Archive by Author

Behind the Scenes: What Happens When Your Book Gets Updated?

  |  Tue, May 8, 2012   |  Products   3

One of the best parts of owning a book in Logos is that it’s constantly updated for free.

If you pay careful attention, you might notice new links and other obvious updates. But most of the updates happen under the hood—like updates to milestones, data types, and other pieces of functionality that make Logos books shine.
Here’s an example of the work we did on one of our resources, the Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary.

Updating the Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary

The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary is just under 7,300,000 words long. After looking at user-submitted typo reports and going over the entire dictionary ourselves, we identified around 800 typos, and fixed all of them. Or, to put it differently, we went from 99.989% accuracy to as close to 100% as possible. (I’m hesitant to say we hit 100%, because with a work this big, it’s inevitable that we—and all our users—missed one.)

This is even more impressive when you consider that 20% of the words in the Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary are in languages other than English: Aramaic, Danish, German, Greek, Spanish, French, Hebrew, Icelandic, Italian, Latin, Dutch, Norwegian, and a few other languages. There are also 61,141 words transliterated into English. That means finding typos is a little more complicated than running a spellchecker.

How We Fix Typos

Fixing typos isn’t as clear cut as it sounds. For some words, there isn’t a clear consensus on the correct spelling, like gray and grey. And a surprisingly large number of typos aren’t actually typos—they’re submitted by U.S. users encountering U.K. spelling, and vice versa. Many U.K. users report words like center as a typo, but U.S. users report centre. (As a general rule, we follow the print edition.) Other words are reported because they’re unfamiliar: we’ve received multiple reports of pine nut as a typo, with pine cone as the suggested correction. But a pine nut is a real thing, and it’s possibly referenced in Song of Songs 6:11.

For some of our resources, it’s not unusual to check a typo report against the print edition, only to find the typo exists in print as well. Fortunately this isn’t a problem with the print edition of the Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, but with 22,000 books in Logos, there are bound to be typos even in well-proofed print source material. But unlike print, the Logos edition can be updated.

More Than Typo Updates

In addition to the typo fixes in the Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, we also added 4,810 bibliographic milestones. We added links for 39,080 bibliographic citations—both to resources already in your library and to resources that don’t yet exist, but will someday. We also linked thousands of references to 61 new data types.

The Anchor Bible Dictionary is just one of around 22,000 resources available in Logos. At any given time, we’re making thorough updates to hundreds of books, adding links, functionality, and other tweaks to make your books shine in current and future versions of Logos. All the updates work on all your devices—Mac, PC, iPhone, iPad, Android phones and tablets, and Biblia.com. You always have access to the latest and greatest.

The best part? You get the updates automatically—absolutely free.

There’s nothing extra you need to do to get the latest, polished version. Nothing to buy. Nothing to click. It all happens in the background, all for free.

That means if you own the Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, you already have all the updates described above. If you don’t own it, now is the perfect time to get it.

Why Thomas Aquinas Is Important

  |  Fri, April 27, 2012   |  Misc   Comments Off

Thomas Aquinas was a profoundly influential thinker from the thirteenth century. As a scholastic, Aquinas sought to understand Christian theology in light of the rediscovery of Aristotle’s works, and he redefined the relationship between revelation and reason, science and theology, and faith and philosophy for the next eight centuries. As a philosopher, Aquinas developed principles of just war and natural law, and outlined an argument for God’s existence from contingency—the intellectual forerunner to the modern Argument from Design.

During the Reformation, Aquinas’ influence waned. Calvin and Luther rarely interacted with his works, preferring Augustine and the Early Church Fathers. The Catholic Church still held his works in high regard, but other scholastics, such as Duns Scotus, were more influential in the Catholic Counter-Reformation. It wasn’t until the nineteenth century that Aquinas was elevated to his current status in the Catholic Church.

He also received renewed interest in Protestant circles as well. In the early nineteenth century, Herman Bavinck interacts with Aquinas a great deal in Reformed Dogmatics, mostly in his volume on the doctrine of God. In fact, Bavinck cites Aquinas 354 times in his 4-volume work. More recently, Norman Geisler has mentioned that Aquinas’ Summa Theologica is his favorite book after the Bible.

This isn’t to say Aquinas was a proto-Protestant. At the same time, it’s almost impossible—in any Christian tradition—to have a conversation about God’s attributes, simplicity, knowability, or any number of other topics without interacting with Aquinas.

