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Almost everyone choosing to continue reading this post after such a stern warning, still won't be in the market for this collection. It is so massive and out of reach for the average consumer that we almost didn't tell people about it at all. Think of it like the super-secret Centurion Card. Only a handful of people will ever own this package—and that's okay—it is not for everyone.

We realize we are taking a big risk even telling people about this package at all. It is sure to be misunderstood and criticized for stereotypical American extravagance, excess, greed, pride, or [insert preferred accusation of evil here].

The reason we are taking the risk to even discuss it, is because we tried to hide it from the beginning and when people heard about it later, they complained that we never let them know to begin with. As you will see in the following description, the Portfolio Edition is the best way to get the largest library of quality content at the lowest possible price. You'll read more later, but to give you a preview, it contains over $31,000.00 worth of print titles (more than 1,550 resources) all for pennies on the dollar. Don't let the price-tag fool you—it is actually the most economical way to build the largest library we have ever offered.

Base packages always offer the best chance to get the most content at the lowest price, and bigger base packages are better deals. Since the biggest base package is always the best deal, some customers just want the biggest and best. It affords them the chance to save the most on their books and resources.

Until recently, our largest base package had always been Scholar’s Library: Gold. It’s a great deal, packed with hundreds of Bibles, commentaries, reference material, and lots of other resources. But with the release of Logos Bible Software 4, the time was right to introduce a bigger base package—much bigger.

Portfolio is by far the largest library we’ve ever offered. It represents a major milestone in the publication of biblical and theological reference books, with more than 1,550 resources. Here are some highlights:

• 450+ Volumes of Bible Commentaries.
  The Pillar New Testament Commentary, the New International Greek Testament Commentary, the New American Commentary, the Baker New Testament Commentary, the UBS Handbook Series, the JPS Tanakh Commentaries, Keil & Delitzsch, Charles Simeon's Horae Homileticae, the Holman New Testament Commentary, and several more sets are included in Portfolio.
• Greek and Hebrew Helps.
  100+ volumes of grammars, lexicons, and more for Greek and Hebrew study. You’ll also find dozens of original language texts, including the major Greek and Hebrew texts.
• Preaching and Ministry.
  Portfolio comes with over 100 resources on preaching, teaching, and ministry, including 10,000+ sermon illustrations, quotations, and other helps. It also includes an 80-volume ministry resource library, with resources on everything from youth ministry to small groups.
• Theological Study.
  Nearly 300 resources from the church’s most influential theologians, such as Wolfhart Pannenberg, Lewis Sperry Chafer, A. W. Pink, Carl F. H. Henry, Charles Hodge, John Piper, R. A. Torrey, and dozens more. You’ll also find volumes on topics such as baptism, creation, election, ecclesiology, sin, and more.

To put this in perspective, if you were building a print library this big, you would need to buy a book every week for the next 29 years, and you would spend more than $31,000 for the print editions (not adjusted for inflation). To store all your books, you would need over 160 feet of new shelf space—that’s a dozen new bookcases. With print, however, you wouldn’t have any of the high speed search functionality, Passage Guides and Exegetical Guides, media resources, Word Studies, customization, or any of the other new features in Logos Bible Software 4.

The price of Portfolio is similar to what you would pay for only a few of the print commentary sets, except with Portfolio, you’ll get the commentaries you want, plus over a thousand additional books, all for the same price. Better yet, spread out the cost over the next year with a payment plan. You can apply your monthly book budget to each payment to begin using your entire library right away.

If you’re a power user, and you want a lot of new content at some of the best prices you’ll ever find, consider upgrading to Logos Bible Software 4: Portfolio Edition.

We want to make sure it is crystal clear once more—this is probably not for you.
If you are happy with your existing library and never plan on buying a book again, just move along, there's nothing to see here. However, if you are like a lot of book lovers, and you realize that you are already spending your book budget, your travel budget, your kids education fund, your entertainment budget, and your milk money on more and more books—and have already spent thousands of dollars on books in the past few years—you would be crazy not to get this.

Take this "kitchen sink" now to end your book purchasing habit once and for all, then start saving your money, give your money away, be more hospitable, care for the poor, bless your church, family and friends, take your wife/husband/kids on a trip, buy Logos for someone that can't afford it at all... "Love God, and do as you please."

If you already have a Logos base package, we have some limited time introductory offers available for upgrades to the Portfolio Edition. Visit our custom upgrade discount calculator to see what discounts you qualify for.

Not ready for the Portfolio Edition, but looking for something smaller?
New customers should visit http://www.logos.com/4 to learn more and see what discounts are currently available on all of our base packages.

Already a Logos Bible Software user?
Visit our custom upgrade discount calculator to see what discounts you qualify for on an upgrade to the brand new Logos 4 base packages.

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The Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library is the third major component to the Anchor Yale Bible Group, which also includes the Anchor Yale Bible and the Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary. The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary has been available for Logos Bible Software for a few years, and the Anchor Yale Bible became available earlier this year. Now we’re set to begin work on the remaining books in the Anchor Yale Bible Group—the Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library.

The 28 volumes in this collection cover a wide variety of sub-disciplines in the broader field of biblical studies, including books on archaeology, geography, history, languages and linguistics, philosophy, and theology, to name a few. These books present the best contemporary scholarship in a way that is accessible not only to scholars but also to educated non-specialists.

This series contains many books which have become classics in their fields:

• The collection contains Raymond Brown’s volumes on the Passion Narrative and his Introduction to the Gospel of John. Brown’s book on John was intended to replace his 2-volume commentary in the Anchor Yale Bible, but the project was interrupted by his death in 1998. Francis J. Maloney edited Brown’s manuscript for publication, and it appeared in the Anchor Yale Reference Library in 2003.
• John P. Meier’s 4-volume (and 3,102-page) work on the historical Jesus is also included in the collection. His books, along with N.T. Wright’s, are essential reading on the subject.
• James H. Charlesworth’s 2-volume Old Testament Pseudepigrapha is a monumental work on Wisdom literature, Psalms, prayers, Judeo-Hellenistic works, and other pseudepigraphal literature.

The Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library has also attracted the attention of mainstream media outlets. Substantial reviews of some of these books have appeared in recent years in magazines like Newsweek and the New York Times.

These 28 volumes retail at roughly $1,300.00, but we’re initially offering them on Pre-Pub for $499.95. To put this in perspective on a smaller scale, the average retail price per volume is $46.09, but you can pick these up on Pre-Pub right now for $17.86 each. We can promise this price won’t last more than a few weeks, so make sure you place your order today.

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Jesus was unequivocal; “In this world you will have trouble.” If you have at least one friend, then you know someone acquainted with grief. If you are in ministry then you don’t need to be told that our churches are filled with the hurting, the wounded, the sick and the lonely. In ministry, helping those who suffer is often the task for which we are least equipped.

The Christian Focus Counseling Collection is a great tool to augment your counseling/care skill set. Included are eight volumes from Christian Focus Publications that are perfect to enable you to revisit a whole host of care-driven ministry needs.

In this collection are books to:

• Help you understand and minister to those suffering from depression with both a Biblical and medical understanding
• Minister to the grieving through the lens of the Old Testament book of Lamentations
• Provide a healthy, theological and balanced look at miraculous healing
• Enable you to understand and minister to couple dealing with infertility issues
• Empower you to provide pastoral visitations that are spiritually nourishing
• Equip others with a self image that is based on a sound and uplifting Christian worldview

The beauty of having resources like this in your Logos Bible Software is that each word is essentially a link to more resources within your library and allowing deeper and more illuminating study. Scripture references are linked to your favorite translation and even original language resources. Studying has never been so uncomplicated and enriching.

If you are looking for more counseling resources for you library make sure you check out the Christian Counseling Product Guide!

Yes, Jesus was quite clear that “In this world you will have trouble.” And it is our sacred responsibility to ensure that we can flesh out his follow-up encouragement, "But take heart! I have overcome the world!"

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Today'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. In this series, Morris answers the question, "What's in my library?"

Bible (Literal)

Definition: The Bible was originally written in the Hebrew and Greek languages. Our English Bibles are based on the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts. A literal translation of the Bible seeks as much as possible to give a word for word translation from Hebrew or Greek to English. Literal translations of the Bible should be used when conducting more serious Bible study.

Example: English Standard Version

Application: If you are not familiar with original languages, but want to do serious Bible study getting as close as possible to the original meaning of the text with an English Bible, then you want to rely on literal translations like the ESV, KJV, NKJV, or NASB.

For more tips like this, be sure to visit Morris Proctor’s mpSeminars website and his Tips & Tricks blog.

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One of the cardinal rules of the Pre-Pub program is that ordering early guarantees you’ll get the lowest price. We always reward our users who pre-order the earliest with the lowest prices—including two people who picked up one collection for 99% off the retail price.

There’s another benefit to ordering early that we don’t talk about too much: When you place your Pre-Pub order for a collection, you are also placing a Pre-Pub order for any future books we may add to the collection while it's still on Pre-Pub. Usually when we add new books to a collection, we raise the price to cover the additional costs. Pre-ordering early not only locks you in at the lowest price—you also pick up the extra books added to the collection while it's on Pre-Pub at no additional charge.

We expand collections for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, new books in a series are published after we put a collection on Pre-Pub, but before it ships. For example, six new titles have been published in the Opening Up Commentary Collection since we first put it on Pre-Pub, so we’ve added them to the collection. The Everyman’s Bible Commentary and the Face2face Collection each picked up an additional volume for the same reason.

Other times, it makes sense to add new books to an existing collection. When we received permission to publish two books and three journal articles by Charles Ryrie, the Charles Ryrie Legacy Collection was the logical place to include them. We also added two books to the Kress Biblical Studies Collection for the same reason.

We receive lots of feedback on collections we post, and sometimes we expand collections based on suggestions from our users. For example, after we posted the Calvin 500 Collection in honor of Calvin’s 500th birthday, we received suggestions from Calvin enthusiasts around the world who wanted additional books on Calvin. We were able to add eleven new books on Calvin’s life and the history of Calvinism to the Calvin 500 Collection.

Occasionally, new books slated for Pre-Pub fit really well into an existing collection. That was the case with Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics, edited by Stanley Porter and D.A. Carson, so we added it to the Studies in New Testament Greek and JSNTS Collection.

The Holman Reference Collection was also expanded to include 131 Christians Everyone Should Know and Steven L. Cox and Kendell H. Easley’s Harmony of the Gospels.

If you pre-ordered any of these collections before we added new books, you still get the entire collection—including the new books—at your original Pre-Pub price. Remember, you need to act before the collection ships in order to get any additional books added to collections. And keep in mind that we don't add books to every collection, but when we do, you can get a great deal on the additional titles. Once a series or collection ships, you'll need to pre-order additional books separately.

There are a few other collections on the Pre-Pub page which may expand soon. If you’ve had your eye on a collection, you’ll want to lock in your order now to get any additional books at no extra charge!

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The New International Commentary—commonly known as NICOT and NICNT—is one of the most respected commentary series published in the evangelical Protestant tradition. It is thoroughly researched and abreast of modern biblical scholarship, yet at the same time loyal to Scripture as the infallible Word of God.

Many of the volumes in this series have become classic works of evangelical biblical scholarship—in particular F. F. Bruce’s commentary on Acts, Douglas Moo’s commentary on Romans, Gordon Fee’s commentary on 1 Corinthians, Bruce K. Waltke’s commentary on Proverbs, and Leon Morris’s commentary on John. In fact, Christianity Today called Morris’s commentary on John “the best commentary on any book of the Bible by an evangelical in recent decades.”

The New International Commentary—the combined NICOT and NICNT—has been, without a doubt, our best-selling and most popular Pre-Pub. In fact, back when we put it on Pre-Pub a few months ago, we received enough pre-orders in just 13 hours to move the project into production. And the orders haven’t stopped.

In the meantime, we have been hard at work on this massive project. We have converted tens of thousands of pages of print material into electronic text, put in extra hours, and have done everything possible to get the New International Commentary into the hands of our users as fast as possible.

We’re now pleased to announce that we plan to ship the New International Commentary in just a few days. Our Electronic Text Development department is putting the finishing touches on the series this afternoon, and we’ll spend the rest of this week and the early part of next week testing and replicating. We plan to begin processing orders by the end of next week.

What does this mean for you? If you haven’t yet ordered, then this is your last chance to do so and still get the Pre-Pub discount. After we ship, the Pre-Pub price disappears. If you want the lowest price on the New International Commentary, make sure you pre-order now.

With the Logos Bible Software edition, all 23,832 pages of material in all 40 volumes of the New International Commentary will integrate seamlessly with the rest of your digital library—appearing in Passage Guides, search results, and custom reports. That makes this edition even more valuable for research projects or preparing for next Sunday’s sermon.

Remember, if you haven’t ordered yet, you still have one last chance to do so. Place your pre-order now to lock in the lowest price.

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Save $50 off the retail price of The Works of Jonathan Edwards (2 Vols.) - with the coupon code ED306 !

Jonathan Edwards was born to Timothy and Esther Edwards on October 5th, 306 years ago. In the 55 years that followed, he pastored in Northampton, Massachusetts, played a role in the Great Awakening, wrote many highly influential books, papers and sermons, and became president of what would later become Princeton University.

One would find it difficult to over-emphasize the influence that Jonathan Edwards has had in Christian theology, philosophy and practice. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy called Edwards, “America's most important and original philosophical theologian.” Perry Miller, founder of the Yale edition of the Works of Jonathan Edwards, described Edwards as the first and greatest American philosopher. In Edward’s works, Perry suggests the reader “discovers an intelligence which, as much as Emerson's, Melville's, or Mark Twain's, is both an index of American society and a comment upon it."

I personally discovered Edwards in John Piper's ECPA Gold Medallion winning book God’s Passion for His Glory. In the first half of this life-affecting book, Piper introduced me to Jonathan Edwards and his theological perspective. One could not find a more passionate apologist for Edwards than John Piper. Piper has said, “Jonathan Edwards is in a class by himself in American history, perhaps in the history of Christendom . . .” The second half of God’s Passion for His Glory featured Edward’s essay The End for Which God Created the World in its entirety, along with notes and commentary by Piper. It was not the easiest read by any stretch of the imagination but, like any good work out, I finished it tired and exhilarated. Soon I was devouring everything I could find by and about America’s theologian.

In 1758, Edwards died from the complications of a new and controversial smallpox vaccine. He chose to get the inoculation in order to encourage others to do the same during a smallpox epidemic striking New Jersey at the time. He left behind 11 children and his dear wife Sarah. Beyond his academic legacy, a twentieth century reporter looked into Edward’s 1400 descendants and found they included 13 college presidents, 100 lawyers, 66 doctors, 65 university professors, 2 university deans, and 80 holders of public office, including 3 senators, 3 state governors and Vice President Aaron Burr.

As a celebration of this life well-lived and Edwards’ incredible legacy, we at Logos would like to offer the following special from October 5th through October 12th:

Happy birthday, Jonathan Edwards . . . and thank you.

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Where were you in 2003?

2003 was a big year. Dan Brown’s bestselling Da Vinci Code was published. Tampa Bay beat Oakland in the Super Bowl and Florida beat New York to win the World Series. Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor of California. The Concorde flew its last commercial flight. Johnny Cash died. It was also—and I’m not kidding—the International Year of Freshwater.

In the world of Greek lexicography, however, 2003 was a rough year. That’s when we cancelled Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament from Pre-Pub. It was an ambitious and expensive project—thousands of entries, links to cross-references, massive appendices, and more.

The last time we put this on Pre-Pub, the response was amazing—Logos users placed Pre-Pub orders in record numbers. Unfortunately, even though this project generated a lot of interest back in 2003, it wasn’t enough. This was a big, technical work that required a lot of tagging, linking, and data entry. We didn’t get enough orders, so we had to cancel the Pre-Pub and shelve the project.

Six years later, the time has come to try again. If you haven’t seen it already, Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament is back on the Pre-Pub page.

Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament contains over 5,000 entries, detailed notes on the meaning of words in the Greek text, references to hundreds of grammatical works, and detailed etymological information. In addition to the Greek texts of the New Testament, it also draws from 340 extra-biblical authors from the ancient world.

If you have any interest at all in seeing this important lexicon go into production, place your order now. This is a new project, which means that if you placed an order six years ago, it was cancelled along with the Pre-Pub. Place a new order now to see this project move forward.

Head on over to the product page to learn more about the history of Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and it’s usefulness for studying the Greek New Testament.

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Twelve more people have now received a top-of-the-line premium leather Bible from the Great Bible Giveaway.

Will you be next? You still have 6 more days to enter for your chance to be one of our September winners! Visit the Great Bible Giveaway for full details and to enter today.

Congratulations to our August winners:

Want to see how this all started? View our original Great Bible Giveaway blog post.

Zondervan announced today they are retiring the Pradis engine and moving their titles to Logos Bible Software.

If you are new around here, this post may look like no big deal—just one more in a long line of publishers releasing titles in our format. However, if you are one of the countless Logos users that have been calling, emailing, praying for and begging us to release Zondervan titles for nearly twenty years—you may be rubbing your eyes in disbelief.

Well, our patient friends, it is true.
Hardly a day has passed that we haven’t heard from users pleading with us to get Zondervan titles into Logos Bible Software. After all the years of waiting we are so excited to be able to finally say “Yes” we are going to have Zondervan titles in Logos Bible Software!

This is not a “run of the mill” deal.
Zondervan has some of the hottest reference material out there—in print and electronic formats. Retiring Pradis doesn't mean they are getting out of the software or e-book business, it means they are simply changing platforms. The announcement to retire Pradis comes in the same press release with the news that they will license Logos Bible Software as their new platform. In our typical book partnerships we license content from publishers to release it ourselves. In this partnership, rather than licensing their books to us, Zondervan is actually licensing technology from us.

What does this mean to you?
Don’t worry, the finished product is exactly what you would expect. There’s nothing different about the way the books are produced. They are still finished by our people right here in our building the same way all our other titles are produced. The difference is, they are Zondervan’s products, so they determine the configurations, collections and prices.

Zondervan has just given us permission, as recently as last week, to allow us to combine all 87 of their volumes in one discounted collection. Their main focus is on individual titles, and we do not know how long we will be able to offer the collection at the current discount. If you have been waiting for the chance to get Zondervan’s titles for Logos Bible Software, we urge you to place your pre-order now for the complete collection.

Here are just a few of the 87 volumes included in this collection of Zondervan’s most popular reference titles:

• Expositor’s Bible Commentary (12 Vols.)
• Expositor's Bible Commentary: Abridged (2 Vols.)
• NIV Application Commentary: New Testament (20 Vols.)
• NIV Application Commentary: Old Testament Prophets (8 Vols.)
• New International Dictionary of NT Theology (4 Vols.)
• New International Dictionary of OT Theology and Exegesis (5 Vols.)
• Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary: New Testament (4 Vols.)
• Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary: Old Testament (5 Vols.)
• Zondervan Encyclopedia of the Bible (5 Vols.)

The complete collection of all 87 volumes has a print retail value of $2,917.07 and for now, we are able to offer it on pre-order for $1,999.95—but we can’t guarantee that price for long. If you have any interest at all in having Zondervan content for Logos Bible Software, please place your pre-order today to ensure you get locked in at the best price available.

Get it all for the best price while you can: Zondervan Bible Reference Bundle (87 Vols.).

. . . or check out the full list of titles available individually.

If you can relate to “rubbing your eyes in disbelief” and have been waiting for this announcement for a long time—add a comment below to tell us your story. How does this great news makes you feel?

Today'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. In this series, Morris answers the question, "What's in my library?"

Bible (Chronological)

Definition: The contents of the Bible are not recorded for us like a story from start to finish in chronological order. A chronological Bible rearranges the events in Scripture placing them in the order they actually occurred in time.

Example: So That's Why Bible

Application: Imagine doing a study on the life of Jesus from the four gospel accounts. You have to read a little in Matthew then jump to John then back to Luke and so on to read then events as they actually occurred. A chronological Bible places theses events on the page as they actually occurred so you can read about the life of Jesus from start to finish.

For more tips like this, be sure to visit Morris Proctor’s mpSeminars website and his Tips & Tricks blog.

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Charles Spurgeon was an astonishing figure. He wrote commentaries, set up orphanages, founded a college, and preached and led Bible studies at his church every week. In fact, by the time Spurgeon turned twenty, he had already preached more than 500 sermons, and was well on his way to becoming one of the church’s most famous preachers and one of Christianity’s most prolific writers. He also found the time to read nearly a book every day, and read John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress over 100 times during his ministry. It’s no wonder John Piper said “the word ‘indefatigable’ was created for people like Charles Spurgeon.”

Spurgeon is well-known for his sermons, available in The Complete Spurgeon Sermon Collection, but Spurgeon also wrote dozens of books, edited a magazine, compiled sermons notes, wrote numerous letters, and penned a 4-volume autobiography—and that’s just the start. The 86-volume Charles Spurgeon Collection assembles all of his books, commentaries, letters, and other materials into one giant collection.

This week we’re putting the finishing touches on the 86-volume Charles Spurgeon Collection. This project has been a major undertaking around here for the past few months, so we’re excited that it’s going to be shipping soon. This means that you still have a few more days to get your Pre-Pub order in. As always, the price jumps up after we ship, so don’t miss out on this chance to add a massive amount of Spurgeon material to your library.

Here’s a summary of some of the notable books in this collection:

• The Treasury of David, a detailed commentary on the Psalms
• Lectures to My Students, which includes Spurgeon’s best-selling Commenting and Commentaries
• The Sword and the Trowel, a magazine edited by Spurgeon and published between 1865 and 1884
• A 4-volume autobiography, the first and most detailed account of Spurgeon’s life and ministry
• A collection of letters and correspondence
• Dozens of volumes on preaching, prayer, evangelism, and more—head on over to the product page to see the complete list.

To whet your appetite, here’s a screenshot of the first part of Spurgeon’s notes on Matthew 4:19 from My Sermon Notes.

Remember, you still have a few more days to get the Pre-Pub price on the entire Charles Spurgeon Collection. Make sure you place your pre-order today!

