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The Exegetical Guide is perfectly suited for digging deep into the grammar and syntax of a passage of Scripture. It provides you with a wealth of information from your grammars, critical apparatuses, lexicons, and more.

When you’ve landed on a particular portion of Scripture that you’re going to study in depth in the original Greek or Hebrew—perhaps for a sermon or paper—the Exegetical Guide is the tool for the task. But sometimes you may just want to see what your grammars have to say about a verse here and there as you’re jumping from passage to passage following cross references and looking at parallel passages. Did you know that you can use the Exegetical Guide for this kind of study as well?

All you need to do is link your Bible to the Exegetical Guide by setting them to share the same link set (e.g., Link Set A), and the Exegetical Guide will follow you wherever you go—providing nearly instant access to every place your grammars discuss the passage you’re looking at. Just click the chain icon at the top of both windows, and set them to the same letter.

To keep the Exegetical Guide as speedy as possible, you can collapse the sections that you’re not as interested in. Just click the minus sign to collapse a section and the plus sign to expand it again.

This is perfect for the times you’re moving around and haven’t settled on just one passage to dig into to. Give it a try. It’s like having someone looking over your shoulder while you’re studying the Bible and finding every occurrence of the passage you’re in in all of your grammars—only instantly!

By the way, you can also do this with the Passage Guide to always have your favorite commentaries just a click away, or with the Reference Browser to have instant access to the places your passage occurs in your favorite collections of books like the Church Fathers, Systematic Theology texts, Old and New Testament Introductions, etc.

MacBibleSoftware.com now has 12 new training videos. If you’re looking to get the most out of Logos for Mac, you’ll definitely want to take some time to watch them.

Reuben Evans walks you through first-time installation, adding additional books to your library, and using the basic tools in the software like the Passage Guide, the Exegetical Guide, the Bible Word Study, the Topic Browser, and the Reference Browser.

He also shows you how to edit your preferences, manage your windows, create workspaces, collections, favorites, and bookmarks, type in Greek and Hebrew, and do various kinds of searches.

Check out these new videos to take your Mac Bible study to the next level:

1. Preferences I
2. Preferences II
3. Window Management
4. Greek and Hebrew Keyboards
5. Study a Word
6. Collections, Favorites, and Bookmarks
7. Topic Browser and Reference Browser
8. Saving and Loading Workspaces
9. Information Window and Navigation
10. Bible Search
11. Greek Morphological Search
12. Hebrew Morphological Search

Most Bible translations have a variety of footnotes throughout the text, giving you instant access to cross references, alternate translations, text-critical notes, and more. These notes are helpful when studying the Bible on your computer, but you may not need them when you copy the text into a sermon or paper.

A fairly common question we hear from new users is how to copy text from a Bible without including the internal footnotes. Let’s take Romans 12:1–2 in the ESV, for example.

You’ll notice 10 notes in these two verses. The superscript letters are for cross references, and the superscript numbers are for alternate translations, comments on manuscripts, etc. Sometimes you may want to include these when copying and pasting, but often you want just the bare Bible text.

There are three ways to accomplish this.

Method 1: Switch to “Bible Text Only” Viewing Mode.

With your Bible open and active, go to the View menu and select “Bible Text Only.” This will strip out all footnotes and allow you to copy only the text with chapter and verse numbers. The downside to this method is that you lose the paragraphing; each verse is formatted as its own paragraph.

Method 2: Uncheck “Include Footnotes When Copying.”

Another option is to go to Tools > Options > General > Interface and uncheck the box “Include Footnotes When Copying.” This will tell Libronix to skip any internal footnotes when copying text from your resources. Formatting and paragraphing will be preserved, but the potential downside to this method is that it applies to all resources and not just Bibles. So if you like having footnotes appear when you copy text from a commentary, for example, then you’ll want to try the next method.

Method 3: Use the “Copy Bible Verses” Tool.

This final method is far and away the best. If you’ve paid careful attention to the icons in your system tray (which is usually in the lower right corner of your screen next to the time), you’ve probably noticed that Libronix adds three icons when it’s open. The black one that looks like a Bible is the Copy Bible Verses tool.

There are two ways to use this powerful tool. You can double-click on the icon in your system tray, type in a passage, and click “Copy” (or “Copy and Paste” to send it directly to your open Word document, for example). Or you can highlight the text you want to copy and select “Copy Romans 12:1-2 to Clipboard” (instead of selecting “Copy” or using Ctrl+c).

One of the cool features of the Copy Bible Verses tool is that you can create as many different styles as you want—one for your sermons, another for your blog posts, another for papers, etc. For additional help creating styles, see the training article “Copy Text without Footnotes and Citations.”

If you copy Bible text frequently, you’ll quickly come to love this very handy little tool. It’s not hard to see why this is some users’ favorite feature.

On Thursday of last week, we looked at how to use Strong’s in Logos Bible Software version 3, but I left out a few things that are worth calling attention to. In addition to accessing Strong’s from the “Other Tools” section of the Bible Speed Search or the regular Bible Search results, you can access it directly from the right-click menu of any Strong’s-tagged Bible or by running advanced Bible searches for particular Strong’s numbers.

Accessing Strong’s from Your Bibles

You can still run the old Englishman’s Concordance report from the right-click menu in Strong’s-enabled Bibles. For example, open the KJV to Romans 8, right-click on a word like condemnation, and select “Englishman’s Concordance.”

Doing so will launch this report, which shows you all of the occurrences of that particular Greek word, which happens to be translated all three times as condemnation.

Another way to do this is to right-click on the word and choose “Selected Reference” > “Speed Search This Resource.”

This will generate a search that gives you the same results as the Englishman’s Concordance report, but provides a few additional options under “Other Tools.”

Searching for a Specific Strong’s Number

You’ll notice that when the previous search generates, it uses the standard Bible Speed Search window and populates the search box with GreekStrongs in G2631. What this means is that you can bypass the right-click menu and do a search directly from the Bible Speed Search if you are starting with the Strong’s number you want to find.

For Greek words, you just need to type in something like GreekStrongs in G2631. Simply replace the Strong’s number with the one you’re looking for. For Hebrew words, you would type in HebrewStrongs in H6942. This allows you to instantly generate a report of all of the occurrences of a given Strong’s number.

Searches like these will show you all of the occurrences of a particular Greek or Hebrew word, regardless of how it is translated in English. If you want to narrow the report to show you only the places where a particular Greek or Hebrew word is (or is not) translated with a particular English word, you would simple add to the search equals or notequals followed by your word. For example, GreekStrongs in G1680 gives you all of the places where this Greek word occurs. It is almost always translated hope. If you wanted to limit it to the places where it is not translated hope, you would search for GreekStrongs in G1680 NOTEQUALS hope. Here’s another one to try: GreekStrongs in G26 NOTEQUALS love, will find all of the places where the main Greek word for love is not translated as love in the KJV.

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

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

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

Resources and Reports

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

Resources

There are several Strong’s lexicons or dictionaries:

• Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon 2.0
• The New Strong’s Dictionary of Hebrew and Greek Words
• The New Strong’s Guide to Bible Words

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

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

• King James Version
• The New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update
• Russian Synodal Translation

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

Reports

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

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

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

Finding the Strong’s Report in Version 3

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

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

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

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

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

For more on Strong’s, see:

• How to study the original languages of the Bible using Strong’s numbers
• "New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update" and Strong's Numbers
• Viewing Strong's Numbers (2:21, 2.4MB)

For more on reverse interlinears, see:

• ESV English-Hebrew Reverse Interlinear of the Old Testament
• ESV English-Greek Reverse Interlinear of the New Testament
• Better Bible Study Through Reverse Interlinear Bibles—OT (13:16, 12.8MB)
• Better Bible Study Through Reverse Interlinear Bibles—NT (14:21, 21.2MB)
• Getting started with Reverse Interlinears
• Explaining each line of the Reverse Interlinear
• Explaining symbols used in Reverse Interlinears
• Bullet points in Reverse Interlinears

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

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

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

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

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

If you do a lot of academic research and writing, you're probably familiar with software like Endnote, Nota Bene's Ibidem, and Zotero, all of which allow you to manage your research sources and easily insert footnotes or endnotes and build bibliographies based on the sources you cite.

I haven't used Endnote or Ibidem, but I just started using Zotero, which comes in the form of a free Firefox plugin, and it looks like it is going to be very handy.

When trying to decide whether or not to use Zotero, two (related) problems I faced were (1) how Zotero would integrate with my Libronix library, where I do the bulk of my research and citing, and (2) how I would get all of my Libronix sources imported into my Zotero database.

If you use Zotero, you have to let it handle all of your citation footnotes, otherwise it won't be able to automatically convert citations to the shortened form or to ibid where appropriate. As you know, Libronix automatically adds footnotes into several word processing programs, but if you use Zotero, you'll have to recreate the footnotes with Zotero. That sounds like a lot of work, but the solution is fairly simple. All you need to do is export your Libronix library (a portion of it or the entire thing) into Zotero.

Open the Bibliography tool by going to Tools > Library Management > Bibliography. Select the collection that you'd like to export, and set the style to BibText Style, which Zotero supports.

After the report finishes generating, go to File > Export and save the report as a text file. (If you're using Logos for Mac, just copy the contents of the report and paste them into a text file.)  You can then import this file into Zotero. If you're dealing with thousands of resources, the import process may take a while, so be patient.

Now when you paste quotations from Libronix into your word processor, you can simply delete the footnote that automatically appears and quickly reinsert the citation with Zotero.

I thought that when you were studying a word in BDAG (for instance) and you hit the right arrow your next lexicon would open up to that word, if the lexicon contained it. When I hit the right arrow from BDAG I get another lexicon (TDNT) but it opens up to some random page. Am I doing something wrong or is this not possible? Thanks for any suggestions Sounds like the active index in BDAG is page number, not topic so when you right arrow LDLS goes to the same page in the next resource. The active index icon is near the current reference box on the resource toolbar and looks like a page. -- Clif

The Passage Guide, Exegetical Guide, and Bible Word Study reports provide you with massive amounts of wonderful information that would take you hours to find in print books. But we realize that not every user wants to see everything available—at least not all of the time.

If you find yourself not using some of the sections in any of these reports, you might want to take the time to customize them. Speedier reports are only a few clicks away.

The first option is simply to collapse any section of the report that you want to see only some of the time. A collapsed section doesn't take any of your system resources, so it won't slow down your report. Once you run the report, you can decide if you want to see the information in that section and click the plus sign to run it. Logos will remember your preference from the last time you ran the report, so all you need to do is leave the appropriate sections collapsed or expanded when you close it.

If there are sections that you are fairly certainly you will never want to see, you can uncheck them in the report properties, which is located at the top of the report towards the right. Unchecked sections won't show up at all, making for a more streamlined report with just the information that you want to see.

The time it takes to load your report will be identical whether you simply collapse a section or uncheck it in the properties. You should decide which method to use based on whether you will occasionally or never want to access the data in that section.

The time it takes me to run the full report above (an Exegetical Guide of 1 Cor 15:28) with everything expanded is about 12 seconds. If I collapse or uncheck the Word by Word section, my time is reduced to just under 7 seconds. Five seconds isn't a lot of time, but it adds up.

You'll really notice the difference with bigger reports. A BWS report on ἀνήρ with everything expanded takes about 4 minutes and 40 seconds to run. If I collapse the LXX, Philo, and the Apostolic Fathers, my time is cut to about 45 seconds!

Take some time to customize your reports and you'll be saving time in no time.

[Today's Guest Post is by Dr. Steve Runge, who is a scholar-in-residence here at Logos Bible Software. Steve is working on projects to annotate discourse function in the Greek New Testament and Hebrew Bible. More importantly, he's a really smart guy with a passion for explaining the exegetical significance and importance of discourse functions in language that non-academics can understand — so that sermons and lessons can take such things into account, resulting in better preaching and teaching. Look for more posts from Steve in the future. — RB]

My name is Steve, and I wanted to give you some ideas about how you can use some technology you probably already have to enhance your Bible study. One of the great features of the Biblical Languages Addin is the Morphological Filter (click View | Visual Filters) that lets you markup Greek and Hebrew Bibles based on their morphological coding (Click for video demo; here's a blog post with similar information). And you are probably saying, “Steve, I don’t know Greek. Why would I want such a tool?” I am glad you asked!

One of the basic tenets of Bible study is to identify the main idea of each verse, which in turn allows you to build toward understanding the big idea of a passage, and so on. Believe it or not, the New Testament writers wanted the same thing. Not every action is of equal importance, and so the writers made choices about which actions to make the main idea of a sentence. One of the ways they did this was by using different kinds of verbs for different kinds of actions in order to prioritize them.

If you were to picture a line of soldiers, there are two ways I could make some of them stand out. The first way is to have the important ones take a step forward. This is essentially what emphasis does, it brings something out front. The other way to make something stand out is to have the less-important ones take a step back. By pushing the less-important things into the background (‘backgrounding’ them), I can focus your attention on the ones that are left in their original position. This is exactly what the writers did through the use of participles. Wait, it’s okay, don’t be afraid! Grammar can be a great friend and ally! Let me show you how.

Every sentence in the New Testament required the writer to make decisions. We make them all the time without even thinking about it, whether writing or speaking. We choose wording that fits best with what we want to communicate. The same is true of the NT writers. If they wanted something to be viewed as a main action, they used a main verb form (technically ‘finite’ verbs like the indicative, subjunctive or imperative moods for fellow grammar geeks). If they wanted to describe some action to set that stage for the main action, the writers would use participles before the main action to push the less important action into the background. Here is a quick example from English.

1. I was writing a blog post this morning. I spilled my coffee on my keyboard.
2. While writing a blog post this morning, I spilled my coffee on my keyboard.

In the first line, both actions are described as though they were equally important, both use main verbs. The second line backgrounds the first action using a participle in order to set the stage for the main action that follows—spilling my coffee (Don’t worry, Bob. I didn’t really spill, just needed an example).

This same kind of backgrounding happens all the time in the New Testament. And even if you don’t know Greek, you can use the tools available in Logos to find these backgrounded actions. Here’s how.

If you have an ESV English-Greek Reverse Interlinear of the New Testament and the Morphological Filter from the Biblical Languages Addin, you have all that you need to start your study. Open up the ESV English-Greek Reverse Interlinear in Logos Bible Software, and then click View | Visual Filters. This opens up the Visual Filter dialogue. Then click on Morphological Filter in the left pane, then click Add.

Then click Details. This opens up another dialog box that lets you choose the grammatical characteristics that you want to visualize. We want to check Verbs, and then Participles under Verb types. Then click Add on the lower left, and finally pick a how you want to represent it in the text using the Palettes (I chose the Gray highlighter pen). This will identify all of the participles.

