Biblical Studies and Technological Tools

BibleWorks and Logos on Android (sort of...)

2012-01-08T01:24:00.000-05:00

I'm still trying to catch up on stuff from SBL last November, but here's a quick note I can post.

In the past I have used Logmein for remote access to the various family computers I maintain. Even the basic free account lets me take over a computer and run programs on it. It works great and is secure. I will continue to use it for such maintenance tasks. Note that this can work the other way around, and what a program like this allows me to do is run programs that are on my home system from any other computer. As long as I have my home system on and Logmein enabled, I can remotely connect to my home system and use my installed programs like BibleWorks or Logos. I've also used it to grab files I've forgotten on my home computer when I'm at school. (I now use SugarSync to keep my systems all in sync via the cloud. It's a wonderful thing.) It's a little slow to use Logmein this way, but it works. What this also means is that I can use the web browser on my smartphone and see BibleWorks on my phone. I say "see," because without the use of a mouse on my phone, I really can't do too much. Logmein does have an Android app ($29), but I just don't use it that much, especially on my phone, to buy it.

I was pleased, therefore, to discover Splashtop Remote Desktop when it showed up as the free app of the day on the Amazon Appstore. (It's now $1.99.) As you can see in the photo above, that's BibleWorks running on my Droid X. It's the same sort of deal where you install the app and then also install the software on your computer and establish a secure password connection. Again, keep in mind that the home system also has to be on and have Splashtop enabled. The nice thing about Splashtop is that it is designed for touch screens. It uses all sorts of single and double finger gestures to scroll, expand the screen, emulate left/right mouse clicks, etc. It works quite well, even on my phone.(The only issue I had is that Splashtop could only see the primary monitor in my dual monitor setup, so I had to move BibleWorks over.) Below, you can see how the Droid X is duplicating my computer monitor. I suspect that this would look much better on a tablet rather than a smartphone. BTW, Splashtop is available for WinXP or better, Android (2.2 Froyo or better), iPhone, iPad, and Mac OS.

I do have other Bible apps on my Droid--OliveTree, CadreBible, YouVersion, Logos. (Check here for my evaluations though I need to update them all. It's coming...) None of these Android versions have the power of a dedicated Bible software program. With Splashtop, however, I can access the power of the full program. (The Logos Android app is slowly gaining capabilities, but it still has a long way to go.) I'm not anticipating BibleWorks to release an Android version, but if you really, really want BW or the full Logos (or Accordance for you Mac users!) program on your phone or tablet, this is a way to do it.

Searching for Greek Semantic Domains Using Louw-Nida in Accordance, BibleWorks, and Logos

2011-12-12T01:16:00.001-05:00

In the previouspost, I indicated how to go about searching for Greek roots in order to geta broader view of how a particular concept is presented by an author. WhileAccordance makes such a search quite simple (it's harder in Logos and would takeeven more work in BibleWorks), I also noted that what a person may really wantis not a search based on word roots but one based on a particular concept oridea. What this means is that we really want to search on semantic domains. In my work, I want to do a domain search as often or more as I want to do a root search. Forthe Greek New Testament, this means that I want to use Louw-Nida's Greek-EnglishLexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains. (This resource isstandard in BibleWorks and is standard with any of the Greek NT packages inAccordance or Logos. Not too much has changed since an earlierreview I did.)

In the preface of this excellentlexicon it states its purpose:

This Greek New Testament lexiconbased on semantic domains has been designed primarily for translators of the NewTestament in various languages, but biblical scholars, pastors, and theologicalstudents will no doubt also find this lexicon of particular value, since itfocuses on the related meanings of different words.

What Louw and Nida did was take every word in theNT and assign it to groupings of concepts (= semantic domains), so that onecould compare words that are related conceptually but not lexically (i.e., byword roots). To continue the goal of the previous post where we were searchingfor roots related to κρινω in James, here is what asearch for κρινω looks like in Accordance, BibleWorks,and Logos.

Accordance: The search brings up the results (usethe Show Paragraph), and the Browser can be expanded to show the organization.

BibleWorks: The search actually brings up the firstinstance of κρινω in the lexicon, but the middle paneon the left provides access to the other occurrences.