You should follow us on Twitter here.

Today'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. In this series, Morris answers the question, "What's in my library?"

Atlas (Bible)

Definition: A Bible atlas contains maps pertaining to the events that occurred in the Bible. A Bible atlas would include maps about the placement of the twelve tribes of Israel or the travels of Paul.

Example: Logos Deluxe Map Set

Application: As you read in John 4 about Jesus having to go through Samaria, an atlas will help explain the significance of the passage.

For more tips like this, be sure to visit Morris Proctor’s mpSeminars website and his Tips & Tricks blog.

You should follow us on Twitter here.

For some reason, the Gospel of Luke really resonates with me. I so easily identify with the structure, language, and style of Luke’s Gospel above the others. In fact, when I look back on my years in the pastorate, my fondest memories come from the years that I preached exegetically through this Gospel.

Logos Bible Software played a huge part in developing that series for me but I wish I had access at the time to the Product Guide on Luke which compiles all the titles we currently sell on Luke’s Gospel.

Just to throw in my own $.02, one of my favorite resources for Luke was The IVP New Testament Commentary Series: Luke, by Darrell L. Bock. Not an overly large commentary for the size of Luke’s Gospel, but a very good exposition from a commentator with a strong Luke/Acts background, and writes from a real pastoral center.

The wonderful thing about the Product Guide on Luke is that it lets you peruse the whole gamut of resources we have available on Luke. If there is something that you feel is missing that we definitely should have, drop us a line at suggest@logos.com and let us know.

The Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, edited by G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson, has quickly become a standard reference work for pastors who preach regularly on the New Testament, for New Testament biblical scholars, and for students of the Bible. In fact, it received a 2008 Christianity Today book award in the category of Biblical Studies, and has been widely praised by New Testament scholars.

For every book of the New Testament, the Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament isolates and comments on both the obvious Old Testament quotations and the more subtle allusions. Under the editorial direction of G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson, this commentary features an impressive list of contributors, including:

• Craig L. Blomberg
• Andreas J. Kostenberger
• I. Howard Marshall
• Moisés Silva
• G. K. Beale
• Jeffrey A. D. Weima
• George H. Guthrie
• D. A. Carson
• G. K. Beale
• Sean M. McDonough
• And lots more! Check out the product page to see the complete list.

More than a year ago, we put this massive commentary on Pre-Pub as part of the 14-volume Baker Hermeneutics Collection. Hundreds of users took advantage of the offer and have already added this book to their library.

Now, we’ve been able to release this volume for individual download, and we’re offering an introductory sale price. For just a couple weeks, you can get this commentary for $39.95 with coupon code NTUSEOFOT.

This coupon code expires on September 15, 2009. After that, you’ll still be able to get the commentary, but the price will jump to $59.99. Make sure you order today while it’s still on sale!

You should follow us on Twitter here.

Today'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. In this series, Morris answers the question, "What's in my library?"

Archaeology (Biblical)

Definition: A biblical archaeology book details archaeological discoveries that are pertinent to biblical history or Christianity. This book is normally arranged topically according to specific locations such as Jericho or the Dead Sea.

Example: Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land

Application: While you are reading about Jericho in Joshua 7 or Ephesus in Acts 18, if you wonder about discoveries recently made in these areas, then an archaeology book is where to go.

For more tips like this, be sure to visit Morris Proctor’s mpSeminars website and his Tips & Tricks blog.

You should follow us on Twitter here.

Michael Bird, who blogs at Euangelion, is a young New Testament scholar who teaches at the Highland Theological College in Dingwall, Scotland. A couple of weeks ago he was in the US on a road trip with some folks from the Zondervan Academic team. During his visit, they did a series of video interviews with him. In the last one, Michael talks about some of the authors and books that have had significant influence on him. The video is embedded below. (If you don’t see it, view the post on the blog.)

Michael mentions Chrysostom, Ambrosiaster, and Calvin as influential ancient authors. But he singles out two modern authors and their books: N. T. Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God and D. A. Carson’s commentary on John’s Gospel in the PNTC and his 2-volume For the Love of God devotionals (see other works by D. A. Carson).

If you’re looking to build your digital library with some quality books, these recommendations from Michael Bird would be a great place to start—and, best of all, they’re all available for Logos Bible Software.

You should follow us on Twitter here.

Today'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. In this series, Morris answers the question, "What's in my library?"

Apologetics

Definition: Apologetics is the area of theology which seeks to defend and support the claims of Christianity. An apologetics book then contains these defenses of The Faith. This book would answer questions such as “Is the Bible reliable?” or “Did Jesus rise from the grave?” Some apologetics books are arranged topically according to subject matter while others are more of free-flowing narrative.

Example: Handbook of Christian Apologetics

Application: If someone were to ask you: “How can you be sure Jesus rose from the dead?” What proof can you give me the Bible is trustworthy?” Then turn to an apologetics book for answers.

For more tips like this, be sure to visit Morris Proctor’s mpSeminars website and his Tips & Tricks blog.

You should follow us on Twitter here.

Commentaries and theology books are two of our top selling categories of resources. That’s to be expected, because they are two of the best kinds of tools for helping Christians grow in their understanding of the Bible, and understanding the Bible is at the heart of Christianity.

Commentaries analyze the Bible sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, book by book and help you understand it in its original context. Most commentaries also point you in the direction of application to life in the 21st century. Commentaries answer the question, “What does this passage of Scripture mean?”

Systematic theology books help you understand the Bible topically. They synthesize its teaching and organize it by its major themes: God, the Bible, man, sin, Christ’s person and work, the Spirit’s person and work, salvation, the church, the future, etc. Systematic theology books answer the question, “What does the Bible teach on this subject?”

Both are important tools to have in your digital library, and we just added two wonderful sets to these two categories last night.

Tyndale Commentaries

The Tyndale Old Testament Commentary (TOTC) and the Tyndale New Testament Commentary (TNTC) together form one of the best series of commentaries covering every book of the Bible. These volumes are known for their concise, to-the-point explanations of Scripture and are useful for scholars, pastors, and lay Bible students alike.

These 49 volumes cover more than 12,000 pages and would cost you almost $600 in print, but we’re offering the set for only $164.95. That’s less than $3.50 per volume.

Pre-order this set today. See more commentaries in our Commentaries Product Guide.

Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics

Among the ranks of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, Turretin’s Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Hodge’s Systematic Theology, and Berkhof’s Systematic Theology, Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics is one of the most significant expositions of the Reformed faith ever written. According to Richard Gaffin, it may be “the most important systematic theology ever produced in the Reformed tradition.”

This 4-volume, 3,008-page set has for the first time been translated into English from its original Dutch, bringing the best of Dutch Reformed theology to the English-speaking world.

Pre-order this set today.

What commentaries and theology books would you like to see next?

You should follow us on Twitter here.

As Driscoll points out in the video below, whether you enjoy his teaching or you just want to criticize him efficiently and effectively, in a footnoted way . . . this is a great way to access his stuff!

The Mark Driscoll Sermon Archive contains nearly ten years of preaching and teaching by Mark Driscoll, the Preaching and Theology Pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington.

In this massive archive, the transcriptions of his audio sermons preached at Mars Hill Church, which work through fifteen books of the Bible and cover scores of topical issues, and at well over one hundred conferences around the U.S. and world will be made available for reading, searching, and study. That’s ten years worth of preaching and teaching from one of today’s most influential and provocative pastors now available in the most advanced digital format anywhere!

What Pastor Mark did not mention in the clip above was that he is a humble steward of his resources and is working on this project with us primarily to find a way to give his content away to the world for free.

Months ago he personally came up to our offices and has since spent much more time with us in his office, home, and on the phone to make this project a success. His ultimate goal was to find a way to partner with us so that in the end, the people who need the content and can’t afford it can get to it. In fact, he is personally working on proofing the transcriptions right now!

For about ten years, Pastor Mark has been archiving audio recordings of his sermons, but he had no text copy or transcripts. Logos users had been asking for a Logos version of his archives, just like the John Piper Sermon Manuscript Library. When we talked to Pastor Mark about it, he offered to trade the license to his content for the use of the transcripts on his website so the people around the world who can’t afford our materials could have his content on the web for free.

Your purchase of the Logos Bible Software edition is actually funding the transcription work right now, so that people all around the world will be able to access a web-based version of the archives.

Driscoll’s passion for the Gospel and his deep honesty in explaining its truths has placed him at the center of a resurging interest in Reformed theology. It has also helped foster Mars Hill’s explosive growth in recent years and drawn the attention of supporters and skeptics alike.

With the Mark Driscoll Sermon Archive, you can go deep into his sermons, or simply read the text. Either way, you get access to an amazing wealth of preaching material.

We expect to ship all orders before the end of this month, but you can still get it for about half off the list price if you order soon.

P.S. If you want to get a feel for Pastor Mark’s passion for Bible study, get a copy of the interview we did with him for Bible Study Magazine a few months ago.

You should follow us on Twitter here.

The first month of our Great Bible Giveaway is over, and 12 ultra premium Bibles are on their way to the winners! If you didn't win last month, don’t worry—we have 60 more beautiful Bibles to give away between now and the end of December.

This August, Bible.Logos.com is giving away another 12 exquisitely crafted premium Bibles. Included in this month’s giveaway is a limited edition KJV from Cambridge Press that is bound in Moroccan goatskin leather and comes with a cherry wood display case. No longer in production, this Bible is sure to be a treasure to one of this month’s winners. Will it be you?

Visit the Great Bible Giveaway page for details on how to enter, as well as the full contest rules and prize list.

This month we will be giving away:

1. ESV Calfskin Study Bible (retail: $239.99) from Crossway
2. ESV Wide Margin Goatskin (retail: $229.99) from Cambridge
3. KJV Concord Cambridge Calfskin (retail: $199.99) from Cambridge
4. NASB In Touch Ministries Wide Margin Edition, Burgundy Calfskin (Retail $149.99) from Lockman Foundation
5. NASB Large Print Ultrathin Reference, Black Calfskin (Retail $149.99) from Lockman Foundation
6. NASB Side Column Reference Wide Margin Limited Edition, Black Calfskin (Retail $149.99) from Lockman Foundation
7. NIV Fine Leather Archaeological (retail: $104.99) from Zondervan
8. NIV Fine Leather Thinline (retail: $49.99) from Zondervan
9. NKJV UltraSlim Bible Signature Series, Black Calfskin (Retail $129.99) from Thomas Nelson
10. NLT Tyndale Select, Black Calfskin (Retail $135.00) from Tyndale
11. NLT Tyndale Select, Black Calfskin (Retail $135.00) from Tyndale
12. TNIV Reference Bible, Black Renaissance Fine Leather (Retail $99.99) from Zondervan

To read how the Great Bible Giveaway got started, check out our original Bible Giveaway post

You should follow us on Twitter here.

Today'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. In this series, Morris answers the question, "What's in my library?"

Analytical Lexicon

Definition: In addition to providing definitions for Hebrew or Greek words, an analytical lexicon examines the various forms of words used in the original texts. In other words, it not only provides definitions for the lemmas (root words), it also offers information about the inflected or manuscript forms of the Hebrew or Greek words used in the Bible. The analytical lexicon is arranged alphabetically according to the Hebrew or Greek words.

Example: Analytical Lexicon of the Greek NT

Application: Imagine coming to the word “logos” in your study of John 1:1. You notice the word is used as a subject of a sentence but you’re curious if the word is ever used in a different case as a direct object. An analytical lexicon will get you well on your way to discovering the answer.

For more tips like this, be sure to visit Morris Proctor’s mpSeminars website and his Tips & Tricks blog.

You should follow us on Twitter here.

We’re about to give away 72 ultra-premium versions of the most amazingly bound Bibles ever printed. From the finest you can imagine top-end offerings in leather and calfskin—to the limited production run—“only a handful in existence” type heirloom quality of ultra-premium goatskin in a custom-carved Rosewood box imported from England!

Wow, was that breathless or what? …but seriously, if you are used to the feel of the paperback Bible you got from church the first day you visited youth-group as a teenager, you won’t believe how different these bindings can be.

We know “…the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” and we love it no matter what it is printed on and no matter what it is bound with. In fact, some of the most “heirloom quality” Bibles in the world are the most plainly bound, simple, worn and weathered Bibles. What makes many Bibles “heirloom quality” is the deep personal connection to God’s Word that they represent for those privileged to steward them.

So why are we giving away such high-end Bibles? Well, it all started when I received an ESV Study Bible in Premium Calfskin. I literally had no idea that leather could feel so supple, so smooth and so cottony-soft. I found myself wondering if it was fair to say that my new Bible could actually be creamy, velvety, and like butter all at the same time. When it came time to launch Bible.Logos.com I wanted to do something spectacular. I wanted to highlight the brand-new ultra-premium access to the Bible that Bible.Logos.com provides, with some ultra-premium print Bibles that people would be more familiar with.

Over the next 6 months Logos is giving away 72 premium print Bibles on Bible.Logos.com—worth over $11,500.00!

Every month from July thru December, we will give away 12 premium Bibles featuring the most popular translations from Bible.Logos.com, including ESV, KJV, NIV, NASB, NLT, and NKJV. These Bibles are the top-of-the-line versions and feature the highest quality leather and binding—some are valued at over $400.

This month we will be giving away these 12 Bibles:

1. ESV Study Bible, Black Calfskin (Retail $239.99) from Crossway
2. KJV Concord Wide Margin Reference, Black Goatskin (Retail $229.99) from Cambridge Bibles
3. NASB In Touch Ministries Wide Margin Edition, Burgundy Calfskin (Retail $149.99) from Lockman Foundation
4. NASB Large Print Ultrathin Reference, Black Calfskin (Retail $149.99) from Lockman Foundation
5. NASB Side Column Reference Wide Margin Limited Edition, Black Calfskin (Retail $149.99) from Lockman Foundation
6. NIV New Women’s Devotional, Espresso Renaissance Fine Leather (Retail $59.99) from Zondervan
7. NLT Tyndale Select, Black Calfskin (Retail $135.00) from Tyndale
8. NIV Study Bible, Black Goatskin (Retail $229.99) from Cambridge Bibles
9. NIV Study Bible, Black Renaissance Fine Leather (Retail $124.99) from Zondervan
10. NKJV UltraSlim Bible Signature Series, Black Calfskin (Retail $129.99) from Thomas Nelson
11. NLT Tyndale Select, Black Calfskin (Retail $135.00) from Tyndale
12. TNIV Reference Bible, Black Renaissance Fine Leather (Retail $99.99) from Zondervan

For details on how to enter, as well as the full contest rules and prize list, visit The Great Bible Giveaway page.

Are you preaching through Mark’s Gospel or writing a paper, article, or thesis on some aspect of Mark’s text or theology?

Maybe you’re studying Mark in your own personal Bible study time or with a small group at your church and want to work through a devotional study to help you apply what you’re reading to your life.

Regardless of your task, having a variety of quality commentaries and Bible study resources on hand is essential.

With Logos Bible Software, you have a plethora of titles to choose from. Our new Product Guide on Mark brings them all together in one place: commentaries you can purchase individually, sets covering Mark, and Bible studies.

Visit www.logos.com/mark to see all of the titles we currently offer on Mark’s Gospel.

If you don’t see something you think we should offer, send an email to suggest@logos.com and let us know.

The May–June issue of Bible Study Magazine featured an article by Elizabeth George on what it means to be a member of God’s household (pp. 19–20) based on her book Understanding Your Blessings in Christ, a study through the book of Ephesians, so we’ve teamed up with Harvest House Publishers to give away 20 copies of her book.

We’re also giving away five subscriptions to Bible Study Magazine and a copy of Bible Study Library.

There are four different ways to enter the giveaway, and you can increase your chance of winning by doing all of them.

Complete any or all of the following by June 30, 2009 to enter:

1. Simply fill out the entry form and click “Submit.”
2. Post a link in any of your social spheres (blog, forum, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.) to www.biblestudymagazine.com/elizabeth letting people know about the giveaway. In July, we'll search through all the backlinks to the site and select winners at random.
3. Since Bible Study Magazine is published by Logos Bible Software, if you mention the giveaway and post a link to www.logos.com, we’ll search through those backlinks as well and select winners at random.
4. Subscribe to Bible Study Magazine between now and June 30, 2009, and we’ll give you two more entries.

Head over to the giveaway page at BibleStudyMagazine.com for all of the details.

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.

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:

• Lovin’ Logos
• Lovin’ Logos, Part 2

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:

• The Catholic Encyclopedia (17 Vols.)
• Catena Aurea, by Thomas Aquinas (8 Vols.)
• Catholic Spirituality Collection (12 Vols.)
• Catholic Theology and Dogma Collection (8 Vols.)
• Collected Works of John Henry Newman (31 Vols.)
• Dogmatic Theology, by Joseph Pohle (12 Vols.)
• Douay-Rheims Bible
• G. K. Chesterton Collection (15 Vols.)
• Lives of the Saints, by Alban Butler (12 Vols.)
• The Major Works of Anselm of Canterbury (4 Vols.)
• Patrologia Cursus Completus, Series Graeca, Part 1 (Vols. 1–18)
• PBI New Testament Studies Collection (11 Vols.)
• Summa Contra Gentiles, by Thomas Aquinas (4 Vols.)
• Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas, English and Latin Bundle (30 Vols.)
• Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas, English Only (22 Vols.)

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

If 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.

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:

• 1,000 Bible Images
• The Annotated Bible (9 Vols.)
• Baker New Testament Studies Collection (14 Vols.)
• Charles Ryrie Collection (8 Vols.)
• Cornerstone Biblical Commentary (9 Vols.)
• Eerdmans Bible Reference Collection (5 Vols.)
• An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews, by John Owen (7 Vols.)
• Hermeneia on CD-ROM 2.0 (43 Vols.)
• Lectionary Reflections Collection (2 Vols.)
• The New Unger's Bible Handbook (may ship today!)
• The Works of H. A. Ironside (65 Vols.)

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.

If you purchased the Anchor Yale Bible, by now you’ve probably had a chance to install it and explore a bit. Those of you who are relatively new to Logos may be wondering how to get the most out of your new commentaries. In this post, we’ll share some tips that will help you put your investment to good use.

Setup Tips

1. Copy the resources to your hard drive.

It may go without saying, but be sure to copy all of your resource files to your hard drive rather than running them off the CD. With your CD in your drive, go to Tools > Library Management > Location Manager and follow the instructions. Everything will be much faster with the files on your hard drive. AYB will take up 308 MB of disk space.

2. Create a collection.

While it’s not essential to using your new commentaries, creating a collection can provide some additional benefits that you might find useful (e.g., faster, more target searching and more exhaustive results in the Passage Guide). In my opinion, this is a good thing to do for many new products you purchase.

You can either create your own collection by going to Tools > Define Collections > New (see also this video demonstration) or download the one I already created and put it in C:\Documents and Settings\{UserName}\My Documents\Libronix DLS\Collections on a Windows machine or in Users/{UserProfile}/Library/Application Support/Libronix DLS/Collections on a Mac.

3. Make sure your resource association is installed.

A resource association allows your entire series to function in some ways as a single book. That means that if you’re in the AYB commentary on Romans and want to jump to the commentary on Isaiah to look up a related passage, just type in the reference in the Reference Box at the top left-hand portion of the resource window.

If that doesn’t work, it’s probably because you don’t have the Resource Association installed. On Windows, run Libronix Update to get it (i.e., Tools > Libronix Update). Alternatively, you could create your own resource association. (This feature is currently only in the Windows version.)

Usage Tips

1. Explore AYB in “My Library.”

To see all of your Anchor Yale Bible commentaries in My Library, simply type in the series abbreviation, AYB, and all of your other titles will be filtered out. Alternatively, if you created a collection, you can simply select your collection from the Collection dropdown.

2. Use AYB in the Passage Guide.

Since the files for the Anchor Yale Bible are commentaries, they will instantly just work when you run a Passage Guide on any portion of Scripture covered by the series. If you don’t see the Anchor Yale volume(s) show up in the initial list of 15 that appears, be sure to click “More »” to see the rest of your commentaries that cover your passage. One of the cool features of the Passage Guide in is that it will remember your top five favorites on each book of the Bible. So the next time you study a passage in the same book, the commentaries that you’ve used most will appear at the top.

To get even more out of AYB in the Passage Guide, click on Properties, scroll down to the Collections section, and check the box next to your AYB collection.

This will tell the Passage Guide to search all of the other commentaries in the AYB for any mention of your passage, providing you with even more to dig into.

3. Find even more with advanced searching.

If you created a collection, you can also do some powerful searching by using the Basic Search (Search > Basic Search) or the Reference Browser (Go > Reference Browser). Just be sure to limit your searches to your new collection, and in just a second or two you’ll be able to find all of the occurrences of words, phrases, Bible references, and more in your entire AYB collection.

In an effort to increase subscriptions to Bible Study Magazine, we were planning on giving away a free download of Money Matters by Larry Burkett as an incentive to everyone that subscribed to the magazine in the month of May. Right now the magazine is on sale for only $14.95 for a full year, and Money Matters is a $20 book, so it was a pretty good deal.

After thinking more about the tough economic times we are in, and how much this book could be of use to so many people, we just decided to give it away for free to anyone that wants it—with no strings attached.

All promotions, marketing and freebies aside, we really encourage you to subscribe to Bible Study Magazine. It has something for all levels of Bible study, and is not only receiving rave reviews from the Christian audience, but the secular as well. In fact it was just recognized as one of the top ten of all magazines launched in 2008 by Library Journal!

Check out what Library Journal says in Best of 2008: Magazines.

"The best new magazines of 2008 have in common the potential to create a devoted readership able to sustain circulation... Each succeeds in presenting distinctive and visually appealing content, in some cases with remarkably creative design. These mags demonstrate that the art of graphic design is thriving. The Best Magazines of 2008 represent a range of target audiences, from general to special interest...

...Bible Study Magazine is a serious, clearly written popular mag that uses biblical scholarship to illuminate but not refute the principal beliefs of evangelical Protestantism. Content includes interviews with well-known evangelical ministers and reports of research by religious studies professors, historians, and archaeologists. ...this colorful popular pub is to Bible studies what Scientific American is to science or Psychology Today is to psychology. A thoughtful bridge between the work of scholars and laypersons looking for a deeper understanding of biblical texts."