Now you need to identify the main verbs. All we have to do is repeat the steps. Click Verbs, and then under the ‘Tense, Voice, Mood’ menu click Finite under ‘Verb types’, then click Add.

Now pick a visualization from the Palettes (I chose green highlighter pen), and finally click Okay. You are ready to look for backgrounded actions!

In your ESV reverse interlinear, go to Matthew 28:19, we can take a look at how Matthew uses a participle to prioritize the actions of the Great Commission. English does not use participles like Greek does, so a lot of them get translated into English as though they were main verbs. This is not incorrect translation, it is just a consequence of Greek not being English. But you can pick out the backgrounded actions from the original Greek using this Visual Filter in the Reverse Interlinear.

In English, there are two main actions of the Great Commission: Go and Make disciples. But if you look at ‘Go’, you’ll see that it is a participle. Does this mean it doesn’t matter at all? No, it does matter. Matthew used a participle to make sure that we got the main idea of the verse: MAKING DISCIPLES. Both actions need to happen, but they are not of equal importance. Using a participle backgrounds the less-important action.

This idea of backgrounding only applies to participles when they precede the main action, not when they follow it. The participles that follow the main action tend to spell out more specifically what the main action looks like. Here, ‘making disciples’ is spelled out as ‘baptizing’ and ‘teaching them to observe all that Jesus commanded’.

Another good example is found in Acts 9:1-2, where Saul is seeking to arrest the believers in order to keep ‘The Way’ from spreading.

In v. 1 there are two actions described: ‘breathing’ and ‘went’. But we can tell from the Morphological Filter that both of these actions are backgrounded. That means that these actions are setting the stage for the main action, and are not the main action themselves. The main action doesn’t come until v. 2; it is Saul ASKING for the letters. ‘Going’ to the high priest was just something that had to happen before he could ‘ask’ them for the letters. Luke’s choice to use a participle reflects how he chose to prioritize the action. Understanding how he prioritized the action will help us better understand the main point of the passage. The other participles in v. 2 function as ‘verbal adjectives’, describing whom Saul is seeking (the ones ‘belonging to the Way’) and how he will bring them (‘having been bound’). The principle of backgrounding only applies to the action participles that precede the main action.

The biggest, hairiest chain of backgrounded actions that I have yet found is in Mark 5:25-27, where SEVEN backgrounded actions before we finally get to the main action. Nearly all of these are translated in the ESV as though they are main verbs. Remember, this is not bad translation, it just reflects that Greek is not English. Take a look!

Look at all of the actions that are backgrounded! The one main action that is left standing is ‘touched’, all of the rest are simply setting the stage for this action. Mark clearly indicates this by using participles instead of main verbs. He could have just as easily chosen to make ALL of the actions main ones, but then ‘touched’ would not have stood out. They would have all been equal. By backgrounding the less-important actions before the main action, the writer lets us know which action we need to focus on. There is good reason to focus on ‘touch’ in this context, because it is the key action that sets off a whole series of events that follows. Touching Jesus is what heals this woman (v. 27). Look at how Jesus’ response is described in v. 30.

Three participles are used to describe the actions that lead to Jesus’ response (‘said’), and what he says is the most important part of the verse: ‘Who touched me?’ Mark has carefully framed his message to make sure that we do not miss the main point of the story!

The gospels and Acts by far make the most use of backgrounding through the use of participles before the main action. Here are a few more examples from Matthew. In Matt 13:46 in the parable about the pearl of great price, look at which actions have been backgrounded.

There are only two main actions in this verse: ‘selling all that he had’ and ‘buying’. The ‘finding’ and ‘going’ set the stage for the main actions. Do you see how the backgrounding fits with the main idea of the passage?

Another example is found in the description of Jesus preparing to feed the 5000 in Matt 14:19.

There are three backgrounded actions leading up to one main action in the first sentence. ‘Ordering the crowds’, ‘taking’ the loaves and fish, and ‘looking up to heaven’ are all backgrounded, keeping attention on the main action: he said a blessing. In the next sentence, ‘breaking’ is backgrounded, keeping attention focused on ‘giving’ it to the disciples who in turn give it to the crowds.

By the way, you do not need to use the visual filter to find out if an action is a participle in Greek or not. If you hover over ‘ordered’ in v. 19 of the reverse interlinear and look at the display in the lower left corner of the main window, you will see some information displayed.

The G2753 is the Strong’s number; the rest is the grammatical information for the Greek word. You can get the same information as what we have visualized using the Visual Filter, but it is does not let you see the big picture, and it is not nearly as cool!

As you may have noticed, not every participle backgrounds an action. Some participles don’t even describe action, but instead function as verbal adjectives to describe a person, place or thing. The participles that follow the main action usually spell out more specifically what the main action looks like (a topic I will take up in a future post). But there is hope!

I have been working for the last year in a super-secret department (next to Rick!) on a project that identifies all of the New Testament occurrences of cool devices like backgrounded actions. There are 15 other devices that are all explained and marked up using something like the visual filter right in the text to help you better understand what the writers were trying to draw your attention to. Stay tuned for more details.

Update: Both products are now available for pre-order:

• Lexham High Definition New Testament
• Lexham Discourse Greek New Testament

I've blogged a bit about the prepositional phrase εν Χριστω 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 εν Χριστω.

Today's post, the last in the series, is a follow-up to Part II. We'll further explore how to search for εν Χριστω 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, εν Χριστω 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.

Since it's Thanksgiving Day here in the U.S., I thought I'd do a little analysis of the primary thanksgiving word in Greek New Testament, the verb εὐχαριστέω, which means "thank, gives thanks to." I'm primarily interested in getting an overview of the biblical data rather than reading what others have to say about it in lexicons and theological dictionaries (which is very valuable, but not my interest for now). So I open the Bible Word Study report, type in εὐχαριστέω, and let it do its thing.

If your Greek knowledge is limited but you want to run the report based on the Greek text rather than the English, Logos Bible Software makes that easy with the reverse interlinears. Start with the Bible Speed Search, select the ESV (or NRSV) English-Greek Reverse Interlinear New Testament from the drop down box, and type thank in the search box. You'll get 56 hits in 53 verses. Click the reference for Matt 15:36, the second one in the list. It will open the text of the ESV NT Reverse Interlinear to the proper location. Locate the word thanks, right click it, and select Bible Word Study: "ευχαριστεω" from the list of options.

Once the report finishes, we're given a wealth of data to examine. My interest for now is in the Grammatical Relationships section, where I can quickly find answers to questions like:

1. Who gives thanks?
2. Who receives thanks?
3. What is thanks given for?

This section is incredibly helpful for quickly getting the big picture of a theme in the NT. As I look over the data, I immediately notice some noteworthy patterns in the Complements section, particularly some things that stand out to me because of my current study of the Trinity.

Of the 23 complements or objects of the verb (i.e., who is being thanked), they are nearly all God. The only human objects are Prisca and Aquila (Rom 16:3). The rest of the references are God—and arguably, God the Father. (Jesus is the object one time [Lk 17:16].) I realize that God can refer to the Triune God, but the contexts and general pattern suggest that the Father is in view.

Here are the data:

Thanks is given to

• the Father (Col 1:11-12; cf. Jn 11:41)
• God the Father through Jesus (Rom 1:8; Col 3:17)
• God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (Col 1:3-5)
• God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ (Eph 5:20)
• God [who is distinguished in the context from Christ] (Rom 14:6; 1 Cor 1:4, 14; Phil 1:3-6; 1 Thes 2:13; 2 Thes 1:3; 2:13; Phm 4-5; Rev 11:17?; cf. Lk 18:11)
• God [who is later identified as the Father] (1 Thes 1:2-4)
• God [undefined in the immediate context] (Acts 27:35; 28:15; 1 Cor 14:18)

So what significance does this have as we give thanks to God today (or any day)? It gives us guidance on how we are to think about and interact with our Triune God. These patterns are descriptive, and not necessarily prescriptive of whom we shouldn't give thanks to. (The fact that we don't find numerous references about giving thanks to Jesus or the Spirit doesn't necessarily mean it is inappropriate to do so.) Nevertheless, these data must be the starting point for any biblical theology of giving thanks to God.

Perhaps a more devotional exercise is to reflect upon the Adjuncts section, where we find out that thanks is given

• always (1 Cor 1:4; Eph 5:20; 1 Thes 1:2-4; 1 Thes 1:3; 2 Thes 2:13; Phm 4-5)
• for other believers (1 Cor 1:4; 1 Thes 1:2-4; 2 Thes 1:3; 2:13)
• because God has given grace to them (1 Cor 1:4)
• because they are growing in faith and love (Rom 1:8; 2 Thes 1:3)
• because God has chose them (1 Thes 1:2-4; 2 Thes 2:13)

There's much more to explore here. Run the Bible Word Study report, and have a look for yourself. Let some of these biblical themes be the starting point for your thanksgiving today—and every day.

Those who frequently visit the Logos training videos webpage may have noticed several tags next to certain links. That's because John Fallahee of Logos' Ministry Relations department just added 13 new videos to our ever-expanding collection of free training content.

If you sometimes feel like you aren't using Logos Bible Software to its full potential, the first thing we would recommend is a visit to www.logos.com/videos. Even if you have been using Logos for years, there may be new features and tools in Logos Bible Software 3 that could help you become more proficient in your Bible study.

One thing I personally enjoy about the training videos is the context they give to the use of a tool. In the same way a trained mathematician uses the proper formulas to solve an equation, using the correct tools in Libronix can greatly expedite your study. You will be able to achieve your desired result more quickly if you know how to use all the tools at your disposal.

Oh, and they're free, too!

Here are a few of the new videos you'll find at www.logos.com/videos:

• Passage In All Versions
• Bible Version Difference Rivers
• Visual Filters
• History

For dozens of training videos (for everyone from new users to Logos veterans) visit www.logos.com/videos.

My friend and colleague Johnny recently came up with some pretty cool tricks for using BDAG to help when reading the Apostolic Fathers in Greek.

The trick is pretty simple, but is involved to explain. So I made a video.

• Video: Flash, 6 megs, 3:49, with sound.

Think about other applications of this same technique:

• Maybe you're interested in where BDAG has cited a particular section of BDF? You could use this same trick. As an example, BDF §260 has to do with how the article is used with personal names. Want to know where BDAG cites or points to this section? Search BDAG for "bdf in 260".
• Maybe you want to see where BDF has referenced Ignatius to Polycarp. You can do the same search the video demonstrates, only do it in BDF: "af in ipol".
• You get the gist. I'm sure you can think of others.

How cool is that?

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

I've said it before and I'm sure I'll say it again...Logos users are a very clever bunch. 

One user, John Minter, recently posted a "wouldn't it be nice if..." to the Logos newsgroups. Regarding Kurt Aland's Synopsis of the Four Gospels—a data set within the Parallel Passages and Harmonies tool—he wrote:

I like being able to generate with my desired translation. What would be nice is to generate a table for the given section as a handout...

Six minutes later he posted again to answer his own question:

OK Figured it out. Select a hebrew text like the BHS and all you get is the table. Woo hoo.

I'm not sure whether this little trick should be considered a hack or feature (no doubt my friends in development would take credit for it as the latter) but it does seem to work and strikes me as the kind of thing that could be useful so I'm sharing it with you.

Try It Yourself!

To try it out, open Logos 3 and click Tools | Bible Comparison | Parallel Passages and Harmonies. For Source, choose Synopsis of the Four Gospels (Aland) if you have it. If not, don't worry—it works with other data sets, too. For Bible version, choose BHS or ESV OT Rev. Int (the latter is in more packages).

Now when you drill down into a section of the synopsis, you'll get the report shown below on the left instead of the usual report, shown on the right (click the thumbnail for a full size image):

This references-only table can be printed, or pasted pretty well into a word processor. It's a handy little hack if you want to include just the parallel references in a handout or other document...

Thanks John!

If you've spent time around Logos Bible Software, you probably already know that Bibles such as the ESV, NKJV, and NASB* include cross-reference links right there in the text. They're indicated by the "little letters and numbers" sprinkled throughout most passages.

Just hover the mouse over an indicator and the cross-references pop up in what we call a "tool tip" window. Click the indicator (rather than hovering) and the tool tip will remain in place when you move your mouse away, allowing you to interact with the links inside the tool tip itself. This is a great way to see the cross-references—verses related to these verses—when reading through a passage.

But did you know that Logos also includes a more powerful tool specifically built for working with parallel passages, Gospel synopses/harmonies, and tables of quotations and allusions?

So you could spend thirty bucks to buy a printed "harmonized Gospel" which would give you a harmony in one version (NIV, for example)...or use the tool within Logos and view the harmony in any Bible version you own, in any language!

Parallel Passages & Harmonies

The Parallel Passages & Harmonies tool is included in all the Logos 3 base packages—with increasingly larger data sets available as you move up the product line. If you have a base package you should have at least four parallel passage data sets and maybe more!

To access the tool using Logos 3, click Tools | Bible Comparison | Parallel Passages and Harmonies. Click the Source button to choose a source—"Synopsis of Matthew, Mark, and Luke (Jackson)," for example. Then select a Bible version in the Bible version chooser box to the right.

You will see a table of contents that looks like the image above; click a title to open the report to that section. Here's what it looks like when I clicked "The Calling of Disciples."

 

Mark, Luke and Matthew contain an account of this event so they all show up here in an easy-to-read columnar alignment...in the Bible version I chose.

Notice the comment in the right-most column, which is supplied by Jeffrey Jackson, the editor of this data. To learn more about the source of each data set, click the first item in the table of contents, which is a description. For this data set, the description explains the approach Jackson used to create this synopsis and the meaning of special formatting used, such as blue or bolded text.

To get back to the table of contents at any time, just click the title of the data set (in this case "Synopsis of Matthew, Mark, etc.").

Navigate to the next or previous section of the synopsis by clicking the down or up arrow (circled in red above). Clicking the hooked up-arrow moves you up one level—that is, it will load the entire chapter into the display.

The left and right arrows work just like the back and forward buttons in your web browser—jumping you back to the previous view or ahead (when applicable).

More is Better

The cool thing about having multiple, overlapping data sets is that each editor follows a slightly different approach when assembling something like a Gospel harmony. All told, Logos packages include no less than six "parallel passages" data sets for the Gospels:

• Synopsis of the Four Gospels (Aland)
• A Harmony of the Gospels (Robertson)
• A Harmony of the Synoptic Gospels (Burton, Goodspeed)
• Synopsis of Matthew, Mark, and Luke
• Eusebian Canons (Eusebius)
• Records of the Life of Jesus (Sharman)

A quick glance at the Burton & Goodspeed harmony description shows that any project like this entails certain editorial choices that others may make differently:

"Our study of the Synoptic Problem, extending now through many years, has led us to certain very definite conclusions respecting the relation of the Synoptic Gospels to one another, and their literary sources. The purpose of this book, however, is not to demonstrate this theory; nor is its construction determined by that theory. It aims rather, as largely as possible in independence of all theories, to set the text of the several gospels in such parallelism as will make the facts themselves tell their own story with the utmost possible fullness and clearness."