Logos: The search actually just brings up the entrylistings for κρινω in the lexicon, and from here youclick on the entry that matches the concept you desire.

You will also see in the screenshots that I havelocated domain 56, "Courts and Legal Procedures," and its subdomain E,"Judge, Condemn, Acquit," which includes fifteen entries: 56.20-56.34.If it is the concept of "judging" (and not just the words whose rootsare κρινω) we want to find in James, then what we wantto do is search for all the words in this subdomain.

So, those screenshots show me what group of words I'm looking for.
How do I go about conducting a search for words in a domain in the Bible software programs?

Accordance: Apparently it is notpossible in Accordance to search the Greek NT by Louw-Nida domains. (Someone mayhave found a way...)

BibleWorks makes it quite easy to conduct Louw-Nida domain searches. First select a morphology Greek version (e.g., BGM, BNM, GNM...) and then right click in the command line. The popup offers an option of "Insert Louw-Nida Domain Code." Clicking on it opens a box with the LN domains, and it is easy to search for domains with a particular word or to browse through the domains to find the one you want.

Additionally, if you want to search multiple (sub)domains, you can use an OR search and simply type in, using angle brackets, the additional ones you want. As usual, BW is quite fast. A search for all the words in the NT in subdomains 56.20-56.34 took less than a second and returned 332 hits.

Logos isn't quite as straightforward as BW, and there are actually a couple ways of obtaining the desired results.

You can use a Syntax search and use the Lexham Syntactic Greek NT. When the search dialog opens and you start a new query, first add a Word. Among the options that are available, you can search for LN Domains (e.g., domain 56 on "Courts and Legal Procedures"), Subdomains (e.g., subdomain 56E on "Judge, Condemn, Acquit"), or Articles (e.g., 56.20 on "make legal decision). Unfortunately, Logos does not display any of those headings, so you need to first have consulted LN to find out which domain or subdomain or article you want. You can mix search categories using an OR command. As you can see above, a search for an article OR a subdomain in James took less than 5 seconds (a search on just subdomain 56E in James took less than a second), and Logos does return a nicely highlighted display of results in both the Greek and another version of your choice.
You can also use a Bible search using one of the Lexham Greek NTs and simply type in the command line in angle brackets the domain range you want (along with boolean operators for multiple ranges). As you can see below, a search for domains 56.20-34 in James took about a second. The advantage of conducting your search this was is that you have the option of displaying the results in a Grid, by Verses (with a Greek / English parallel if you wish), Aligned, or Analysis view as shown in the graphic.

A couple other related matters...

In terms of memorizing Greek vocabulary, theprevious post pointed to a number of lexical aids that group vocabulary by rootsto help in memorizing. Mark Wilson, however, persuasively argues (cf. Wilson'sarticle: GreekVocabulary Acquisition Using Semantic Domains) that students are much betteroff trying to build vocabulary by learning words associated in semantic domains.His approach is demonstrated in his book, MasteringNew Testament Greek Vocabulary Through Semantic Domains.
Another possible resource (though it is not nearlyas comprehensive as Louw-Nida but goes deeper in the words it does include) isTrench’s Synonyms ofthe New Testament from 1880. It's available in Logos and Accordance, but it cannot be used to search word groups in the NT.

BOTTOM LINE: BibleWorks has the most straightforward way of searching on Louw-Nida domains. Logos has more options in searching and especially in its display of results. Accordance is unable to conduct this kind of search.

Next: What about domain searches in Hebrew?

Searching for Greek Roots in Accordance, BibleWorks, and Logos

2011-12-08T01:43:00.001-05:00

This has turned out to be a somewhat lengthyadventure for me. It started with reading Rubén Gómez' posting on "Finding all the forms of a Greek word in Accordance"which was in turn a response to Michael Hite's posting on "Finding all forms of a Greek word with Logos 4."As Gomez noted, the method demonstrated for Logos 4 was rather convoluted.Furthermore, it's simply inadequate and misses a number of hits, because itfails to include words that have prefixes attached to the roots or instanceswhere the root word has forms that are not spelled quite the same. In theexample provided in both videos, the task was to find all the words sharing theroot of κρινω = judge. The Logos demonstration found,by picking words alphabetically close to κρινω: κρινω,κριμα, κρισις,κριτηριον,κριτης,κριτικος. What it missed, however, werethese words that also occur in James based on that root:διακρινω,αδιακριτος,ανυποκριτος. Gomezdemonstrates the very simple and elegant way that Accordance found all thosewords which is accomplished merely by right-clicking on a word and choosing"Search for root." The results are very nicely displayed as well.

