Logos Bible Software Blog

April 9, 2008

Bible Speed Search and Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament

First, a teaser. Here's where we're going:

[Maybe you just want to cut to the chase and watch the video instead of read. That's fine, go right ahead! — RB]

The Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament comes with two primary views. One is the Syntax Graph, (formal title: The Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament: Sentence Analysis; shortname is LEXHAMSGNTGRAPH) where the text is in a column on the right, and a graph of arrows and lines shows how the text is structured. Hovering the text brings the Expansions and Annotations data for the word into a popup. If you use the Lexham SGNT, this is probably the view you're most familiar with.

However, there's another view, one I like to call the "running text" view. This has the text of the Greek New Testament (UBS/NA) but it has one clause on each line, with indentations to show the relationships. This view is also an interlinear. The resource is The Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament, shortname is LEXHAMSGNT. Here's an example, note that I have my interlinear configured to only show the Greek text and the English gloss line (you can control this in View | Interlinear).

Now, what not many people know about this edition of the Lexham SGNT is that it is tagged for Syntactic Force. This is what many people refer to as "syntax" when they talk about the Greek of the New Testament, and it is the sort of thing that many second-year programs at seminaries and colleges dig into. You can see the clause and phrase breaks and the hierarchy implied by indentation; what you can't see is that each word carries a syntactic force annotation. So, in the above example, when I hover over ???????, a popup informs me that this could be either a circumstantial participle or an adverbial participle. Definitions of these terms are given as well.

Did you know that you can search for this kind of thing using the Bible Speed Search report? It's a little verbose, but possible: sgnt-syn = "circumstantial participle" andequals lemma:???? In the material covered by the Lexham SGNT, this happens 10 times (I know because I just did the search).

This is just one example; I made a video that explains things a little more. This combines a few different advanced concepts: non-Bible data type searching, the andequals operator (also note the notequals operator) and using the lemma field. But it allows you to find some pretty specific things. Like, copulative conjunctions that aren't ???.

• Video: 10 minutes, 7.7MB, Flash, with sound.

To further facilitate this kind of searching, I've also compiled a list of valid syntactic force codes that you can key into the Bible Speed Search dialog. So, instead of having to type "circumstantial participle", you'd know you could instead type "ptc-circum". You can download this file (PDF); hopefully it'll help in your use of the Lexham SGNT.

Lastly, I should note that the Lexham SGNT is a work in progress; at present it includes annotations of Romans-Galatians and Hebrews through Revelation. If you find annotations that you don't agree with or would like to suggest alternate annotations, we want to know about it. Send an email to syntax@logos.com and we'll make sure it gets to the editor.

February 14, 2008

Finding Louw-Nida References in the New Testament

I'll admit it; I'm hopelessly addicted to reading (and writing) blog posts; particularly those having to do with Biblical Studies and especially those having to do with the intersection of Biblical Studies and technology. And when they can mix in the Greek New Testament, well, then I usually have to clean the saliva off of my keyboard.

So when I saw Mark Hoffman post a question and an answer about finding the co-occurrence of a Louw-Nida domain and a particular morphological criterion (here where Domain 25, "Attitudes and Emotions", occurs with an imperative verb), a light went off in my head. The in-development Lexham Greek-English Interlinear New Testament, which has every word tagged with disambiguated Louw-Nida references (described more fully in this previous post), can do this fairly easily. You can even do it in one search with the Bible Speed Search dialog. Here's the query:

louw in LN25 andequals LogosMorph in V??M??

And here are the results, 122 hits in 108 verses:

And, since we haven't yet released the Lexham Greek-English Interlinear New Testament (though you can buy it on pre-pub!), I thought I'd include a video on how this search works and some further things you will be able to do with the search data once it is available.

• Video: Flash, approx. 6:00, 7.7 MB; with sound.

(Pardon my voice; I must've slept with my mouth open last night. I woke up with a dry throat and the ability to sing with a Johnny Cash style voice without even trying.)

January 24, 2008

Updates to the Louw Nida Greek-English Lexicon

The Louw-Nida Greek Lexicon (formal title: Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, though henceforth "LN") is a unique and helpful lexicon. It is, however, put together differently than most Greek lexicons.