Because each data set is compiled by a different editor, each offers a unique perspective on the text. We offer as many as we can license, in hopes that your Bible study will be enriched!

* For the Logos editions of Bibles, we use the cross-reference data supplied by the publisher, which was generated by the publisher's translation/editorial team. For some versions (e.g., NIV, NRSV) this data was not supplied by the publisher and so is not present in the electronic edition.

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]

This is the third post in a series of posts having to do with the Apostolic Fathers in Greek and English. (The first post is here, the second is here).

Today's video focuses on different reports and resources that the Apostolic Fathers resources complement through providing text on hover, on how references to Apostolic Fathers within lexicons can be exploited, and also how Apostolic Fathers information can be used in the Bible Word Study report.

• Video: Flash, 7.6 megs, 6:32, with sound.

Note: The video discusses two resources that do not ship with Apostolic Fathers but can be added to your digital library: NA27 (included in "language" base packages) and the BDAG lexicon.

Want more power?

Stuff like stacked window tabs, fuzzy searching, and quick navigation?

Of course you do.

Then you need Power Tools. If you don't have 'em, you should check out the Power Tools Addin.

In a previous post, we looked at how English translations delimit the quotation in James 4.5. Do other resources shed any light on this question?

Greek New Testaments

We can examine the formatting of Greek New Testaments much like we examined the formatting of English New Testaments. In Logos Bible Software, the relevant Greek NTs are the NA27 and UBS4 editions along with Westcott & Hort. If you have a product from Thomas Nelson, you may also have the Hodges/Farstad edition of the Majority Text, this is formatted as well.

In the above, you can see that Hodges/Farstad formats v. 6 as a quotation (complete with angle quotes). In v. 5, the relevant portion appears to be treated as a quotation of some sort; this is traditionally what an upper-cased letter after introduction would imply (ἡ Γραφὴ λέγει, Πρὸς φθόνον ἐπιποθεῖ). The upper-case gamma in Γραφὴ also implies the editors see this as referring to the Scriptures, and not to generic writings of some sort.

The NA27 uses italicised text for v. 6, which indicates an Old Testament quotation. But no special formatting or casing appears in v. 5. The UBS4 is similar, only they have no special formatting implying quotation or quotation source.

Westcott and Hort use bold text to indicate some sort of quotation or allusion (not always to the Old Testament). So v. 6 includes a quotation, but no special formatting on v. 5. (note also the placement of the question mark in WH vs. NA27/UBS, that could be significant when translating the verses).

Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament

The Lexham SGNT marks what the editor considers to be quotations from or allusions to external source with what is called a Quotative Frame.

The Lexham SGNT Glossary defines the Quotative Frame as follows:

Quotative Frame: A frame which contains an explicit quotation, or citation, from an external source. Where allusion occurs or where, as in sections of Hebrews, the text of external sources is woven inextricably into the main text, this is annotated as if it were original on the part of the author.
Lukaszewski, A. L. (2006; 2006). The Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament Glossary. Logos Research Systems, Inc.

Commentaries

Logos Bible Software has a wide selection of Commentaries. Commentaries focused on working through the Greek text or that are focused on interpretational difficulties will assist one in this verse. I've reviewed a few commentaries on this verse (NIGTC, Hermeneia, ICC, Word Biblical Commentary) and they don't agree any more than the translators do. But the better commentaries will explore the possibilities and explain the positives and negatives of each in some degree of detail before arriving at a conclusion. Comparing these sorts of discussions across commentaries can be enlightening and helpful in sticky situations like this one.

Conclusion

Using resources like these — in ways you may not have thought of — helps in examining the questions we've run into in James 4.5. Hopefully this series of posts has been helpful.

My primary purpose has been to show that when one runs into ambiguities in the text, there are a lot of places one can turn. The options are knowable and explorable, utilizing both textual resources (Bibles and commentaries), databases (morphology and syntactic databases) and reports (like Passage in all Versions). So next time you run into an ambiguity ... have fun digging!

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!

I've been blogging about James 4.5-6. In the series I blogged about examining the text using English translations. Then I blogged about the underlying Greek. There are still more questions with James 4.5-6, however. In this post we'll consider the quotation from Scripture mentioned in James 4.5 and how it is represented in the English texts. Is it a quotation, or is it a summary of Scripture? Here's the text:

Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”?(Jas 4:5, ESV)

Instead of writing ad nauseum about this, I've recorded a video that that compares the quotes in English translations. Examining the way that the major English translations handle this gives us an idea of the options and might even give us help in deciding which option is preferred in this case.

• Video: Flash, approx. 2.8 MB, 3:22, sound.

I am a contributor at another blog called PastoralEpistles.com. That blog is one outlet where I work specifically with my favorite section of the New Testament, the Pastoral Epistles (1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus).

Over on PastoralEpistles.com, I'm working on a series of posts that combines a few of my loves: The writings of the Apostolic Fathers, Koine Greek, and the Pastoral Epistles. I'm using a book published in 1904 by Oxford titled The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers (that one is actually a Community Pricing title, check it out!) that provides information on areas in the writings of the Apostolic Fathers that show affinity with areas of the New Testament. These "areas of affinity" may be outright quotes, they may be indirect citations, they may be allusions, or they may simply have topical similarity using similar language for similar topics.

I'm also able to use the shortly-to-be-released Logos Edition of the Apostolic Fathers which makes this sort of work loads easier than it was before. It's true, after long last the work on the Apostolic Fathers is done and it should be released on time — so hurry up and get the pre-pub price while you can!.

Basically, I'm working through where writings of the Apostolic Fathers are noted to have affinity with the Pastoral Epistles. I started in the Epistle of Barnabas. Here's an example of an entry from The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers:

This short section provides the texts in question and a short (emphasis on short) discussion. But it's a starting point. Basically I'm reviewing the texts and considering the linkages. You can check out my discussion on the Ep.Barn. 1.3-6 || Titus 3.5-7; 1.2 affinities.

I'm not writing this post to discuss linkages between the writings of the Apostolic Fathers and the NT (as cool as that would be). Instead, I'm going to shift to syntax. In looking at the above linkages, one notices the Greek ἐλπίδι ζωῆς (hope of life) prominent in both the Barnabas and Titus passages.

This prompted me to ask a few questions. First, I wondered how prominent this "hope of life" (Titus has "life eternal") is in the NT, and second I wondered what other sorts of "hope" there were in the NT. And these questions can be answered with syntax searches.

I made the below video that sets up the search and shows the results. If one just searches the Greek NT for ἐλπίς, 48 verses (53 instances) are located. But there are 18 instances where "hope" is qualified in some way. There are only two instances where it is qualified by "life" (ζωῆς), and both of them are in Titus (the two examples cited above in relation to Barnabas).

• Video: Flash, 7:12 min, 9 MB, sound.

Why do I bring this up? Well, with the advent of the syntactically tagged databases of the Greek New Testament, I find myself asking more and more questions like this. And I'm more and more able to run a syntax query (many of which share the same basic template that this search has) to get a clearer picture of some grammatical phenomenon without having to run a blunt concordance search, and then sift through the hits. I'm able to get more relevant, more meaningful instances of what I'm interested in and sift through less chaff in the process. And this has made my study of the New Testament deeper, which can only help my understanding and application. And to my mind, that's what it's all about.

In the home group Bible study that I'm in, we're studying the epistle of James. We're currently in James 4. While preparing for this week's study, I noticed some interesting things going on in James 4:5-6. There are some ambiguities in James 4.5. This seemed like a good text to examine a bit further using some of the resources and reports found in Logos Bible Software (things that are in some collections, and some things that are supplemental).

First, the text of the ESV:

Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”(Jas 4:5-6, ESV)

Seems pretty straightforward, huh? It actually isn't. When reading the Greek in preparation for the study, I noticed a few things that are ambiguous. And these things are pretty noticeable when you compare English translations. So I made a video that shows how to do this.

• Video: Flash, 4.11 MB, 4:28, sound.

The basic issues discussed in the video, as a result of examining English translations, set the stage for the balance of posts in this series. At present I hope for two more posts plus a summary/conclusion post, though that may change (likely be extended) as I write further posts.

So what are the issues we'll look at?

• Is it 'spirit' or 'Spirit' in James 4.5? That is, is it the Holy Spirit, or is it more along the lines of Genesis 2.7, the life breathed within us?
• What is the subject of the quotation in verse 5? Is it:
  • God (also 'He')
  • Spirit (that is, the Holy Spirit)
  • spirit (that is, the human spirit, that of Ge 2.7)
• Where does the quotation in v. 5 come from? (I've not discussed this yet, but it will come up in later posts).

Further posts will focus on using syntactic annotations, morphology, critical commentaries and syntax searching to look at this verse further.

All in all, I hope to show that there are features and resources that those who aren't comfy with the original languages can use to think about these things and that there are other features and resources that those comfy with the original languages can use to examine these sorts of issues more fully.

A feature of Logos 3 that still draws the most oohs and aahs when I demo the software for people is also one of the simplest: Bible Speed Search. I think that's because of how quick it is (it finds as you type) and how easy it is to figure out. In fact, many people use it much like they use Google: type one or two words and voila! there's the thing you're looking for.

Type the word "heaven," for example, and Bible Speed Search instantly returns 701 hits in 661 verses in the English Standard Version Bible.

But just like Google's advanced search features, much more is possible using Bible Speed Search. This post will cover a few of the most commonly used search refinements. A more detailed tutorial is available in the training article Exploring Libronix Searching or in the Help file on advanced searching within the software.

You'll notice in the screenshot above that the first result is not heaven but heavens. What's going on here? Bible Speed Search automatically looks for variations of the word you type: plural, -ed, -ing, and so on. Usually, that's fine...but sometimes you really do want to find just the form of the word you typed. In other words, you want to turn off "stemming."

In this case, use the "nostem" modifier to turn off stemming and find only the form you typed. In Logos, term modifiers like "nostem" are used with parentheses surrounding the search term, like this: nostem(heaven).

Now we see that heaven singular is used 491 times in the ESV. But what if I want to isolate instances of Heaven, singular and capitalized? The "exact" modifier comes to the rescue and Bible Speed Search returns only 7 hits. Using exact tells Logos to only return exact matches, no fooling around.

As you can see, only twice—once in Genesis and once in Daniel—is the word heaven capitalized in the ESV when it's not at the beginning of a sentence. Significant? Perhaps not. But it would be interesting to know why translators gave those two instances alone the capital treatment.

What if I told you that Logos could very easily find every statement Jesus made about heaven? In a sense, it can.

When Logos data geeks (I mean, book designers) create an electronic edition of a book, they rarely throw anything away. In fact, they even save the red letters that indicate the words of Christ in many Bible versions. Cooler yet, they encode these red letters as invisible "fields" that can be specified in a search.

Field searches use a colon instead of parentheses to separate the two components of the search. The Words of Christ field is WordsOfChrist or WOC for short. So a speed search to find out what Jesus says about heaven looks like: woc:heaven. Pretty simple, huh?

(For a list of fields available within any given book, open the book and click Help | About This Resource. See the training article Exploring Logos Searching for more details.)

As I look through the search results showing all the verses where Jesus uses the word heaven, I notice that the phrase "kingdom of heaven" appears rather frequently. I'll go ahead and type kingdom of heaven in the search box.

OK, clearly this is not what I want. When I type more than one word in the search box, Logos looks for verses that contain all the words I typed. It's as if I said, "Find verses that contain kingdom and of and heaven...in any order."

This is called "natural language syntax" and mimics the behavior of the web search engines we use everyday. Again, much like a web search engine, if you want to search for a phrase use quotes.

Here's what a search for "kingdom of heaven" returns:

As it turns out, the phrase "kingdom of heaven" appears only in Matthew, appears 32 times, and appears twice in one verse: Matthew 5:19.

We've really only touched the tip of the iceberg. To find out more about advanced searching, including lists of available modifiers and operators, see the Advanced Searching section of the Libronix DLS help file.

A record number of customers took advantage of the insanely great "Library Builder" Christmas special this year and added 330+ books to their library in one fell swoop, so we're taking a look at how to maximize the value of those new books. Even if you don't own the Library Builder product, this series will help you get the most from the books in your electronic library.

Part 1 introduced some tools and techniques for exploring your new books, while Part 2 focused on commentaries.

This post will review some of the other categories of books that are part of Library Builder, introduce some individual titles, and show where to look for them in your digital library.

Illustrations

Pastors and teachers love illustrations...readers and listeners love them, too. They're the raisins in the toast, the strawberries in the fruit salad.

Library Builder adds a new book of illustrations: Illustrations for Biblical Preaching , with fresh material to help you enliven your teaching or your own study.

Your digital library knows that this is a book of illustrations so it will automatically show up in the Illustrations section of Passage Guide. When you run Passage Guide, the system figures out all the topics related to your passage, then scours your books of illustrations to find illustrations on those topics. Like magic.

Music

Library Builder adds five new books on music:

• 101 Hymn Stories
• 101 More Hymn Stories
• Hymns and Scripture Selection Guide
• Hymns of Ter Steegen, Suso, and Others
• The Psalms and Hymns of Isaac Watts

You're probably familiar with the 101 Hymn Stories books that give the history of various hymns and their composers, but some of the others may be new to you.

Hymn and Scripture Selection Guide is great because, while it does not contain hymn texts, each hymn is tagged with numerous Bible references. That increases the odds you'll find a song relating to the Bible passage you're studying or preaching!

Hymns of Ter Steegen, Suso, and Others  and The Psalms and Hymns of Isaac Watts open a window on the poetical voice of those who contributed greatly to the hymnody of the Christian church in bygone days. Sometimes one of these classic hymns, read as a poem, is just the thing to illustrate a biblical truth.

Again, Logos Bible Software knows that these are books dealing with music, so they show up in the Music section of Passage Guide. When you run Passage Guide on a passage of Scripture, the guide finds any hymns or songs that relate to the passage you're studying.

What you see above are the Music results I get for a Passage Guide on Psalm 4:8, "In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety." (ESV)

Books on Prayer

Library Builder adds quite a number of books on prayer. It's easy to locate them all in your library: just click My Library, arrange by subject, then type prayer.

You'll notice a bunch of books by E.M. Bounds, one by Tom Elliff, one by P.T. Forsyth, and one by Oswald Chambers...all new with Library Builder.

Because prayer is such a vital discipline in the Christian's life, Logos Bible Software also includes a feature right on the homepage that introduces you to books on prayer within your library. Your new books on prayer show up here automatically.