How does Accordance accomplish this task? They haveevidently compiled lists of cognate word groups. Theseare simply the collection of words based on the same root. Such collections ofcognate groups have been regularly used as aids to vocabulary memorization, andyou can find them in Metzger's Lexical Aids for Students of New Testament Greek,Robinson's MasteringNT Greek, Van Voorst's BuildingYour NT Greek Vocabulary,or Trenchard's CompleteVocabulary Guide to the Greek NT. (Incidentally, I am fairlycertain that Accordance and Logos referred to Trenchard's listings, because, forexample, he--inaccurately, I believe--includesνηστευ· forms with the εσθι·root and εραυν· forms with the ερωτα· root. A real linguist, which I am not, may beable to confirm that or not.) By using such a listing, Accordance hasmade it possible to search for all the words in a group when you search for anyone of them based on its root. (Searching by root was a featureadded in version 7. Matters are similar but not the same with Hebrew and itssystem of 3 consonant roots.)

As far as I can tell, Logos is not able at thistime to conduct such a root search directly. Fortunately, however, it is able todo so with a little work. What you need to use is the The Lexham Analytical Lexicon to the Greek NewTestament. (It's included in their Silver library or higher or forpurchase separately. $30 list) Each entry in this lexicon includes the word,a gloss, a list of cognate words, links to usages in Louw-Nida, and alisting of all the forms in the NT.

Unfortunately, however, there is no simpleway to search on that cognate list. (I'm thinking if Logos folks read this, itwouldn't be a particularly hard thing to implement.) What I did was to copy thelist, paste it into a word processor, then find/replace every instance of", " with " OR lemma:" and then touch up a bit so thatultimately I could use a Morph search and paste in the full list ofκρινω cognates:

That search will generate the results you want, andLogos returns them with the attractive options of viewing it as Verses (with aparallel English version if you wish), Aligned, or the Analysis view whichprovides all sorts of helpful information.

Can BibleWorks conduct such a root search? No,unless you manually typed in all the roots you would have had to gotten fromelsewhere. You can get pretty close, however, by searching for *κρι*in one of the Greek morphological versions, but that really only works becausethe κρι stem is rather regular. (Note that in BW, the commandline search would actually be: .*κρι* The initial asterisk allowsfor prefixes, and the final asterisk allows for various suffix-type endings. Asimilar sort of search could be done in Logos using a morph search with lemma:*κρι* OR lemma:*κρί*in the command line. I had to specify both an unaccented and accented iota toget all the results.) For other roots, the spelling is irregular, and so youcan't count on a wildcard search. (E.g.,γινομαι shares its root with forms ofγιν· γεν· γενν·γον·)

Bottom line: If you want to do a word root search,Accordance is the tool you want. Now why exactly would you want to do such asearch? It does give you a broader picture of how an author is using wordssharing the same root. In the case of James, it helps you gain a broader pictureof the matter of 'judging' throughout the book. It also demonstrates a bit ofJames' eloquence in pairing αδιάκριτος(=impartial) and ανυπόκριτος(=not hypocritical) together. You wouldn't have caught that pairing inany English translation. But if our real concern is to find all the instances ofa concept, then we are not necessarily looking for just a word root but for anywords related to that concept. For that, we want to use semantic domains, and in the next posting I will describe the use of Louw-Nida's Lexicon of the NTBased on Semantic Domains.

SBL 2011: Bible in Ancient and Modern Media

2011-11-28T23:41:00.001-05:00

I still have a bunch of notes to post on the recent SBL meeting, and I'll get them out as time allows.

On Sunday afternoon (2011.11.20), I went to the Bible in Ancient and Modern Media presentation where the theme was: "The Bible and Digital Media." Here are rough notes, but they can provide an idea of what transpired.