You can get the Summa Theologica, the Summa Contra Gentiles, and the Catena Aurea in Logos today. We also recently announced a project to translate Aquinas’ commentaries on Isaiah and Jeremiah, as well as his 4-volume Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. These three translation projects are available at a limited-time Pre-Pub discount. Pre-order them today!

How You Can Set the Price for the Charles Spurgeon Sermon Collection

  |  Fri, April 13, 2012   |  Products   Comments Off

How much is a set of Spurgeon’s sermons worth to you?

Before you answer that question, here are a few things to keep in mind:

  1. Spurgeon preached at an astonishing pace—three sermons every week for several years. Before he turned 20, Spurgeon preached more than 500 sermons. When, when he moved to the Park Street Chapel, his sermons were published each week and sold more than 25,000 copies. According to Christian History, Spurgeon preached to more than 10 million people during his lifetime. He often preached to thousands of people at a time—without a microphone. By the time of his death, Spurgeon had preached over 3,500 sermons.
  2. Spurgeon had a profound influence on an entire generation. Dwight Moody met with Spurgeon during a trip to England in 1875. During his visit, Spurgeon, Moody refined his preaching skills before returning to America to become one of the century’s most famous evangelists. And Moody wasn’t the only one: David Livingston (of “Doctor Livingston, I presume” fame) carried copies of Spurgeon’s sermons with him on his travels. After Livingston’s death, his daughter found the note “Very good. D.L.” written on the front of one of Spurgeon’s sermons.
  3. Because Spurgeon preached from the entire Bible, his sermons nearly provide a comprehensive commentary on the entire Bible. That’s 63 volumes, and tens of thousands of pages, straight from Spurgeon.
  4. With the Logos edition, you could search all of Spurgeon’s sermons for the text or topic you’re preaching on. Scripture references would be linked to your Bible, and the entire set will integrate with the rest of your library.

So what would owning the Logos edition of Spurgeon’s sermons be worth to you? Ultimately, you’re the best person to judge. That’s why we decided to let you help select the price.

How It Works

Simply go to the product page and select the amount you’d be willing to pay. Maybe it’s a lot. Maybe it’s a little. Whatever the amount—choose how much Spurgeon’s sermons are worth to you. It’s that simple.

I’ve Selected My Price. What Happens Next?

If enough people select the same price as you to cover product costs, you’ll get it for your price. A higher selected price means fewer people are needed to put the project into production.

If the final price ends up being lower than what you selected, you’ll get it at the lower price. But if final price is higher than what you selected, you’ll miss out. The bottom line: the higher you bid, the more likely you are to get it at or below your price.

As soon as there are enough bids to cover production costs, we’ll send you an email notifying you whether your bid was successful or not. If your bid was successful, then it will turn into a Pre-Pub order. We won’t charge your card until the product ships, and we’ll let you know a few weeks before that happens.

For now, all you need to do is tell us how much owning the Logos edition of Spurgeon’s Sermons is worth to you. Head to the product page to place your bid!

Do you already own the Ages edition of The Complete Spurgeon Sermon Collection (63 vols.) that was built years ago for Libronix? If so, then you will receive this updated collection for free, and the files will automatically download when it is complete.

Greek Discourse Grammar Course Coming to Dallas Theological Seminary

  |  Thu, March 29, 2012   |  Misc   Comments Off

If you’ve ever done work with the Greek text of the New Testament, you know there are multiple layers of understanding and interpreting the text. That’s because many features of the Greek language convey meaning not just in words and sentences, but in the higher level patterns and structures of discourse.

For years, Dr. Steven Runge, Scholar-in-Residence here at Logos, has been researching this topic and developing resources to aid both pastors and scholars. We’re honored that Dr. Runge has been invited to teach a class on Greek discourse grammar and analysis at Dallas Theological Seminary.

Runge takes complex linguistic ideas and makes them accessible. His cross-linguistic approach focuses on function instead of translation, helping you gain a much deeper understanding of the Greek text. He gives special attention to describing the task accomplished by each discourse device. This function-based approach helps to conceptualize what is happening in Greek by understanding how the comparable task is accomplished in another language.

This course will help you:

  1. Understand how various grammatical devices work from the standpoint of discourse.
  2. Understand their exegetical purpose.
  3. Develop homiletical strategies to faithfully communicate the sense of the original Greek.

If you’ve had a year of Greek and you’re comfortable working in an interlinear text, then you won’t want to miss it.