We would be thrilled if you would subscribe to Bible Study Magazine for just $14.95 for the entire year, but you don’t have to. No strings attached, if you want Money Matters, go ahead and take it free of charge, just follow the simple steps listed below:

Step 1 Add Money Matters to your cart.

Step 2 Enter coupon code: BIBLESTUDYMAGAZINE at checkout.

Step 3 If you’d like, click "Add to Cart" to subscribe to Bible Study Magazine.

Step 4 Proceed through checkout, and notice that whether you added Bible Study Magazine to your order or not, you will still be required to enter a valid credit card. The system will be unable to process the order for your free book without a valid credit card being entered, even though your total may be $0.00 and you won't be charged at all.

Step 5 Tell your friends, and link to this post from your blog so others can take advantage of this free gift too!

Horatius Bonar (1808–1889) was a powerful Scottish Presbyterian preacher, a voluminous author, and perhaps the greatest hymn writer that Scotland has ever produced—yet few today have directly benefited from his many contributions to evangelical faith and life.

According Iain Murray, Horatius Bonar “is one of the greatest of the little-known evangelical leaders,” and he is so obscure to most “because many of his writings have long been rare and unobtainable.”

Joel Beeke likewise has high esteem for Bonar and his writings: “I have been collecting and reading Horatius Bonar’s writings for 35 years and have always found him to be unparalleled in Gospel clarity. He is simple yet profound, and always insightful. Bonar is particularly gifted at reasoning with unbelievers and removing doubts of believers.”

C. H. Spurgeon wrote of Bonar’s The Everlasting Righteousness; or, How Shall Man Be Just with God?, a book that I read in seminary with much profit, it is

a rich book, suggestive, gracious, full of holy unction. Unlike many writers of the Evangelical school Dr. Bonar is not content with baling out milk for babes, but gives us real thought and teaching. There never was any need that orthodoxy and platitudes should go together, but they often have done so; no one can bring that charge in reference to this work. We say to all our friends, read and be refreshed.

This collection brings together all of Horatius Bonar’s extant writings, many of which have never been published in print. In all it is 137 volumes:

• 41 books
• 14 volumes of hymns and poems
• 5 volumes of biographical material
• 29 volumes of letters, manuscripts, and tracts
• 25 volumes of the Quarterly Journal of Prophecy
• 21 volumes of The Christian Treasury
• a photo gallery
• an audio lecture

Place your pre-order now to help bring these rich writings to a new generation of Christians—and to many generations to come.

Read more about Horatius Bonar in your Libronix library:

• J. D. Douglas, “Bonar, Horatius (1808–1889),” Who’s Who in Christian History, ed. J. D. Douglas, Philip W. Comfort, Donald Mitchell (Wheaton: Tyndale, 1992).
• A. T. B. McGowan, “Bonar, Horatius (1808–1889),” Encyclopedia of the Reformed Faith, ed. Donald K. McKim and David F. Wright (Lousville: Westminster/John Knox, 1992), 38.
• K. B. E. Roxburgh, “Bonar, Horatius,” Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals, ed. Timothy Larsen, D. W. Bebbington, Mark A. Noll, and Steve Carter (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2003), 61–63.

Not all digital books are created equal. I regularly interact with people who have never used Logos Bible Software, and one of the most common things I hear goes something like this: “I already have ________ as PDFs. Why would I want to get the Logos version?”

I go on to explain all of the things that you can do with Logos resources that you can’t do with PDFs, and people get interested. Once they try it for themselves, they are blown away. One professor recently responded this way, “I can’t believe how fantastic this is in Logos—far superior to PDFs.”

One of the things that makes Logos resources so useful is all of the tagging behind the text. We put together a video recently that talks about the various kinds of links in our digital books. What is a red link, and how does it differ from a blue link? Did you know that just about every word is a link? Find out more in the video below.

For more videos, visit www.logos.com/videos or www.macbiblesoftware.com/videos.

This year marks the 500th anniversary of the birth of the great Protestant Reformer John Calvin. For several years we have had Calvin’s Commentaries and Institutes available, but there is a large portion of Calvin’s writings that we don’t yet have (e.g., his collected writings in Latin span 59 dense volumes!). So we decided that 2009 was the perfect time to work on digitizing as much of Calvin’s corpus as possible—and to update our existing Calvin material.

Seven New Calvin Collections

We are excited to make available for pre-order seven new Calvin collections:

• The Calvin 500 Collection (97 Vols.)
• Calvin’s Commentaries (46 Vols.)
• The Institutes of the Christian Religion, by John Calvin: English, Latin, and French (9 Vols.)
• The Letters of John Calvin (4 Vols.)
• Tracts and Treatises of John Calvin (8 Vols.)
• John Calvin Biography Collection (10 Vols.)
• Calvin and the History of Calvinism (20 Vols.)

The Calvin 500 Collection contains all of the volumes from the other six collections and is an unbelievable value. It offers an additional 50% off the cumulative Pre-Pub prices for the individual collections—which themselves are already priced very low! It’s 97 volumes, nearly 40,000 pages (!), and currently just $299.95. That makes this the lowest priced Pre-Pub (in terms of price per page) that we have ever offered! In short, this is an amazing deal that you won’t want to pass up.

If you already own our earlier editions of Calvin’s Commentaries and Institutes, don’t worry. There’s an upgrade collection available that offers you an even lower price based on what you already own—and you’ll get all of the newly updated content at no additional charge.

Calvin’s Sermons

What about Calvin’s sermons? Most of Calvin’s extant sermons were translated into English in the late 1500s, but 16th-century English uses different spelling, and the majority of these volumes haven’t been updated to modern English spelling. We’re in the process of evaluating our options for a Calvin Sermons Collection and hope to be able to put it on Pre-Pub in the near future.

Additional Titles

The literature by and about Calvin is as massive as the great Reformer’s influence has been. It’s possible that we missed important books in our research, so we may add additional volumes to many of these collections over the next few months. That means the prices will probably have to go up to cover the additional production costs, so you’ll definitely want to pre-order early to lock in the lowest price! If you pre-order now, any additional volumes that we add to these collections will essentially be free!

Calvin500.com

In conjunction with the release of these new collections, we’ve also just launched a brand new website: Calvin500.com. We’ve done a fair bit of research on Calvin, so we thought we’d share it with you. You’ll find information about Calvin, bibliographies of Calvin’s works and literature on Calvin, a list of all Calvin 500 conferences, a page that tracks all Twitter mentions of John Calvin, and some fun stuff like a Calvin quiz and a couple of birthday countdown widgets. There’s also a blog where we will post news and announcements. Be sure to subscribe to the Calvin 500 feed to stay in the loop.

Blogging at Conferences

By the way, if you’re planning to attend any of the Calvin conferences this year and would like to blog the conference at Calvin500.com—or even if you blog about them on your own blog—let us know. We’d love to feature you on our site.

Go check out the new site and collections, and help us spread the word by blogging about it or mentioning it on Facebook, Twitter, and the other social networking sites you frequent.

One of the last remaining products to be updated from the old Logos Library System (LLS) format to the Libronix Digital Library System (LDLS) format is the R. C. Sproul Digital Library. This is especially good news to all of our Mac users, since Logos for Mac reads only the newer Libronix files.

The collection includes the following 20 updated titles:

• Annotated Bibliography of R.C. Sproul’s Works
• Before the Face of God, Book 1: A Daily Guide for Living from the Book of Romans
• Before the Face of God, Book 2: A Daily Guide for Living from the Gospel of Luke
• Before the Face of God, Book 3: A Daily Guide for Living from the Old Testament
• Before the Face of God, Book 4: A Daily Guide for Living from Ephesians, Hebrews, and James
• Choosing My Religion
• Chosen by God
• Doubt and Assurance
• Essential Truths of the Christian Faith
• Faith Alone: The Evangelical Doctrine of Justification
• Grace Unknown: The Heart of Reformed Theology
• The Holiness of God
• The Last Days According to Jesus
• Lifeviews: Make a Christian Impact on Culture and Society
• Not a Chance: The Myth of Chance in Modern Science and Cosmology
• Renewing Your Mind: Basic Christian Beliefs You Need to Know
• R. C. Sproul’s Chapters from Symposium Volumes
• Selected Articles from “Tabletalk” Magazine
• Ultimate Issues
• Willing to Believe: The Controversy Over Free Will

(Right-click on any of the above titles to save the file to your computer.)

If you already own the R. C. Sproul Digital Library, you can download all of these new books for free. If you are using Logos on a Windows machine, just run the resource auto-update script. If you are using Logos for Mac, download the files to your resources folder (i.e., Macintosh HD/Library/Application Support/Libronix DLS/Resources on the startup volume) and restart Logos for Mac.

Once you’ve downloaded the new files, you can safely delete the old files. In Windows you can do this by running the Delete Duplicate Resources tool (for more advanced users), or you can just manually locate and delete the files from your resources folder (i.e., C:\Program Files\Libronix DLS\Resources). The file names are the same as the new ones, but the extensions are .LSF and .LIX rather than .lbxlls.

There are several other R. C. Sproul titles that are not included in the R. C. Sproul Digital Library:

• Following Christ
• The Glory of Christ
• If There’s a God, Why Are There Atheists?
• The Intimate Marriage
• The Mystery of the Holy Spirit
• Pleasing God
• The Soul’s Quest for God
• Surprised by Suffering

Each of these is available for individual purchase and will work on both the Windows and Mac versions of Logos.

Easter weekend is my favorite time of the year because it provides an occasion for focused reflection on the historical events that are at the heart of the gospel and the Christian faith—the death and resurrection of Jesus by the Father through the Spirit (cf. Rom 8:11).

Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 describes these events as being of “first importance”:

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. 3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.

Notice that it is the gospel of the death and resurrection of Jesus in which we as Christians stand (and apart from which we fall) and by which we continue to be saved as we hold fast to these central truths.

This weekend as you take some extra time to read through the Gospel accounts (perhaps using the Parallel Passages and Harmonies tool) and mediate on other portions of Scripture relating to the death and resurrection of Jesus, you may have some time to read some reflections by others. If you’re looking for reading material, here is a list of some of the books available for Logos that may provide you with some fruitful mediation:

• The Cross and Salvation: The Doctrine of Salvation by Bruce A. Demarest [currently 40% off using coupon code MME8]
• Six Hours One Friday by Max Lucado
• The Murder of Jesus by John F. MacArthur Jr.
• The Passion Conspiracy by Randy Weiss
• The Crises of the Christ by G. Campbell Morgan
• The Actuality of Atonement by Colin E. Gunton
• The Divine Substitute: The Atonement in the Bible and History by Ian J. Shaw and Brian H. Edwards
• The Satisfaction of Christ: Studies in the Atonement Arthur Walkington Pink
• Studies in the Atonement by Dr. Robert A. Morey
• The Radical Cross: Living the Passion of Christ by A. W. Tozer
• The Seven Sayings of the Saviour on the Cross by Arthur W. Pink
• Who Put Jesus on the Cross? by A. W. Tozer
• Crucify Him: A Lawyer Looks at the Trial of Jesus by Dale Foreman
• The Death of Death in the Death of Christ by John Owen
• The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ: A Devotional History of Our Lord's Passion by James Stalker
• Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die by John Piper
• Jesus’ Resurrection: Fact or Figment? A Debate between William Lane Craig and Gerd Lüdemann
• Resurrection, ed. Stanley E. Porter, Michael A. Hayes and David Tombs
• The Resurrection: The Unopened Gift by Gerard Chrispin

There are a handful of other titles on Pre-Pub right now that deal with these important events. But these will have to wait for a future Easter weekend’s reading.

• Paternoster Atonement Collection (5 Vols.)
• The Doctrine of the Atonement, As Taught by Christ Himself by George Smeaton 
• The Doctrine of the Atonement, As Taught by the Apostles by George Smeaton 
• Cries from the Cross: A Journey into the Heart of Jesus by Erwin Lutzer

Finally, we just put Robert Candlish’s classic exposition of 1 Corinthians 15, Life in a Risen Saviour, on Community Pricing. This gem is well worth picking up—especially at the $5 price tag that it will probably go for.

Today’s guest blogger is Dan Pritchett, VP Marketing & Business Development at Logos.

Have you ever heard the ads for mattress stores where they say, “If you’re not picky about color™, you can get a great deal on a bed?” They mix and match mattresses and box springs of different colors and remind you that the moment you get them home, you are going to throw sheets and covers on the bed and never see the individual colors again.

Much like mattresses, once you load a new Logos Bible Software collection onto your computer, you may never see the “colors” again. The packaging often goes straight into the trash or onto the shelf, and the books inside go straight into your electronic library. As you build your library, the packaging that each book came in is long forgotten.

...so if you’re not too picky about packaging, you can get some great deals on books! How about over $1,000.00 worth of content for less than $50 bucks?

Forget the cover, forget the packaging, and look at what’s inside. This deal is almost too good to be true. Take a look for yourself at the amazing titles included for just $50.00, and you will be blown away. But don’t look too long—the product has been discontinued, and we only have a limited supply left!

$1,000.00 worth of content for less than $50.

The Champ Is Crowned
From the start of the final round it was clear that Schaeffer was going to be the run-away winner of the 2009 Logos March Madness tournament. Having made it through a field of 64 titles, The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer is now available at 75% off using the code MMCHAMP at checkout.

Runner-Up
While it isn’t the champ, The Existence and Attributes of God performed well in every round of the competition and, as runner up, is now available for 50% off using the code MMTWO at checkout.

Everyone Is a Winner!
During the course of the Logos March Madness tournament, we have received numerous emails and comments from people who found out about the contest after it started or forgot to check the site and missed out on one of the many spectacular deals we offered. After some consideration, we decided to give everyone one last chance to reap the benefits of our first Logos March Madness tourney. That said, we have re-opened ALL the discount codes used during the tournament. All discount codes are good between now and midnight (PST) April 12th. Below is a list of all the titles and their discount codes.

Important Purchasing Note:
The Logos checkout system can only accommodate one discount code per purchase. So, if you want to buy titles that have different discount codes, you will need to make them as separate purchases.

After five rounds of competition with almost 40,000 votes cast, we’re down to the championship game of the 2009 Logos March Madness book tournament. There have been some close-fought battles and surprising upsets along the way.

Who will rise to the top and become the Logos March Madness champion?

The final match is between The Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer by philosopher and apologist Francis Schaeffer and The Existence and Attributes of God by Puritan Stephen Charnock. The winner will be awarded a 75% discount, and the loser a 50% discount.

Voting begins today and runs through Sunday night, at which time the champion will be decided. You will then have until the following Sunday night (April 12) to take advantage of the discounts. Head on over and place your vote now for your favorite title!

By the way, the two titles that got knocked out in the Final 4 round are currently available at 45% off using coupon code MMFF. The code is good through Sunday night (April 5).

• The Life and Work of St. Paul (2 Vols.) by F. W. Farrar
• The Prophecy of Isaiah by J. Alec Motyer

It’s time for another plug for the Pre-Pubs that are right on the brink of moving into production but need just a handful of additional pre-orders. Now that our Electronic Text Development team has finished up the Anchor Yale Bible, they’re ready to get going on some other projects.

Take a look at the products listed below, or—if you have a little more time—scroll through the Pre-Pub page and take note of the ones that are getting close to 100%.

Whether it’s commentaries, theology, biblical studies, or practical issues that you are interested in, there are plenty of titles and collections to choose from.

If you’re looking to beef up the commentaries section of your digital library, look no further. These seven collections offer a wide range of perspectives at some great prices:

• Charles Hodge Commentary Collection (4 Vols.)
• Eerdmans Wesleyan Bible Commentary (7 Vols.)
• Focus on the Bible Commentaries (32 Vols.)
• The Expositor's Greek Testament (5 Vols.)
• Frédéric Louis Godet Commentary Collection (16 Vols.)
• Selected Works of A. C. Gaebelein (13 Vols.)
• Walk! Messianic Jewish Devotional Commentary Collection (5 Vols.)

Do you enjoying studying Reformed theology? Have a look at these four products featuring the writings of A. A. Hodge, George Smeaton, Jean Henri Merle d’Aubigne, and William G. T. Shedd:

• A. A. Hodge Collection (10 Vols.)
• History of the Reformation in the Time of Calvin (8 Vols.)
• Smeaton Theology Collection (3 Vols.)
• William G. T. Shedd Collection (12 Vols.)

Are biblical studies more your thing? Check out these titles:

• Christian-Jewish Relations through the Centuries, ed. Stanley Porter and Brook Pearson
• Hebrew/Aramaic Index to the Septuagint
• Sahidic Coptic Collection (3 Vols.)
• Studies in New Testament Greek and JSNTS Collection (17 Vols.)
• Text and Task, ed. Michael Parsons

If books dealing with the practical side of the Christian faith are what you’re looking for, we have several books and collections that might be a good fit:

• B&H Marriage and Family Collection (19 Vols.)
• The Great Reversal: Ethics and the New Testament, by Allen Verhey
• R. Larry Moyer Evangelism Collection (9 Vols.)
• Robert P. Lightner and Aubrey Malphurs Collection (9 Vols.)
• Toward the Twenty-First Century in Christian Mission, ed. James Phillips and Robert Coote

Can’t decide or just want a bit of everything? Consider the Roy Zuck Vital Issues Series (12 Vols.).

Back in August of last year, we announced that we’d soon be working on digitizing the massive Anchor Yale Bible (formerly Anchor Bible). A little over seven months later, and we’re just about done with the largest single project we’ve ever undertaken!

When we first started working on it, there were 83 volumes that we were going to be able to include. Since that time, an 84th has become available—John Reumann’s 808-page commentary on Philippians. That brings the cumulative numbers to 44,123 pages, 163 pounds, an estimated 25,300,000 words, and 10+ feet of saved shelf space!

Our electronic text development team has been pushing extra hard to have their work finished by the end of the month. So we’re almost ready to start shipping. For those of you who already pre-ordered this set, that means your wait is just about over. For the rest of you, that means that you still have a few days left to get your pre-order in at the deeply discounted Pre-Pub price.

Very few people own all 84 of these volumes due to their high cost and the amount of space they take up. Now they can be yours for just a fraction of the print cost and without requiring you to purchase any more bookshelves—and, of course, in a much more usable format.

Round 2 of Logos March Madness has closed, and we now have 16 titles (listed below) eligible for a 30% discount using the code MMR2. This code will expire on March 28th, so grab these books now.

Voting is currently open for the Sweet 16 round. Remember, the further a title advances, the greater the discount. Head over now and vote for your favorite titles.The grand champion of Logos March Madness will be offered at 75% off retail!

Yesterday we finished posting on our Pre-Pub page 56 new books in 11 new collections from Moody Publishers. The collections are a variety of sizes and cover a wide range of topics. Whether you’re a new Christian, a student, or a seasoned pastor, there are plenty of quality titles to choose from.

• Alistair Begg Collection (3 Vols.)
• Erwin W. Lutzer Collection (5 Vols.)
• Jesus and Jewish Feasts Collection (3 Vols.)
• Larry Burkett Collection (4 Vols.)
• Moody Apologetics Collection (5 Vols.)
• Moody Bible Study Collection (11 Vols.)
• Moody History Makers Collection (2 Vols.)
• Moody Pastoral Care Collection (2 Vols.)
• Moody Pastoral Theology Collection (5 Vols.)
• Moody Spiritual Warfare Collection (6 Vols.)
• Moody Theological Studies Collection (10 Vols.)

There are also several other Moody collections still on Pre-Pub, and some are getting ready to ship soon, which means that you still have time to jump in before the price goes up. Give them a look as well.

• A Savior Worth Having
• Charles Ryrie Collection (8 Vols.)
• Jensen's Survey of the Old and New Testament (2 Vols.)
• Moody Church Leadership Collection (24 Vols.)
• Moody Counseling Collection (11 Vols.)
• The Names of the Trinity Collection (3 Vols.)
• New Testament Greek Syntax: An Illustrated Manual
• The New Unger's Bible Handbook

View all 19 of the Moody collections and titles on Pre-Pub in our handy new search results.

At Logos we tend to love books more than we love basketball. So, with March Madness starting today we thought we’d spin our own variation of the tournament and launch LogosMarchMadness.com.

The premise is simple—we’ve selected 64 of our titles and placed them in 4 divisions: OT, NT, Theology, and Popular. You visit LogosMarchMadness.com and vote for which titles advance each round. In each division, titles will compete based upon your votes. The highest voted titles advance until we have a grand champion.

To make things more interesting, we’re offering discounts on ALL the books in the tournament and YOU control how much the discount is. Every round that a book advances in the tournament, the discount increases. Discounts will be between 25% and 75%. That means that if you see a title you really want, it is up to you to spread the word and get people to vote. Post it on your blog, tell your Facebook friends, and tweet it on Twitter! If you want the discount, you need to get the votes. The discount is in your hands!

The tournament will run from March 19 through April 6 and will have 6 rounds. We’ve posted the full schedule and brackets on the site.

Opportunities like this don’t come along often, so don't miss out. Be sure to subscribe to the Tournament RSS feed to receive updates on what books are advancing and the all important discount codes!

Logos March Madness—When books move up, prices go down. Spread the word!

We put together a new page at Logos.com recently that features all of the books of John MacArthur that we sell—nearly 100 total! In addition to his commentaries and Bible study guides on almost every book in the NT, you’ll find books covering spiritual gifts, heaven, family, parenting, counseling, Bible study, preaching, leadership, and a host of other topics.

John MacArthur, the pastor–teacher of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California for more than 40 years and a regular conference speaker, has had a profound impact on conservative evangelical churches and Christians all over the country (and world) through his extensive preaching and writing ministries.

There’s no better way to read and study John MacArthur’s writings than in the Libronix Digital Library System. Finding out what MacArthur says on just about any topic or passage is a cinch with Libronix’s powerful searching capabilities.

While you could pick out all of the titles that interest you one by one, the most economical way to add MacArthur’s works to your digital library is by picking up the MacArthur LifeWorks and Commentaries Bundle, which includes more than 70 books and study guides for under $5 per volume.