[OK, this got a little long. If you're more of an I-have-to-see-it-to-understand-it sort of person, cut to the chase and check out the video.— RB]

Instead of being ordered by the Greek alphabet (for easy headword lookup) with one article per headword, the lexicon is ordered by the concept of semantic domain. Even more confusingly, words with multiple major senses have multiple entries. For example, ???????? could be "human being", or more specifically "man", or even more specifically, "husband". In this case, LN has at least three definitions in three different places in the lexicon.

The lexicon has a separate index, ordered by headword, that helps one to navigate the articles and actually use the lexicon. We've had LN (volumes 1 & 2) available in Logos Bible Software for years; it is included in many of our packages (specifically, Original Languages, Scholar's, Scholar's Silver and Scholar's Gold).

So to use LN, you've had to go into the index, pick the likeliest sense from the index list, then go to that entry and see if it is proper.

With the new enhancements we've made to LN, when you keylink in from a Greek New Testament (or a New Testament Reverse Interlinear), you'll go directly to the article representing the sense being used in your current instance instead of the catch-all index entry. How's that for cool? (and time-saving!)

If you still want to go to the index entry in volume 2 after having read the sense-specific article, you can still get there — check the video for the groovy keylink-on-the-lexicon-headword trick I use to do this quickly. (Note that the method is more fully documented here).

Confused? That's OK. I made a video; you can hear me blathering on for almost nine minutes on this book, how it is ordered, how it is used and the significant enhancements we've made to it to support keylinking into this lexicon from the Greek New Testament (or New Testament Reverse Interlinears!) Apologies for the last minute; I sort of ramble on for a bit.

• Video: Flash, 10.5 megs, 8:55, with sound

This updated version is available on our FTP site (ftp://ftp.logos.com/lbxbooks, look for LOUWNIDA.lbxlls). You also can download the latest version of LN from the book's page on our web site if you'd like to try this yourself.

January 18, 2008

Progress on the Lexham Greek-English Interlinear New Testament

Back in December, we put The Lexham Greek-English Interlinear New Testament on Pre-Pub.

Since the early reception to the Pre-Pub was good, we've been doing a little work on the New Testament interlinear and even have some provisional data back from the editor, Hall Harris. So I thought I'd take some time to walk you through some of the features in the hopes that even more of you will pre-order it!

• Video: Flash, 5 megs, 6:00, with sound

December 26, 2007

Greek Syntax: First Thessalonians 4:16, Part IV

I've blogged a bit about the prepositional phrase ?? ?????? in 1Th 4.16. There are three previous posts in this series:

• Greek Syntax: First Thessalonians 4:16. This post introduces the problem and shows how to do searches for the prepositional phrase.
• Greek Syntax: First Thessalonians 4:16, Part II (with video). This post shows how to just search for adverbial instances, and those in relation to where the verb (predicator) stands in the clause. So, does the prepositional phrase come before or after the verb? Or is there even a verb in the clause?
• Greek Syntax: First Thessalonians 4:16, Part III (with video). This post shows how to search for articular and anarthrous instances of ?? ??????.

Today's post, the last in the series, is a follow-up to Part II. We'll further explore how to search for ?? ?????? in relation to the verb (predicator) that it co-occurs with; only today we'll search for this with both adverbial (as in Part II) and adjectival instances. For those of you who can't wait, here's a link to the video:

• Video: Flash, 7.5MB, with sound, 5:30

In 1Th 4.16, ?? ?????? occurs before the verb, as shown below:

This instance is somewhat ambiguous (indeed, that's the reason why the JBL article was written); there are equally good reasons for the prepositional phrase to modify the subject or the verb. OpenText.org SAGNT annotates this as an adjectival relation, further modifying the subject. In order to examine like cases, we need to find where the prepositional phrase itself (whether the OpenText.org SAGNT annotates it adjectivally or adverbially) occurs preceding the predicator. Our earlier search in Part II only located OpenText.org's adverbial instances.

So today's video starts there and then shows how to search for where OpenText.org's adjectival instances precede the predicator. The combination of those two lists provides the whole set of instances where the prepositional phrase precedes the predicator.