Presenting first was Michael Hemenway (MH): “From Codex to Kindle: Reimagining the Book”
Cited McLuhan

Print technologies are vehicles of stability, closed,
Digital technologies are open, dynamic

Cf. Tim Beal's, The Rise and Fall of the Bible: The Unexpected History of an Accidental Book
Cf. O’Donnell's Avatars of the Word: From Papyrus to Cyberspace

MH pointed out the romantic remnant of book collections like Shelfari using a bookshelf with book cover displays or Kindle using page numbers. (BTW, what shall we use to reference locations in digital editions?) He imagined a time when our own writings become part of our digital libraries, fully searchable and integrated with all our other books… (which basically is what Logos already offers with its Personal Book Builder).

Margaret E. Lee (MEL) presented: "A Digital NT for Sound and Performance"
Cf. her Sound Mapping the New Testament

Because the NT was composed for performance, its meaning is not (primarily) in its words but its sounds. How can we better present an auditory NT? Issues of suitable graphic interface, pronunciation schemes, challenges to fluency of Hellenistic Greek.

Printed versions distract us by encouraging focus on grammar, semantics and the versions further distract us by division into sentence, verse, paragraph, chapter. All of these reflect editorial decisions and matters that are foreign to the auditory nature of the text. We need tools to analyze auditory compositional elements.

MEL presented a preliminary prototype of a digital NT that was created by one of her students at Tulsa Community College. It was a digital "document" (MEL prefers "document" as a term instead of "text) that had links to all sorts of media presentations of the Greek, including a reading of it in Koine. The display featured oral divisions rather than the traditional chapter/verse.

I have not read her book, and this was the first time I'd really encountered her approach, but it struck me that it would be quite sympathetic with Runge's type of discourse analysis.

Next, Eva Mroczek (EM) on "Digital Culture and the Death of the (biblical) Book: New Metaphors for the Study of Scriptures in Jewish Antiquity"

EM referenced the work of Katherine Hayles. Our notions of textuality are shot through with assumptions specific to print, although they have not been generally recognized as such. The advent of electronic textuality presents us with an unparalleled opportunity to reformulate fundamental ideas about texts and, in the process, to see print as well as electronic texts with fresh eyes.

Quoted K. Van der Toorn Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible (p16)

The books of the bible were not designed to be read as unities. They rather compare to archives. A biblical book is often like a box containing heterogeneous materials brought together on the assumption of common authorship or chronology.

=== In antiquity, we really need to think of ‘book’ as metaphor.
Used example of Robert Frost ‘education by poetry’ on metaphor.

Consider 11QPsalmsa
We think of pss in modern digital categories: cache, archives, repository.

Ben Sira generally recognized as first authored book in Jewish antiquity
But the way he understands "author" is not same as way we understand author today. He is not asserting authorial authority but understands himself to as an heir of traditional wisdom.
In Sir 50.27 in Hebrew fragment, it is not called a book (as it does in Greek).

EM encouraged us to think of "book" as a project rather than a product.
(cf PACE project on ancient cultural engagement)

===

I found Mroczek's presentation to be the most interesting. I suppose I have understood authorship of the biblical books in modern terms rather than in the way it was understood in antiquity. Perhaps that is why the gospels are anonymous? Did the gospel authors mainly see themselves as a transmitters of common knowledge?

Though I am sympathetic to Lee's emphasis on the orality of the early Xn documents, I do think we can discern shifts even among the gospels. I'm convinced that Mark reflects an oral tradition and presentation, but Luke is much more conscious of the literary nature of his work.