Go have a look at the new page at www.logos.com/macarthur.

If you’re into studying the Septuagint—and we think you should be—you’re going to love what just hit the Pre-Pub page!

The Göttingen Septuagint (a.k.a. Septuaginta: Vetus Testamentum Graecum. Auctoritate Academiae Scientiarum Gottingensis Editum) is the most important edition of the Greek translation of the Old Testament ever published. At present it spans 24 print volumes and nearly 7,000 pages, setting the bar high for text-critical studies.

For optimal use in Logos Bible Software, these 24 print volumes will be split into 65 digital resources. This means you’ll be able to view the Greek text right alongside of the apparatus, and in several cases multiple Greek translations with multiple apparatuses. By linking them all together, they will stay in sync as you scroll or jump from passage to passage.

This is without question one of the best deals that we’ve ever had on Pre-Pub. The print set could easily run you $3,000. But for a limited time, we’re making it available on Pre-Pub for only $299.95. For more than 90% off the print cost, you can add this definitive critical edition of the Septuagint to your Libronix digital library. So if you are serious about studying the LXX—or its use in the NT by Jesus and the Apostles—do be sure to check it out.

On February 12, 1809, two hundred years ago today, Charles Darwin was born. It's difficult to overstate the impact that his theory of evolution has had over the last 150 years.

The book by which he is best known, Origin of Species (or On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life), is available in our Harvard Classics and Fiction Collection (71 Vols.), which is currently on Pre-Pub. If you haven't yet pre-ordered this set, be sure to check it out. It's an incredible value—about $1.41 per volume!

In light of this important day and the impact Darwin has had on the relationship between science and the Christian faith, we put together a Creation and Science Product Guide, which features all of our titles on creation, evolution, and science.

In the product guide you'll find three collections and almost 30 individual titles:

• Hugh Ross / Reasons To Believe Collection (9 Vols.)
• Science & Theology Collection (9 Vols.)
• Day One Creation and Science Collection (10 Vols.)

The titles are written from a variety of perspectives and will help you grapple with the relationship between faith and science. So be sure to check it out and see which ones might be good additions to your library.

By the way, if you purchased the B. B. Warfield Collection (20 Vols.), you might want to read Warfield's article "Charles Darwin's Religious Life: A Sketch in Spiritual Biography" (The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield, Volume 9: Studies in Theology [Bellingham, WA: Logos, 2008], 541-81). It's a fascinating look into Darwin's spiritual journey.

The March-April issue of Bible Study Magazine has a cover story about Mark Driscoll, and we're giving away 20 copies of his Vintage Church, which he coauthored with Western Seminary's Gerry Breshears.

We're also giving away five subscriptions to Bible Study Magazine and one copy of Bible Study Library.

There are four different ways to enter the giveaway, and you can increase your chance of winning by doing all of them.

Complete any or all of the following by March 31, 2009 to enter:

1. Simply fill out the entry form and click "Submit."
2. Post a link in any of your social spheres (blog, forum, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.) to www.biblestudymagazine.com/driscoll letting people know about the giveaway. In April, we'll search through all the backlinks to the site and select winners at random.
3. Since Bible Study Magazine is published by Logos Bible Software, if you mention the giveaway and post a link to www.logos.com, we'll search through those backlinks as well and select winners at random.
4. Subscribe to Bible Study Magazine between now and March 31, 2009, and we'll give you two more entries.

Head over to the giveaway page at BibleStudyMagazine.com for all of the details.

Last week we put 43 new titles on Pre-Pub from Wesleyan Publishing House. In addition to their 18-volume commentary series covering the entire NT and three OT books, there are resources on holiness, the church, worship, devotions, and a number of other personal and ministry topics.

Have a look at these five new collections:

• Wesleyan Bible Commentary Series (18 Vols.)
• Holiness Collection (8 Vols.)
• Wesleyan Ministry Collection (5 Vols.)
• Keith Drury Collection (6 Vols.)
• Stan Toler Collection (6 Vols.)

For other titles by Wesleyan, Methodist, or Arminian authors, check out these titles:

• Eerdmans Wesleyan Bible Commentary (7 Vols.)
• Systematic Theology by John Miley (2 Vols.)
• Wesleyan-Arminian Collection (81 Vols.)
• John Wesley and Adam Clarke Collection (85 Vols.)
• Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature (12 Vols.)
• Thomas C. Oden's Systematic Theology (3 Vols.)
• Classical Pastoral Care (4 Vols.)

We'd love to hear from our Wesleyan, Methodist, and Arminian readers. What other titles would you like to see be made available? Leave a comment or send an email to suggest@logos.com to let us know.

Last week I read some advice that a seminary student was giving to potential Logos users. It went something like this: when trying to decide whether to invest in Logos, calculate the print value of the books that you think you'd actually use and, if that amount exceeds the cost of the package from Logos, buy it. But in your calculations make sure to exclude any books that are available for free elsewhere (e.g., from Google Books or Amazon's Online Reader).

I think the first part of the advice is generally* sound, but the second part has problems. While it's often a good idea not to spend money for something you can get for free, this is not always the case. The advice above leaves out two important factors: quality and convenience.

Quality

First, the advice above is not really comparing apples with apples. The quality of Logos digital books exceeds the quality of books available at Amazon's Online Reader, Google Books, and other places on the internet.

So it may very well be worth paying money for books that are available for free online, if you want the ability to perform incredibly powerful searches, copy and paste text into papers or sermons with automatic citations, get instant access to Bible passages with a hover or a click, jump to cited books and articles, and all the other things that make Logos digital books so valuable.

So the advice would have been better if it had said, "Exclude any books that are of equal quality and available for free elsewhere." But that still doesn't quite do.

Convenience

Second, even if we were comparing apples with apples, that is, books of equal quality—or let's assume you are the rare person who doesn't need any of the benefits I mentioned above—there is value in the convenience of an integrated digital library. When your digital library is spread across multiple platforms and websites (e.g., Google Books, PDFs and Word docs on your computer, Amazon, and other places), it takes time (1) to remember where you have access to x, y, and z books and then (2) to perform multiple searches on multiple websites and desktop applications. That extra time spent can be quantified in terms of value, so it may be worth the money for the added convenience and time-saving benefit.

Let's say you use iTunes for your music library. Numerous legal sources allow you to listen to music for free online, but you have to be connected to the internet and go to the website to listen to it. You can't download it and integrate it into your digital music library in iTunes—or listen to it on your iPod. Perhaps for many songs that would be fine, but the benefit of convenience may make it worth it to purchase some music that is available for free elsewhere.

So I think we could further improve the advice by saying, "Exclude any books that are of equal quality and available for free elsewhere in a medium that offers equal convenience."

Everyone has different needs and different financial abilities, and there are definitely times when it is financially wise to be content to use good secondary tools like Google Books and Amazon's Online Reader. But if quality and convenience are important to you, it may very well be worth paying for something you can get for free elsewhere.

* However, I think you could make a case for why it might be wise to buy Logos even if the digital cost exceeded the print cost, but that is perhaps for another day and another blog post.

Do you read Russian, want to learn to read Russian, know someone who reads Russian, or just like free books (even if you can't read them :))?

Then head on over to Logos.com and check out the free Русский Синодальный Перевод (that's Russian Synodal Translation for you English-only readers), which just went up on Friday.

The RST was translated in 1876 and revised in 1956. Our edition has the Strong's numbering system integrated for the entire Bible. That means you can simply hover over a word and see the Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic word in a pop-up window (if you have a dictionary with Strong's tagging like the Dictionaries of Biblical Languages w/ Semantic Domains, which are included in all of our base packages, except for Christian Home).

Those of you who have purchased from us before know the ropes. But if this is your first time, or if you just need a little refresher, then keep reading. Otherwise, just go download it and spread the word!

To purchase a book (or get a free book) from Logos.com, you'll need three things:

1. a copy of the Libronix Digital Library System installed on your PC or Mac
2. a Logos.com account with a credit card on file
3. a Libronix Customer ID that is connected to your Logos.com account

Here are the steps you need to follow to get all set up:

Step 1: Download and install Libronix for Windows. (Mac users can purchase the Mac version of the engine, or buy a Mac base package.) If you already have Libronix up and running on your computer, jump to the third step.

Step 2: Activate Libronix. When you do, you'll create a Libronix Customer ID (usually your email address, if you enter it). You can find your Libronix Customer ID by going to Help > About Libronix DLS.

Step 3: Create a Logos.com account. If you already have one, just log in.

Step 4: Make sure that your Libronix Customer ID is associated with your Logos.com account. Go to My Account, enter your Libronix Customer ID from Step 2, and click "Confirm." If it's already there, no need to do anything.

Step 5: "Buy" the Russian Synodal Translation. Go to the page and click "Add to Cart," or just add it straight to your cart from here. Proceed through the checkout process and then click "Submit Order." If you don't have a credit card on file, you'll need to enter your credit card information. Don't worry. You won't be charged. It's an unfortunate inconvenience in our current checkout system, and we hope to change it at some point.

Step 6: Unlock and download your new book. If you're on a Windows machine, just click the orange "Unlock & Download" button. If you're on a Mac, just synchronize your licenses (Tools > Library Management > Synchronize Licenses) and manually put the book file in your resources folder (Macintosh HD/Library/Application Support/Libronix DLS/Resources on the startup volume).

Step 7: Start using your new book! Open Libronix, open My Library, then type RST to find it. Since the title is in a different script, you'll find it all the way at the bottom. Double-click it to open it.

Enjoy!

Have any Russian-speaking friends? Let them know how they can get a Russian Bible for free!

It's no secret to regular readers of this blog that we favor our digital books over their print counterparts and consider them to be superior when it comes to things like longevity, usability, space savings, cost savings, time savings, and ease of shipping and moving. Many of you are already convinced and choose digital over print as often as possible, but some of you may still be a bit skeptical. A couple of weeks ago, I came across another perfect illustration of how investing in Logos is one of the best ways to protect your investment in a biblical and theological library.

Ryan M. is a Logos user. I met him a while back on the Logos newsgroups. Over the last several years, Ryan has acquired more than 4,000 Libronix digital resources. He chose to build his library primarily with Libronix books partly because he and his wife, Sandi, were planning to do full-time mission work in Quito, Ecuador (and partly, I'm sure, for some of the other reasons I mentioned above).

After a few years of deputation and raising their necessary support, the time had finally come to leave the US and head to the field. As they made their final preparations, Ryan and Sandi gave away most of their earthly possessions and carefully stored up exactly what they would need to take with them. They were set to fly out of Detroit on January 5, 2009 and head to San José, Costa Rica, where they would spent their first year in language school.

The night before they left, the vast majority of their belongings were stolen—everything that they had prepared to take with them, except for their overnight bags and laptop.

Here are some snippets from a email that Ryan sent me last week:

My parents drove us to the airport in Detroit—about 2-1/2 hours from our home in Grand Rapids—to save us having to rent a car (we'd already given ours away). They reserved a nice hotel room for them and us quite near the airport; we stayed the night, and when we awoke the van and all our possessions were gone. (We think the vehicle has probably already been chopped up and that our stuff is being enjoyed by the thieves. Our name, address, and eddress was in every box, so there's no secret about how to contact us to return any or all of it. But these were obviously evil people.)

. . .

Logos has been wonderful for us in this circumstance! The theft we experienced could have been even more damaging to our finances if I had packed a good number of paper books. I would also be without those ministry helps if I had been relying on paper resources. As it stands, I haven't lost my theological library, for which I'm extremely grateful. I even have a digital copy of numerous Spanish resources and a Spanish-English dictionary!

Though this is a horrible situation to go through, Ryan doesn't have to mess with the hassle and massive expense of trying to replace his library. And even if his laptop had been stolen as well, he could have gotten his entire Libronix digital library up and running with very little effort and at almost no cost. His 4000+ resources and all of his licenses are safe. But how easily could you replace your library?

Please pray for Ryan and Sandi as they adjust to a new culture, learn a new language, and try to replace all of the things that they lost. If you would like to be a financial blessing to them, you can donate directly through the HCJB Global website. (To help them in their immediate need, be sure to put "for personal use" in the "Add an Additional Note" blank.) You can read more about how you can pray for and help Ryan and Sandi at their blog.

Today Barack Obama takes office and becomes the 44th President of the United States of America.

In recognition of this important day, we are running a special on our American History Collection, which includes the following eight titles:

• Common Sense
• The Constitution of the United States of America
• The Declaration of Independence
• The Federalist Papers
• Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States (free update including the latest inaugural addresses coming soon!)
• An Outline of the American Economy
• An Outline of American Government
• An Outline of American History

Use coupon code 44PRESIDENT to take 75% off and get this 8-volume collection for under $5! The offer is good for today only.

Enjoy!

Update: The updated file for Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States is now available.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-92), the “Prince of Preachers,” is regarded by many as the most important Baptist preacher of the last two centuries. According to some, he may very well have been the greatest preacher in the history of the church.

His sermons, which drew crowds by the thousands, are still widely read today, and nearly all of his writings remain in print and provide help to myriads of Christians all over the globe.

But though his sermons have been published as a set, which we have available in the companion Complete Spurgeon Sermon Collection, until now there has been no attempt to publish a comprehensive collection of Spurgeon's writings like has been done with the works of other historically significant people like Luther, Knox, Bunyan, Owen, Wesley, Edwards, and many others.

In the Charles Spurgeon Collection, we bring you what is to our knowledge the most comprehensive collection of Spurgeon’s non-sermonic material available anywhere. It presently* totals 78 87 volumes and 17,361 18,719 pages and is on Pre-Pub for only $249.95 $259.95. That’s just over $3 per volume. Assembling this massive collection in print would cost you at least two to three times as much.

In the Charles Spurgeon Collection, you’ll get

• The Treasury of David, Spurgeon’s 7-vol. commentary on the Psalms
• Spurgeon’s 4-vol. Lectures to My Students, which includes his best-selling Commenting and Commentaries
• 228 issues of Spurgeon's magazine, The Sword and the Trowel (1865-84)
• Spurgeon’s 4-vol. Sermon Notes
• the 2-volume Salt Cellars
• Spurgeon’s 4-vol. Autobiography, the first and most detailed account of Spurgeon’s life and ministry
• a collection of Spurgeon's letters and correspondence
• dozens of additional volumes on preaching, prayer, evangelism, and much more!

*And it gets even better. I said presently above because we're still in the process of researching another dozen or so titles for possible inclusion in this collection. The best part is that if you pre-order now, you'll be locked in at the lowest possible price, even if the price goes up to cover the additional cost.

So pre-order this unparalleled collection of the writings of C. H. Spurgeon now (and his sermons, too, if you don’t already have them), and get ready to take advantage of the power of Logos to integrate this wealth of material into your devotions, Bible studies, and sermons with ease.

Update (07/09/09): We’ve added 9 new titles to the collection, bringing the total up to 87!

Today's guest post is from Jana Gering, Project Manager of the Electronic Text Development department.

The teaching pastor at a church I worked for a few years ago asked the staff for stories and ideas about an upcoming sermon dealing with a section of scripture on pride. The first thing to come to my mind was the chapter on pride from C. S. Lewis' book Mere Christianity. I looked up the chapter to find some quotes for my email response; I began by typing out a few of the quotes and ended by transcribing almost the whole of that incredible chapter! Lewis' pithy writing defies summary, so the email turned out be a list of about 15 lengthy quotes from the chapter. The pastor tried to summarize them, too, but the impact of the text was such that in the end, he posted all of the quotes on slides and discussed them during the sermon.

As the manager of the small bookstore at the church, I can testify that we sold out of all Lewis books and put in many backorders that Sunday. The power of Lewis' written words struck a note with many who otherwise may never have read them. The power of enduring authors—writers of fiction, playwrights, philosophers, and poets as well as theologians—can add a truly powerful punch to your studies and messages.

Right now, the massive 71-volume Harvard Classics and Fiction Collection, which contains a whopping 33,719 pages of classic writings, is on Pre-Pub for only $99.95. To quote from the product page, "When Charles William Eliot assembled The Harvard Classics, more commonly known as 'The Five-Foot Shelf,' and later the 'Shelf of Fiction,' he gathered this epic collection of key works which he thought would best represent 'the progress of man . . . from the earliest historical times to the close of the nineteenth century.'"

While C.S. Lewis' works are too new to be published in this set, biographies, philosophical and scientific essays, stories, plays, poetry, and whole or excerpted keynote works from throughout history are included:

"Men despise religion; they hate it and fear it is true." —Pensee 174

"The immortality of the soul is a matter which is of so great consequence to us and which touches us so profoundly that we must have lost all feeling to be indifferent as to knowing what it is. . . ." —Pensee 194

—Blaise Pascal, Pensees

"A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires."

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

"Avarice, envy, pride, Three fatal sparks, have set the hearts of all On Fire."

—Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

"Faith is a living, daring confidence in God's grace, so sure and certain that a man could stake his life on it a thousand times."

—Martin Luther

"Do you wish to be great? Then begin by being. Do you desire to construct a vast and lofty fabric? Think first about the foundations of humility. The higher your structure is to be, the deeper must be its foundation."

—Saint Augustine

"A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience."

"Alas! All music jars when the soul's out of tune."

—Miguel Cervantes

Imagine having not only your biblical and theological works at your fingertips through Libronix, but also a complete university course in the history of original authors from ancient times through the 19^th century!

French philosopher Étienne Gilson wrote that "history is the only laboratory we have in which to test the consequences of thought." Secular or religious, fiction or nonfiction, prose or poetry, this classic collection gives insight into the history, culture, art, and consequences of ideas as expressed by the written word. And so, since "Brevity is the soul of wit," (William Shakespeare in Hamlet), and I've already passed up my word count (and probably my wit as well!), I'll leave you to discover the merits of the collection yourself at the Pre-Pub page.

Recently we've blogged about the many ways to read the Bible in a year using tools from Logos Bible Software. Within the application, one can make custom reading plans, or you can join an online community of people reading through the same plan using either Global Bible Reader or Bible.Logos.com.

But all of these solutions currently support a 66 book canon only. If you also want to read the Apocrypha, or Deuterocanonical books, either because your faith tradition includes such books or just to learn more about the Jewish writings that appeared during the time 'between the testaments' and were read by the early Church, some additional help is needed.

So I've made a little Libronix digital book that contains a list of daily readings to cover the Apocrypha in one year. It functions just like other daily devotionals, with a link at the top to jump directly to the current day's reading. It can also be loaded into your Libronix Home Page in the devotionals section.

This reading plan covers the Eastern Orthodox, Catholic and Anglican deuterocanonical materials. The 'additions' to Esther and Daniel are interspersed within and around the protocanonical portions of those books, and Ezra, Nehemiah and the last chapters of 2 Chronicles are included just before the Esdras writings to provide important context for comparison. So if using this in conjunction with one of the other Bible reading plans, you might end up reading some of the books of the Bible twice, but we think this is a high class problem.

Because of some (temporary) limitations to how the Bible data type functions, this first release of the Apocrypha Reading Plan is hard-coded to the NRSV, so we've made it free to any customer that already has the NRSV in their Libronix Digital Library. The NRSV is included in all of our base packages, and is also available à la carte.

Updated Instructions:

1. Determine the folder that contains your Libronix digital books. The default folder is C:\Program Files\Libronix DLS\Resources. If you have changed the default folder, you can see the folders your system monitors for new books by opening Libronix DLS and clicking Tools | Options | General | Resource Paths.


2. Save, do not run or open the following link to the folder that contains your Libronix digital books. Save this file to your resource path.


3. Open Libronix DLS (don't try to click on the newly downloaded file). You may see a message in the lower right-hand corner that says "Discovering Resources" - wait a few seconds for this message to go away.


4. Open My Library and type 'NRSV Apocrypha Reading Plan'. If you already own the NRSV, this will appear unlocked, otherwise it will be locked. If Libronix DLS was open when you downloaded the file, you may need to press the F5 key to refresh your My Library view, or close and re-open Libronix DLS.


5. Enjoy!

There's no replacement for reading the Bible. But there are some very good supplements.

Last week Ryan talked about how you can read the Bible this year with people all over the world using our Global Bible Reader or the new Bible reading plans at Bible.Logos.com. Both are great ways to read the Bible while learning from and sharing with other believers.

If you just want to read by yourself or want to customize your own reading plan, there is the Bible reading feature in the Windows version of Logos. Rather than repeating what I wrote last year, I'll let you check it out for yourself if you want to learn some tips for creating a reading plan in Logos for 2009.

Another feature in Logos for Windows that I'd encourage you to consider using this year is the Devotions section on the home page. Books whose content is arranged by day of the year are automatically added to the list of available devotional readings that you can choose from.

Here's just a sampling of the scores of devotional books we have:

• Amazing Grace—366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions by Kenneth W. Osbeck
• Drawing Near—Daily Readings for a Deeper Faith by John MacArthur
• Everyday Blessings by Max Lucado
• For the Love of God, Volume One by D. A. Carson
• For the Love of God, Volume Two by D. A. Carson
• From This Verse by Robert J. Morgan
• Grace for the Moment by Max Lucado
• Into His Presence by Charles Stanley
• More Light on the Path by David W. Baker and Elaine A. Heath
• Morning and Evening by Charles Haddon Spurgeon
• My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers
• On This Day by Robert J. Morgan
• Truth for Today by John MacArthur
• Tozer on the Almighty God: A 366-Day Devotional by A. W. Tozer

To add a book to your daily devotional reading, simply click "Customize View" on home page, scroll down to the Devotions section, and check the box next to Devotions and any of the books that you'd like to read through over the next year. Every day the next devotional will be waiting for you. Just click it to open the current day's reading.

Some other devotional books that don't span an entire year but are worth checking out include John Piper's A Godward Life, Life As a Vapor, and Pierced by the Word.

We trust that God would encourage your faith this year as your read His Word and meditate on its relevance for your life.

Yesterday we started a two-part interview with astrophysicist and author Dr. Hugh Ross of Reasons To Believe, whose books we are featuring in our nearly finished Hugh Ross / Reasons To Believe Collection (9 Vols.). If you missed the post, be sure to check it out.