• Video: Flash, 7.5MB, with sound, 5:30

Once the lists are available, the analysis can proceed. Examine not only the verbs, but also the other clausal components that are similar to 1Th 4.16. Which of these instances, like 1Th 4.16, appear to be genuinely ambiguous as to where the prepositional phrase can attach? And can those instances help in establishing reasons to prefer either adjectival or adverbial modification in 1Th 4.16?

Lastly, after surveying the material, you may want to do a reference search of your Greek grammars to see if any of them discuss the issue of how the prepositional phrase functions in 1Th 4.16; you may also want to check some of your commentaries (like NIGTC on Thessalonians, perhaps; or the WBC or ICC volumes if you've got 'em) to see what they say.

December 18, 2007

Greek Syntax: First Thessalonians 4:16, Part III

I've blogged a few times about 1Th 4.16 and the prepositional phrase ?? ?????? (see here and here).

But there's more to talk about.

One thing that could be handy is searching for when the prepositional object (??????) is articular, and when it is anarthrous. Our initial search for the prepositional phrase found both articular and anarthrous instances.

But in tracking how ?? ?????? functions, it may be necessary to consider articular and anarthrous instances separately. With syntax searching, you can do this. I've created a video that starts with the basic search for the prepositional phrase and adjusts it to first locate articular instances (so, ?? ?? ??????) and then to locate anarthrous instances (?? ??????) .

• Video: Flash, 7.4MB, with sound, 7:18

September 4, 2007

Using Exegetical Guide When Reading Greek NT or Hebrew Bible

I was hanging out with some Logos users at Camp Logos II, held here in Bellingham on August 27-28, when my friend and colleague Johnny asked me about ways to emulate a "Reader's Greek New Testament" inside of Logos. Johnny is always working on his Greek (and Hebrew) skills as he's pursuing a Masters degree up at Regent College. He wanted to read the Greek NT but only have glosses available for words (lemmas) that occur less than, say, 20 times in the Greek NT.

There is a way to do this, but you might not think of it. It involves paring down your Exegetical Guide preferences and also using the chain link to link your Exegetical Guide with the Greek New Testament.

Don't worry, I recorded a video to explain how you can do this too. Check it out.

• Video: Flash, 6:02, with sound, approx. 8 megs

June 22, 2007

RSS in Plain English

If you keep hearing the acronym "RSS" while waiting in vain for a clear explanation of RSS in non-geek terms...wait no longer.

This video from The Common Craft Show explains the concept simply and memorably.

Click To Play

For a detailed video tutorial on how to set up Google Reader as your RSS reader, see Getting Started with Google Reader.

Why should you care about RSS? Because it's a convenient way to receive information on topics that interest you. Things like the latest prepubs and community pricing titles from Logos, or the latest thoughts on the mind of Bob Pritchett, for example. For a list of all the Logos-related RSS feeds you can subscribe to, see Logos and RSS.

Via: Worlds Apart

May 14, 2007

Syntax Search Example: Prepositions and Nouns

If you've read this blog for awhile, you know that sometimes I just notice things as I'm reading through the text. This time, it was a syntactic structure used in 1Ti 6.3, shown below in the ESV NT Reverse Interlinear:

The structure that is highlighted is what we're interested in. This is a neat little syntactic structure where the article + substantive (here a noun) combo surrounds a prepositional phrase. Here's the syntax graph of the verse:

I thought it might be interesting and instructive to walk through constructing a search to find this and other instances (over 100 in the NT!). So I created a video.

• Video: Windows Media, 14.42 MB, 13:55, with sound

[Note: I used WMV format because the video as captured was too big for Camtasia to save as Flash format. I'll try to keep it shorter in the future -- RB]

April 3, 2007

Comparing Your Active Bible Text

Sometimes you know parts but haven't put together the whole. That happened to me today.

I knew that I could link reports to the active Bible text window.

I knew that I could run a Compare Parallel Bible Versions report to highlight the differences between editions.

I didn't realize that I could link the active window to the report ... so when I scroll in my Bible, the comparison scrolls along. Now that is cool. Here's a video to show you how it works.

• Video: Flash, approx. 4 MB, 1:55, with sound.

Did you notice how I just typed version abbreviations, separated by commas, in the compare report window? Pretty cool, huh? And if you think that's cool ... poke around other reports and see which ones have a link icon. Link up, and see what happens!