Just click any of the links in the list to open that book to its table of contents and begin exploring.

(Note: the Prayer section of the Logos Bible Software homepage can be turned off or on via the "Customize View" link at the top of the homepage. The Prayer section is only available if you have the Personal Bible Study Addin, included with Logos Bible Software base libraries or available as a separate purchase but not included with Library Builder.)

Devotionals

Devotionals, structured around daily readings and meditations, are a great way to get into the Word every day. The Devotions section on the Logos Bible Software homepage makes it easy to start every day with the devotional of your choice.

Here I've selected two of the devotionals that are new in Library Builder. 

Take Heart is a very cool concept—it offers daily snippets from sermons by great preachers of the past such as C.H. Spurgeon, G. Campbell Morgan, and John Ker. As the editor writes in the preface, "These preached words are a part of our Christian heritage, and you will find the power of God in them still. I want to preserve them not because they are old but because they are true. It is our loss if we allow this part of our heritage to crumble to dust, forgotten, on out-of-the-way shelves."

Drawing Near  by John MacArthur reflects that teacher's emphasis on in-depth Bible exposition study. As MacArthur states in the introduction: "As you use this book daily, you will learn how to approach Scripture on your own, developing the study skills you need to open up the Bible and discover its rich and marvelous truths for yourself. Such repeated exposure to God’s Word trains you to think Biblically, and that’s what ultimately makes a difference in your spiritual life."

Choosing Devotionals for Your Homepage

To choose the devotional that gets displayed on your homepage every day, click the Customize View link at the top right corner of the Logos homepage.

Then scroll down to the Devotions section and choose as many of the devotionals as you'd like to see on the homepage every day. Put a check in the boxes for those you choose, make sure there's a check next to "Devotions," then scroll back up to the top of the page and click Save Changes.

Note: the version of Take Heart that shipped on the Library Builder disc will not show up in the list of devotions; in order to make this devotional show up as an option, download an updated version of the book. Here's how: close Libronix DLS, then click this link and choose to save the file to your resources folder (for most users, C:\Program Files\Libronix DLS\Resources). When prompted, overwrite the file that's already there.

Looking Ahead...

In the next installment of this series, we'll take a look at some of the books that don't fall into any of the categories we've covered thus far. You'll definitely want to take some steps to ensure you're incorporating these "ordinary" books into your Bible study workflow.

A recent commenter here on the blog expressed frustration at having duplicate books that clutter up My Library and hog space on his hard drive. Jonathan Pratt wrote,

One problem is that every series that I install comes with its own set of reference materials - typically a few versions of the Bible and a single volume commentary or two, perhaps some other stuff. Well I have lots of copies of (say) the authorized version of the Bible. Because each has a slightly different name [e.g "Authorized version", or "Bible - AV"] they are all installed (copied to my hard drive) and show up all over the place in My Library.

Last time I checked the Libronix repository was nearly 6GB in size - I know because I tried to back it up but I can't fit it all on a single (single layer) DVD. I don't know for sure, but maybe I could if I could somehow choose to delete/expunge books that I know are duplicates. Libronix itself doesn't seem to be able to do that...

Let's address these in order. First, you can rest easy knowing that it's extremely unlikely that you have multiple copies of the same book.

Say you buy two products that both contain the KJV Bible. Fortunately, that doesn't mean two copies of the KJV book file will end up on your drive. During installation, Libronix DLS compares the files on your hard drive with what's on the disc you're installing. If a file on disc is newer, it will overwrite what's on your hard drive. If not, Libronix skips it and moves on.

A couple of caveats are worthy of mention, however, and one of them is to blame for making Jonathan think there are duplicate files all over his hard drive.

Eliminate Duplicate Titles in My Library

When you open My Library, you may notice that many books are listed multiple times.

 

Titles 2, 3, 4 and 6 in this screenshot are all the same book. Why this duplication? Many books include multiple titles to allow for different ways of finding the book (e.g., AV, authorized, king james, kjv, etc).

Admittedly, with all these duplicate and sometimes triplicate titles it can be hard to find what you are looking for...and confusing to know when items with similar titles really are different books. The Cambridge Paragraph Bible of the Authorized English Version really is a different version of the KJV...not the same file at all! 

To help reduce this confusion, we give you the option to display only the primary title of each book in My Library. Here's how to set your preference:

1. Go to Tools | Options | General
2. On the left side of the Options window, click the Interface tab.
3. Check the option "Use Only Primary Resource Titles in My Library" and click OK. 

Now go back to My Library and you will only see one title for each book.

Ahhh...much better. Truth is, this is one of the first preferences I set when I install Logos on a new machine. And there's really no downside...I can still type KJV in the find box and the King James Version will appear in the list.

Eliminate Duplicate Files from Your Hard Drive(s)

Most users copy all their Libronix book files to the default location on their hard drive and so never accumulate duplicate files. But the intrepid user among us may have set up multiple book caches, perhaps on more than one hard drive, and maybe even a network drive. As a result, this user—let's call him a "Power User"—may have built up some duplicate book files on his hard drives.

If you fall into this category and feel the need to identify and eliminate those pesky dupes, you'll want to install the free Power Tools Addin and use the Remove Duplicate Resources report therein.

After installing the addin, read through the help file just to make sure you understand how the tool works and what it's doing. The process is mostly automated and deleted book files end up in your Recycle Bin, so the damage can be undone at any rate.

Wrapping It Up

To wrap things up in a neat little bundle...Libronix is probably not junking up your hard drive with duplicate book files. But you can always run the Remove Duplicate Resources report just to be sure. And by telling My Library to show only primary book titles, you can eliminate any remaining feelings of clutter that may still disturb your tranquility.

If you shared some of Jonathan's questions and concerns at the beginning of this post, you should now sleep a little better tonight.

As you may already know, the Morris Proctor Tips & Tricks Blog offers two new tips every week for getting the most out of Logos Bible Software (learn more).

User David Bergquist posed the following question on a recent post at the Tips blog:

Is there a way to have one note show up in two places, for instance at a Bible verse and also in another book? I know one could make two copies of the same note, but is there a way to avoid making duplicate notes to have it show up in different books?

Here's my response, with the addition of a couple of illustrative screenshots:

David, you can create a system-wide note that's attached to a Bible verse. Then your note will show up in any book organized by Bible verse (e.g., Bibles and commentaries)!

To do this, right-click in a Bible or commentary and choose Add a Note | [desired note file] | Add a Note to [verse].

Voila! Now when you're reading any Bible version, commentary, or other book organized by verse (e.g., The New Manners and Customs of the Bible) you can just click the yellow note icon to open and edit the note. Or hover the mouse over the note icon to preview your note right where you are.

Yep, that post title is correct.

Lord willing, my wife Amy is due to deliver our first child in mid-May.** (Insert applause here, Amy really is fantastic!) As many first-time parents-to-be, we're reading a lot and researching the whole process. We've got books on all sorts of stuff, which is par for the course for this bibliophile Daddy-to-be.

One very helpful book has been The Christian Woman's Guide to Childbirth by Debra Evans and Ingrid Trobisch. It was published by Crossway Books (which is where the link goes) but it is unfortunately out of print, so you'll have to find a used copy somewhere. We found ours on Amazon for five bucks.

One of the things that Amy and I love about The Christian Woman's Guide to Childbirth is that it has a great Scripture reference index, and each chapter also lists a number of references having to do, in one way or another, with the basic content or thoughts in the chapter. Good stuff for focusing our minds on our Lord and Saviour and his gracious provision and comfort through the traumatic and uncertain (yet joyous!) time before us.

So to take those references into the hospital with us, we're starting to use the Verse List feature in Logos Bible Software. We're making a verse list for each topic, then we'll just print them out so we'll have ready-reference during labor and delivery.

How do you make a verse list, you ask?

• File | New
• Select Verse List from the New Document dialog
• Click Add button. Use the dialog or point to proper source.
• Voila! Use the Preferences button to give the file a name, but the system will prompt for that if you close the document without providing a name.

Printing is pretty easy too. Just open the verse list (either through File | Open or through the Open Document button on the toolbar), then export or print.

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** We've decided to be surprised, so we don't know the sex of the baby and don't plan on finding out before the big day! At the time of this post, Mom thinks it's a boy and Dad thinks it's a girl. Either way, we're greatly blessed!

A record number of customers took advantage of the insanely great "Library Builder" Christmas special this year and added 330+ books to their library in one fell swoop, so we're taking a look at how to maximize the value of those new books. Even if you don't own the Library Builder product, this series will help you get the most from the books in your electronic library.

In Part 1, I encouraged you to begin exploring the new books added to your library and pointed you to a few tools that assist in said exploration. We also paused to think about some of the helpful things you didn't have to do...because the digital library did them for you!

Now I want to focus on a few different categories of book that arrived in your library via Library Builder, and consider how you will encounter individual books within those categories in the course of your study.

VIP Books

Some categories of book enjoy a "privileged" status within the Libronix DLS. They are privileged because we have built special features or tools that help you get the most value from them. A few examples are commentaries, sermon illustrations, music, maps, and devotionals.

Today I'll focus on commentaries. The Logos Bible Software homepage has a feature that enables you to open a favorite commentary and Bible directly to your desired passage. And Passage Guide is programmed to find all the commentaries that address your passage. We'll look at how these features work, a few tweaks to optimize things for your owen preferences, and pause to discuss a few individual books along the way...

Commentaries on the Homepage

Remember the list of Library Builder contents on the wiki mentioned in Part 1? A quick glance at the list shows that Library Builder included three single-volume commentaries:

• Evangelical Commentary on the Bible
• Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary on the Bible
• The 365 Day Devotional Commentary

I like to specify a single-volume commentary as my preferred commentary on the homepage. To change your preferred commentary to one of the new commentaries in Library Builder, just click "Customize View" on the homepage, then select from the list. Walter Elwell's Evangelical Commentary on the Bible would be a fine option.

If you also check the box next to "Show Study Options" you will now have a "Bible and Commentary" option on the homepage, in the Study Passage section.

Now when you select Bible and Commentary, enter a passage, and click "Go!", your favorite Bible version and Evangelical Commentary on the Bible will open straight to your passage. Simple. Quick. Smooth.

Commentaries in Passage Guide

Commentaries also show up at the top of the Passage Guide report. Library Builder included one OT commentary series (Wiersbe) and four NT series: College Press NIV Commentary Series, IVP New Testament Commentary Series, Crossway Classic Commentary Series, and Classic Commentaries on the Greek New Testament.

You would expect these commentaries to automatically appear when you run Passage Guide, and they do. But you may notice some pleasant surprises as well...

The pastor of the church I attend is currently preaching through Revelation, a book that could be described in terms borrowed from Winston Churchill: "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."

When I run a Passage Guide report on Revelation 2:13, in addition to all the expected commentaries that appear, two in-depth studies on the book of Revelation show up: Back to the Future - A Study of the Book of Revelation by Ralph Bass and Revelation Explained by Lerry W. Fogle. I'm grateful that my digital library summoned these books in response to my passage search, because I might never have thought to look for them.

Passage Guide was smart enough to find two other books that are not traditional commentaries but rather brief surveys, organized by passage, and intended to provide "helps" to the ordinary reader or the pastor who needs information fast.

The People's New Testament , written in 1891, provides a sentence or two for each verse...like a margin note to provide background on people and places, or help interpret easily misunderstood phrases.

The Bible Guide , published in 2001 by Augsburg, is a fantastic resource for concise comments on a given passage of Scripture. Its commentary on the letter to church in Pergamum in Revelation 2 begins with a description of the city that makes it seem like an actual, living place:

Pergamum is an important city — not for trade or beauty, but as a seat of government (2:12–17). It has been the capital of Asia for nearly 400 years — ever since the break-up of Alexander the Great’s empire, when it became the centre of the Seleucid kingdom.

Pergamum has a famous library of parchment scrolls, and parchment gets its name from the ‘Pergamene sheet’. The culture and religion is strongly Greek, with an emphasis on the worship of Asklepios, a god of healing. His temples are something like hospitals. For many people Asklepios is the saviour. Also at Pergamum is a huge temple dedicated to Zeus. It is built on three sides of a square, to make a giant chair or throne.

Andrew Knowles, The Bible Guide, Includes index., 1st Augsburg books ed., 697 (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 2001).

You can be sure that I'll be returning to The Bible Guide as my small group works through Revelation.

Bonus Tip #1: Show More Commentaries

In Logos 3, Passage Guide lists only 15 commentaries when the report is first run. To see more commentaries, click the "More >>" link.

Bonus Tip #2: Cream the Commentary Crop 

Sometimes you want to see fewer commentaries in the Passage Guide report rather than more. Or more precisely...you want to see more of the commentaries you use most and fewer of the ones you use least.

Logos 3 has a nifty feature that keeps track of how many times you use each commentary and promotes the most used commentaries to the top of the list. Notice in the screenshot below the space between A Commentary, Critical and Explanatory... and The Apocalypse of St. John. The Passage Guide report has grown smarter over time and now reserves the top 5 slots for my most-used commentaries. Honestly, how cool is that?

If you prefer your own smarts over the built-in smarts, you can always create a defined collection of your favorite commentaries (learn how!) and then limit Passage Guide to searching those commentaries. Once the collection is created, simply click the Properties button in the Passage Guide report, and select your collection from the list.

Looking Ahead

Today we focused on your new commentaries to see where they show up in the library, get some pointers on how to promote the ones you like best, and introduce a few of the new titles on a first-name basis. The next post in the series will look at books in other categories such as illustrations, music and devotionals. In the meantime...happy exploring!

One feature I use frequently is right-click reference searching within a lexicon (specifically, within BDAG). I typically keylink into BDAG and note the sense under discussion, usually by a reference citation (which in my setup is highlighted by the Active Bible Reference visual filter, which maybe I'll blog about in the future). From there, I right-click on the reference and search the active resource for more instances of that reference.

In lexicons, this generates a list of all articles that contain a direct citation of that reference, which can come in handy when working through a reference. Since this is hard to convey in writing, I made a video.

Oh, yeah. This works for all reference citations, not just Bible references. So you can right-click on an Apostolic Fathers reference, do the same exact right-click functions, and find all the places that the Apostolic Fathers reference is cited as well.

Or a Josephus reference. Or a Philo reference. In any resource. At any time.

How cool is that?!

• Video: Flash, with sound, 1:59, 3.6 MB.

If you woke up on Christmas morning to find Library Builder volumes 1-3 in your stocking (even if you had to put it there)...this article is for you.

Like a lot of users, you may have started out December owning only the Logos 3 version of Scholar's Library. Adding the Library Builder Christmas special literally doubled the number of books on your digital bookshelf. Wow. Start off by congratulating yourself on not having to clear out furniture to make space for more shelving!