As promised, here is the second half of the interview. Scroll down to start reading, or simply click on any of the questions to jump to Dr. Ross' response. Enjoy!

10. Can you tell us a little bit about the books in the Hugh Ross-Reasons To Believe Collection at Logos.com and how the material in them can help Christians?
11. If someone was to pick up only one of your books to read, which book would you recommend and why?
12. Do you have any new books in the works?
13. What current scientific developments are you really excited about?
14. At your speaking engagements on behalf of Reasons To Believe, have you seen a change in the questions people are asking now as opposed to, say, 10 or 20 years ago?
15. Why has the old-earth vs. young-earth debate become such a divisive issue among evangelical Christians?
16. What advice would you give to a young man or woman entering a secular university to study in a scientific field?
17. In your years of studying science and faith, are there any "ah-ha!" moments that really stand out?
18. Are there any questions you're currently wrestling with?
19. How can Christians better reach out to scientists, engineers, and other science-minded individuals?

Q10. Can you tell us a little bit about the books in the Hugh Ross-Reasons To Believe Collection at Logos.com and how the material in them can help Christians?

A. The Fingerprint of God was my first full-length book. It tells the story of how astronomers' observations of the universe led them, in many cases against their will, to a theistic model of the universe. In addition to explaining the astronomical evidences for the God of the Bible, The Fingerprint of God addresses the problem of evil, the origin of life and humanity, and the Genesis 1 creation account. In many respects, The Fingerprint of God laid the foundations for the rest of my books.

My second book, The Creator and the Cosmos (now in its third edition), greatly expands upon and updates the astronomical, physical, and geological evidence for a God who transcends and creates all matter, energy, space, and time and who has supernaturally and super-intelligently designed the universe and all its constituent parts for the specific benefit of human beings. Of my books, this one has brought more people to faith in Christ than any other.

The Genesis Question addresses the most problematic passages in the Bible for skeptics, namely Genesis 1-11. This book shows how the most maligned chapters in Scripture, in fact, provide some of the strongest proofs available that the Bible is the error-free Word of God, perfectly reliable and trustworthy, not only for faith, doctrine, and life practice but also for science, history, geography, and all the rest of the academic disciplines. It documents how the Bible repeatedly and accurately predicted future scientific discoveries, laid the foundation for the scientific method, makes a biblical case for a non-global but universal Flood, and addresses such questions as the identity of the Nephilim, pre-Flood long life spans, and the origin of the races.

Beyond the Cosmos describes the scientific breakthrough of physicists discovering six dimensions of space in addition to length, width, and height and the conclusion from the space-time theorems of general relativity that the Agent responsible for creating the universe at a minimum possesses the capacity to operate in the equivalent of two time dimensions. These extra dimensions explain why the Bible alone among the world's "holy books" contains doctrines that cannot be visualized within length, width, height, and time. It alone was inspired by the One who lives in and beyond the extra dimensions. In addition, Beyond the Cosmos describes how the transcendence of God into extra dimensions and beyond explains the great paradoxes of the Christian faith: why God is not created, how God can respond to billions of simultaneously uttered prayers, the Trinity, eternal security, human free choice and divine predestination, the atonement, heaven, hell, and the new creation. This book, more than any other from Reasons To Believe, strengthens the security and hope of the believer. It also won more awards than any other RTB book.

Because most scientists refuse to believe in the possibility of nonphysical reality, they are convinced that ETs are real and that UFOs do not exist. Lights in the Sky and Little Green Men shows how the scientific evidence warrants the opposite conclusion. While the vast majority of reported UFOs are explained by natural phenomena or human activity, there exists a provably real but nonphysical residual. This book explains that reality, describes the properties of real UFOs, and shows how only people with involvement in the occult experience close encounters with them. The occult connection also explains why these close encounters always results in harm. The proof of the book's thesis is that anyone who takes the described steps to remove the occult connection from his or her life will be freed from such encounters. This book helps those trapped in occult activities and equips Christians to help them.

Origins of Life presents the RTB biblical model for life's beginning in detail and compares its explanatory power and predictive success with naturalistic models. This book uses the latest scientific discoveries to demonstrate how the explanatory gaps for the naturalistic models have become dramatically larger while RTB's model has shown remarkable success in filling in and explaining knowledge gaps. It also describes the successes and failures in the emerging discipline of astrobiology for testing competing models for the origins of life.

Who Was Adam? tells the story of how scientific advances during the past decade resulted in a paradigm shift that caused the scientific community to abandon Darwin's descent of man hypothesis in favor of what is called in the scientific literature the Garden of Eden hypothesis. This book documents how DNA studies, the discovery of over a dozen independent narrow time windows for human existence, cultural "big bangs," and new fossil record finds brought about this transformation. Who Was Adam? also compares the biblical content on human origins, including the date of humanity's origin, pre-Flood life spans, the rapid post-Flood spreading out of humanity, and the birth of human civilization, with the latest scientific discoveries.

A Matter of Days seeks to resolve the controversy within the church over the age of Earth and the universe. In a context of biblical inerrancy, it explains the four different literal definitions for yôm. This Hebrew word is used for the creation days in Genesis 1. Only the definition of a long, but finite period of time permits a literal and consistent interpretation when integrating the 27 chapter-length creation accounts. A Matter of Days also reviews all the scientific age-measuring methods for the earth and universe, the constancy of the physical laws, the reliability of radiometric dating, time dilation, and the validity of young-earth scientific claims. It addresses, too, death before Adam, hyper-evolution in young-earth creationism, human origins, appearance of age, and restoration theology.

Creation as Science surveys the entirety of RTB's testable creation model. It compares the explanatory power and predictive success of this model with three others: naturalistic materialism, theistic evolution, and young-earth creationism. It also addresses two other creation/evolution participants that have not yet produced detailed models: the intelligent design movement and directed panspermia proponents. This book proposes a new way of handling creation/evolution issues that answers concerns expressed by legislatures and the courts and offers a resolution to the science education crisis currently plaguing both secular and sectarian institutions in America.

Q11. If someone were to pick up only one of your books to read, which book would you recommend and why?

A. I frequently get asked this question. My response is that it depends on the person. For someone looking for the most rigorous scientific evidence for the God of the Bible, I recommend The Creator and the Cosmos. If an individual wants to see the entire scientific case for the God of the Bible summarized in one book, I suggest Creation as Science. This book is also useful for Christians who want to become more effective in reaching out to non-Christians. For those who struggle with the claimed scientific and historical accuracy of the Bible, I advise they read The Genesis Question. A Matter of Days helps many non-Christians, who find young-earth creationism the biggest barrier to the Christian faith. Many Christians say that's our most liberating book. Beyond the Cosmos gives the greatest understanding of who God is and what our future holds is. This is the best book to give someone facing death. People who are caught up in the occult or who are fascinated by ETs and UFOs need to read Lights in the Sky and Little Green Men.

Q12. Do you have any new books in the works?

A. Yes. Baker Publishing Group released my latest book, Why the Universe Is the Way It Is, this past October. They fast-tracked my next book, More Than a Theory, so it's release will coincide (as closely as possible) with global celebrations of the Darwin anniversaries during 2009. Its release is scheduled for March. Right now, I am busy writing a book with the working title Answers in Job.

Why the Universe Is the Way It Is examines 12 different purposes for God creating the universe and answers challenges from atheist scientists who insist the universe is poorly designed. It also provides an answer to the problem of evil by explaining how the physical laws of the universe are optimized to help bring about a rapid, efficient, and permanent removal of evil.

More Than a Theory responds to both naturalism and theistic evolution by presenting a testable, falsifiable, and predictive biblical creation model. Rather than pointing out flaws in the evolutionary models, More Than a Theory presents a comprehensive case for creation and shows how the RTB creation model provides a more complete and consistent explanation of the natural realm and a better record in predicting future scientific discoveries.

Answers in Job will show how many of the most divisive creation/evolution issues, both inside and outside the church, find resolution in the book of Job. Answers in Job also will launch new apologetics disciplines pertaining to the origin of soulish features in birds and mammals.

Q13. What current scientific developments are you really excited about?

A. The top seven for me right now are (1) the hidden purposes in "junk DNA," (2) testing the unique designs of our solar system through the discovery of extrasolar planets and so-called solar twins, (3) testing human origins through the discovery and analysis of Neanderthal DNA and the DNA of long-dead humans, (4) determining the location and structure of exotic dark matter and ordinary dark matter, (5) the potential discovery of axions (a leading candidate for exotic dark matter particle) through measuring the cooling of white dwarf stars, (6) the possibility of a much more accurate measure of the scalar spectral index in the cosmic microwave background radiation (which would explain exactly what kind of inflationary hot big bang creation event brought about the universe), and (7) further experiments with bacteria such as the recent one performed with E coli to test the possibility of natural occurring repeated evolutionary outcomes (proved impossible). These developments and many more are discussed in my forthcoming book, More Than a Theory.

Q14. At your speaking engagements on behalf of Reasons To Believe, have you seen a change in the questions people are asking now as opposed to, say, 10 or 20 years ago?

A. The truth is that the big questions of life people typically ask pretty much stay the same. What has changed are my answers. That's because we live at a time in history when evidences for the Christian faith are multiplying at an astonishing rate. In taking advantage of these new reasons to believe, I try to give my audiences much more effective answers. This availability of new evidence probably explains one main difference I do see. I seem to be getting far fewer aggressive challenges from atheist skeptics, theistic evolutionists, and young-earth creationists. Many more people simply want help resolving apparent conflicts between the record of nature and the words of the Bible.

Q15. Why has the old-earth vs. young-earth debate become such a divisive issue among evangelical Christians?

A. Historically, the church persists in splitting over nonessentials. In the first century the circumcision issue was even more divisive, and certainly more violent. During that debate doctrine wasn't so much at stake as was the strong desire of many Jewish Christians to keep Gentiles out of the church. Likewise, I'm convinced many evangelicals want to keep scientists out of their churches. Telling scientists that they must believe in something with no more scientific credibility than the flat-earth hypothesis is an effective means for discouraging them from getting involved.

Another reason why this debate is so divisive is that many churches tend to ignore the controversy. In the book of Acts, Luke records that not until church leaders dealt with the circumcision controversy head-on did it subside.

Q16. What advice would you give to a young man or woman entering a secular university to study in a scientific field?

A. First, try to get into the best university for your particular discipline. In choosing the best, look carefully at the faculty who will be providing instruction in your area of study. Once school starts, watch for opportunities to assist faculty and senior graduate students in their research. Don't be afraid to ask questions. If you don't understand something, ask. As much as possible, read the periodical literature related to your discipline. For a Christian student wanting to be an effective witness, it is important to realize that the impact of your message will be proportional first, to your degree of humility and grace; second, to how well-prepared you are to give reasons and evidences for your Christian faith; and third, to the academic excellence you display.

Q17. In your years of studying science and faith, are there any "ah-ha!" moments that really stand out?

A. At Reasons To Believe "ah-ha" moments occur quite frequently. One in the biological sciences that especially comes to mind is a study published by Michigan State researchers proving that Stephen Jay Gould was correct when he claimed that evolution would never produce a repeated outcome. The hundreds of examples of "repeated evolutionary outcomes" seen in nature's record, thus, must be repeated creation outcomes.

A standout in the physical sciences is the recognition of how remarkably designed all the solar system planets are for the maintenance of advanced life on Earth. Another is the discovery that the laws of physics are optimally designed to facilitate a rapid and efficient conquest and removal of all evil.

An "ah-ha" moment that was a big factor in my committing my life to Christ was discovering that Genesis 1 answers the fossil record enigma: rapid and aggressive speciation before the advent of humanity and virtually none afterwards. Genesis 1 provided the answer: for six days God creates but on the seventh day, God ceased from His creation work. That day of rest began after God created Eve and will not end until evil is permanently removed. Genesis 1 also helped me understand why many scientists do not see God in their research studies. If their studies focus only on the era in which God rests, they won't find any evidence of His miraculous interventions in the natural realm.

Q18. Are there any questions you're currently wrestling with?

A. Yes. For my next book I am researching soulish designs. The Bible implies that all "soulish" life has been designed in distinct ways to serve and please humanity. Since these designs were established before humans even existed, no one can claim that soulish creatures (birds and mammals) naturally evolved such features. Some questions I am pursuing is to what degree can scientific evidence be developed to prove that each bird and mammal species was designed to serve and please humans? How distinct are the different means by which birds and mammals do that? And, how did different species help launch human civilization.

Questions of astronomical interest for me are what kinds of particles make up exotic dark matter and what kind of design will we uncover in their properties. In determining more precisely the geography of both exotic and ordinary dark matter, what kind of new arguments for supernatural design will be discovered? What will more accurate measurements of the universe's scalar spectral index and geometry tell us about the cosmic creation event, the universe's spatial size, and the universe's future? Likewise, what will the detection and measurement of gravitational waves tell us about the beginning and end of the universe?

Biblically, a question I continue to pursue is can I, with the help of my colleagues, build a stronger, more extensive case for showing how God's two books of revelation, the book of Scripture and the book of nature, overlap in their content and in that overlap completely agree? Can we continue to find more examples of the Bible accurately predicting future scientific discoveries and providing wisdom for guiding scientific research?

Q19. How can Christians better reach out to scientists, engineers, and other science-minded individuals?

A. For too long many American Christians have treated the scientific and engineering communities as enemies of the Christian faith rather than as mission fields to be won to Christ. What scientists tell me they want most from Christians is a positive rather than a negative overture. They want us to stop bashing scientists and "evolution." Instead, they desire public appreciation from Christians for all the hard work scientists perform in their pursuit of truth and understanding about nature's realm. They also would like to see us present a positive case for creation, one that can be scientifically tested.

Most scientists and engineers are not unwilling to consider creation as an alternative to their evolutionary paradigms. However, they are unwilling to abandon their evolutionary models until they see creation models that offer superior explanations of the record of nature. These models also need to demonstrate greater success in predicting future scientific discoveries. Scientists are waiting for such models to be produced. They are eager to evaluate the credibility and integrity of creation models and to suggest ways that better models can be improved and extended.

It's through engaging scientists and engineers rather than attacking them or ignoring them that we can win many to faith in Christ. I know this from personal experience. Of all the people groups before whom I have presented evangelistic messages within the United States and Canada, engineers have demonstrated the greatest receptivity. And, scientists were not far behind.

Thank you, Dr. Ross, for taking the time to share with our readers!

If you'd like to learn more from Dr. Ross, you still have a few days left to pre-order the Hugh Ross / Reasons To Believe Collection (9 Vols.) at a nicely discounted price.

Our Hugh Ross / Reasons To Believe Collection (9 Vols.) is nearing completion, so we thought we'd take the opportunity to talk to Dr. Ross about his area of expertise and the excellent resources in this collection.

The interview is lengthy, so we've divided it into two posts. The second post will appear tomorrow. If you have an interest in creation, science, and apologetics, I think you'll find it a fascinating read.

Here are the first 9 questions that Dr. Ross answers below. Scroll down to start reading, or simply click on any of the questions to jump directly to his response. Enjoy!

1. As an astronomer and a pastor of evangelism for more than 30 years, could you describe the importance of using science to help people come into a relationship with Jesus Christ?
2. For our readers who might not be familiar with you or your work, could you give us a brief introduction?
3. Can you tell us a little about your ministry, Reasons To Believe (RTB)?
4. Can you share a little bit about your conversion to Christianity?
5. You're an astrophysicist. What exactly does that mean?
6. What started your interest in creation science?
7. Why is testing so important?
8. How can the Christian worldview be tested for poor biblical interpretations?
9. How can science be tested for poor interpretations?

Q1. As an astronomer and a pastor of evangelism for more than 30 years, could you describe the importance of using science to help people come into a relationship with Jesus Christ?

A. The heart cannot rejoice in what the mind rejects. When the record of nature appears to contradict the Bible, that conflict may prevent an individual from making a personal commitment to Christ. For Christians such perceived inconsistencies may stymie the motivation to share their faith.

A core doctrine of Christianity is that everything God reveals is true and, therefore, consistent. The Belgic Confession states that God gave us two books: the book of Scripture and the book of nature. Both are faithful and trustworthy. Thus, any conflict between science and theology must be due to either a misinterpretation of nature's record, a misinterpretation of the Bible's words, or both.

The Bible commands us to be diligent in integrating everything God reveals in its 66 books and in all scientific disciplines. Anomalies or apparent discrepancies should be welcomed as opportunities to dig deeper and broader in the quest to learn more of the truth God reveals.

Today, in some science disciplines, the knowledge base doubles in less than five years. Such new knowledge fascinates people. It also provides opportunities to put belief systems to the test. Whereas many non-Christians refuse to listen to historical evidence for the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead, they will listen to news about a recent scientific discovery. Thanks to the pace of science research, every weekday our Reasons To Believe (RTB) team is able to post a new reason to believe in Christ as Creator, Lord, and Savior.

Q2. For our readers who might not be familiar with you or your work, could you give us a brief introduction?

A. I completed my undergraduate degree in physics at the University of British Columbia and have graduate degrees in astronomy from the University of Toronto. My postdoctoral studies were completed at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where I researched quasi-stellar objects, or "quasars," some of the most distant and ancient objects in the universe.

Curious about the world's religions and "holy books," I found only one that proved scientifically and historically accurate: the Bible. Scientific and historical reality-testing convinced me that the Bible is the Word of God.

Communicating that God's revelation in Scripture and in nature do not, will not, and cannot contradict each other became my message and mission. My colleagues at Reasons To Believe and I keep tabs on the frontiers of research to share with scientists and nonscientists alike the thrilling news of what's being discovered and how it connects with biblical theology. In the process, I've written many books including: The Fingerprint of God, The Creator and the Cosmos, Beyond the Cosmos, The Genesis Question, A Matter of Days, and Creation as Science.

Between writing books and articles, making webcasts and podcasts (see www.reasons.org), and being interviewed by outside media, I maintain an extensive travel schedule with the hope of challenging students and faculty, churches, and professional groups to consider what they believe and why. I try to present a persuasive case for Christianity without applying pressure. Treating people's questions and comments with respect has opened many doors for me as a speaker and a talk-radio and television guest.

Q3. Can you tell us a little about your ministry, Reasons To Believe (RTB)?

A. It's a science-faith think tank founded in 1986. RTB focuses on the relationship between the words of the Bible and the facts of nature. We present reasons in writing or in talks at universities, research labs, churches, and elsewhere for confidence in the findings of science and in the authority of Scripture. Our scientists and theologians demonstrate how God's verbal revelation proves accurate and wholly consistent with the latest discoveries. Podcasts, webcasts, video clips, and articles, including Today's New Reason to Believe, show how scientific advance supports the Christian faith. Each can be accessed at www.reasons.org. Event information is listed there as well. We also maintain a science-faith hotline (626-335-5282) that operates daily from 5 to 7 p.m.

Q4. Can you share a little bit about your conversion to Christianity?

A. I was born in Montreal and raised in Vancouver, Canada. My parents were morally upright but nonreligious. I didn't know any Christians or serious followers of any religion while growing up.

Though my neighborhood was poor, its public schools were outstanding and its libraries well-equipped. By age seven I was reading physics books as fast as I could check them out. By eight I decided to make astronomy my career. In the next several years my study of the big bang convinced me that the universe had a beginning, and thus a Beginner. But, like the astronomers whose books I read, I imagined that the Beginner must be distant and noncommunicative.

My high school history studies disturbed me, for it became obvious that all people groups tend to take their religions very seriously. Knowing the European philosophers of the Enlightenment largely discounted religion, my initial response was to study their works. But I quickly discovered inconsistencies, contradictions, evasions, and circular reasoning.

The next step was to turn to the "holy" books themselves. If the Creator had spoken through any of these books (and I thought He probably had not) His authorship would be obvious: the communication would be perfectly true. I reasoned that if man invented a religion, it would reflect human error. But, if God communicated, His message would be error free and as consistent as the facts of nature. So, I used the facts of history and science to test each of the "holy" books.

Initially my task was easy. After only a few hours (in some cases less) of reading, I could find one or more statements clearly at odds with the historical and scientific facts. I also noted a writing style best described as esoteric and mysterious; it seemed inconsistent with the character of the Creator as implied by the facts of nature. My task was easy until I dusted off the Bible that the Gideons had given me as part of their distribution program in public schools.

The Bible was noticeably different. It was simple, direct, and specific. I was amazed at the quantity and detail of its historical and scientific (i.e., testable) accounts. The first page caught my attention. Not only did its author correctly describe the major events in the creation of life on Earth, but he placed those events in the scientifically correct order and properly identified the earth's initial conditions.

For the next year and a half I spent about an hour a day searching the Bible for scientific and historical inaccuracies. Finally I had to admit it was error free and that this accuracy could only come from the Creator Himself. The Bible alone described God and His dealings with man from a perspective that demanded more than just the dimensions (length, width, height, and time) we humans experience. Further, I had proven to myself, on the basis of predicted history and science, that the Bible was more reliable than many of the physical laws. My only rational option was to trust the Bible's authority to the same degree as I trusted the laws of physics.

By this time I clearly understood that Jesus Christ was the Creator of the universe, that He paid the price only a sinless person could pay for all of my offenses against God, and that eternal life would be mine if I received His pardon and gave Him His rightful place of authority over my life. I understood enough Scripture to know, however, that this commitment could not be kept secret. It had to be public, and that meant letting my peers, professors, and family know. I feared the contempt and ridicule that surely would come. So, for several months I hesitated.

During those months I experienced a strange sense of confusion. For the first time in my life, my grades dropped and I had difficulty solving problems. I was discovering the meaning of Romans 1:21, which says that when a man rejects what he knows and understands to be true about God, his thinking becomes futile and his mind darkened. The eventual consequences spelled out in the succeeding verses chilled me.

I knew what I had to do, but my pride seemed too great. One evening I prayed, asking God to take away my resistance and make me a Christian. I prayed this way for six hours with no apparent answer. Finally, I realized that Jesus Christ will not force Himself upon anyone, even if asked. It was up to me to humble myself and invite Him in. And this is what I did at 1:06 in the morning. I then signed my name to the "decision statement" at the back of my Gideon Bible, acknowledging Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.