The course runs from May 14 through May 25, 2012. To register, contact the registrar at Dallas Theological Seminary.

If you can’t attend the course in person, you’ll want to pick up Dr. Runge’s video course, Introducing New Testament Discourse Grammar: Video Series.

Update on the English Translation of Geerhardus Vos’ Reformed Dogmatics

  |  Wed, March 7, 2012   |  Products   1

Work on translating Geerhardus Vos’ Reformed Dogmatics is underway! In fact, it has been for a while—lots of work has been happening behind the scenes.

We have assembled a team of translators from North America and the Netherlands who are working under Richard B. Gaffin. There are few individuals more qualified than Gaffin to edit this translation. He is an acclaimed Vos scholar, having published numerous articles on Vos, and editing Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos. Gaffin has taught at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia since 1965.

The translation is making progress, and we are tentatively estimating a ship date in early 2013.

Who Is Geerhardus Vos?

Geerhardus Vos was an important theologian from the early twentieth century. He taught at both Calvin Theological Seminary and Princeton Theology Seminary alongside J. Gresham Machen and B. B. Warfield. He was an outspoken proponent of Reformed biblical theology. Cornelius Van Til has written that “Vos was the greatest pedagogue I ever sat under,” and John Murray said Vos was “the most penetrating exegete it has been my privilege to know.”

Reformed Dogmatics is available at a discounted Pre-Pub price while translation work is underway. By pre-ordering, you’ll not only get it at the best price, but you’ll also help fund the project and move it forward—and you’ll be one of the first to receive the English translation when it’s finished. Pre-order now!

What’s Next?

Soon we’ll be announcing another project. Be the first to hear about it by subscribing to the Pre-Publication mailing list!

To subscribe, go to the Notifications tab in your account and check the box next to “Pre-Publication.”

When you subscribe, you’ll receive an email each weekday with the newest Pre-Pub deals. You’ll always know about the latest and greatest on Pre-Pub, and you’ll be the first to hear about the next translation project.

63 Bestselling Zondervan Books on Pre-Pub: What You Need to Know

  |  Fri, February 17, 2012   |  Products   Comments Off

Now you can get 63 new Zondervan books available at some of the best prices anywhere—digital or print: Books like Michael Horton’s The Christian Faith, a dozen new volumes in the NIV Application Commentary, and a lot more are available for pre-order in a discounted 63-volume bundle and a dozen smaller collections.

It’s a ton of content, so here’s a quick look at some of the highlights:

New Releases and Bestsellers

Michael Horton’s The Christian Faith has been one of the most-requested books in the last few months. This book is Horton’s long-anticipated systematic theology. It also received a 2011 Christianity Today Book Award, and has received praise in journal reviews and on prominent blogs.

You’ll also get Michael Williams’ new book, How to Read the Bible through the Jesus Lens, which Justin Taylor called “the sort of book I’d love to have in the hands of every member of my church!” If you enjoyed Fee and Stuart’s How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, then Williams’ book is right up your alley.

The bundle contains lots of other bestsellers, like Scot McKnight’s The King Jesus Gospel and The Blue Parakeet, Andreas Köstenberger’s Theology of John’s Gospel and Letters, Carl Rasmussen’s recently updated Zondervan Atlas of the Bible, Gregg Allison’s Historical Theology, and dozens more.

Commentaries

We’ve made 12 additional volumes in the NIV Application Commentary available for Logos users. In fact, this is the first time these volumes have been available anywhere in a high-quality digital format. So if you already own the commentaries on the New Testament and the Prophets, this is the perfect chance to round out your set.

The bundle contains lots of other commentaries, too, like the newest volumes in the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament series by Thomas Schreiner and Clinton E. Arnold, and a new commentary on Revelation by Chuck Swindoll.

Bible Dictionaries and Reference Works

You’ll also get Moises Silva’s Essential Companion to Life in Bible Times and The Essential Bible Dictionary, as well as The Essential Bible Companion to the Psalms, by Brian Webster and David Beach.

This is just a quick summary—there are more than 63 volumes altogether. Check out the product page to see the full booklist.

An Incredible Value!

If you were to get all these books in print, you would pay $1,674.37, and even if you searched the web and found the best deals, you would still pay well over $1,000.00. For a limited time, you can get all these books for around $899.95 on Pre-Pub, which works out to around $14 per volume.