February 9, 2007

Interview with Bob Pritchett: Looking Forward

This is the sixth installment in a series of video blog posts (introduced here) sharing the story and culture of Logos Bible Software. Other posts in the series are archived in the Video category.

The video interview was shot during the final days of 2006. Scott asked Bob to summarize the highlights of the year and take a look forward to some of the exciting things coming during 2007. Enjoy!

• Highlights of 2006 (1:22 | 2.59MB)
• New Frontiers for Logos (1:16 | 2.43MB)
• Making Bible Study Too Easy? (1:22 | 2.61MB)
• Looking at the Year Ahead (1:02 | 1.97MB)

Note: All videos are in Windows Media format. Mac users may need to download the free Flip4Mac plugin for playback within QuickTime.

February 7, 2007

Interview with Bob Pritchett: Innovation at Logos

This is the fifth installment in a series of video blog posts (introduced here) sharing the story and culture of Logos Bible Software. Other posts in the series are archived in the Video category.

Bob is asked to choose the top innovations Logos has offered the world, describes his role in the development of Logos Bible Software, and discusses some of the ways ideas become product features. You'll also hear how Logos appropriates the best research and technology from other fields such as gene sequencing visualizations and applies it to the task of digital Bible study.

• Key Innovations from Logos (1:23 | 2.62MB)
• Bob's Role in Software Development Today (1:06 | 2.11MB)
• From Idea to Product Feature (1:54 | 3.62MB)

Note: All videos are in Windows Media format. Mac users may need to download the free Flip4Mac plugin for playback within QuickTime.

February 1, 2007

Interview with Bob Pritchett: Creating a Digital Library

This is the fourth installment in a series of video blog posts (introduced here) sharing the story and culture of Logos Bible Software. Other posts in the series are archived in the Video category.

Logos Bible Software pioneered the digital library concept. In these video clips, Bob describes the original vision for a "massive" 12-volume digital library, explains how new content and book-specific features drove platform redesign, and answers the commonly posed question, "Where did the name 'Libronix' come from?"

• Logos Library System 1.0 (1:12 | 2.28MB)
• A Digital Library System for 10,000 Books (3:18 | 6.22MB)
• Why "Libronix"? (00:25 | 850KB)

Note: All videos are in Windows Media format. Mac users may need to download the free Flip4Mac plugin for playback within QuickTime.

January 23, 2007

Interview with Bob Pritchett: Company in Transition

This is the third installment in a series of video blog posts (introduced here) sharing the story and culture of Logos Bible Software. Other posts in the series are archived in the Video category.

Hear about the move from New Jersey to Washington, developer meetings at Denny's restaurant, and see photos of the first Logos offices.

• Moving West (00:57 | 1.82MB)
• Life at the Office (circa early 90s) (3:33 | 6.74MB)
• From Oak Harbor to Bellingham (2002) (1:32 | 2.93MB)

Note: All videos are in Windows Media format. Mac users may need to download the free Flip4Mac plugin for playback within QuickTime.

January 16, 2007

Interview with Bob Pritchett: Growing the Logos Vision

This is the second installment in a series of video blog posts (introduced here), sharing the story and culture of Logos Bible Software.

In these four video clips, you'll hear Bob Pritchett talk about the initial goals of Logos, how early customer response helped enlarge the vision for what Bible software could do for people's Bible study, and how the whole Pritchett family got involved in the enterprise.

• Selling Enough to Pay the Bills (00:52 | 1.68MB)
• The Logos Vision Grows (1:15 | 2.37MB)
• From Hobby to Business (1:31 | 2.9MB)
• A Family Business (1:27 | 2.76MB)

Note: All videos are in Windows Media format. Mac users may need to download the free Flip4Mac plugin for playback within QuickTime.

January 12, 2007

Interview with Bob Pritchett: The Early Years

Every culture tells stories about itself. Stories that give answers to the Big Questions: where did we come from, who are we, where are we going? Stories that inspire and motivate; stories that enslave and perpetuate harmful attitudes. Some would say that without shared stories there's really no "we" to talk about.

Companies like Logos also tell culture-creating stories that define who we are and help delineate our collective purpose. But any period of rapid growth brings the attendant risk that the company's culture will be lost, or at least lost on the new hires. This risk is especially acute when the new hires will be working thousands of miles away from the home office.