Right away I sensed an assurance that God would never let me go, that I was His forever. My fears of ridicule from unbelievers subsided gradually, and day by day I began learning how to share my discoveries of spiritual truth with fellow students and faculty. However, a lack of fellowship with other Christians stunted my growth in Christlikeness.

Every once in awhile I'd visit a church only to discover a cult or a group who called themselves Christians but did not take the Bible seriously. On arriving at Caltech for postdoctoral studies, I finally met a serious believer, Dave Rogstad. Dave invited me to a seminar on applying biblical principles to daily living. There I sat with 16,000 committed Christians. I was overwhelmed to find that so many believers existed, and the things I was taught helped and humbled me.

Within weeks of that seminar I found myself not only attending home Bible studies but helping lead them. Dave challenged me to begin sharing my faith with nonscientists. I was surprised to observe that unlike scientists, who tend to struggle more with their wills than with their minds in coming to Christ, nonscientists tend to struggle more with their minds. If only they could see convincing evidence that God exists, that Jesus is God, and that the Bible is true, they would readily give their lives to Christ. What joy to know the truths that could help set them free!

I began spending more and more time sharing the evidence with others. Within a year I started serving full-time as the minister of evangelism for Sierra Madre Congregational Church. Ten years later, when breakthrough discoveries in the sciences virtually sealed the scientific case for the God of the Bible, a group of friends urged me to form Reasons To Believe. RTB communicates new scientific evidence for creation as widely as possible. It is my delight to report that for each year I have known Jesus as my Lord and Savior, my joy in Him and in sharing His truth with others grows greater. There is nothing in this world for which I would trade my relationship with Jesus Christ. [For an extended audio version, go to Hugh Ross' testimony (Real Audio, 50 minutes).]

Q5. You're an astrophysicist. What exactly does that mean?

A. An astrophysicist studies the physics of the universe and all it contains: cosmic voids, galaxy clusters, galaxies, dark matter, dark energy, gas, dust, stars, planets, moons, asteroids, comets, cosmic rays, etc. Decades ago, astronomers exclusively focused on making observations of the universe and its components while astrophysicists made theoretical interpretations of the observations. Today, however, virtually all observational astronomers spend much of their time making theoretical interpretations and virtually all theoretical astrophysicists are involved to some degree in making observations. Thus, the terms "astronomer" and "astrophysicist" have become interchangeable. This interchangeability explains why even universities with large numbers of graduate students in a wide range of astronomical sciences offer either astronomy or astrophysics degrees, not both.

Q6. What started your interest in creation science?

A. My parents said I did science experiments even before I could talk (though that didn't happen until I was five). By the time I was sixteen I recognized that astronomical observations favored the big bang model of the universe. A big bang implied a cosmic beginning and, hence, a cosmic Beginner. That realization prompted me to study different philosophical systems and religions to test whether their teachings matched the established record of nature. Thus, creation science played a crucial role in my becoming a Christian.

By the time I started postdoctoral research studies at the Caltech, I kept running into people who began peppering me with creation science and science-faith questions. The same thing happened at the church I attended near Caltech. My answers led to invitations to speak on the subject. And, my writing soon followed.

Q7. Why is testing so important?

A. Testing guards our minds and spirits from deception. The Bible warns us that legions of fallen angels and humans are determined to win converts to their rebellion against God. Rigorous, thorough, objective testing is a God-given tool that helps us discern truth from error. Testing is the chief means by which we can uncover more of the truth God wants us to discover and understand.

The Bible states that people perish for a lack of knowledge. But, not all knowledge is from God. The apostle John warns, "Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world."

Q8. How can the Christian worldview be tested for poor biblical interpretations?

A. The Bible is not one book. It is 66. Many Christians pride themselves on taking the Bible literally, but fail to take it consistently. A weakness of the modern American church is its failure to appreciate and practice systematic theology. The best way to check out and fine-tune an interpretation of a topic addressed by a particular Bible passage is to examine all the verses throughout Scripture that pertain to that topic.

A correct interpretation must be consistent with all the passages. However, there may be more than one such interpretation. The range of possibly consistent interpretations must be continually reevaluated as one's knowledge and understanding of the topic and the relevant Bible passages grows. These interpretations also must be evaluated in light of other related biblical topics and doctrines.

Another means for checking a particular interpretation are extrabiblical truths, for example, God's second book, the book of nature. The International Council on Biblical Inerrancy wrote in 1981, "We affirm that since God is the author of all truth, all truths, biblical and extrabiblical, are consistent and cohere, and that the Bible speaks truth when it touches on matters pertaining to nature, history, or anything else. We further affirm that in some cases extrabiblical data have value for clarifying what Scripture teaches, and for prompting correction of faulty interpretations."

Q9. How can science be tested for poor interpretations?

A. Science is the study of the entire record of nature. Through observations and experiments, scientists note that nature's record is contradiction free. This unfailing consistency yields a reliable test for any scientific interpretation.

Correct scientific interpretations must explain in a consistent and fully integrated manner all the scientific data accumulated in all scientific disciplines. The best interpretation develops a model with the most extensive, detailed, and complete explanation of the phenomenon under consideration.

A theologian can always learn more about a biblical topic. So, too, a scientist can always learn more about a scientific phenomenon. The lack of total knowledge implies that every phenomenon under investigation will exhibit anomalies that don't quite fit the available scientific explanations.

Anomalies provide another means for evaluating scientific interpretations. For poor interpretations anomalies will grow in number and significance as scientists learn more about the phenomenon under investigation. For good interpretations anomalies will shrink in number and degree of significance.

Gaps in knowledge and understanding yield yet another testing tool. If gaps grow bigger and more numerous as scientists learn more, the interpretation is likely incorrect. On the other hand, if the gaps shrink in magnitude and number, that's a sign one's interpretation lies on the pathway toward truth.

Finally, a good scientific interpretation will be consistent with what the Bible teaches. Scripture properly integrated, analyzed, and understood can correct faulty interpretations of nature's record.

Be sure to check back tomorrow for part two.

In the meantime, don't miss out on your chance to pre-order the Hugh Ross / Reasons To Believe Collection (9 Vols.) at a nicely discounted price.

It's 2:00 AM, and you can't sleep. You decide to browse the Logos website for books to buy. And you find the perfect book that you'd like to read right away before the need to sleep takes over.

So you add the downloadable book to your cart and purchase it. The only thing that stands between you and reading your new book is clicking the orange "Download and Unlock" button. Then you get a screen that says, "You have received an unlocking error. Please contact Customer Service at 1-800-875-6467 for further help." The only problem is that the Logos Customer Service team doesn't open until 6AM (PST). Alas, you return to be restless, forced to wait until the morning to dig into your new book.

This sad scenario can be avoided by making sure that your Libronix Customer ID has been entered in your web account prior to making an order.

Once you sign in to your web account, you will see a screen that includes your shipping and billing information. Below that, there is a section titled "Confirm Libronix Customer ID."

If this is blank (or has the wrong information in it), you will not be able to purchase any downloadable resources and you will get the infamous "unlocking error."

So what goes in this box? How do you find your Customer ID? Your Libronix Customer ID is usually either the email address you used when you first installed Libronix or, if you didn't enter one, an automatically created ID like LBXUSER948372.

Many customers put their current email address in as their Customer ID, but this may not be correct. To be sure, you should check in Libronix. Open Libronix and go to Help > About Libronix DLS.

After you've identified your Customer ID—in my case demo@libronix.com —make sure to enter it into your web account and click "Confirm." Now you will be able to successfully purchase and unlock books at Logos.com—even in the early hours of the morning when you can't sleep!

One more tip for Vista users: when you download a book file, it is usually best to save it to your desktop and then manually drag it to your Resources folder: C:\Program Files\Libronix DLS\Resources. If you're using the 64-bit version of Vista, the correct location is C:\Program Files (x86)\Libronix DLS\Resources.

Happy unlocking—and reading!

Thanks to an email sent to suggest@logos.com from a Hebrew professor at Bethel Seminary in St. Paul, MN, we've made a nice update to Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar that will make it more useful when referencing and looking up his detailed section and subsection organization.

If you're familiar with Gesenius, you'll recognize a reference like GKC §19.b. In our original digital edition, we included all of the these sections and subsections as milestones, enabling you to navigate to a location like this by simply setting the Active Index to "Hebrew Grammar (Gesenius, Kautzsch, and Cowley)" and typing it in the box at the top of the resource. As you would scroll through the resource, the index would update letting you know when one section ended and another began.

As a general rule, it was fairly reliable, but there were some places where those divisions were a little difficult to be sure about, making it necessary at times to consult the print edition. That's no good. Our resources are supposed to make things more convenient and save you time. So we rebuilt the resource with the subsection letters added prominently in the left making it easy to see the divisions.

In addition to this improvement, we also fixed all the typos that had been reported (thanks for sending them!) and added links to some new data types that weren't around when the grammar was first produced, most notably the Semitic Inscriptions data type.

The new file is now on our FTP site and is free to all existing owners. Be sure to grab it. You can download it manually and drop it in your resources folder (C:\Program Files\Libronix DLS\Resources), or just run the resource auto update script.

If you don't already own it, there are several ways you can pick up this standard Hebrew grammar.

• as an individual download
• in the Gesenius Hebrew Bundle along with Gesenius' Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament
• as a part of the Original Languages Library, Scholar's Library: Silver, or Scholar's Library: Gold (which are currently available at 25% off with coupon code Christmas08)

Thanks for your suggestions and feedback. We aren't always able to reply, but we do read them all and implement many of them. Who knows? Your suggestion may be the next one we put into place, benefitting not only you, but potentially many thousands of other users. So keep 'em coming, and keep sending those typo reports as well!

Oftentimes we'll get a newly licensed book that would be a perfect fit in a collection that's already up on Pre-Pub. What we end up doing most of the time is sneaking that book into a collection and giving you more content at no additional charge. Every once in a while we'll say something about it, but usually we do it without even telling you.

We usually have to raise the price after we add the new volume to cover the additional costs, but the good news is that those of you who already placed your pre-order are locked in at the lowest possible price.

We've done this several times recently, so I thought I'd call attention to them.

1. Holman Reference Collection (13 Vols.), which contains the award-winning Apologetics Study Bible, added two new books: 131 Christians Everyone Should Know and Harmony of the Gospels.
2. Studies in New Testament Greek and JSNTS Collection (17 Vols.) picked up Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics.
3. The Moody Counseling Collection (11 Vols.) now has A Gift from God: Foundational Principles of Biblical Parenting.
4. Face2face Collection (7 Vols.) got Elisha: Encountering the Messenger of Salvation.

What's the moral of the story? We do our best to reward those of you who faithfully order Pre-Pubs—and do so early.

If you don't want to miss out on little bonuses like these, make sure you're subscribed to our Pre-Pub RSS feed. This is just one of the several reasons it's a good idea to pre-order early.

Update: Two more collections just got new books!

1. A. T. Robertson Collection (15 Vols.) added Preaching and Scholarship, the inaugural lecture given at Southern Baptist Seminary in 1890.
2. Kress Biblical Studies Collection (8 Vols.) picked up Richard L. Mayhue's The Biblical Pattern for Divine Healing and Snatched Before the Storm: A Case for Pretribulationism.

When I travel, I almost always take my laptop with me. Being able to read and study the Bible and Christian literature without having to pack print books is perfect for flying, especially now that many airlines charge extra for your luggage. I've heard that some airlines have even considered charging by weight.

But Logos is more than just a Bible study tool. It's great for fun and games too. I'm sure most of you are aware of the Word Find. You can find it under Tools > Bible Puzzles > Word Find. I've used it on a couple of occasions while traveling. It's not just for kids.

During my last trip to Minnesota to spend Thanksgiving with my wife's family, I found a couple of new uses for Logos when we were playing games around the kitchen table.

First, I was introduced to a word game called Boggle. The goal is in three minutes to come up with as many words as you can that no one else comes up with—the longer the word the better. As you can imagine, you often have to come up with words that are uncommon. This sometimes involves a bit of guessing, which in turns requires that a dictionary be handy.

I pulled up Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, which comes in most of our base packages, and the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, linked them together, and had fun looking up and learning many new words.

My brother-in-law tried to use a traditional paper dictionary, but I don't think he even got to the right section of the dictionary before I had looked the word up in two dictionaries. I highly recommend using Logos the next time you need a dictionary for family game time. Less waiting and more time having fun.

Second, another game we played with Logos was one I made up myself. I would read a random verse of Scripture after performing a Bible Speed Search, and the first person to guess the book it was found in would get a point. (You get only one guess until everyone has guessed.) If you could guess the full reference, you'd get a bonus point. This one was a lot of fun, but a little lopsided since my oldest brother-in-law is a pastor and was winning most of them.

These are just a couple of examples that illustrate how Logos is more than just a Bible study tool and can be a great addition to family game time.

How about you? What creative ways have you found to use Logos for more than just Bible study?

Through the end of the year, we're having a sale on the 59-volume Word Biblical Commentary series. This digital set retails for $1,199.99, but is available for a limited time for only $599.95!

Each of these volumes in print has a retail price of $49.99 and sells in the $30-$40 range. If you buy the digital set from us, you're paying only a tad above $10 per volume! That's a savings of roughly $1,200-$1,700 when compared to the print cost.

Not only does the Libronix edition of WBC save you a sizable chunk of change, but you also get all of the conveniences of the Libronix Digital Library System, like portability, ease of use, integration with the rest of your digital library, powerful searching, and so much more.

Pastors, scholars, students, and anyone who is serious about Bible study would benefit from this important set—and there's no better way to make it a part of your library than this.

Update: Don't want the whole set? Or maybe you just can't afford it right now? We're also offering 50% off the retail price on any of the individual volumes with coupon code WBC!

We prepared 12 new bundles for ETS and SBL and wanted to share these specials with you as well. Each of these collections was carefully crafted and offers some really nice savings.

Whether you're into the original languages, OT studies, NT studies, church history, theology, or apologetics, there's something here for just about everyone.

For those of you who want to beef up the Greek and Hebrew sections of your digital library, we have three language supplements containing some of our best original language resources:

• Advanced Greek Supplement (6 Vols.)
• Advanced Hebrew Supplement (11 Vols.)
• Original Languages Supplement (12 Vols.)

Many of our other top-selling resources and collections have been conveniently combined into these nine bundles.

• Ancient Near Eastern Bundle (30 Vols.)
• Hebrew Bible Bundle (54 Vols.)
• Early Judaism Bundle (30 Vols.)
• New Testament Studies Bundle (64 Vols.)
• Early Church Bundle (59 Vols.)
• Protestant Theology Bundle (336 Vols.)
• Christian Apologetics Bundle (94 Vols.)
• Theological Reference Bundle (19 Vols.)
• Scholar's Reference Bundle (140 Vols.)

Go take a look at what's included and see if anything here would be a good addition to your Libronix library.

One of the benefits in doing what I do is interacting with different folks about the projects I'm privileged to work on. I get to interact with all sorts of people, many of whom give us valuable feedback on different products and projects. This happened within the past week, and I wanted to share the story.

Logos recently released the Josephus in Greek: Niese Critical Edition with Apparatus. This was a large project and involved a lot of work by a lot of people. It was a great feeling to finally hear that it had shipped because, with the apparatus and the newly-translated prefaces, this puts a lot of stuff that wasn't easily available into the hands of a lot of folks.

After Josephus in Greek: Niese Critical Edition with Apparatus had been released a few weeks, I was forwarded some feedback from Steve Mason, who is a specialist in the study of Josephus. Some of Steve's work is available in Logos format, see Josephus and the New Testament and the Flavius Josephus Collection.

Anyway, Steve rightly noted that, while in the Greek text, it wasn't that easy to see if there were apparatus entries for a particular line of text. The Greek text and apparatus are separate resources that can scroll together, this allows one to scan the whole apparatus to notice if there are trends in omission/addition/correction sources. But it meant that the Greek text itself didn't provide clues of apparatus entries. He was suggesting that we try to do some sort of linking to make the content easier to access.

In our correspondence, we figured out a solution to the problem. I could insert an apparatus note indicator after a line number if the line had an entry in the apparatus. Yeah, it sounds weird when you write it out. Here's a picture of the newly-revised resource. Note the dagger (†) after the line number, that is the indicator of apparatus material relevant to the line:

The hover allows one to consult the apparatus content quickly. Note how it displays underneath the Greek line, so you can see which entry applies to which word in the line. If you would like to consult the apparatus further, just click on the indicator (†) instead of hovering on it, and the apparatus itself will be opened to the proper location.

All in all, this should help make the apparatus content even more approachable and useable. True, we should've had this type of feature implemented in the first place, but thanks to Steve Mason's feedback and our conversation, we now have this implemented and available for everyone who purchased the Josephus in Greek: Niese Critical Edition with Apparatus collection.

How do you get it? Just go to our resource FTP site: ftp://ftp.logos.com/lbxbooks and look for the file JOSGK.lbxlls. Download it, put it in your resource folder, and the next time you start Logos it should be there and ready to go. (Vista users may want to consult this page for further info on downloading resources)

Our Pre-Pub system let's you decide which resources make it into production and which ones don't—or at least which one's make it sooner than other.

It works quite well for the most part. But for the Pre-Pubs that don't generate sufficient interest in a reasonable amount of time, perhaps our time could have been better spent working on titles that you want to see turned into Libronix resources.

You get a say in which titles go up on Pre-Pub by submitting your requests to suggest@logos.com and posting them in the suggestions newsgroup. While those suggestions are very helpful, we can't always license the things you want.

We're considering another way that you can help us decide which books to Pre-Pub and which ones to pass by or put on the back burner. We're tentatively calling it Pre-Pre-Pub. :)

Here's how it will work. Visit the Pre-Pre-Pub page, enter your full name, and then vote on as many of the titles as you'd like. After you're done, click the submit button at the bottom of the page. (Please vote only once.) After we've had enough people respond, we'll do our best to put your recommendations into action and put up a new list.

At close to 500 titles, our first list might be a bit too large. If you move quickly, you should be able to get through it in roughly 10 minutes. Feel free to skip the ones that don't interest you. A skip will count as a low vote. To help you navigate the list, we've arranged the titles in alphabetical order of the author's last name.

Thanks for your help! As always, we welcome your feedback on how we can continue to offer you more of the books that you want.

I recently posted about the progress we've made on our The Lexham Greek-English Interlinear Septuagint (LXX), but that post was primarily about our progress. It didn't really answer the question, "Why should I worry about the Septuagint?"

Books have been written in attempts to answer that question; several are available for Logos Bible Software:

• The Use of the Septuagint in New Testament Research by R. Timothy McLay
• The Bible in Translation, Ancient and English Versions by Bruce M. Metzger
• The Septuagint by Jennifer Dines, in the Understanding the Bible and Its World Collection (4 vols.)
• The Septuagint as Christian Scripture: Its Prehistory and the Problem of Its Canon by Martin Hengel, in the Second Temple Period Collection (19 vols.)
• The Psalms in the New Testament edited by Steve Moyise and Maarten J.J. Menken, in Psalms: A Commentary, and Its New Testament Relevance (2 vols.)
• Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, edited by D.A. Carson and G.K. Beale, in the Baker Hermeneutics Collection (14 vols.)
• There are many more; check out some of the JSOTS volumes and collections

As you can see, much ink has been spilled on the topic of the importance and role of the Septuagint (LXX) in Biblical Studies. I don't think I'll answer the question conclusively here, but hopefully I can shed some light on it.

So, why worry about the Septuagint?

Well, for starters, virtually every Bible study method I know of—particularly those geared to students without advanced training in Greek and Hebrew—recommend the consultation of several different Bible translations when examining a passage. Did you know that the Septuagint (LXX) is the oldest translation of the Hebrew Bible that we have? So, when examining a passage in the Old Testament, it can be helpful to examine the LXX as well because it is another translation. The Lexham Greek-English Interlinear Septuagint makes some of the differences between the Hebrew and LXX available through translation differences and also through notes. Used in conjunction with the Lexham Hebrew-English Interlinear Bible, with reputable commentaries on OT books, and with other English translations, The Lexham Greek-English Interlinear Septuagint can be a benefit to your study.

Second, if you're studying a New Testament passage that quotes the Old Testament, you should check out the source of that quotation. Many times, the NT author is likely using the Septuagint (LXX) and not the Hebrew Scriptures directly. This means examining the fuller context of the quote source is important to understanding how the NT author is using the passage. The Lexham Greek-English Interlinear Septuagint makes this larger context more accessible, particularly to those who may have only focused on the study of Greek in the New Testament.

(An aside, the best and most comprehensive treatment of the NT's use of the OT is Carson and Beale's Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, edited by D.A. Carson and G.K. Beale, available for Logos Bible Software in the Baker Hermeneutics Collection (14 vols.))

Third, if you're studying an Old Testament passage that uses an obscure Hebrew word, looking to the Greek of the Septuagint can help in understanding what may have been in the underlying Hebrew text. This in turn can help in coming to a better understanding of the Old Testament text. Consult lexicon articles (such as those in HALOT) which also mention how these more obscure Hebrew words may have been translated in to Greek; use these as a base to track down other citations that use the Greek word in a similar manner.

The same can be said, perhaps to a greater degree, of obscure New Testament words. Examining the Septuagint use of an obscure NT word can be enlightening. Again, use a lexicon (like BDAG) which classifies senses and provides both LXX and NT citations to hunt down LXX citations to follow up on instances like this.

These are only a few reasons why the Septuagint (LXX) should play a role in one's study of both the Old Testament and the New Testament. So what are you waiting for? Subscribe to the pre-pub, lock in your low price, and reserve your copy of The Lexham Greek-English Interlinear Septuagint today!

The best way to get started with Logos Bible Software is to purchase one of our base packages. Not everyone has the same budget or needs, but the bigger packages are definitely the better value. For those who are serious about studying the Bible and are convinced of the value of building a digital library, there's no better place to start than Scholar's Gold.

But once you have your base package and are ready for more, what should you buy next?