Review of the AAR-SBL Mobile App

2011-11-22T20:37:00.001-05:00

I always hated trying to navigate the SBL paper catalog and when it's an AAR-SBL catalog, it's even worse. When you get to the annual meeting, you do get a condensed version, and that is more helpful, but this year marked the first time that a mobile app (iOS and Android) was available for the meeting. It was quite handy. It could be updated with latest changes. You could look through the meeting lists and add ones to "My Schedule" which made it easy to see when and where to go and see time conflicts. It included maps and lists of exhibitors. For both meetings and the exhibit hall, there was a great little locator link showing you where to go. If a meeting had any extra information attached to it (info on speakers or abstracts of presentations), that was available too. You could even attach notes to meetings within the app. There was even an included Twitter feed (#sblaar). All great stuff! Downsides? It was a bit slow and sometimes would freeze on my Droid X. The calendaring part would always start at Thursday rather than the day/time where you last were looking. I also couldn't find any way to export My Schedule (e.g., to Outlook or Google Calendar) or to add an appointment that wasn't a meeting to My Schedule. Still, a very handy app, and I strongly encourage AAR-SBL to offer it again next year.

Zotero (Everywhere) and a good idea for the next AAR-SBL

2011-11-22T20:18:00.001-05:00

Took the redeye home from San Francisco to Washington Dulles and trying to catch up on a bunch of things...

Moscone Convention Center - Entrance to Exhibit Hall

One of the best parts of the annual AAR-SBL meeting is to wander through the Exhibit Hall. It's great to see the new works that are being featured. You are bound to bump into someone you know. Plenty of little freebies to collect. I, of course, always check in on all the Bible software vendors.

I managed to restrain myself and come away with only a couple books, but there were a lot of books I wanted to remember for future reference. Instead of trying to write down author / title / publisher information, I thought it would be easier to use my Droid X and scan the barcode. At the time, what I ended up doing was using the Amazon Mobile app which allows me to scan the barcode and look it up at Amazon. One thing this accomplished is that I could quickly see the Amazon price and compare what sort of convention discount the publishers were actually offering on the book (and some certainly were and some were not). Second, and actually more important for me, I could add the book to my Amazon wishlist. (I had set my 'Academic Books' to be my default wishlist, so they all went straight there.) Now, when I got home, I pulled up my wishlist, clicked up the books, and was then one more click away from having them saved in my Zotero collection with full bibliographic information intact.

You can click to enlarge the graphic to see my somewhat eclectic / esoteric list. You will also see that I dumped everything in a SBL2011 collection, but from there, I used drag/drop to add them to any of the other collections you can see in the left pane. It's a beautiful thing.

I've been a big fan of Zotero, and it has become my default means of collecting all my bibliographic data, adding notes and tags to the resources, links to Amazon or Review of Books in Religion, etc. In the past, Zotero has required you to use it within Firefox, but they announced in August the beta releases of standalone versions for Windows, Mac, and Linux. (Click for the download links. I've used the Windows one, and it has been stable.) There are now also connectors so that Chrome and Safari users can use Zotero in those browsers. You really have no reason not to use Zotero now.

I should have thought to check ahead of time, however, to see if there were any mobile Zotero apps, and indeed there are. Check them out here. In particular, I would have liked to use Scanner for Zotero (Android) which would allow me to scan directly to Zotero. BibUp functions similarly for iPhone.
UPDATE: Avram Lyon, author of Zandy, indicates in the comments that his Android app now also handles ISBN barcode scanning.
(If anyone has used either of these, I'd appreciate hearing your comments.)

Future of Markan Scholarship Put in Jeopardy

2011-11-22T17:25:00.001-05:00

The blog title is intentionally provocative, but, given all the Markan scholars in the room, we can all be glad that no tragedy occurred during the SBL session: Discussion of Kelly R. Iverson and Christopher W. Skinner, ed., Mark as Scholar: Retrospect and Prospect. (That link is to the book and includes more info as well as a PDF download of the table and conducts and the introductory chapter.)

The panel gathered around the table included:

Kelly Iverson, Christopher Skinner, Rikki Watts, Francis J. Moloney, Tom Shepherd, Kathleen Corley, Philip Ruge-Jones, David Rhoads, Joanna Dewey, and Donald Michie.

I also saw Elizabeth Struthers Malbon and Ched Myers present, and there were probably others as well whom I didn't recognize. There are, of course, many other noted Markan scholars, but that still is quite a room full!

I have used Mark as Story as a required text in my Gospels course, but I also have a bit of history with it. Back in 1977-78 when I was learning Greek at the University of Illinois with Vernon K. Robbins, he shared with us in class a draft translation that a colleague and friend of his was working on for us to comment upon. That translation eventually was published by David Rhoads in the 1982 release of the first edition of Mark as Story: An Introduction to the Narrative of a Gospel.

