Results tagged “Anchor Yale Bible” from Logos Bible Software Blog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Anchor Yale Bible was our biggest Pre-Pub ever in terms of its size, the number of hours it took to get it from print to digital, and the team assembled to tackle it.

Pictured below are the folks in our Electronic Text Development department who did the lion’s share of the work.

Several others are not pictured here because they forgot to wear their t-shirts! Many more were involved in other ways like working with the publisher and doing things like marketing, sales, testing, shipping, and support.

Since this was a special Pre-Pub, we did something out of the ordinary. One of our artists designed a t-shirt that those who worked closely on the project received. Here’s a close-up of someone wearing his new t-shirt proudly.

I know some of you are thinking how much you’d like to add this to your wardrobe. Well, if you wear a medium, you just might be able to. We have three medium t-shirts left. If you bought the Anchor Yale Bible and want one of these cool shirts, leave a comment below. We’ll randomly pick out three winners and send out the shirts in the next day or two.

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

Setup Tips

1. Copy the resources to your hard drive.

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

2. Create a collection.

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

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

3. Make sure your resource association is installed.

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

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

Usage Tips

1. Explore AYB in “My Library.”

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

2. Use AYB in the Passage Guide.

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

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

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

3. Find even more with advanced searching.

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

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

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

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

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

The Anchor Yale Bible (formerly Anchor Bible)—even though incomplete—is to my knowledge the largest commentary series ever written. Weighing in at 83 volumes, approximately 160 pounds, 43,315 pages, and an estimated 25,000,000 words, this is one massive collection of biblical data!

As you can imagine, producing a Libronix edition of this mammoth set is no small undertaking. Being 30 volumes larger than the International Critical Commentary Series, which we did a few years ago, the Anchor Yale Bible is the largest project we've ever attempted to do in a single collection. (Migne's 166-volume Patrologia Graeca is a much bigger project, but we are breaking it into several smaller chunks.)

These 83 volumes retail at $3,920.00, but we are offering them on Pre-Pub for only $1,499.95. That's more than 60% off the list price!

To be sure, $1,500 is far from pocket change. But if you start saving now and set aside a couple hundred dollars every month for the next several months, you'll probably have enough to purchase this set by the time it's ready to ship.

To put this in perspective on a smaller level, the average retail cost per volume is $47.23. If you purchase this collection on Pre-Pub, you'll be paying only $18.07 per volume.

The 83 volumes that are included in this collection cover the entire Protestant Bible except for Deuteronomy 12-34, Proverbs 10-31, and Ezekiel 38-48, Nahum, Mark 8-16, and Philippians. Several of these volumes will become available after they have been published in print. In addition, this set provides you with commentaries on Tobit, Judith, the additions to Daniel, Esther, and Jeremiah, Wisdom of Solomon, The Wisdom of Ben Sira, 1-2 Maccabees, and 1-2 Esdras. You'll also get both the new and old volumes for Second Isaiah (Blenkinsopp and McKenzie) and 1 Corinthians (Fitzmyer and Orr and Walther).

For a lot more information, head over to the product page, where you can place your pre-order. When I say a lot, I mean a lot. It's 53 pages in a Word document and nearly 23,000 words! For a project this massive, we thought it was only fitting to have the product page correspond to the collection. :)

Now you know why it's been a little quiet on the Pre-Pub page recently. Well, at least you know part of the reason. There are still more good things to come.

2/27/09 UPDATE: New Volume! We have added the newly published Philippians commentary by John Reumann. Lock in your order now!