Now we want to help you maximize the value of those additional books. This is the first in a short series of blog posts that will help acquaint you with what, specifically, you've added to your library (knowledge is power) and then provide some tips for deriving ultimate benefit from those new books.

The Things You Don't Have to Do

Not only did you not have to build shelving to accommodate doubling the number of books in your library...there are lots of other things you didn't have to do!

Indeed, the developers of Logos Bible Software have taken great pains to ensure that new books merge seamlessly, painlessly, and optimally into your digital library. That means you're probably already enjoying many of the benefits of a larger library without having to do a thing. Let's hear it for not having to do a thing!

• My Library automatically discovered and categorized your new books by title, author and subject.
• The bibliography report (Tools | Library Management | Bibliography) was updated to include your new titles.
• Passage Guide has identified your new commentaries, illustrations, devotionals and books on music and will include them in searches whenever there's relevant data inside.
• Your new books are indexed, topically tagged, and ready to be instantly and thoroughly searched.

Whew, I'm going to step out for a glass of iced tea and be back in a moment.

Hello Books

The next step is to get to know some of your books on first name basis. The more you know about an individual title or series the better you can evaluate how much you plan to use it, in what contexts you're likely to use it, and whether you'll want to add it to any special collections or otherwise promote its status in your library.

So how do you identify all your new books? The Library Builder product didn't ship in a fancy box with a contents list on the back, and since it was a limited special the webpage has been removed from Logos.com.

But I've posted to the Logos wiki a list, by category, of all the books that are in the Library Builder product. You may want to bookmark the link and keep it handy as you spend time with your new books. And you may fairly ask, "What's the Logos wiki?".

For now, start by taking a look at the list and identifying the books you're most interested in based on title. Then spend a few minutes with My Library, opening and browsing those books to become familiar with their structure and contents.

A couple of articles may be helpful in this area:

• Know Thy Books (basic tools for exploring your library)
• Getting to Know Your Books (tips on evaluating books)

Next up: Part 2

Owning a large digital library is great when you can consult precisely the book you need at the moment you need it. But a vast digital holding can present challenges when deciding whether to buy a new collection, such as the 2006 Christmas Special, Library Builder: Volumes 1-3 (available through December 31).

At present, there is no magical tool that can analyze your licenses, compare them against the product you're thinking of buying, then spit out a report showing you duplicated books, new books, books you'd like, books you'll never use, and books you think you'll never use until late on a certain desperate Saturday night in February 2008.

But a couple of features in the Libronix DLS can come in handy when evaluating a purchase, or simply getting to know your books.

(I apologize if this seems obvious to our seasoned users but I recently came across two users in one day who were not aware of this information and realized that I take it for granted.)

Calling Marian...the Librarian

Everyone probably knows about My Library since there's a big button for it right in the main toolbar. So I'll just do a quick refresher... 

My Library is the card catalog of Libronix—the library-ish way to see what digital books you own. It's built on library standards and the "metadata" about each book—stuff like subject classifications—come from the Library of Congress. Yeah, the whole "library" thing is more than a metaphor with us.

In My Library, you can type in the title of a book to find specific volume, or see what you have from a particular author like A.W. Pink or Oswald Chambers. Viewing your books by subject can help you get a handle on the depth of your library in a subject like creeds, for example.

Just the List, Ma'am

If list-making, rather than browsing, is what you're after...the Bibliography report is the tool to use. Click Tools | Library Management | Bibliography, then customize the report to show the contents of various collections you may have built or all the resources you own. You can also customize the display to suit the task at hand.

"Catalog style with covers" generates the colorful display shown below, which is great for getting to know your books. If you're making a standard bibliography, you may choose something more utilitarian like "APA Style (4th ed.)".

For this screenshot, I chose to run the bibliography report on the "Biblical Counseling Library" collection: a user-defined collection I created earlier. User-defined means the list of books in this collection can be completely arbitrary. The metadata shown in the report comes from the Library of Congress, except for the brief descriptions which our book designers edit together from the book jacket or preface.

Follow the Money Trail

When you want to view the Libronix-based products you've purchased and activated, My Library is no help and Bibliography is only helpful if you've manually created collections. What you need is the Account Summary, a new tool in Logos Bible Software 3.

(OK, you really must at least download the free update if you haven't already!)

Account Summary gives you a handle on the product collections in your digital library, as opposed to the individual books.

To open Account Summary, click Tools | Library Management | Account Summary and you'll see something like this, but with fewer 0s.

Here is a record of the licenses for all the products or collections unlocked on this system. A product like Scholar's Library will be in this list. At the bottom of the report is a list of the books and resources you have unlocked individually, such as Scripture Alphabet of Animals.

Tip: If you suspect that something you own is missing from this list...click Tools | Library Management | Synchronize Licenses (available only in Logos 3) to make sure you're utterly up to date.

So What Have We Learned Today?

Account Summary can be the most useful tool when trying to decide whether to purchase a product such as The Complete Theological Journal Library Bundle, for example. You may recall having purchased a couple of journals discs in the past, but can't remember which ones exactly.

After reading this post you now know that resources like journals don't show up as product collections in My Library; they show up as individual journals. But you also know that Account Summary is the place to turn for a list of the products you've activated, which makes comparison easier.

On the other hand, My Library is the ideal tool for locating an individual resource or browing books by subject. And the Bibliography tool can generate either a standard bibliography or a more detail-rich list with bookcovers and descriptions.

Perhaps a corollary of the dictum "Know Thy Books" is "Know Thy Book-Knowing Tools."

(Note: Before anyone writes in to ask...if you see an item in your account summary that simply reads "Theological Journal Library" that corresponds to what we now call "Theological Journal Library Volumes 1-5" to distinguish it from the journal collections that came after.)

For further reading see "Getting to Know Your Books," a web article written by Rick Brannan that offers some additional suggestions for familiarizing yourself with the contents of your digital library.

A recent post on Morris Proctor's Tips & Tricks Blog prompted the following comment from user Aaron Cantrell:

...What I would like to do is choose a book of the bible, or a section of a book (for example Gen 12-22), and have the program give me a complete list of all the words in that book, or section, and show me where they are found in that section. It would be extremely helpful if it could be limited to words that occur a specific number of times. For example, "Show me all the words that occur in Genesis 12-22, occuring 50 times or less." Then a list comes up which shows all these words and where they are found.

That would be a very helpful concordance feature.

In the print world, this kind of thing is often called a "vocabulary guide" or "lexical aid" and a number of excellent tools are available in this category.

What our users may not know is that all Logos Bible Software 3 "language" collections* include a feature that can create a frequency-sorted vocabulary list from lemmatized Bibles in Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, or Aramaic. What's great about doing this digitally rather than in print is that you can break down your lists by pericope, chapter, book, or however you like; you can add, subtract, or edit individual words; and you don't have to spend a dime on another book because the capability is built into Logos Bible Software!

Vocabulary Lists

Vocabulary lists are helpful when learning a biblical language, because you can start learning the most common words and work your way down to the least common. Or filter out the most common words you probably already know and focus on the less common words. Flash cards are great for drilling the language (through my thick skull, I could add).

The Vocabulary List feature in Logos 3 makes it easy to produce a list of words within a passage or biblical book—with word frequencies—and sort the list either by frequency or alphabetically. At that point, printing flash cards is just a few clicks away.

Due to the highly flexible nature of this tool, you could do all sorts of cool things... You could build vocabulary lists by author, combining, say, all Johannine material into one list. Or you could build a vocabulary list for a parallel passage in both the Septuagint and Greek NT. Go wild.

Vincent recently created a training article that walks you through the steps of creating a vocabulary list manually or by importing words from a passage. His article also includes links to free, pre-built vocabulary lists that go along with the most popular Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic grammars. Be sure to check it out.

DIY Vocab List

Here are the steps for making a vocabulary list for Genesis 12-22, as Mr. Cantrell requests.

1. Click the black triangle next to the New File icon on the toolbar and choose Vocabulary List.
2. In the Properties dialog that opens, select Hebrew for the language.
3. Click the Add button on the Vocabulary List toolbar and select Add Bible Passage...
4. Select the BHS Bible and enter Gen 12-22 for the reference. Click OK.

Voila! Like magic, you have a vocabulary list. (Think for a moment about what we just did and how little effort it took...and I think you'll see why I call it magic.)

We're close to the desired goal...now we just need to re-sort the list by frequency. Right-click on the section header and select Sort by Frequency (Descending).

 

Now the list is sorted by frequency and we can delete the words with a frequency over 50, if desired. Click once on the top row, then hold down Shift and click on the last row with a 50+ frequency, and hit the Delete key.

 

Everything highlighted in gray above gets cut and you're left with a list of words used 50 times or fewer in Genesis 12-22...with glosses included!

By the way, you can edit anything you see here, including the Hebrew words, frequencies (maybe you want to use that column for something idosyncratic like difficulty level, then sort by difficulty!), and glosses. And, as mentioned previously, you can print these words as flash cards and use them to master the vocabulary in this passage.

All this with just a few clicks, and available from the software you already own...no need to go out and buy a separate vocabulary guide!

* How come I don't have the Vocabulary Lists feature? Vocabulary Lists are part of the Original Languages Addin, included in the following Logos 3 collections: Original Languages Library, Scholar's Library, Scholar's Library: Silver, and Scholar's Library: Gold. If you own the Original Languages Addin as part of an older collection but have not updated to Libronix DLS v3.0 or greater, you can get Vocabulary Lists for free: open Libronix DLS and click Tools | Libronix Update. If you own a collection like Bible Study Library or don't own a base collection, you can get the Original Languages Addin by upgrading to a Logos 3 collection that includes the addin or purchasing it individually.

We've devoted a lot of words on this blog to persuading you to upgrade to Logos Bible Software 3. While it's true that many of the features we talk about most often (reverse interlinear Bibles, syntactically tagged Bibles) are only available with a paid upgrade it's also the case that we're giving away a ton of amazing functionality at no cost! That's right...

FREE STUFF

One of the cool, new features in Logos 3 that you can take advantage of right now, just by downloading the free update, is the SermonCentral.com search built into Passage Guide. This is just one free feature among many, but the one I want to highlight today.

Caveat: This feature is only free if you already own a product, such as any base collection (e.g., Bible Study Library), that comes with the Logos Bible Software homepage.

What is the SermonCentral.com search?

Logos has partnered with SermonCentral, a website that offers a massive database of sermons uploaded by users of the site. In Logos 3, when you enter a passage—say 2 Corinthians 9:1-5—and click "Go!" the Passage Guide report includes not only links to commentaries, dictionaries, maps, and reports...but it also shows you links to freely available sermons at SermonCentral!

These sermons were preached by people just like you—if you're a pastor—then uploaded to the SermonCentral database to share with others. They're great for inspiration, to get some ideas for organizing your material, gleaning illustrations, and to see how other preachers have treated the same material you're working through.

(We encourage responsible use of others' sermons, including citing sources where appropriate. For an excellent and practical discussion of these issues, see the article Plagiarism in the Pulpit from Preaching magazine.)

SermonCentral Results in Passage Guide

Let's take a closer look at one of the SermonCentral results that shows up in Passage Guide.

On the left you see the sermon title, the Scripture passage that it covers, a brief description of the sermon, and a rating that indicates how many people found the sermon to be helpful. 

On the right is the contributor, date the sermon was preached, intended audience type (e.g., Believer, Seeker, etc.), and intended audience age range. Obviously, most sermons are preached to the entire congregation so many results will show "General, Adults".

Blue text indicates links; clicking the sermon title opens SermonCentral to that sermon, clicking the Bible passage opens your preferred Bible to the beginning of that range, and clicking the contributor name opens a page at SermonCentral.com giving some information about the contributor such as denominational affiliation, church name, education, family, and other biographical details.

Click here to see the page that would open at SermonCentral.com if you clicked the link to the sermon displayed above.

So here you have a huge source of additional content, integrated right into your normal workflow within Logos Bible Software. Just a click and you're looking at instantly relevant material that you didn't pay a red cent to acquire!

Go Pro!

As with any useful, free service there's a way to get even more from SermonCentral.com by upgrading to a paid account. Upgrading to SermonCentral.com PRO provides a whole slew of additional features and benefits. They even offer a free 30-day trial to the PRO version so you can check it all out before committing the funds.

For details on updating Logos for free, and a comparison chart showing all you get with a SermonCentral PRO subscription, see our special SermonCentral page at Logos.com.

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Today's guest blogger is John Fallahee, who works in our ministry relations department and produces free tutorial videos.

Your purchase of Logos Bible Software is essential for studying the Bible. You are saving countless hours in study time; you are going further in biblical research due to our easy two-step automation of “Enter Passage, Click Go”. You are adding more books to grow and customize your library and therefore have robust search results. However, at times, there is the need to narrow your search results to find very specific information.

Let's say you own Scholar's Library, have created a custom collection of books on theology, and include that collection in Passage Guide. When running Passage Guide on Ephesians 2:1, you get 22 hits within your collection of theologies. Alternatively, the reference browser returns 26, 22, or 12 hits depending on your search selections.

With the following “Power Search” example, we will reduce the number of hits even more in order to target very specific and relevant information.

The “Power Search” is like a laser targeting system, which can search through shelves of books, turn pages faster than any band-aid supplied librarian (paper cuts stain pages!), and can read faster than the best graduate of “Speed-Reader University”!

All you need for the “Power Search” are 3 things:

1. a key Bible verse
2. a key word
3. a key book

Open Libronix DLS, click Search | Basic Search and type the following:

bible=“eph 2:1” within 1 sentence sin

Next, select a theology collection that you previously created or downloaded (see below) from the “in” drop down box.

Then click the search button. Your hits are now reduced to just 2 relevant hits. You see, when your search specifies a collection of books plus a particular verse plus your keyword in close proximity—your hits are reduced. Note: The closer the proximity ("within 3 words" vs "within 1 sentence") the greater will be the reduction of the number of hits. Also, a Greek or Hebrew word as a keyword will also narrow your results significantly.

As an added bonus, since we searched our theology books, we can determine the theology of this passage with this method. If you click on the search results, and locate your position in the book, you will discover the category of theology for this passage. For example, Charles Hodge’s Systematic Theology includes a discussion on original sin under the theological category of Anthropology (The Study of Man).

I made a video that walks you through each step so that you can add “Power Search” to Your Study Tool Belt.

Flash Video, 2:50, 2.8MB

By the way, to satisfy your hunger for more “Power Search” meals, simply add a book to your banquet...buffet style: Logos.com offers more than 100 books on theology and doctrine, many of which are not included in the base packages.

Collection Files to Download

Right-click the file that matches the product you own, choose "Save Target As..." and save the file to My Documents\Libronix DLS\Collections (create the folder if it doesn't exist).