That's the question that a new Logos user asked in the newsgroups recently:

I bought the Scholar's Gold edition. Can you suggest any other good resources I would want to add to it?

I use it mostly for speaking/preaching so I enjoy having lots of good commentaries.

With around 9,000 resources, it's good to have a little guidance to find out what others consider most useful.

Several longtime Logos users responded with their recommendations. Here are some of the things that they suggested:

• Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary
• Hermeneia
• Word Biblical Commentary
• BDAG and HALOT (available at a discount in a bundle)
• Theological Journal Library
• Robert Reymond's Systematic Theology
• Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology
• Cornelius Van Til
• Pillar New Testament Commentary

I'd concur with most of these recommendations and probably add the Essential IVP Reference Collection and the new Lexham Discourse Greek New Testament Bundle. I'd also point out our Top 10 lists, our Commentary product guide, and our Pre-Pub system.

What would you recommend? What are your top picks for moving beyond a base package?

The Lexham Greek-English Interlinear Septuagint is a project that we've been working on for some time. This is perhaps one of the largest projects we've taken on, involving 29 (at present) contributors and two editors (Randall Tan, the General Editor, and David A. deSilva, the Contributing Editor). Several of the contributors have also contributed copious notes covering different text-critical, translational and lexical issues. In this first release, a 20-book portion (see book list below), there are over 6700 notes.

In tandem with the development of the interlinear portions, we have also been working on a new morphology to the Septuagint (LXX) that will accompany the interlinear.

As mentioned on the pre-pub page, our plan all along has been to release portions as they are available. Those who have been Logos customers for awhile may recall that this is how we released the Lexham Hebrew-English Interlinear Bible. There is one resource; as new portions are available the resource will be updated to include those new portions, and released on FTP. Those who have the license simply download the update to get the revised and updated resource.

I'm happy to report that we finally have our first major chunk of The Lexham Greek-English Interlinear Septuagint just about ready to release. There are 20 books of the LXX included in this release. Books fall into two different categories, those in a draft status, and those in an edited status. The draft status means that by and large, the interlinear portions have been completed by the contributor but they have not yet been reviewed by the editor. The edited status means that the interlinear portions have been reviewed by the project general editor.

Books in an edited status are as follows:

• Exodus
• Ruth
• Psalms
• Additional Psalm (Psalm 151)
• Proverbs
• Ecclesiastes
• Song of Solomon
• Obadiah
• Haggai
• Letter of Jeremiah

The following books are in draft status:

• Genesis
• Numbers
• Job
• Jeremiah
• Lamentations
• Ezekiel
• Zechariah
• Malachi
• Baruch
• Psalms of Solomon

The interlinear has seven interlinear lines; these are:

• Manuscript
• Manuscript (Transliterated)
• Greek Lemma
• Greek Lemma (Transliterated)
• Morphology
• English Lexical Value
• English Literal Translation

Why are there two English entries for each word? The Lexham Greek-English Interlinear Septuagint, takes advantage of its digital environment to offer multiple layers of English glosses that reflect the complexity of the Greek language structure. Like the other Lexham interlinears (Hebrew-English Bible and Greek-English NT) there are two levels of interlinear translation. The first is the English Lexical Value, which is a gloss of the lexical or dictionary form of the word. The second is the English Literal Translation, a contextually sensitive gloss of the inflected form of the word. The difference in these glosses is subtle, but powerful. The first gloss answers the question, "What does this word mean?" The second gloss answers the question, "What does this word mean here?"

The English Literal Translation line also includes a word order number, where necessary, to allow the reader to re-assemble the text in an order more friendly to English readers. The below screen capture, with only the Manuscript and English Literal Translation lines shows how helpful this can be:

One would reassemble the text as follows:

¹ And (then) the Lord spoke all these words, saying, ² "I am the Lord your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of servitude. ³ There will be not to you other gods except me! (Exodus 20:1-3)

Somewhat rough, of course, but remember it is an interlinear translation. The goal is make it easier for the LXX to play a role in one's study of the Bible, both Old Testament and New Testament.

If you haven't subscribed to this pre-pub already, you may want to consider it sooner than later. Once the first portion ships, the pre-pub will be filled, and then the price will go up.

One of the features in Bible Study Magazine is an ongoing Bible study that focuses on the practical value of the book of Hebrews for Christians today. In conjunction with this series, we created a product guide of commentaries and Bible study tools on this important letter.

If you've ever wanted to see a list of most of the commentaries that we sell on the book of Hebrews—more than 35—now you can in our Hebrews product guide.

If you're planning to study or preach through Hebrews, you're sure to find some great tools to add to your digital library.

For more lists of resources, be sure to check out our other product guides. Have an idea for a product guide that you'd like to see? Drop us a note in the comments and let us know.

A potential customer emailed me his concerns about investing in an electronic library:

"I have had the desire to invest in an electronic library, but I am terrified of investing all of this money into one and then losing my money's worth because new computers will not be able to read them. How does Logos deal with this? Will my grandchildren be able to use my electronic library?"

This is a fear we hear regularly, but one that quickly goes away once we explain how Logos licenses the content, not the file-format.

It's true that digital data can be lost if it is not constantly migrated to new storage media and kept in up-to-date or easily parsed formats. Paper books can be lost, too — just look at New Orleans and the libraries lost to flooding and mold.

The key issue is, who is ensuring your continued access? With paper it's you — you have to keep it dry and away from fire, and you have to be willing to store and move it. (Most books are "lost" when people don't want to move them yet again.)

I can't make guarantees about the future; nobody can. But in Logos' case, we've got a 17 year track record, we're a strong business, and we've honored users licenses to the electronic books through various format, media, and operating system changes for more than a dozen years. That's a pretty good record.

Moreover, what we sell you is the license to the book, NOT the digital file. When we change formats (which we've done) you don't have to re-acquire a license. When music went from vinyl records to cassettes to CD's, you had to re-purchase the album each time. But we aren't selling you "today's format" — we're selling an electronic license. With Logos, it's as if you're provided the song free on cassette, CD, and then digital download, all because of your original vinyl purchase.

Can you loan the book, and can your grandchildren have it [see the clarification below]? No. But not because of the electronic format. It's because we offer a really good price in exchange for licensing to one user. We sell our electronic books (in collections) at a huge discount from list price.

The big question is, what is your goal? To have beautiful books on your shelf that you can pass as heirlooms to your descendents, or to get convenient, useful access to a large library of content with a powerful set of tools for searching and reports?

I can "acquire a movie" in several ways: $9 at the theater, $1.99 VHS rental later, $29.95 to own the DVD, or (maybe) hundreds of dollars to acquire a film print. Each format has strengths and weaknesses. The theater experience is the best way to see it, but when it's over, it's over. The rental lets me rewind and pause and watch it a few times, but it's on a small screen and later in the release cycle. The DVD is also on my home screen, costs more, and might still go obsolete years down the road. The film is physically simple — shine light through the film to project — and actually the "safest" format to ensure my descendents can watch it, but it's more expensive, more awkward, etc.

The biggest risk with our electronic books is that we go out of business and then, some years later, computers change in a way that doesn't let you run our software. We intend, of course, to stay in business, and (to the best of our knowledge) we're the largest and strongest player in Bible software. But still, A) virtualization technology will probably ensure the ability to run this generation of applications for a long time and B) we have a large enough customer base that even in a bankruptcy someone would probably acquire and retain our product line and/or customer relationships.

So is your investment in e-books a safe bet? I believe so. Plus, it's easier on the back when it's time to move your library.

October is Pastor Appreciation Month. Pastors, since you are such an important part of our user base, we want to show our appreciation by giving you something for free and offering you discounted pricing on many of our best collections.

For the rest of the month, you can download the Sermon File Addin at no charge. No coupon codes necessary. Just visit the product page and place your order for the downloadable version.

We invite you to download it and give it a try—and spread the word to other pastors. Check out the video below to learn more about this powerful tool.

After you download it, be sure to watch the five tutorial videos at the bottom of the product page.

If you already have the Sermon File Addin, we want to show our appreciation to you as well! We're offering discounted pricing on these 16 collections. Just use coupon code PAM2008 to see the special savings in your shopping cart.

• Classical Pastoral Care (4 Vols.)
• Preaching & Leadership Collection (18 Vols.)
• The Complete Library of Christian Worship (8 Vols.)
• Pastoral Ministry Collection (13 Vols.)
• Broadman & Holman Preaching Resources Collection (18 Vols.)
• Church Origins Collection (10 Vols.)
• D. A. Carson Collection (5 Vols.)
• An Exposition on Prayer in the Bible (5 Vols.)
• Nelson 325 Book Unlock (325 Vols.)
• Biblical Counseling Collection (30 Vols.)
• R. Kent Hughes' Preaching the Word Collection (19 Vols.)
• R. Kent Hughes' Preaching the Word Upgrade (12 Vols.)
• The Pulpit Commentary (77 Vols.)
• Selected Works of Martyn Lloyd-Jones (10 Vols.)
• The New International Greek Testament Commentary (12 Vols.)
• John Hunt Desk Reference Collection (4 Vols.)

If you're not a pastor, why not show your pastor how much you appreciate him by buying him one of our base packages. Save 25% off with coupon code BLESSING. And then tell your pastor how he can get the Sermon File Addin for free by sending this post to him.

Update: The Sermon File Addin offer has expired.

We're excited to be able to make available on Pre-Pub 41 books in five collections from our new friends at Canon Press.

These collections cover a wide range of biblical, theological, and practical issues and are sure to be of help to average Christians, pastors, and scholars alike.

• Canon Press Theology Collection (9 Vols.)

• Canon Press Biblical Studies Collection (6 Vols.)

• Nancy Wilson Collection (3 Vols.)

• Peter J. Leithart Collection (6 Vols.)

• Douglas J. Wilson Collection (17 Vols.)

Canon Press is one of the literature ministries of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, which is pastored by Douglas Wilson, a theologian and prolific author—both in print and on his popular Blog and Mablog.

Wilson is also a powerful apologist in the tradition of Cornelius Van Til. I thoroughly enjoyed the six-part debate with atheist Christopher Hitchens hosted by ChristianityToday.com in June of 2007, "Is Christianity Good for the World?"

An unusually high number of Pre-Pubs are scheduled to ship in the next few weeks. That means that the special discounted pricing will be ending very soon. You may want to give this list a quick look over to make sure that you don't unknowingly miss out on any of these great deals.

Here they are in order of estimated ship date.

10/16/2008

• The Trinity by Roger E. Olson and Christopher A. Hall

10/17/2008

• Forms of the Old Testament Literature Series (17 Vols.) 
• Historical Theology by William Cunningham (2 Vols.)
• Standard Reference Library: Old Testament Collection (3 Vols.)
• Theology and Doctrine Collection (16 Vols.)

10/20/2008

• NLT Study Bible Libronix Software

10/21/2008

• James Buchanan Collection (2 Vols.)

10/23/2008

• Calvin and the Reformation: Four Studies

10/24/2008

• Abraham Kuyper Collection (3 Vols.)
• New Testament Textual Criticism Collection (6 Vols.)

10/27/2008

• PBI Old Testament Studies Collection (6 Vols.)

10/28/2008

• Day One Creation and Science Collection (10 Vols.)
• Josephus in Greek: Niese Critical Edition with Apparatus

11/7/2008

• Crossway Classic Commentary Collection Upgrade (11 Vols.)
• Theological Lexicon of the New Testament (3 Vols.)
• Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament (3 Vols.)

And last, but certainly not least, is the long-awaited Old Testament Greek Pseudepigrapha with Morphology with a target ship date of 11/14/2008. Many of you have been patiently waiting for a very long time. The wait is just about over.

What in the world are those crazy people at Logos doing now? What is The Lexham Analytical Lexicon of the Greek New Testament? Why another lexicon?

There are a few reasons, actually. Here are three of them.

First, this lexicon takes advantage of the classification in Louw & Nida's Greek-English Lexicon based on Semantic Domains and offers definitions of each lemma broken into the different senses used in the Greek New Testament, as shown below.

Second, this lexicon lists every instance of every word in the NA27/UBS4 Greek New Testament classified by Louw-Nida sense. Why is this important? It means that you can be in the Greek New Testament, KeyLink into the Lexham Analytical Lexicon, and (particularly if you're using the Active Reference Visual Filter) note the classification of the instance from which you KeyLinked.

The Lexham Analytical Lexicon to the Greek New Testament is a great complement to the Lexham Greek-English Interlinear of the New Testament and is designed to provide keylinking help when keylinking from text that is not morphologically tagged—like commentaries, as described in the third point above.

Interested? Then this one is for you. No waiting for this one to make it through the Pre-Pub process. It's already done. Get yours today!

I'm really excited about two new reference tools that we have recently added to our Pre-Pub page.

• Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature (12 Vols.)

• New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (13 Vols.)

Big, unwieldy, out-of-print sets like these make wonderful additions to your Libronix digital library. Not only will you save huge amounts of shelf space, but you'll be able to find what you're looking for with far greater ease.

Looking for a word or phrase? No problem. No need to flip back and forth between the index volume (which we include for the set that has one) and the other volumes. Just run a search and click to jump right to the locations.

Want to look up a particular entry? Libronix is at your service. No need to try to figure out which volume it's in. Libronix allows you to enter your topic right into the top of the resource and instantly jump to the right place in the right volume—no matter which volume you happen to have opened.

Want to find a Bible passage? Piece of cake. By using the reference browser or the basic search, you'll have all the hits in seconds. You can even integrate these sets right into the Passage Guide.

I could go on, but you get the point. Libronix makes Bible study better and easier—especially when it comes to using gargantuan sets like these.

Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature (12 Vols.)

This classic set is composed of 12 volumes of roughly 1,000 pages each for a total of 12,324 pages packed with biblical and theological content. With 31,000 articles and about 17,000,000 words, it's unlikely you'll come up empty handed when you turn to this resource.

As a reference point, the 83-volume Anchor Yale Bible, which has 43,315 pages, has an estimated 25,000,000 words. In terms of cost per amount of data, the Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature is a tremendous value.

New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (13 Vols.)

This 13-volume, 6,328-page set covers a huge range of topics. The full title says it best: The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religion Knowledge, Embracing Biblical, Historical, Doctrinal, and Practical Theology, and Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiological Biography from the Earliest Times to the Present Day. The Homiletic Review called it "indispensable . . . the best reference work in the entire field."

Though both of these sets are a bit older, they are still of considerable value for today.

October 5, 2008 marked 305 years since the birth of Jonathan Edwards, who has been widely known as America's greatest theologian. Most people's birthdays don't get remembered by very many people after they die, but Jonathan Edwards is a notable exception.

John Piper on Jonathan Edwards

As I mentioned in Friday's post on Learning from Your Heroes' Heroes, John Piper is well known for his immense appreciation for Edwards. He's written or edited two books about Edwards, both of which are available in Libronix:

• God's Passion for His Glory: Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards
• A God Entranced Vision of All Things: The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards

I'd strongly encourage you to listen to or read Piper's biographical sketch on Edwards, "The Pastor as Theologian," which was given at the first Desiring God Pastors Conference in 1988. Powerful and motivating.

As you might expect, Piper wrote a blog post about Jonathan Edwards' Birthday, where he had this to say about him:

I suppose, after the Bible, no theologian has a greater ongoing effect on me as Jonathan Edwards. There are few in the world who combine the sharpness of mind, the scope of thought, the allegiance to Scripture, the depth of insight, the intensity of affections, the height of imagination, and the power of expression that he brings to all his work. I thank God for him today.

Coming Soon to Libronix!

Soon you'll be able to have the standard 2-volume set fully searchable and tagged in your Libronix library. We announced Edwards' works on Pre-Pub at the end of March. I just heard from our Electronic Text Development department that we're not too far away from being ready to ship! If you haven't placed your pre-order yet, don't miss out on your chance to get our best price on the works of this eminently influential theologian. Place your pre-order now.

A Birthday Special

What would a birthday be without a birthday present? To celebrate Edwards' 305th birthday and the soon arrival of his works in Libronix format, we have two specials for you, our blog readers:

1. Get a taste of Edwards now by downloading A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections for free! Use coupon code EDWARDS during checkout to get this Edwards classic for no charge.
2. Save 40% on the two Piper books on Edwards mentioned above by using coupon code PIPER-EDWARDS.

Both specials are good for one week, so take advantage now and spread the word!

Update: This offer has expired.

Some people's opinions carry a lot of weight, and rightfully so. For many, John Piper is one of those people. It's hard to overstate his influence on evangelicalism. His preaching and writings are powerful and his wedding of passion and God-centered theology is contagious.

Like many of you, I've learned much from him—and, consequently, from his teachers.

Just as God uses John Piper to mold and shape people's lives, God has used many people—living and dead—to shape John Piper. It's wise to seek to learn from them as well.

I discovered Jonathan Edwards—like I'm sure many others have—due to the central role he has played for Piper. Of course, I knew about Edwards in my "pre-Piper" days, but Piper led me to really delve into his writings.

I'm eager to have Henry Alford's Greek Testament in my digital library before too long (just a few more pre-orders needed!), largely because of what Piper had to say about it.

Another author whom Piper has created interest in is Charles Simeon, whose massive Horae Homileticae (Hours of Homilies) was nearly impossible to obtain until we produced a digital edition of it. (Read the story of how it all came to be.) Now the entire collection containing 54 years of Simeon's expository sermons covering the entire Bible is again available—and, I might add, much more useful!

At the 1989 Desiring God Pastors Conference, John Piper gave his annual biographical sketch on the life of Charles Simeon. It was entitled "Brothers, We Must Not Mind a Little Suffering." You can listen to the message or read it online. If you have the Piper collection, you can read the expanded edition right in Libronix.

According to Piper, Horae Homileticae "is the best place to go to research Simeon's theology. One can find his views on almost every key text in the Bible." (Roots of Endurance, 86). The depth and power of Simeon's ministry was rooted in "a life of prayer and meditation." As a result, "what Simeon experienced in the Word and prayer was extraordinary. It is so utterly different from the counsel that we receive today that it is worth looking at carefully" (Roots of Endurance, 106-07).

For a limited time, we're offering Simeon's 21-volume Horae Homileticae for more than 50% off the retail price when you use coupon code BIOGRAPHY.

Andy Naselli, a good friend of mine and an avid Logos user, points out a relevant quote in a new book from Crossway: The New Media Frontier: Blogging, Vlogging, and Podcasting for Christ, edited by John Mark Reynolds and Roger Overton. In his chapter, "Professors with a New Public: Academics and New Media," Fred Sanders avers,

The coming crisis in academic publishing is centered on the expense of printing and distributing scholarly works with an extremely narrow focus. Electronic publishing is the obvious source of a solution to this problem. The current editorial systems could stay in place just as they are, with the cost of production dropping to a fraction of the current system. It may be a long time before paperless publication is desirable for all users, but in academia it seems like an obvious need. The current system . . . must find a way out of its deadlock. (p. 172)

We're happy to be a large part of this solution.

If you've been following our Pre-Pub offerings for the last couple of years, you're well aware that we are publishing digital editions of a host of expensive academic resources. While the front-end costs of high-end digital publishing aren't small (especially if we have to work from print rather than digital sources), the on-going costs are significantly less allowing volumes that cost $100-200 or even more in print to be available for significantly less digitally. This set was a perfect illustration of the savings that digital can offer: Library of NT Studies: JSNTS on the Gospels and Acts (16 Vols.).

On a closely related note, you may remember that back in May Dale Pritchett addressed this subject in his presentation "Logos in the Classroom." If you missed it, be sure to give it a listen or read the transcript.

We just posted a new video from Steve Runge about the Lexham Discourse Greek New Testament. You can watch it on the LDGNT product page or right here in the blog post.

Steve's been working hard for the last few months on a new discourse-related project, so be on the lookout for an announcement—perhaps even sometime this week.

Several months ago we put a collection of 48 volumes from H. A. Ironside on Pre-Pub. Many were thrilled at the prospect of having access to Ironside's writings in Libronix, but several people lamented that we had not included all of Ironside's commentaries.

We did some research and found out that we were in fact missing 17 of his 32 commentaries! So we immediately looked into whether or not we could include them as well. We were happy to get approval and began to try to locate print copies of all of those missing volumes.

Fortunately, we have many book lovers in the office. And one of them happened to have a beautiful copy of all 32 of Ironside's commentaries! Since he prefers having access to his commentaries in Logos, he was happy to part with his print set to help the project move forward. Thanks, Andy!

So we're pleased to announce The Works of H. A. Ironside (65 Vols.)—now including the complete set of Ironside's 32 commentaries covering 51 books of the Bible! In addition to the 32 biblical commentaries, you'll get 32 books—covering a variety of subjects like baptism, the Holy Spirit, assurance, and many others—and a collection of 25 pamphlets, sermon notes, tracts, lectures, and other miscellaneous writings.

If you enjoy the writings of H. A. Ironside or want to study the contributions of this important 20th-century preacher, you won't want to pass up this phenomenal deal—65 volumes for about $2.60 a piece!

By the way, if you had pre-ordered the earlier 48-volume collection, you'll need to place a new order for this 65-volume collection and cancel your original order.

In just a few days this new collection has reached 100%! Production is now underway. Don't miss out on this tremendous deal. Place your pre-order today.

If you're unfamiliar with Ironside, you can learn more about him right in your Libronix digital library:

• J. A. Carpenter, "Ironside, Henry ('Harry') Allen (1876-1951)," Dictionary of Christianity in America.
• J. D. Douglas, ed., "Ironside, Henry Allen (1876-1951)," New 20th-Century Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, 2nd ed.
• Millard J. Erickson, "Ironside, Henry Allen (H. A.) (1876-1951)," The Concise Dictionary of Christian Theology, rev. ed., 105.
• T. Gloege, "IRONSIDE, Henry ('Harry') Allen," Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals, ed. Timothy Larsen, 325-26.
• George Thomas Kurian, ed., "Ironside, Henry Allen ('Harry')," Nelson's New Christian Dictionary.
• T. P. Weber, "Ironside, Henry Allen (1876-1951)," Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, ed. Walter A. Elwell.