Sharing the Logos Story

Since we won't be flying the new Field Sales team to Bellingham for every chili cookoff or field trip to the Dead Sea Scrolls—and it will be a little harder for Bob to take the new reps out for coffee—we are recording stories from various Logos team members to share with the new hires. My guess is that some of these stories will be new for many of us who work right here in Bellingham, too.

We'd also like to share some of these stories with you, so I'll be posting a series of video interviews over the coming weeks that help tell the Logos story.

Interview with Bob Pritchett

First up in the series is an interview with Bob Pritchett, Logos co-founder, president and CEO. We'll "begin at the beginning" with Bob answering a question about how he first got into computers and Bible software. You'll hear Bob describe what it was like to work with early electronic Bibles, how he swapped his first search engine for Bible texts, and more...

The interviewer is Scott Lindsey, director of ministry relations, and Dale Pritchett is behind the camera.

• Bob's Beginning in Bible Software (2:58 | 5.6MB)
• Working at Microsoft (3:00 | 5.69MB)

Note: All videos are in Windows Media format. Mac users may need to download the free Flip4Mac plugin for playback within QuickTime.

August 3, 2006

National Camp Logos 2006...Recap!

"It was a scorcher, but the training was fantastic." That seemed to sum up the views of those who attended National Camp Logos here in Bellingham in late July.

About 80 Logos users turned out for Morris Proctor's 2-day training seminar, held at a local church. They came from all over the U.S. (and Canada) to take their Bible software skills to the next level and to hang out with other Logos users. The temps reached the upper 80s on Friday, but that didn't seem to dry up the crowd's enthusiasm.

For many attendees, this was not their first Camp Logos experience. A handful of users come back every year. A common theme I heard when asking attendees what they get out of attending multiple times is that Camp shakes them out of a rut, pushes them to use more of the software's features, use it more effectively, and try new things.

The folks who attended also had an opportunity to interact with Bob and Dale Pritchett, dine together at a local restaurant, and tour the Logos facility. If you missed it, don't worry—we'll do another one next year. And in the meantime you can check the Camp Logos calendar for an event near you...without some of the fringe benefits of the "National" event but very worthwhile, nevertheless.

Click any of the photos on this page to see a larger version and be sure to check out the video to watch some Camp clips and brief interviews with Camp Logos attendees. As you'll see, everyone I talked to was very fired up about Logos 3 and Camp Logos!

Windows Media Video, 3:48, 4.3MB

July 27, 2006

Syntax: Talking Animals in the Bible

Several readers have requested that we produce more examples of syntax searching. Your wish is my command — at least in this case. I made a video that shows how to make a syntax search to find all the places in the Hebrew Bible where an animal speaks, or more specifically, where a clause has a verb of speaking with a “creature” in the subject. The query uses the semantic categories present in the A-F markup to narrow the hits down to only verbs of speaking with “creature” subjects.

• Video: Flash, with audio (3:31, 4.8 Mb)

This query, which is mostly just for fun, is a variation on a template that I use often:

• Clause
• Clause IC 1: Structure = {Finite Verb}
• Anything
• Clause IC 2: Structure = {Subject}

That query is pretty general: It'll find every clause that has a Finite Verb followed by a Subject, with “Anything” in between. That's not a very useful query in and of itself, but I can now “hang” segments or phrases or whatever from each of the two clause-immediate constituents (Clause IC) in order to further narrow my search. In the case of the “Talking Animals” query, I added a segment (ie, a single Hebrew word or word-part, such as the prefix prepositions) beneath the Verb clause IC and then, using the semantic properties that are available to text segments in the Andersen-Forbes database, I constrained it to only match words that had “speaking” semantics. Similarly, I constrained the subject to animals by adding a segment that could only match if it had “creature” semantics.

• verb of utterance + “creature” in the subject = Talking Animals

This pattern can be used to come up with all sorts of more useful queries:

• verb of destruction + ???? in the subject = What does YHWH destroy?
• ??? in the verb + noun with “deity” semantics in the subject = What does God love?
• verb of utterance + ????? in the subject = What does Abraham say?
• plural in the verb + singular in the subject = Subject/verb disagreement in number

… and so on. By varying the qualifications for the subject and the verb, you can produce any number of useful queries.