• Scholar's Library – Theology Collection (8 Theology/Doctrinal Books)
  
• Scholar's Library: Silver – Theology Collection (10 Theology/Doctrinal Books)
  
• Scholar's Library: Gold – Theology Collection (11 Theology/Doctrinal Books)
  
• Mega Collection – (79 Theology/Doctrinal Books!)

Note: “locked books” can be searched but not viewed; add theological books to your library here.

I blogged about the new Favorites feature in Logos 3 here and here. Today I want to take a quick look at Workspaces—a feature that's been part of Logos Bible Software since at least 2001—and think about when to use a Workspace and when to use Favorites.

When working on research papers in grad school, I'd go to the library, locate and pull a bunch of books I thought would be helpful, then sort them into piles, sticking slips of paper in some to mark articles, leaving others open, but always arranging them according to a logic known only to me.

Similarly, the Workspace feature of Logos Bible Software allows you to set up any number of desktop configurations that reflect the way you work.

If you have a large monitor and like to keep four Bibles open across the bottom of the screen with four commentaries across the top…you can save that as a workspace.

Or if you want to create a custom workspace for each project you've got going, you can do that, too. Last year, Rick Brannan wrote about his personal workspace and showed a screenshot at Ricoblog. Workspaces maximize your efficiency and make the software work the way you work.

(For step-by-step instructions on how to set up a workspace, view the tutorial video.)

This leads us to the question...

When should I use Favorites and when should I use Workspaces?

If the layout of the windows and resources—their placement on the screen—is important to you...then save as a workspace. All your visible windows, tabs, even minimized windows in the background, are preserved.

Workspaces are ideal when you have a long and fairly focused project that you'll be working on over time, using many of the same resources and reports. They are also great for taking a "snapshot" of your Logos desktop at the end of the day so you can pick up at the same spot tomorrow.

In Logos 3, there are buttons right on the toolbar for loading and saving a workspace so this is very quick and easy.

The limiting factor with a workspace is that it's an all-or-nothing approach. You can't load just part of a workspace.

Favorites, on the other hand, are much more granular. They don't preserve the placement on the screen, but they are a great way to flag a specific location in a specific resource. Or to save a single search, as I showed in an earlier post.

The good news is that Workspaces and Favorites can work in tandem, to really supercharge your study. You can save a workspace that puts all your resources and reports just where you want them. Then use Favorites to load varying information into those "slots." So if New American Commentary is one window in your workspace and you have a saved Favorite for Matt. 7:28 in NAC, clicking that Favorite will jump the commentary to that spot while leaving your screen layout intact. (Note: This seems to work best with resources; launching a report from Favorites will open it in a new window).

So there you have it, some tips on when to use workspaces, when to use favorites, and how they can complement one another. I exhort you to go forth and experiment to get comfortable with both features and figure out how they can most effectively support you in the way you study.

Last week I answered the question "Can I save searches in Logos?" by taking a look at Favorites, one of the new features in Logos 3.

If you looked carefully at the screenshot I used to illustrate Favorites you may have noticed some interesting things in the "Crowds" folder. Take another look…

Notice that the Crowds folder contains not only searches, but also dictionary articles, notes, and even a Bible Word Study report.

Follow the Crowds

In college, I took part in a manuscript study of the book of Mark. We dug deep into the text using little more than a double-spaced printout of the gospel, lots of colored pencils, and hours of poring over the text and group discussion. (To read about the manuscript study method, check out the PDFs on StudentJourney.org, a cool new site from InterVarsity Christian Fellowship).

When reading through Mark's gospel this way, one thing you can't miss are the crowds. Everywhere you look, Jesus seems to be surrounded by a mob. At the time, we made a number of interesting observations concerning the ebb and flow of these crowds, and the Savior's interaction with them...and now I'm doing some research into the topic using Logos Bible Software.

Playing Favorites

The Favorites feature in Logos 3 enables me to save and organize each step of my research by placing Favorites in my "Crowds" folder. As my study progresses (or is interrupted and resumed later), I can refer back to this folder to pull up and review any component of my research.

Just about any resource, report, or document within Logos Bible Software can be saved as a Favorite. Resources are Bibles, books or journals; reports are things like Bible Word Study, Exegetical Guide, or Compare Parallel Bible Versions; documents include notes, sentence diagrams, lists (word/vocabulary/reference/verse), or even remote library searches.

So next time you're investigating a particular research topic or Bible passage, organize your work using Favorites folders.

Another great use of Favorites: flag stuff for later investigation. Instead of following a rabbit trail right now, make a Later folder and pop that juicy tidbit in there with a descriptive title so you can stay on track. Or when you see something that relates to a different project or research interest, pause only long enough to bookmark it to that folder. If you often find yourself wandering in your digital library, Favorites can help you stay focused.

Just think about all that Favorites can do to assist your study, and you'll want to start using them right now!

• Save time and frustration trying to recall later what you did
  
• Instantly get back to that key resource or note file
  
• Keep a commonly-used text or search at your fingertips
  
• Defer your bunny trails and keep focused on the task at hand

Next in series: Favorites vs. Workspaces

If you have other ways you're using Favorites, leave a comment here or drop me a line at daniel@logos.com...I'd love to hear about it and, who knows, it might make for an interesting follow-up blog post!

Morris Proctor says he gets the question a lot: "Does Logos let me save my searches?"

The answer to that is…"it depends."

Before you start throwing things, like accusations of being a weaselly marketer, let me explain. It depends on what question you're really asking:

Can I pull up a previous search to tweak it and try it again?

Yes, absolutely! (Lob me another softball, c'mon.) When you bring up a search dialog, it automatically displays the last search you ran. But maybe you want the search you ran last week. No problem, open the search dialog and click the button labelled "Previous" to see the last 50 searches you ran from that dialog. Select one and click "OK" to load it into the search dialog.

If you're working with graphical queries, you can use File | New, Save, Open to create and recall searches. For syntax searches, there are Load, Save and Previous buttons right in the search dialog.

What about the search results, can I save those?

Yes, but not as a search results window. Results of a Bible Search can be exported to a Verse List, where you can do cool manipulations like sort the verses, show them in a few different styles, or add more verses either manually or from a web page, file, clipboard, or Word document.

You can also use File | Export to save search results as HTML or plain text. Or just copy and paste the results into a document of your choosing. And of course you can also click the Graph Bible Search Results link in the results window and export the data to Excel.

Neato, but what I really want to do is save all my favorite searches, give them names, talk to them when I'm lonely, er, I mean organize them into groups, that kind of thing.

Great news! In Logos 3 you can do precisely that using the new "Favorites" feature. Here's how...

After running a search, with the Search Results window as the active window, just click Favorites | Add to Favorites. Sound familiar? It should…it works just like Favorites in your web browser.

You can give your search any name you choose. You can use Greek characters in the name. You can create an unlimited number of folders and subfolders to hold all your favorites.

When you want to launch one of your saved searches, just click Favorites and click your saved search. Then click the Continue Search button to run the search. The button looks like the Play button on your VCR remote.

Voila! Your search results are there, just like you remember them.

Next in series: Get Organized with Research Folders

In Logos Bible Software, context-sensitive help is available from dialogs or reports just by pressing the help button.

But sometimes you might just want to read the manual. And you can do that too, because the manual is a book in the system.

That's right. Just go to My Library. Type in "help manual". Hit enter or click on the title.

This is what is known as a non-scrolling book. It is a series of articles, each article is a separate "scrolling" region of text. Sort of like a series of web pages.

On books like this, it is handy to open up the Table of Contents Pane in the book window. Like below.

Just click the button, and the TOC Pane opens up. You can navigate the book this way. Or search it with the LDLS search engine. Set bookmarks so you can remember where you left off. It's your choice.

Another Hint: Try the Locator Pane by clicking the button next to the TOC Pane button.

Daniel Foster just came to me and said, "Hey, I didn't know that the Andersen-Forbes Analyzed Text has two resource-specific visual filters!" I said, "Sure, I thought everybody knew that."

Well, if Daniel doesn't know ... okay, I guess almost nobody knows.

Visual What?

"Visual filter" may sound like something you do to a photograph to reduce red eye, but in fact it's a simple and flexible feature that the Libronix DLS can use to modify a book's formatting or content on the fly — that is, right when it's being displayed. A simple visual filter is the Page Numbers visual filter, which shows page numbers inline (for resources that have page number tagging).

An earlier post on the Bible Word Study Grammatical Relationships feature garnered the following comment. I inserted the referenced graphic as well.

When I do what you did, I get everything except the side by side translations of the passage as you show above (where you made the notes in red). For instance, I just show the cite Matt 13:14, but not the translations with the colored keys to the study word and the subject. What am I missing?

Yes, this isn't exactly obvious. Grammatical Relationships mirrors the preferences you have set for syntax search results. So try creating a basic syntax search — such as searching for all primary clauses with the word ἀγαπάω as the predicator (verb) in the OpenText.org database. You know, like we find in John 3.16. Here's a short video to show you how: Flash, 9:20, 11 megs, with sound. [NB: When I recorded the video, my computer was in the midst of a massive process that took some significant processor cycles. So it's a little slow in some areas.]

Then modify the search results. Note the "Current View" drop-down in the results menubar. This controls the columns. Also note the Bible button. This is where the English will come in. If your preferred Bible is the ESV, then toggling the button on should cause the ESV to display with proper highlighting in the search results window. Again, the video shows you how this works.

These preferences will then be mirrored in Grammatical Relationships.

When studying Greek words, it is sometimes fun and beneficial to see how the words are used outside of the New Testament. One of the features of Logos Bible Software, version 3 is the ability to look up Greek words in the online Perseus database, which includes a wide variety of classical Greek texts, many with morphological and lexical tags, and some with English translations.

Let’s say you wanted to see references to crucifixion outside the New Testament. In this screenshot, I’ve right-clicked on σταυρόω - the verb form of ‘to crucify’ - in my lexicon (in this case BDAG), chosen ‘Selected Text’ and ‘Perseus Greek Word Lookup’. I could also have right-clicked the word in a Greek Bible and chosen ‘Selected Text’ and the ‘(Lemma)’ form instead. Of course, I may also want to run this lookup on related words, such as σταυρός - ‘cross’.

Here Perseus has provided some analysis of the word. Note the link to ‘Configure display’. Use this link to choose between displaying texts in transliteration or Unicode or some other Greek encoding. After some initial analysis, you can see hit counts by genre – in this case 92 hits in prose and 1 hit in poetry. Clicking on 'Greek Word Search' will generate a concordance of the 93 hits of this word in the database, as seen below.

You can see hits in authors such as Josephus, Xenophon, Epictetus, Thucydides, and Appian. Clicking on the first line of each hit will open the Greek text to the larger context of the hit. Clicking on individual words will provide analysis to help you translate the passage. Sometimes a link to an English translation or Latin version is available as well.

In a recent article on Hebrew KeyLinking, I mentioned that using the arrow keys to scroll between lexicons isn’t always the best way to survey all the articles on the word you are studying, because the arrow key navigation is based on how a lexicon spells a word, not on the KeyLink look-up tables Logos Bible Software 3 supports for navigating from the Bible directly and accurately to the lexicons. I mentioned that you can more accurately get to all your lexicons using the Bible Word Study report or the Exegetical Guide, or you can use the right-click menu to select a specific lexicon as a KeyLink destination if you want to consult a resource other than your default lexicon.

I’m sticking with my story; it’s all true. But I over-looked a new feature in version 3. Sometimes I want to do a quick survey of my lexicons on a given word, but I don’t need all the other searches and features of the Bible Word Study report. Of course, I could manage my preferences and turn off most of the sections of the Bible Word Study report until I stream-lined it for the task at hand, but then I’d have to reset my preferences the next time I wanted to dig deeper. As it turns out, there is a fast way to execute all my KeyLinks on a given word while making use of the KeyLink look-up tables for increased accuracy: the KeyLink Summary report.

As an example, open one of the newer Hebrew Bibles (such as the Westminster 4.2 morphology or the Andersen-Forbes Analyzed Text) and go to Psalm 19:9. Let’s say we wanted to check out what our lexicons had to say about the word ‘pure’ (bar in Hebrew). We only care about the entries for bar that mean 'pure'; we don’t want to read about when it means ‘son’ or ‘grain’ or 'field' or a 'soothsayer' or a 'cargo ship'. Right click the word and choose ‘Selected Text’ and then select the Hebrew word with the term ‘(Lemma)’ after it. (‘Lemma’ indicates that you are working with the dictionary form of the word. Selecting this form also makes use of the KeyLink look-up tables, if they are present.) Now click on ‘KeyLink Summary’.

Your exact results will vary depending on what lexicons you own, the order of your KeyLink preferences and whether or not you’ve downloaded the new texts and lexicons that are part of version 3.0 or, even better, the beta version 3.0a. But you should see something like this:

In the screenshot, I’ve clicked the plus signs next to the top three articles in order to be able to read their articles right in the summary report. You can see that we’ve landed on the correct homograph on the expanded examples. (Some of the other lexicons don’t have look-up tables yet, so they still link on spelling alone. Most of the prestigious lexicons have completed look-up tables for version 3.0a, but other lexicons are still works in progress.) You can navigate directly to the lexicon articles themselves just by clicking on the title of the lexicon. That way you can follow any links in the lexicon, or read surrounding articles, or execute searches against the lexicon.

Clicking the word 'More' will expand the report to execute more KeyLinks further down your list of KeyLink preferences.

That's it: the KeyLink Summary is a simple, one-purpose tool for quickly surveying your lexicons.

One of the features of Libronix DLS that was completely redesigned for version 3.0 was the weights and measures calculator.

Click on the thumbnail to take a look at an example. This example was taken from Revelation 14:20, where we’re given an image of a horse-high river of blood running 1,600 stadia. Ick, right? But enquiring minds want to know, just how icky are we talking about here? So I click ‘Tools | Bible Data | Weights and Measures’ and enter ‘1,600 stadia’. I could have used ‘stade’, ‘stades’, ‘stadion’, ‘stadioi’ or ‘furlong’ if I wanted. A stade is an eighth of a mile, but the length of a mile in Roman times was different than today’s standard mile. One of the really cool features of the new calculator is that it doesn’t assume it knows which stade length you want, nor does it assume you know that there are two lengths to choose from. Instead, it displays both.

Note the second line of the results: 1.00 stades (Roman) = 0.92 furlongs (modern). (A furlong is another name for an eighth of a mile, the report just happens to call the modern measurement a furlong, though as you can see, it is savvy enough to show furlongs when you ask for stades.) So right away you are informed that the measurement for a stade will be different depending on which stade you are interested in (Roman or modern), even if you didn’t know there was a choice!

Beneath the conversion formula between the related measurements, the report is split into columns, one column for each measurement that 1,600 stadioi might be referring to. From here, it is easy to look up conversions to other measurements of length, such as kilometers or miles. Again, each list shows ‘miles (Roman)’ as distinct from the modern standard ‘mile’. 1,600 Roman Stadioi equals 200 Roman miles, but only 183.93 modern standard miles.

