several verses. Getting more results is as simple as switching the search unit from “Verses” to “Chapters or Sections.”

Our search for grace “in Christ” now turns up 116 occurrences in 28 articles instead of 16 occurrences in 8 verses. But this may be too broad, since it will return chapters where grace and in Christ occur nowhere near each other and are contextually unrelated. To tighten it up a bit, simply add a proximity delimiter like 25 words. So our search would be grace WITHIN 25 WORDS “in Christ”. This search returns 37 occurrences in 16 articles and gives us several additional targeted results to work through.

For more help on searching, be sure to read our training article “Exploring Logos Searching.”

Search SermonCentral.com

  |  Mon, May 18, 2009   |  Training   7

Tips & Tricks blog SetToday’s guest post is from Morris Proctor, certified and authorized trainer for Logos Bible Software. Morris has trained thousands of Logos users at his two-day Camp Logos training seminars.

SermonCentral.com is a website containing thousands of sermons and illustrations contributed by people from around the world. The Libronix automated report called the Passage Guide automatically searches this site for sermons about your specific passage.

On the Home Page enter a passage in the Study Passage box and click Go. When the Passage Guide opens look for the section named SermonCentral.com containing links to specific sermons on the site.

If SermonCentral.com does not appear on the Passage Guide complete these steps:

Click the Properties icon on the Passage Guide toolbar. Make sure in the Web Resources section that SermonCentral.com is checked.

If this section does not appear in Properties, then please update the Libronix software by choosing Tools | Libronix Update.

For more tips like this, be sure to visit Morris Proctor’s Tips & Tricks blog or subscribe to the RSS feed.

11 Pre-Pubs Shipping Soon

  |  Fri, May 15, 2009   |  Products   8

Now that Anchor Yale Bible is done, our electronic text development team is starting to pump out quite a few other Pre-Pubs. The following 11 are projected to ship within the next 2 to 3 weeks:

I’m pretty excited about picking up several of these, and I know many of you are too. But if you haven’t placed your pre-orders yet, you’d better act fast or else you’ll miss out on the opportunity to pick up some of these titles at the nicely discounted Pre-Pub price. In some cases you have just a few days left to get your pre-orders in.

Page 1 of 212»