I've worked at Logos for a long time — fifteen years! There used to be a time when I knew every title and author we published. But we're publishing so much, and putting so much more on pre-pub, that I lost track of it all.

Actually, I lost track of it all long ago. We have a lot of books available. I tend to only keep track of certain areas that have to do with my primary areas of study — Greek, linguistics, Pauline Epistles, and early church.

But something neat happened to me this past weekend. My lovely wife will be attending a ladies' Book Study at the church we attend. They'll be reading and discussing Bryan Chappell's book, Holiness by Grace.

On a whim, I searched the Logos web site for "chapell" by just typing it in the upper-right corner of the page, like this:

Here's what I found in the "Downloadable Products" section of the results:

How cool is that? We've actually done the book already! Now I'll have it in my Logos Library at home too, so Amy and I can work through the book together as she attends the book study this fall.

But what was really cool to me was that I searched Logos on a whim. I had no idea if we had Holiness by Grace available or not. But we've done so many books in the past few years that I figured it was worth a chance.

This is a book that I'd never look for; that I wouldn't have even known to search for had my sweet wife not signed up for the book study. But it was there when I looked for it. Why? Because Logos does lots of high-quality, useful books from lots of different publishers so that not only will you find the stuff you know you want; you might even find stuff you didn't know you wanted.

Who knows? Maybe that book you need for a class or a study is available in Logos format too!

Today's guest blogger is Adam Navarrete, who works in the marketing department here at Logos.

The Logos Lecture Series is back in action after taking a month off. Tomorrow, September 24, we will host Dr. Arnold Fruchtenbaum of Ariel Ministries, who will be speaking on "The Basis of the Second Coming." Make a point of joining us at 7:00 PM at the American Museum of Radio and Electricity here in Bellingham, Washington.

About the Lecture

While the rapture of the church has no preconditions and can happen at any moment of time, the second coming for Israel does have a major precondition: Israel's national salvation. This topic is a study of the circumstances of the rejection of the Messiah by Israel and the one prerequisite that must be fulfilled before the Messiah can return.

About the Speaker

Arnold Fruchtenbaum is the author of books such as Jesus Was a Jew, Messianic Christology, and Hebrew Christianity, among many others. He began his formal education at Shelton College, earned B.A. degrees in Hebrew and Greek from Cedarville University, his M.T.S. from Dallas Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. at New York University. Dr. Fruchtenbaum has lived and worked with the messianic congregation in Jerusalem, ministered for the American Board of Missions to the Jews, was editor of The Chosen People, served as Associate Director of the world's largest Messianic Jewish broadcasting ministry at The Christian Jew Foundation, and currently serves as Director of Ariel Ministries.

Event Details

• Title: The Basis of the Second Coming
• Speaker: Dr. Arnold Fruchtenbaum of Ariel Ministries
• Date: Wednesday, September 24
• Time: 7:00-8:00 PM
• Location: The American Museum of Radio and Electricity in Bellingham, Washington
• Admission is free!

For those who are unable to attend the lecture, we hope to make the audio available within a few days of the event.

By the way, be sure to check out our collection of books from Dr. Fruchtenbaum in the Ariel Ministries Messianic Collection (11 Vols.).

To get you thinking about our next lecture, our guest will be local professor Clarence Zylstra of Whatcom Community College. He will present his topic, "Understanding Radical Islam," on Monday, October 27. Please check the Lecture Series page, which we'll keep updated as more information becomes available.

Today's guest blogger is Kent Hendricks, the main Pre-Pub man here at Logos.

A few weeks ago, Phil mentioned several big shipments of books headed to the Pre-Pub page. Since then, we've brought you dozens of collections and hundreds of books, including books from Baker, IVP, and our biggest Pre-Pub ever, the Anchor Yale Bible (83 Vols.).

But we're still not done.

If you've perused the Pre-Pub page lately, you've probably noticed all the new books from Paternoster Press. In fact, in the span of just a few days, we posted ten collections containing almost 100 books! In case you haven't been able to keep up, here's a quick summary of these exciting new books from Paternoster.

The Paternoster Theological Studies Collection (25 Vols.) is not only the biggest collection from Paternoster, but it's also the best value. The equivalent print copies of these books would cost you well over $1,000, but they're currently listed at $12.00 per volume on Pre-Pub. In this collection, you'll find book-length treatments of some of the most influential Christian thinkers from the past century, like Karl Barth, Jurgen Moltmann, Reinhold Niebuhr, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Alvin Plantinga, William G. T. Shedd, John Howard Yoder, and many more. This amounts to more than 7,000 pages of the best in theological studies from Paternoster Press!

If you like theological studies, you'll also want to check out three smaller collections, the Paternoster Atonement Collection (5 Vols.), the Paternoster Trinitarian Studies Collection (4 Vols.), and the Paternoster Spiritual Growth Collection (4 Vols.).

We're also featuring four collections for biblical scholars:

• Paternoster Old Testament Studies Collection (10 Vols.)
• Paternoster New Testament Studies Collection (7 Vols.)
• Paternoster Gospels Studies Collection (10 Vols.)
• Paternoster Pauline Studies Collection (11 Vols.)

The Paternoster Missional Theology Collection (16 Vols.) includes books by Jason Clark, Robert Jenson, Brian McLaren, and lots of other great authors who are writing some of the most influential books at the intersection of theology and culture. In this collection, you'll find books on the emerging church, ancient liturgy, missional theology, and cultural engagement.

Speaking of cultural engagement, we're also offering a collection of books which tackle some of the biggest issues facing the church today. The Paternoster Contemporary Issue Collection (7 Vols.) contains books on politics, feminism, Israel, hell, the problem of evil, and lots of other important subjects.

And remember, it always pays to place your Pre-Pub order early. Sometimes Pre-Pub prices go up, and other times we add books to collections later on. By placing your order today for these collections from Paternoster, not only are you guaranteed the lowest price, but you'll also help move these collections into production as soon as possible!

We realize that we've been sending a lot of Pre-Pubs your way—on average about one a day. In some ways that's good because that gives you more books to choose from and it's more likely that we'll offer the kinds of books that you want. But it also has its downsides. For one, it's easy for many of these collections and titles to end up getting lost on our massive Pre-Pub page, which has nearly 200 products on it right now.

Since we add new Pre-Pubs at such a rapid pace, it's likely that there are some  buried deep in the page that might be right up your alley. Perhaps one of these:

1. Old Testament Studies Series Collection (8 Vols.)
2. Christ Is All
3. PBI Old Testament Studies Collection (6 Vols.)
4. Robert P. Lightner and Aubrey Malphurs Collection (9 Vols.)
5. Smeaton Theology Collection (3 Vols.)
6. Evangelism Collection (11 Vols.)
7. Broadman & Holman Baptist History Collection (11 Vols.)
8. Theology and Doctrine Collection (16 Vols.)
9. The Greek Testament by Henry Alford (8 Vols.)
10. Sheffield Reader Collection (12 Vols.)

Each of these needs just a handful of orders to send them into production. Give them a look. If something catches your eye that you had previously missed, consider placing your pre-order. You could be the one to send it into production and make lots of patient people very happy.

If you love to study the Bible, you probably love commentaries as well. Commentaries are wonderful tools for helping you to understand the historical background of the Bible; the meaning of its words, phrases, clauses, sentences, paragraphs, and books; its timeless theological message; and how all of that applies to how we ought to live in the 21st century.

Commentaries are ideal books to have in digital format, especially when connected with the power of the Passage Guide. That's part of the reason that they are our top selling category of add-on books. If you regularly watch our Pre-Pub page, you've no doubt noticed that we add new commentary series all the time.

Here are the recent additions to the Pre-Pub page since the last time I mentioned the commentary series on Pre-Pub:

• Cornerstone Biblical Commentary (9 Vols.)
• Anchor Yale Bible (83 Vols.)
• Focus on the Bible Commentaries (32 Vols.)
• Black's New Testament Commentary (13 Vols.)
• The Expositor's Greek Testament (5 Vols.)
• An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews, by John Owen (7 Vols.)

We have several pages on our website that are geared to help you keep up with all the commentaries that we are making available—and help you choose the best ones for you.

The Product Guide to Multi-Volume Commentaries brings together all of the commentary sets we offer and provides essential details like intended audience, publisher, number of volumes, etc. We try to update it every time we add a new series to Pre-Pub or Community Pricing, so it should be a fairly accurate list of all the series that we offer. If you're looking to add new commentaries to your digital library, this is the best place to start.

But what if you are studying or preaching on a particular book and want to find all of the commentaries that we have on, say, Romans? You could try searching on Romans, but that won't provide you with a completely accurate list. (It's even worse if you search on Mark, since Mark is a common first name and mark is a common noun and verb in the English language.)

We're working on ways to make it easier to search and browse for what you're looking for—like finding all the commentaries we offer on a particular book—but in the meantime we're thrilled to be able to point you to an awesome new website run by DTS grad and developer John Dyer: BestCommentaries.com.

BestCommentaries.com lists the most important commentaries on every book of the Bible, along with the series they are in (if any), ratings, categorization, places to buy, and so much more. It even lists projected forthcoming commentaries! And one of the coolest new features is the integration with Logos.com. As you browse through BestCommentaries.com, look for the Logos logo. Whenever you see it, it's an indication that that commentary is available (or will soon be available) in our format. Click it to go straight to the product page and place your order or pre-order.

You'll see our logo on the best of the best page, as well as in the list of commentaries on a book when you hover over the commentary

and on the individual commentary pages.

As you continue to build the commentaries section of your library—both print and digital—be sure to make use of all of the helpful information at BestCommentaries.com. You might just find some new commentaries to add to your Libronix digital library that you didn't even know were available!

Update: John just created a new Logos page where you can see all of the commentaries available in our format. Very cool.

We added some new titles from IVP to the Pre-Pub page last week. IVP publishes a lot of quality books, many of which are available for Libronix. We're excited to be able to expand our offerings with these 17 new volumes.

IVP Biblical Theology Collection (4 Vols.)

• A Concise New Testament Theology, I. Howard Marshall
• Old Testament Theology, Paul R. House
• Old Testament Theology, Vol. 1: Israel's Gospel, John Goldingay
• Old Testament Theology, Vol. 2: Israel's Faith, John Goldingay

This set will provide you with some key biblical theology texts for exploring the the message of Scripture as it is progressively unfolded in each of the books of the Bible.

IVP Evangelical Theology Collection (11 Vols.)

• Ancient Faith for the Church's Future, ed. Mark Husbands and Jeffrey P. Greenman
• Biblical Theology: Retrospect and Prospect, ed. Scott J. Hafemann
• Care for the Soul: Exploring the Intersection of Psychology & Theology, ed. Mark R. McMinn and Timothy R. Phillips
• Christian Apologetics in the Postmodern World, ed. Timothy R. Phillips and Dennis L. Okholm
• Evangelicals & Scripture: Tradition, Authority and Hermeneutics, ed. Vincent E. Bacote, Laura C. Miguelez, and Dennis L. Okholm
• Justification: What's at Stake in the Current Debates, ed. Mark Husbands and Daniel Treier
• The Beauty of God: Theology and the Arts, ed. Daniel Treier, Mark Husbands and Roger Lundin
• The Community of the Word: Toward an Evangelical Ecclesiology, ed. Mark Husbands and Daniel Treier
• The Gospel in Black and White, ed. Dennis L. Okholm
• The Nature of Confession, ed. Timothy R. Phillips and Dennis L. Okholm
• Women, Ministry and the Gospel, ed. Mark Husbands and Timothy Larsen

Each of these books is the fruit of one of the annual Wheaton Theology Conferences. These volumes contain essays from some of the top evangelical scholars in the world and explore issues that are of special importance for the church today.

Two titles didn't fit into a collection and are available as individual volumes:

• The Lord's Supper: Five Views, ed. Gordon T. Smith
• The Shape of Practical Theology: Empowering Ministry with Theological Praxis, Ray S. Anderson

Thanks to IVP for making all of these available!

I mentioned in yesterday's blog post that you may want to keep locked resources on your hard drive so you can (1) search them and (2) find cool new resources to add to your digital library.

If you've managed to stumble across a locked resource that you'd like to unlock, you have several options.

For your convenience, you can unlock most resources from within the program itself. Simply click on the locked resource, and then click on "Unlock this resource..." in the window that opens.

Or click the padlock icon in the Tools menu or on your toolbar.

With the built-in unlocker, you can have your new resource unlocked and begin using it immediately.

Your other options are to head on over to Logos.com and search for the resource you want to unlock (most resources are available for immediate download) or give our sales team at jingle at 800-875-6467.

Read more about unlocking resources in this article.

A couple of weeks ago I showed you how to free up some hard drive space by deleting duplicate resources. There's another way to make even more space available: deleting locked resources.

Searching Locked Resources

Now, before I show you how to do that, I should tell you that there is actually a very good reason for keeping locked resources on your hard drive. You may not know this, but you can actually search the contents of locked resources as well. Libronix will even give you the page numbers where the hits for your search occur!

This is helpful for two reasons:

1. If you have the book in print, you can pull it off your shelf and find exactly what you're looking for—far more powerful and far easier to use than typical indexes, which the print book may not even have.
2. You may find other resources that you don't have in Libronix or in print that deal with a topic or passage that you're studying that you might want to add to your library.

But if you don't plan to search your locked resources and need to free up some space, you may want to delete them.

Do You Have Locked Resources?

To find out if you have locked resources on your computer, open My Library and select "All Locked Resources" under the "Collection" drop-down.

Locked resources have a yellow padlock over the book icon.

How Can You Delete Them?

There are two methods for deleting locked resources.

Method 1

If you have a smaller number of locked resources, you could run a Bibliography report (Tools > Library Management > Bibliography) and set it to "All Locked Resources" and "Titles and Locations" to find the file names and locations for all of your locked resources. You could then open your resources folder (e.g., C:\Program Files\Libronix DLS\Resources) and manually delete the locked resources you no longer want. (You may need to close Libronix in order to delete them.)

Method 2

If you have a larger number of locked resources, you may want to try this method. It does require that you have some free space, and it does take some time to run.

NOTE: This method is recommended only for advanced users.

1. Open the Location Manager (Tools > Library Management > Location Manager) and select "Unlocked on Local Drives." Enter a new destination that doesn't have any files in it (e.g., C:\Program Files\Libronix DLS\Resources\Unlocked). If the folder doesn't exist, Libronix will automatically create it. After Libronix is done generating the list of resource, click "Copy Resources." Libronix will copy all unlocked resources to your new folder. Be patient. It may take some time. Wait until it is completely done before proceeding.
2. Manually delete all of the resources from your original resources folder, since it contains locked and unlocked resources. To do this, open your resources folder in Windows Explorer and select all of the resources. If your new resources folder is a subfolder of your original resources folder, make sure not to delete it or any other folders (e.g., Media). Delete only the .lbxlls files.
3. Move all of the resources from your new resources folder back to your original resources folder and delete the new resources folder.
4. Start Libronix and open My Library. If any of your unlocked resources are grayed out, that means that you deleted some unlocked resources as well. Don't worry. You can restore them from your Recycle Bin. If you don't see any grayed out unlocked resources, you can proceed to Refresh Resources (Tools > Option > General > Resource Paths). All locked resources should now be gone.

Enjoy your extra space!

A while back someone sent me a question about how to use the Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary to the fullest.

Any good ideas on where I can go to learn how to most effectively use this dictionary in my study process? Is there a way to integrate it into the Bible Word Study selection?

Any help would be appreciated!

I sent this user some tips, but thought this might be worthy of a blog post—especially since it’s back-to-school time and we are currently offering a 30% discount on this wonderful resource. Just use coupon code YALE to save more than $60!

Setting Up Your Keylink Preferences

First, you should set up your keylink preferences. Go to Tools > Options > Keylinks and select “English” from the “Data Type” drop-down menu. Then find the Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary in the list of resources in the bottom window and “Promote” it to the top. Prioritize it wherever you’d like. If you want it to be the first resource that Libronix looks to, move it to the top of your list.

This allows you to double-click on any English word and have quick access to the AYBD entry, if there is one. (You’ll need to set AYBD as your first keylink destination or set your keylink preferences to open several keylink destinations at a time.)

This also allows you to see AYBD entries in the Bible Word Study report.

By the way, if you don’t have the updated Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary resource (formerly Anchor Bible Dictionary), you can get it by running the resource auto-update script or by downloading it directly from our FTP server.

Creating a Parallel Resource Association

You may also want to set up a custom parallel resource association of all of your Bible dictionaries and encyclopedias. This allows you to jump from the entry on “Jericho,” for example, in the AYBD to the one in other Bible dictionary like ISBE or the New Bible Dictionary by simply hitting the right arrow key. Make sure the active index is set to “Topics.”

By creating a custom parallel resource association, you get to control which resources Libronix looks to and you get to put them in whatever order you’d like.

Watch the Video!

For more tips, see our training video on Using the Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary in Logos Bible Software. It’s embedded below. If you’re reading this in your email inbox or your RSS reader and don’t see the video, visit the blog post to watch it.

To add this resource to your Libronix digital library, visit the product page. And make sure to use coupon code YALE to save 30%!

If you've been keeping tabs on the Pre-Pub page over the last couple of weeks, you've probably noticed the scores of titles published by Baker. We just announced 9 new collections containing a total of 67 books from Baker covering topics like hermeneutics, Old Testament studies, New Testament studies, theology, preaching, counseling, and more.

Here's the complete list of collections:

• Robert Webber Ancient-Future Collection (4 Vols.)
• Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics (4 Vols.)
• Baker New Testament Studies Collection (14 Vols.)
• Baker Encountering the Bible Collection (3 Vols.)
• Baker Preaching Collection (8 Vols.)
• Baker Theology Collection (11 Vols.)
• Baker Old Testament Studies Collection (6 Vols.)
• Baker Hermeneutics Collection (14 Vols.)
• Baker Counseling Collection (3 Vols.)

I'm really excited about many of the titles included in these collections. Several that make the top of my list:

• Muller's Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics
• Schreiner's New Testament Theology
• Carson and Beale's Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament
• Vanhoozer's Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible
• Elwell's Evangelical Dictionary of Theology
• Piper's The Justification of God and The Supremacy of God in Preaching
• Chapell's Christ-Centered Preaching
• Silva's Interpreting Galatians

Which collections or individual books are you looking forward to most?

By the way, this is still only part of what I had in mind in my post about lots of great books coming down the pike. Still more to come.

The Cornerstone Biblical Commentary Series

Last Friday the Cornerstone Biblical Commentary (9 Vols.) hit the Pre-Pub page. This relatively new series from Tyndale, under the editorship of Philip W. Comfort, Tremper Longman III (OT), and Grant Osborne (NT), attempts--like the second edition of the New Living Translation it is based on--to be both exegetically accurate and idiomatically powerful.

The CBC gives careful attention to both the words and theological message of the texts of Scripture and strives to be a helpful tool for teachers, pastors, students, and lay people alike.

The contributors to this series—Allen P. Ross, Tremper Longman III, Darrell L. Bock, Harold W. Hoehner, and many others—represent a wide spectrum of theological positions within evangelicalism, reflecting the rich variety that exists in the church.

The 9-volume collection now on Pre-Pub includes the following titles:

• Genesis, Exodus
• Job, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs
• Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations
• Minor Prophets: Hosea-Malachi
• Matthew, Mark
• Luke, Acts
• The Gospel of John, 1-3 John
• Romans, Galatians
• Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, Philemon

Visit the product page to place your pre-order.

Get the Matthew, Mark Volume for Free!

We have arranged with Tyndale to give away the Matthew, Mark volume for free—no strings attached! For a limited time you can head over to product page and add this wonderful title to your Libronix digital library absolutely free of charge. Use coupon code CORNERSTONE during checkout.

We're confident that after you've had a chance to try out a volume from this series many of you will want to place your pre-order for the whole collection.

Head over to the product page to download it, and help us spread the word about this free offer!

NOTE: If you are not currently a Libronix user, we welcome you to take advantage of this free offer as well. You will simply need to follow these steps:

1. Download the free Libronix engine (for Windows) and install it. Installation is a two step process. Make sure to complete both steps before proceeding.
2. Start Libronix and create a Libronix Customer ID when prompted.
3. Visit the Matthew, Mark product page and click the "Add to Cart" button.
4. Make sure that CORNERSTONE appears in the Coupon Code box. If it doesn't, add it and click "Update Cart." Then click "Proceed" to go to the next step.
5. Log in to your Logos.com account or create one if this is your first time purchasing anything from Logos.com.
6. Enter your credit card information. Don't worry; your information is secure, and you will not be charged as long as you use the coupon code. Then click "Proceed" to go to the next step.
7. Verify that your Billing Information is correct. Then click "Proceed" to go to the next step. (NOTE: IF YOU USED THE COUPON CODE, YOU MAY SAFELY IGNORE THE SHOPPING CART INFO IN THE TOP RIGHT-HAND CORNER.)
8. In the top right-hand corner enter your Libronix Customer ID (created in step 2), click "Confirm," and then click "Submit Order." (You can find your Libronix Customer ID in Libronix under the "Help" menu in "About Libronix DLS."
9. Click the "Unlock & Download" button and then click "Open" or "Run" if prompted by your browser. Libronix Update will start and will download the book and unlock it.
10. When Libronix Update finishes, you may start Libronix and use your new book.

It's not working for me. What do I do?

1. Did you completely install Libronix first (both steps)?
2. Did you create a Libronix Customer ID?
3. Did you make sure to enter the coupon code CORNERSTONE?
4. Did you make sure to enter your Libronix Customer ID in the top right-hand corner during checkout?
5. Try working through the 10 steps again. If that doesn't work, call our Customer Service team at 800-875-6467.

I'm using the Mac alpha. How can I get the free book?

1. Follow steps 1-8 above.
2. Download the book file from the product page or from our FTP server and put it in your resources folder (normally /Library/Application Support/Libronix DLS/Resources on the startup volume).
3. Open Libronix for the Mac and synchronize your licenses by going to Tools > Library Management > Synchronize Licenses.
4. Your new book should now be unlocked and usable. You may need to restart Libronix for the changes to take effect.

Update: This offer has expired.