Take a look at the next example. Here I entered 1 shekel, but a shekel can be a measurement of weight or of money. And when it is money, it might be gold or silver. (The modern Israeli shekel is not listed here, though that would have been an interesting addition to this table.) Note how two different charts of two different colors make it easy to separate out the different kinds of shekels. Again, you didn’t need to know that there are three different things a shekel could refer to in order to see the conversion charts.

Trying to fathom (pun intended) modern equivalents to ancient measurements is always a bit difficult, and exact precision often eludes us. But with Logos Bible Software, getting to reasonable estimates just got easier than ever.

One thing I use the Bible Speed Search feature for is to do quick searches of the New Testament for a Greek word, but display my hits in English.

Huh?

Yes, I type in a Greek lemma, but the results are provided in English with the proper English word highlighted. Rather than explain it all, I figured I'd put a quick video together to show you.

• Video: Flash, just over 1 minute, 1 meg, with audio

Note in the video that I use the F2 key to cycle between English, Hebrew and Greek keyboards (in that order) in order to type in English and Greek on the same line. I probably should've mentioned that, but it's too late now.

Remember, you can do this with right-clicks too. See this previous entry for more details (with a video).

It seems a good thing to have one place we can point to for a listing of all of the posts on the Bible Word Study report. So here it is.

If you've recently stumbled across the Logos Bible Software Blog, then you've likely missed some of these posts. Check 'em out!

• Bible Word Study Report Part I: Overview
• Bible Word Study Report Part II: Report Header
• Bible Word Study Report Part III: KeyLinks
• Bible Word Study Report Part IV: Grammatical Relationships (A)
• Bible Word Study Report Part IV: Grammatical Relationships (B)
• Bible Word Study Report Part V: Translation
• Bible Word Study Report Part VI: Lemma Reports
• Bible Word Study Report Part VII: Report Properties

This is the seventh and final portion of my series on the Bible Word Study (BWS) report. It's been a few weeks since I've blogged on this topic, but it is time to wrap up the thread.

Since we've only discussed how the Bible Word Study report deals with Greek text, we'll limit this discussion to the options for Greek words inside of the report.

The report properties are broken up in sections—the same sections that are included in the BWS report itself. So the Lemma properties have to do with the Lemma, etc. So we'll refer back to earlier posts as we step through each section's properties.

There are more than 100 new features in Logos Bible Software 3. One of the smallest is becoming a favorite of many users.

The Edit > Find Dialog has been replaced with a Find Bar. You can open it on a report or resource by selecting Edit > Find from the menus, or pressing Ctrl+F. This opens a small toolbar at the bottom of the window where you can immediately start typing. It then searches the text in that window as you type, putting a little starburst on the first occurrence.

The Find Next button (or Enter key) moves to the next occurrence. Find Previous (or Shift+Enter) moves back to the previous occurrence.

The Find feature is not a replacement for searching, but it’s very helpful when you know you’re in the right place, but want to quickly jump to a specific word or phrase. For example, you might open a very long article on Moses in the Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary and want to find where in the article Moses’ sister Miriam is mentioned. The Find feature takes you right there, without launching a whole-book or whole-library search.

This is the sixth post in my on-going series on the Bible Word Study (BWS) report.

This post will look into the Lemma Report sections of the BWS report.

To refresh our collective memories, we're looking at 1Th 2.16. Here it is in the reverse interlinear, with the phrase in question marked up using new Visual Markup features.

The Lemma Report sections have to do with understanding how the study word (ἀναπληρόω) is used both inside of the Greek New Testament and in other Greek literature, like the LXX (Greek Old Testament) and the Works of Philo.

One feature request that we've had a lot in the past 10 years or so runs something like this:

So, I have this Greek word. I want to know all the ways it is translated in the New Testament. How do I do that?

Another similar question is frequently asked as well:

What are the different Greek words that get translated as this English word in the New Testament?

We couldn't always answer these questions before. In some ways, we could use Strong's numbers as a bridge, but it wasn't one-click easy to search the text to answer these sorts of questions.

With Reverse Interlinears, answering these questions is quick, easy, and elegant.

You're using Logos 3 and hadn't realized this yet? That's OK, there is a lot of new stuff in Logos 3.

I figured I'd make a video to run you through how to use Reverse Interlinears to start to answer these questions as you study the Bible.

• Video: Flash, 7.6 megs, with audio
  (press F11 to view full screen at smaller resolutions)

For those of you who haven't upgraded and added Reverse Interlinears yet ... you can do that on our upgrade page.

This is the fifth post in my on-going series on the Bible Word Study (BWS) report.

This post will look into the Translation section of the BWS report.

To refresh our collective memories, we're looking at 1Th 2.16. Here it is in the reverse interlinear, with the phrase in question marked up using new Visual Markup features.

This is the second part of the fourth post in my on-going series on the Bible Word Study report.

This post will look a little further into the Grammatical Relationships section. Our previous foray into the Grammatical Relationships section is here.

To refresh our collective memories, we're looking at 1Th 2.16. Here it is in the reverse interlinear, with the phrase in question marked up using new Visual Markup features.

We left off the last post by saying:

So ἀναπληρόω means something like "make complete" or "fulfill" or "replace". We begin to understand the nuance of each of those senses by considering who or what is doing ἀναπληρόω, and to whom or to what ἀναπληρόω is being done. Grammatical Relationships does all of the heavy lifting for you in searching out these usages, categorizing them, and returning them to us grouped by usage context.

So let's examine the results and see what we can learn about the word ἀναπληρόω.

It is time for the third installment in our series about the Bible Word Study Report (BWS). Parts 1-3 involved:

• Part I: Running BWS from ESV NT Reverse Interlinear
• Part II: Report Header
• Part III: KeyLinks

To refresh our collective memories, we're looking at 1Th 2.16. So here it is in the reverse interlinear, with the phrase in question marked up using new Visual Markup features.

The information inside Grammatical Relationships allows you to see the different sorts of words or larger clausal units that are commonly (or uncommonly) used with the study word (in our case, ἀναπληρόω).

Word study isn't only about what the word means, it is also about how the word is used. The Grammatical Relationships section is the only place, apart from your own syntactic searches and study, where this information is presented to you. And it is done automatically, both in the original language and also, through the bridge of Reverse Interlinears, in English.

So let's begin our look at the Grammatical Relationships section of the report. There is a lot of information here, so we'll take two articles to work through it.

We've talked about how to start up the report with a Greek word from the ESV English-Greek Reverse Interlinear, and we've talked about the report header. Today we talk about the KeyLink section of the Bible Word Study report.

To refresh our collective memories, we're looking at 1Th 2.16. So here it is in the reverse interlinear, with the phrase in question marked up using new Visual Markup features.

So let's look at KeyLinks.

A few days back, I blogged about the Bible Word Study report. There I talked about how to run the Bible Word Study report on the underlying Greek word from an English text. In that post, we started the process of running a Bible Word Study on the word translated "to fill up the measure of" in the ESV, ἀναπληρόω. For a refresher, here's the text of 1Th 2.16 in the ESV English-Greek Reverse Interlinear New Testament:

The next posts in this series will walk through each of the major sections of the Bible Word Study report. Today we start with the Report header section. I know I said last time that we'd dig into KeyLinks, but there's so much happening in just the report header that it merits its own discussion.

This is more than just an attractive header, it conveys a lot of information and leads to more information that you might not necessarily think to examine. Check out the image below to see the different parts of the header.

(Yes, we'll get into the Properties and the other icons on the toolbar in later posts)

In the above image you can see five primary pieces that form the header. Some of this content is static, other content is dynamic. Portions of the header include:

• Lexical Form
• Pronunciation (optional, not installed on the machine I'm using for this post)
• Gloss from Preferred KeyLink
• Horizontal Ellipsis (...) indicating further glosses are available
• Gloss Source
• Lemma Density Chart, also known as a sparkline

I'll discuss each of these in turn.

I'm in a home Bible study group that is studying First Thessalonians. So I was reading it the other morning, working through the second half of chapter 2. I stumbled across the following. Note the italicised phrase:

¹⁴ For you, brothers, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea. For you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews, ¹⁵ who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and displease God and oppose all mankind ¹⁶ by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved—so as always to fill up the measure of their sins. But God’s wrath has come upon them at last! (1Th 2.14-16, ESV)

The phrase "so as to always fill up the measure of their sins" didn't make much sense to me. I can figure out what it might mean based on contextual clues in the ESV, but it still seems weird. So I thought I'd use Logos Bible Software 3 and the The ESV English-Greek Reverse Interlinear New Testament to get from the English to the Greek, and then the Bible Word Study report to understand more about the contexts in which the underlying Greek appears in the New Testament. This series of posts will hopefully help in illustrating some of these features.

First we'll look into how to run the Bible Word Study report from the Greek if our starting point is an English text.

Users on the always-active Logos newsgroups often amaze me with their ingenuity. They come up with some very inventive uses of Logos Bible Software, not to mention creating scripts and custom toolbars to tweak the application in various ways.

I was recently impressed by a very simple but useful idea that had never occurred to me: a newsgroup user* created a collection of books that he owns in print but doesn't yet own electronically. When he wants to locate a phrase or word in one of those print books, he simply searches the collection of locked books to get the page number or section title. After that, it's a matter of walking to the shelf, pulling down the print book, and opening it to the right place.

That's right...Libronix DLS can provide a full-text, searchable index to some of your print books, too!

This works because 1) we let you search inside locked books and 2) we have some 5,000+ books to search. I'm sure you can think of how you might find it useful to search print books, but let's look at an example.

Just the other day, you were reading along in one of your print books (if you're like me, you can't recall now which one) and happened across a great illustration of the satisfaction found in Christ. You remember that it was a quotation from Malcolm Muggeridge but that's about it.

Libronix DLS makes it a 10-second task to run a search for "muggeridge" in the "My Print Books" collection you created, which points you to the R. Kent Hughes Preaching the Word commentary on Ephesians. Specifically, Hughes' commentary on Ephesians 1:13.

A moment later, you have the print book in hand and are reading this quotation from Muggeridge:

I may, I suppose, regard myself, or pass for being, a relatively successful man. People occasionally stare at me in the streets — that’s fame. I can fairly easily earn enough to qualify for admission to the higher slopes of the Inland Revenue — that’s success. Furnished with money and a little fame even the elderly, if they care to, may partake of trendy diversions — that’s pleasure. It might happen once in a while that something I said or wrote was sufficiently heeded for me to persuade myself that it represented a serious impact on our time — that’s fulfillment. Yet I say to you, and I beg you to believe me, multiply these tiny triumphs by a million, add them all together, and they are nothing — less than nothing — a positive impediment — measured against one draught of that living water Christ offers to the spiritually thirsty — irrespective of who or what they are. What, I ask myself, does life hold, what is there in the works of time, in the past, now and to come, which could possibly be put in the balance against the refreshment of drinking that water?

Searching the full text of your print books is a great way to re-locate that half-forgotton passage or track down a place name or topic that might not appear in the printed book's index. It's not a substitute for owning the electronic edition, but it's a nice added perk of the digital library system.

As a caveat, I should point out that not all locked books return equally useful search results. Depending on the structure of the book, the search results window may return chapter titles or section titles. This is especially true of older books that were not coded with page numbers.

If you're convinced of the utility of this, you might be asking "How do I begin?"

It's pretty simple, really. Just create a new collection (Tools | Define Collection) and when you do, uncheck the "Unlocked Resources Only" box. The titles accompanied by a yellow "padlock" icon are locked. Then it's just a matter of adding the titles to your collection that you own in print. Of course, you can include both locked and unlocked titles.

To search your new collection, just click the Search button in the toolbar and select your collection.

* I would give credit to the newsgroup user who suggested this, but I can't seem to recall who it was (par for the course) and couldn't immediately locate the thread on the newsgroup.

It's cool to see features and datasets combine in ways that weren't originally anticipated.

Just the other day, Eli and I were talking with Dale Pritchett (VP Marketing and Bob's father!) and Dale wondered about how to highlight an English text based on Greek or Hebrew morphology. Sort of like this:

Eli and I looked at each other quizzically. Then at about the same time we had the answer: Reverse Interlinear! And the cool part is that the feature already works in Logos Bible Software 3! It is a consequence of having data and functionality already in place, we just hadn't quite stopped to realize the extent of the functionality. But it is a consequence of:

• Having Reverse Interlinears available that align the original language texts (Greek and Hebrew) with a modern language translation at the word level.
• Having morphological information in the original language texts underlying the English translation of the Reverse Interlinear.
• Having a Visual Filter (a method of overlaying highlighting based on specified criteria) for morphologies.

Because of the architecture of Logos Bible Software ... well, it just works. Nothing extra needed.

Here's a short video (Flash, approx. 0.7 MB, no sound) that walks through how to specify the visual filter for the reverse interlinear. It walks through setting up a visual filter that highlights where finite verbs (i.e., verbs in the indicative, imperative, subjunctive or optative moods) occur in the Aorist tense. These will be visually highlighted with the "Box" style, so you can simply see them as you scroll through the text. And you'll see how the ESV handles translating them. After the visual filter is set, I then show how interlinear lines are customizable. In the end, you see only the English text of the ESV, but the English words that represent the aorist verbs are highlighted ... and no Greek is in sight.

Pretty cool. Give it a try if you're running the Release Candidate!

I'm excited about a lot of the features in the upcoming Logos Bible Software 3. One of them that hasn't received much air time is the Remote Library Search.

Huh?

That's right. Remote Library Search.

Let's face it, there are a decent amount of folks out there that are book geeks, just like me. We're the type of people who:

• Actually read footnote references.
• Hate books that use endnotes instead of footnotes because you have to constantly refer to the back of the book.
• Actually look up citations in footnotes and endnotes.
• Feel like you need to obtain cited books if they sound interesting or appropriate based on the footnote.

Remote Library Search is for you.

In Episodes I and II, I showed how every word in a Libronix DLS resource is a potential link, whether English or another language. I hope you've started going around your digital library double-clicking everywhere.

Here's one more little tidbit: the "ubiquitous link principle" extends beyond resources. It even works in some reports!

While playing around with the Biblical People report that will ship with Libronix DLS version 3.0 I discovered quite accidentally that I could double-click a Hebrew or Greek name at the top of the report and look it up in a lexicon.

So, for example, I'm looking at Obed in the Biblical People report and want to consult my reference works to read more about him. I double-click on the English, Hebrew, or Greek version of his name to open Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, HALOT, or BDAG, respectively.

(Note: Libronix DLS 3.0 Beta 7 required; your mileage may vary depending on the resources you own and how you've configured your English, Hebrew and Greek KeyLinks).