SBL Fonts Presentation at SBL

2011-11-22T01:50:00.001-05:00

SBL Fonts Presentation at SBL 2011

Christopher Hooker provided a helpful background on electronic fonts tracing back to ASCII, the older SP fonts, and to the new SBL fonts. He noted such issues as:

Limitations with ASCII, especially that could only handle 256 characters
The difficulties with keyboard input, especially with non-standardized inputs in the old True Typefonts
The difficulties with keyboard input for right-to-left languages

Christopher Hooker

The solution was Unicode that provides standardization for glyph mapping and explicitly included classical and historical texts. The beauty of Unicode is that it is fully cross-platform and has an expanded character range that allows for 1,048,576 characters. Hence, even scripts like Ugaritic or Eygptian Cunieform have standardized locations.
With the pre-Unicode fonts, switching to type in another language really meant switching to another font. With Unicode, what you primarily are doing is switching to a different keyboard. (Note this means a virtual keyboard accessed by the software, not a physical keyboard.) You really don't want to have a font that has all million plus characters, because it really is overkill that may slow things down if you embed the font. (If you do, try Lucida Sans Unicode.)
Here is where the SBL Fonts--SBL Greek and SBL Hebrew-- come in to play as specialized, Unicode fonts with character sets intended for biblical scholars. Hooker was particularly proud of the sophistication and comprehensiveness of the SBL Hebrew font.

What's next? They are working on the SBL BibLit font which will be the comprehensive font set incorporating Greek, Hebrew, and Latin characters. Further, it will also have the full set of transliteration characters (IPA extensions). Unfortunately... there is no release date BUT Hooker did his whole presentation using SBL BibLit. He assured us we are close to a release date.

Beyond SBL BibLit, they are looking into figuring out the best ways to make such fonts available for mobile devices. They are also working on the development of other ancient language fonts. (No particular priority list has been established yet for additional character sets, but SBL would welcome input on scholarly needs.)
Hooker then ran through the process of installing and using the SBL fonts on both Windows and Mac. You can download the fonts and get other installation info at the SBL Fonts page.

As we are waiting for SBL BibLit, I recommend using Cardo (free) which includes full sets of Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and transliteration characters. (BTW, if you haven't updated Cardo since April 2011, there is an updated version now available along with additional bold and italic sets.) If you aren't entirely comfortable trying to install the keyboards (especially setting up the right to left scripts) I recommend that you use the Tyndale Unicode Font Kit. It's available for a variety of platforms--Mac, Win, Linux--and provides additional instruction on its use.

If you only type in Greek or Hebrew occasionally, I have previously suggested using Logos' free Shibboleth program with its graphical interface. (Rather than working within any program, Shibboleth runs separately, and you type/copy/paste into any other application.) Additionally:

Tavultesoft Keyman (a wonderful program for $19) integrates into your system so that you can type in brilliant Greek and Hebrew right in the program. No need to copy/paste...
Tavultesoft also has a free online notepad for typing in any language you want. If you want to use Greek, you have four different keyboards to choose from. (Where is that psi?) I find "Greek Classical" to be the most usable.
The free online composer at TypeGreek.com is very nice, and note that it is even smart enough that if you type a sigma followed by a space or punctuation, it will convert it into a final sigma. One problem with TypeGreek: if you are typing and don't know what character you need, you hit the "Alphabet Key." This provides the layouts, but when you go back to the previous page where you were typing, it will be all gone.
The free online composer at GreekInputter2. The keyboard is a bit less intuitive, but you can display the layouts so that they are visible while you type in the box.

Accordance at SBL

2011-11-21T21:34:00.001-05:00

Accordance at SBL

David Lang at the Accordance booth

I actually do have Accordance 8 running on my PC under emulation, and I like to use it for its map module, but since I'm mainly a PC (and now also Android) kind of guy, I don't spend as much time with it as I do other programs. Still, my students who have Accordance love it, and I like to keep up with the Accordance folks are doing, because they have been leading the way on a number of fronts in Bible software. Besides, they are just nice guys at Accordance and fun to visit.

