I've said it before and I'm sure I'll say it again...Logos users are a very clever bunch.
One user, John Minter, recently posted a "wouldn't it be nice if..." to the Logos newsgroups. Regarding Kurt Aland's Synopsis of the Four Gospels—a data set within the Parallel Passages and Harmonies tool—he wrote:
I like being able to generate with my desired translation. What would be nice is to generate a table for the given section as a handout...
Six minutes later he posted again to answer his own question:
OK Figured it out. Select a hebrew text like the BHS and all you get is the table. Woo hoo.
I'm not sure whether this little trick should be considered a hack or feature (no doubt my friends in development would take credit for it as the latter) but it does seem to work and strikes me as the kind of thing that could be useful so I'm sharing it with you.
Try It Yourself!
To try it out, open Logos 3 and click Tools | Bible Comparison | Parallel Passages and Harmonies. For Source, choose Synopsis of the Four Gospels (Aland) if you have it. If not, don't worry—it works with other data sets, too. For Bible version, choose BHS or ESV OT Rev. Int (the latter is in more packages).
Now when you drill down into a section of the synopsis, you'll get the report shown below on the left instead of the usual report, shown on the right (click the thumbnail for a full size image):
This references-only table can be printed, or pasted pretty well into a word processor. It's a handy little hack if you want to include just the parallel references in a handout or other document...
Thanks John!
When I tried this I only got the table. I didn't get the table on the right with the verses quoted. What do I need to do?
I think I figured it out. I have to open it 2x with separate bible formats, right?
Wow! Thanks John AND Dan AND "[our]friends in development"! And "right on schedule," too, because I have been thinking for the last few days that my students need more on one of their handouts than the outline of Luke I had painstakingly entered from note headings in "The Access Bible".
Now for another "Wouldn't it be nice if . . . ?" The Aland "Synopsis" aligns parallels vertically, but not horizontally as well (as in Burton-Goodspeed, for example).
Steve Maling
Jeff, the table on the right shows how the report would normally look if you chose an English Bible that contains both testaments. The table on the left shows how the report looks if you choose a Bible that lacks the testament you're in.
Steve, I'm not sure I understand. The Aland data set and the Burton set are arranged the same way. Can you email me a screenshot of what you're seeing? daniel@logos.com
A suggestion, formatting the parralell Bible's the way they are in Aland's print edition. Putting the words next to each other rather than just the verses.
Very helpful trick. I also used it to look at sources like "OT Quotations and Allusions in the NT". Choose one of the Cairo Geniza Tarmums in the drop down menu, and you get a nice readable table of NT versus with their OT references.