April 28, 2006

Meet the Staff: Roberto Haskell

Rob works with Guillermo Powell, promoting our Spanish-language products. In this video interview you'll hear about some of the programs Rob works on, including the Spanish affiliate program.

Windows Media (1.7MB) | Quicktime (2.2MB)

April 21, 2006

Meet the Staff: Seth Thomas

In this video clip I turn the camera on Seth, who recently joined the marketing team at Logos and happens to be my office mate. For the record, we get along great.

Windows Media (1.6MB) | Quicktime (2.1MB)

April 14, 2006

Meet the Staff: Scott Lindsey

Scott has probably accrued the most airline miles of any Logos employee. He's also been known to sell Logos Bible Software to his seatmate.

Windows Media (2.9MB) | Quicktime (3.8MB)

April 7, 2006

Meet the Staff: Kimi Sebens

I visited the shipping department on a slow day, so Kimi was able to show me around a little. As you might imagine, the shipping department puts product together and gets all the orders out to our customers worldwide.

Windows Media (1.9MB) | Quicktime (2.5MB)

March 31, 2006

Meet the Staff: Guillermo Powell

Guillermo Powell heads up the Spanish department at Logos, which is responsible for creating and promoting our Spanish language products to North America and the world. Guillermo was also the subject of a recent post about his trip to Perú.

Did you know that we offer a growing number of Spanish language collections, a Spanish toll-free order line -- (800) 570-5400, a Spanish website complete with product demos in Spanish, Spanish support articles and training articles? Well, now you know.

Windows Media (2.1MB) | Quicktime (2.8MB)

March 24, 2006

Meet the Staff: David Mitchell

David works in software development, helping create and enhance Logos Bible Software.

Windows Media (1.9MB) | Quicktime (2.1MB)

March 16, 2006

Meet the Staff: Dave Jones

As an academic sales manager for Logos, Dave works to get Logos Bible Software into the hands of college and seminary students around the world.

Windows Media (775KB) | Quicktime (1.5MB)

March 10, 2006

Meet the Staff: Tracy Geleynse

Tracy Geleynse, a book designer in our text processing department, talks about what goes into writing a book specification and how we create electronic Bibles.

Windows Media (2.9MB) | Quicktime (3.7MB)

March 3, 2006

Meet the Staff: John Fallahee

John works in our Ministry Relations department and is affectionately known as the "demo monkey."

Actually, I made that up.

But he is the guy behind the 35 new training videos posted Monday...and you can be certain that you'll be hearing his voice more over the coming months.

Windows Media (1.7MB) | Quicktime (2.2MB)

February 28, 2006

Meet the Staff: James Van Noord

James Van Noord, software developer (and long-time friend of the guy holding the camera), shares his special insight into what it's like to write code for Logos.

Windows Media (2.0MB) | Quicktime (2.3MB)

February 24, 2006

Meet the Staff: Fran Radke

Fran would probably be the first person you'd meet if you walked into Logos...or called on the phone. As you'll see, she keeps very busy.

Windows Media (1.6MB) | Quicktime (1.6MB)

February 17, 2006

Meet the Staff: Rordon Cole

Long-time Logos users probably know Rordon from the newsgroups or from his days in tech support. This video clip will give you a glimpse of what goes into quality assurance (QA) testing Logos Bible Software.

Windows Media (2.4MB) | Quicktime (2.6MB)

February 10, 2006

Meet the Staff: Video Interviews

Way back in April 2005, before the Logos blog, Bob kicked off a series of video posts on his personal blog, touring our building and introducing some of the fine folk who work for Logos.

Those posts can be found here...

• Part 1: Company Tour and Bob's Office
  
• Part 2: Design & Editorial
  
• Part 3: Logos Curry Day 2005

Bob's been after me for awhile to continue the series so I've been taking a few minutes here and there to interrupt my fellow employees and ask them what their role is at Logos. Most of them have taken it kindly enough.

To inaugurate the continuation of the video post series, let's start with the guy who keeps our computers running: Gabriel Powell.

Windows Media (1.9MB) | Quicktime (1.6MB)