These are the articles on Obed that open when I do this:

I have to hand it to the developers...they've implemented the concept of KeyLink-ability with remarkable consistency.

All I can say is...Click On!

Last week, I showed how every word in every Libronix DLS resource is a link. The focus of that post was interacting with English text in resources; today I want to follow up with some observations about interacting with text in other languages.

Just as you can double-click on an English word in a resource and jump to a reference work that has an entry on that word, you can also interact with Greek text in the same way.

Baker New Testament Commentary includes a section for each biblical passage discussing "Greek words, phrases and constructions." When reading the commentary you might encounter a page that looks like this:

Some of the Greek words here may be unfamiliar to you, or you might become intrigued by a word and want to study it further. To read more about ἀσθενής, for example, double-click it and a lexicon will open directly to the entry for that word. For me, BDAG opens to an in-depth article about the word, and I can take my study in any number of directions from there.

(Bonus tip: You can open more than one lexicon the same way; just go to Tools | Options | Keylink, select the desired Data Type (e.g., Greek) and change Number of Windows to Open on a KeyLink to a number larger than 1.)

If I double-click on the word κερδήσω, Analytical Lexicon of the Greek New Testament (included with Scholar's Silver) opens instead of BDAG. This is because κερδήσω is an inflected form of the word, not the dictionary form.

ANLEX, as it is called, is worth its weight in gold for this simple reason: it lists every inflected form in the Greek New Testament...so if the word is in the NT you'll get a hit in ANLEX. I can either consult the brief lexical entry here or double-click the headword κερδαίνω to dig deeper with BDAG or another lexicon.

Just remember...with Libronix, every word's a link!

If you liked this post, you might also enjoy reading Rick's discussion of KeyLinking between lexicons.

Proceed to Episode III >>

Libronix DLS, our digital library system, is based in no small part on linkage between texts. Today I want to introduce you to the quiet, unobtrusive links you may have overlooked.

You should care about this topic because links are one of the key features that make a digital library more than a pile of texts on your hard drive...and that sets Logos Bible Software apart from the competition.

Every user is familiar with the obvious links that appear in Logos resources: references to Bible verses, Josephus or Word Biblical Commentary; links to footnotes; or cross-links between articles in an encyclopedia.

These links are obvious because of their color. "Click me," they shout. They are elevevated to a special status in the digital library because the author of the book gave them special status: "Here's a pointer to the verse I'm discussing…it's Genesis 3:1." Blue text.

What many users miss out on—and it's a shame, really, because there's a great deal of utility here—is that every word of every Logos resource is a potential link to something.

Let me say it again…every word's a link!

These are the shy and retiring links that don't draw attention to themselves…but they may turn out to be at least as useful as their boisterous brethren.

These links are not visually distinguished in any way; they are just all the other words in a resource, set in normal black text. But double-click on one of these guys and cool stuff happens…even better, you get to control what cool stuff happens!

When you double-click on a word in a resource, the Libronix DLS knows what language the word is and seeks to open a resource that will tell you something useful about that word.

You can try this right now…open up a Bible to Genesis 3:1 and double-click the word serpent. What happens on your machine?

On my machine, the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible opens to a fascinating article on serpents in the mythology and iconology of the Ancient Near East, its appearances in the Hebrew Bible, and in later writings.

Depending on how you have configured your machine and which books you own, you might see an equally fascinating article in A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature discussing the serpent in Beowulf, Genesis B, Canterbury Tales and so on. Or maybe you'll see the entry for serpent in Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible, or The New Bible Dictionary.

If what you see isn't as cool as you would like it to be, check out the tutorial article on English KeyLinking at Logos.com, which provides a strategy for configuring your preferences in this area. I think you'll find it well worth the ten minutes it takes to read the article and customize for your own particular interests.

Proceed to Episode II >>

Another feature in the upcoming LDLS 3.0 release has to do with sentence diagramming.

Yes, we're aware that there are more ways to diagram a sentence than you can shake a stick at (pun intended). One of these methods is the "Block" or "Sentence Flow" diagram.

The linked video presentation walks through using the new feature. It is all contained within the present sentence diagrammer. The steps are simple:

1. Create a New Sentence Diagram document (or open an existing one)
2. Insert a passage
3. When inserting a passage, select the "As Wrapping Columns" option
4. Enter the passage and version information
5. Click Insert Passage

That's it. Now you can click and drag text around as you see fit. I should note that I didn't think too much about this particular block diagram. Looking at it in retrospect, there are things that need to be done differently. But since it is an LDLS document, I can just open the diagram and edit it later to clean that stuff up.

Video: 950x750, Flash, approx. 2 megs.

One cool feature here is that you can insert more than one column of text. So, as I did in the video, you could insert one column of Greek text and another column of English text, and match them up.

Or — hold on to your hats — you could enter different accounts of an event in the synoptic gospels and block-diagram them in parallel. You can use the stick diagramming symbols (like, say, brackets, lines or arrows) to draw attention to parallel groups or features. On top of that, all of the Visual Markup features are available in the sentence diagrammer.

All done? Go to File | Export. Look, you can save it as a PDF to show your friends, or to put on your web page or blog!

Part I

Here's another of Wendell Stavig's questions to one of my earlier posts:

What is a MARC record?

MARC stands for Machine Readable Catalog, and is a Library of Congress standard way of specifying resource metadata, that is, information about the book. Think of it as an electronic card catalog entry. You could use the MARC record information to do a library search, and if you printed this information out and took it to your local library, your librarian would probably know what she was looking at, but mostly the MARC record represents cataloging information that is used by the Libronix DLS to help organize and find resources in your library.

If you want to learn more about the MARC format in all its splendor, the Library of Congress has a page for you. If you follow that link, I recommend that you refrain from operating heavy machinery for at least twelve hours afterward. Better make it twenty-four, just to be safe.

Anyway, this illustrates one of the things that sets the Libronix DLS apart from other Bible software programs: We really have built an electronic library, and not simply a Bible study program. To be sure, the Libronix DLS is an excellent Bible study program, but that's not all it is; the features we've built for Bible study are simply specialized ways to access certain kinds of information in your electronic library shelves.

Say it with me: It's not a program, it's a library.

This is why, for example, we call books “resources” — a library has all sorts of resources, not just books. (So do we: A video resource isn't a “book,” it's ... a video resource.) We are not tied down to presenting only one kind of information. Just like a library.

This is also why the My Library browser shows you not only the actual title of each book, but also alternate titles, popular titles, and any abbreviated titles we know about. You can type "Little Kittel" into the My Library browser to find The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume. Or you can find them by subject. Or by author. There's more than one way to find the book you're looking for.

Just like a library.

Earlier, I wrote an article titled Visual Filters and Verb Rivers (Part I) in which I described the use of a particular visual filter, the Morphology Filter in the Biblical Languages Addin.

That article got long, and I promised to follow it up later. Well ... it's later. And this is the follow-up.

The Morphology Filter is good for word-level and paragraph-level work. That is, when you are reading through the text and noticing morphological trends, the Morphology Filter helps these sorts of things jump out at you.

Upon noticing what seems to be a concentration of a particular morphological criteria in a particular paragraph or section, the next question is: Does this happen elsewhere in the book, or is this unique? In other words, with the Morphology Filter, you're looking at the trees (or perhaps a particular grove of trees). But you need to step back and look at the whole forest now. This is what Verb Rivers help you to do.

(Holding back the urge to mix metaphors and crack a joke about going "over the river and through the woods" ... )

I've been working through 1Ti 4.11-16 in my personal study. One thing that jumps out in this passage is the amount of imperative verbs relative to 1Ti 1.1-4.10. These six verses contain 10 imperatives; nine of them are in the second person singular (thus likely addressed to the reader, Timothy).

This is an important feature of the passage (and in the larger discourse of the epistle), and it should be looked into.

But how does Logos Bible Software help you become aware of this sort of thing? There are two features (at least) that help one "see" these things. Visual Filters and Verb Rivers. These are available in the Biblical Languages Addin, which is already a part of some Logos packages (see bottom of this product page for details).

This article explores what sort of information these addins convey.

If you've been to one of Morris Proctor's Camp Logos training seminars, then you're familiar with the cry of "Tools, Options, KeyLink!"

I know I occasionally need a reminder of this, and chances are you may need a reminder too. Now is as good a time as any, especially since Eli's recent blog entry about data types reminds me that facility with KeyLinking (how you look up stuff using data types) is something that effective users of Logos Bible Software seem to take for granted.

But knowing where to go to set your KeyLink preferences (once again, this time for Moe: "Tools, Options, KeyLink!") is only half the battle. Understanding what happens when a KeyLink is invoked, and knowing a little more about the resources available for KeyLinking is necessary as well.

You might want to check out a few tutorials we have in the Support area of the Logos web site. These are listed in the order in which they were written. I wrote the Greek KeyLinking article to help folks understand what the different targets were and how KeyLink order affects lookup. A colleague then wrote the Hebrew KeyLinking article, and he followed that up with the English KeyLinking article. (If you haven't figured it out, I'm a bit myopic when it comes to Greek!) All three articles have the same basic idea: understand the feature, know your resources, select your KeyLink order; but the each article applies the ideas to particular languages and available resources.

So, here are the articles:

• Greek KeyLinking: A Strategy
• Hebrew KeyLinking: A Strategy
• English KeyLinking: A Strategy

Wendell Stavig* posed some great questions in his comments to one of my earlier posts, and since my computer is bogged down running a conversion script that takes about forty-five minutes to run (top-secret project!) I'll go ahead and answer them. Out of order, of course.

[C]ould you please explain some of the data in the Help | About This Resource window?

...

How you use the information under datatypes?

As far as I'm concerned, datatypes and keylinking are the two most important concepts in the Libronix DLS.

The Libronix Digital Library System is a very modular framework. The user interface is separate from the system internals. This modularity not only makes for a better application architecture, it allows us to deliver new features and user interface without changing the underlying system. (Below I am going to show you how to add a “Toggle Zoom” feature right now, without downloading anything.)

It is always a pain to switch from keyboard to mouse and back. “Power users” tend to master the keyboard shortcuts of their favorite applications so that they can keep their hands in one place.

The keyboard is not as convenient as the mouse, though, for navigating a page full of hyperlinks. But when you are following lots of links it is a real pain to keep moving your mouse between the list of links and the back button, or moving your hand back to the keyboard to press “Alt-Left”.

Mouse gestures are a powerful shortcut that can cut your mouse travel without touching the keyboard.

In an open resource window, click and hold the right mouse button while dragging it just a short distance to the left and then releasing the button. This “gesture” executes the Go > Back command. (Assuming you have already followed a link or scrolled, so there is somewhere to go back to.) Right-click and drag to the right executes the Go > Forward command. Up moves to the previous article, down to the next. A “C” shape (left, down, right) toggles the contents pane.

I am not sure who invented mouse gestures, but we first saw them in Opera and Mozilla. These browsers support a long list of gestures, but I don’t often make an “M” shape to view the tags for a page, or “S” to view the source. I do use forward and back all the time and can’t imagine working without them.

I call mouse gestures a hidden feature because they don’t have any visible user interface and so most users never find them. But now you know. A complete list of the gestures supported in the Libronix DLS is in the Libronix DLS Help, under Appendixes > Gestures. Give them a try, and let us know if there are any other commands you would like to access through gestures.

I received the following comment regarding my post about Logos Workspaces:

I saw your post regarding your workspace in Libronix and I had a question: How do you open the same book twice? You did this for the ESV and I can not figure it out for the life of me. Any help would be wonderful. Thanks

I suppose this really isn't prominently documented. But in Logos Bible Software, if you hold down the SHIFT key while clicking a link, you open a new version of the target resource.

So if you see a link for a Bible reference and SHIFT+Click the reference, a new version of your preferred Bible will open if you already have a copy open. This is very handy — it means you won't lose your place in your primary Bible window (and any linked windows) by following bunny trails.

I usually keep a second version of the ESV open, and I also mark it as the Reference Target Window (the little red book icon in the book icon bar that has the arrow pointing to itself). That way, whenever I click a Bible reference, it will jump to that specific window — and not cause any of my other linked windows to jump around.

This SHIFT+Click logic carries to opening books in general. So if you're in My Library and do the SHIFT+Click book-opening dance, you'll open a new copy of the book you clicked.

It's amazing what you learn when you write a blog article. A few folks here at the office read this one and told me I was missing out — that there are all sorts of ways to open another instance of the same resource.

Some of these ways to open another copy of the same book include:

• Window | New Window will spawn a new instance of the current window.
• CTRL + SHIFT + N will spawn a new instance of the current window.
• I've been told that in future versions of the LDLS (currently in alpha testing) will support multiple opening in the "Go"/Quick Nav box. So if you type 'ESV' and then ENTER, then ENTER again, two instances of the ESV will open.

Rick wrote earlier about how you can go from a headword in one lexicon to another by right-clicking and executing a keylink from the headword. This is true, and a very useful feature.

But I will show you a still more excellent way ...

Earlier, I wrote about how to set up the Quick Navigation Bar (aka, “the Go box”) to quickly open resources. It can be used to navigate to references as well, and in the Libronix DLS, just about everything is a reference. I'll look at two in this post: citations of Bible verses, and lexicon headwords.

When I'm working through the Greek text at the word level, many times I like to get a second opinion. My primary Greek lexicon is BDAG, which is an excellent resource, but I do like to consult others. My favorite lexicons to consult for second opinion are:

• A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott-Jones or LSJ)
• A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint, Revised
• Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament (EDNT)
• Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT)

This article explains just a little bit about Greek keylinking and then shows you how to keylink from lexicon to lexicon using the keylink functionality straight from the right-click menu. No funky keystrokes involved.

The other day, Rick Brannan mentioned the Libronix DLS “Go” box casually in passing, as if everyone has that feature turned on and knows how to use it. Since Rick and I work with LDLS resource files all the time, we often stop thinking about titles and authors and start calling books by their project names: CHAPSOT, ANLEX, BHSWTS40.

We also use the identifiers to navigate quickly to the resources using the "Go" box that Rick was talking about. This is so integral to the way that I use the LDLS that I forget that most people don't know about these shorthand identifiers, and furthermore, many people don't even have the "Go" box turned on in the first place.

Inconceivable!

On Saturday morning I was studying the first part of 1Ti 4.6:

If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, (1Ti 4.6a, ESV)

When I was looking into the term "good servant", I noticed that in the Greek it was an adjective and a noun that agreed in case and number. So, I wondered, what other things are called "good" in the Pastoral Epistles? This article explores ways to specify this sort of search with the Graphical Query Editor.

[I should note that I have been working through the Pastoral Epistles for some time. I blog about the Pastoral Epistles at http://PastoralEpistles.com and have some other information on my personal web site.]