This pricing is available for a very limited time. We’re already working on these books, and we expect to ship them soon. After we ship, the price will jump, so the window of time to get this discount is quickly closing. Pre-order now!

Not quite ready to spring for the whole bundle? Then choose from a dozen smaller collections:

The main thing to remember is that all these prices will go up very soon, so pre-order today!

Helping You Make Sense of the Old Testament

  |  Fri, February 3, 2012   |  Products   Comments Off

Let’s face it. The Old Testament can be hard to read sometimes. We’re separated by thousands of years and thousands of miles (at least if you’re at our headquarters in Bellingham, Washington). There are difficult-to-pronounce names, complicated rituals, and cultural assumptions very different from our own.

The Handbook on the Old Testament Series is an attempt to summarize and introduce you to every chapter of every book in the Old Testament. It’s part commentary, part textbook, part historical background, and part comprehensive introduction. In other words, it’s the perfect place to start if you’re looking for a solid introduction to the Old Testament.

These handbooks summarize the key issues of each chapter in the Old Testament, provide exposition of the text, and interact with recent commentaries and studies. So if you’re working on a sermon, or writing a paper, these books can help guide you through the vast scholarship on the Old Testament, and help you identify key themes on the text you’re studying. You’ll also get historical background, an introduction to the cultural context, helpful bibliographies of recent research, and lots more.

In the preface to the volume on the Pentateuch, Victor P. Hamilton writes:

As I wrote this book, I had in mind the student not only as a scholar of God’s Word, but also as a proclaimer of God’s Word. Therefore, I have attempted to write something that is as usable in the pastor’s study as it is in the classroom, something that is as devotional as it is scholarly.

These books have gone through multiple print editions and sold tens of thousands of copies in print. Now, we’re pleased to make them available for pre-order at a discounted price. You would normally pay more than $100.00 for these four volumes, even if you searched around and found them on sale. Right now you can get the entire set on Pre-Pub for less than $85. This price will be going up soon, so make sure you pre-order now before it’s too late!

5 Things You Didn’t Know about John Calvin (and Should!)

  |  Mon, January 23, 2012   |  Products   Comments Off

1. Calvin suffered.

He was in constant pain: “headaches, insomnia, shortness of breath (probably due to advanced tuberculosis), coughing fits, hemorrhages, fevers, colitis, kidney stones, hemorrhoids,” according to Alexandre Ganoczy, and “bleeding from the stomach, fever, muscle cramps, nephritis, and gout” to name just a few. Calvin was more than a preacher and theologian—he was a pastor, too. He knew what it meant to suffer, and his writings bear this out.

2. John Calvin and Ignatius of Loyola were classmates at the University of Paris.

Why is this interesting? Because Ignatius of Loyola founded the Society of Jesus—more commonly known as the Jesuits. The Jesuits were the driving force behind the Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that, as the Reformation unfolded, no group opposed Calvin and his successors more than the Jesuits.

3. Calvin had a religious conversion.

Everyone knows the story of Luther’s conversion—his near-death experience and his commitment to a life of study. But did you know Calvin had a conversion experience, too? Calvin famously wrote in the preface to his commentary on Psalms:

“God by a sudden conversion subdued and brought my mind to teachable frame, which was more hardened in such matters than might have been expected from one at my early period of life. Having thus received some taste and knowledge of true godliness, I was immediately inflamed with so intense a desire to make progress therein, that although I did not altogether leave off other studies, yet I pursued them with less ardor.”

4. Calvin was deeply influenced by Augustine.

Some have claimed that Augustine was the first Calvinist! B. B. Warfield wrote:

“The system of doctrine taught by Calvin is just the Augustinianism common to the whole body of the Reformers—for the Reformation was, as from the spiritual point of view a great revival of religion, so from the theological point of view a great revival of Augustinianism.”

Spurgeon wrote:

“Perhaps Calvin himself derived it [Calvinism] mainly from the writings of Augustine.”

Calvin himself wrote:

“Augustine is so wholly with me, that if I wished to write a confession of my faith, I could do so with all fullness and satisfaction to myself out of his writings.”

The data are pretty interesting, too. In the 1536 edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin quotes Augustine 24 times. By the 1559 edition, he quotes Augustine 400 times. Here’s just a snapshot:

  • 68 citations about the sacraments
  • 54 citations about the church
  • 34 citations about God’s will
  • 34 citations about sin
  • 28 citations about grace
  • 17 citations about predestination

5. Nobody knows where Calvin is buried.

Calvin wanted no veneration after he died. He didn’t want pilgrims to travel to Geneva to find his grave. In fact, even today it’s difficult to find many monuments to his life at all. James Rigney has written that “unlike other reformers. . . Calvin is represented in Geneva only by traces and shadows and by the diffused voice of his writings.” Hugh Y. Reyburn wrote in 1914 that “The spot where he was laid is now uncertain. . . . But he needs no stone. His indestructible memorial is his works.”

Calvin’s most important work is the Institutes of the Christian Religion. This book has enjoyed a prominent place on the reading lists of theological students and scholars around the world, and has left its mark in the fields of theology, philosophy, social thought, and legal theory. It has been republished and translated nearly 100 times in dozens of languages.

The most authoritative English edition is the translation by Ford Lewis Battles of the 1559 Latin edition, which is newly available for pre-order. If you’re a scholar of the Reformation, you already know this edition is a must-have. And if you’re new to Calvin but not sure where to begin, you couldn’t do much better than the Battles translation of Calvin’s Institutes. But the price is only available for a limited time, so pre-order it now!

New Lower Prices on the New Interpreter’s Bible and New Interpreter’s Dictionary!

  |  Thu, December 15, 2011   |  Products   Comments Off

The price has dropped on the 12-volume New Interpreter’s Bible and the 5-volume New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible!

Pre-Pub prices often go up as we get closer to shipping. Normally, even when you pre-order early and the price goes up, you still get it at the lower price.

This is the rare exception where the Pre-Pub prices have gone down.

We’ve been working with the publisher to make the NIB and the NIDB available for pre-order at a discount. So if you’ve been sitting on the sidelines, now is your chance to pre-order these two sets at a much lower price!

We don’t know how long we’ll be able to offer the NIB and the NIDB at these prices. You need to pre-order now to get these two sets at the lower price. Even if the price goes up later, you’ll still get it at today’s price. We also won’t charge your card until this product ships, and we’ll send you a reminder a few weeks in advance.

About the New Interpreter’s Bible (12 vols.)

  • Commentary on the entire Bible in 12 volumes
  • Contributions by Terence E. Fretheim, Walter Brueggemann, Walter C. Kaiser, and other top biblical scholars
  • New material specifically prepared to meet the needs of today’s preachers, teachers, and students of the Bible
  • Introductions to each biblical book covering essential historical, literary, socio-cultural, and theological issues
  • A massive amount of materials—11,591 pages of introduction and commentary on the entire Bible, including Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical books

About the New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols.)

  • 8,400 entries in five massive volumes
  • 7,100 new articles
  • Contributions from 900 scholars
  • Summary introductions for long articles
  • Bibliographies
  • Visual aids, including maps, charts, photos, and illustrations

Take advantage of the new lower prices and pre-order now! Remember, we won’t charge your card until the products ship, and we’ll remind you about it a few weeks in advance.

NIV Now on iPhone, iPad, Android, and Biblia.com

  |  Fri, December 2, 2011   |  Misc   1

We recently reached a new agreement with Zondervan to make the NIV available on the iPhone, iPad, and Android apps. This is big news: the world’s most popular Bible translation since the King James Version is now available on the most advanced tool for Bible study on mobile devices and tablets.

How to Get the NIV on Your iPhone, iPad, or Android Device

If you have Bible Study Library or higher, then there’s nothing extra you need to do to get the NIV. You already own it. You can access it on your iPhone, iPad, Android device, or Biblia.com right now.

If you own Christian Home Library, or you don’t own a base package, you’ll need to download the NIV. But keep in mind that it’s a much better idea to get the NIV as part of a base package. For example, if you upgrade from Christian Home Library to Bible Study Library, you’ll get the NIV, plus almost 200 additional resources—all for around $115. Otherwise, you would pay $26.95 for just the NIV. As you can see, getting the NIV as part of a base package is the way to go. (Note that these prices are current as of December 2, 2011.)

More Than an Ebook

With the Logos app on your iPhone, iPad, or Android phone or tablet, the NIV is fully integrated with the most powerful digital library available anywhere for Bible study.

Logos mobile apps equip the NIV with reading plans, searching, word studies, and other features. With the app, any Bible reference in any book in your library can be set to link back to the NIV. This seamless integration makes reading the Logos app the optimal mobile platform for reading and studying the NIV.

If you don’t have the Logos app for your iPhone, iPad, or Android phone or tablet yet, download it now!

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