Accordance is now at version 9.5, and probably the nicest new feature is the Dynamic Interlinear capability. Contrary to the complaints I heard a few times at sessions that Bible software doesn't offer actual 'texts' of manuscripts (as compared to simply providing critical editions), I was interested in seeing how this works with their collection of manuscripts. Here's a graphic from their website that gives you an idea of how it looks.

BibleWorks9 offers a similar set of manuscripts and tools for text criticism, so scholars do indeed have options for original manuscript analysis.

Be sure to check out the Accordance web site to catch up on the latest enhancements, new resources, and continued development of their iPhone/iPad apps. BTW, you may also want to check out the recent review of Accordance 9.5 by Rubén Gómez.

BibleWorks at SBL

2011-11-21T12:30:00.001-05:00

Mark Cannon and Glenn Weaver at the BW display

BibleWorks at SBL
I visited with the BibleWorks people here at SBL. Business has been good with the new BW9 release, and they continue to plan for the future with new resources and features. One thing I've heard in 2 sessions here at SBL is people lamenting that there are no actual digital texts, i.e., editions of actual manuscripts. I've been happy to point out that we do have precisely that now in BW with the NT transcriptions project. Sinaiticus not only is fully transcribed but it is even morphologically tagged. (Accordance offers a similar mss collection. Logos for now only has the Comfort/Barrett collection, also available in both BW and Accordance.)

SBL: Bible Software Shootout 2 - Revenge of the Teacher

2011-11-21T02:47:00.001-05:00

SBL Computer Assisted Research Section:

Bible Software Shootout 2 - Revenge of the Teachers

Keith Reeves introduced the session and highlighted that this session was not intended to be a shootout resulting in last man standing. Rather, the approach this year is to come at the topics 'backwards' by seeing how teachers are actually using the software in the classroom.

Logos

Two professors from Calvin College, Dean Deppe and Carl Bosma, presented on their use of Logos in their classrooms.
Calvin College has a 2 week gateway course that is a required part of the curriculum to introduce Logos to the students. An important aspect of the instruction is both learning how to use the program and to start the process of using it to take notes.

A 1 hour introduction
Four 2 hour sessions explaining features with MDiv students
Three 3 hours sessions with MA students.

Deppe showed examples of how he has used Logos. (Cf. Deppe's All Roads Lead to the Text: Eight Methods of Inquiry into the Bible for his work on using Logos for exegetical examples. I have now acquired the book and will provide a review here, hopefully before the new year.) He demonstrated how he thinks in terms of various lenses for viewing the texts using various Logos tools: Personal Book Builder to collect notes, Collections for searching, Passage Analysis, highlighting, layouts, visual filters including sympathetic highlighting, tools that can be used for students who don't know Greek or Hebrew, etc. He showed an interesting example of highlighting of verb tenses in Romans 7 along with quite a number of layouts he has created for working with grammatical, exegetical, background, related texts (e.g., DSS, Josephus, Pseudepigrapha).
Bosma showed how he used Logos for notetaking and linking to local and web resources.

Comments:

It was clear that both Deppe and Bosma have a great deal of experience working with Logos. It was good to see they are actually using it.
Deppe especially had a tremendously customized version of Logos enhanced by many of his own layouts, collections, etc. Unfortunately, it is not possible to share layouts with other users (at least at this time). When I try to model my use of Bible software, I would like my students to be able to follow along, so the ability to share a similar look would be important.
It's great that Calvin College has the required training sessions. I know enough about the use of Logos to see that the kind of things Deppe and Bosma had done reflect at least a high intermediate level of skill.
Though it wasn't pointed out in the session, I like that Logos is available for Windows, Mac, iPhone/iPad, Android, and as a mobile web resource at Biblia.com.

Accordance

Roy B. Brown from Accordance demonstrated how he and his colleagues have used the program. (His presentation is availableHERE.) He noted that the use of the software is dependent on the audience. He used Amos 1.1-6 as an example.
Preparation: How can Accordance be used for preparing, creating handouts, etc. He noted a variety of resources available and the easy way to export material for printing, incorporation in other programs, using its Slideshow mode, displaying collections of photos, maps, etc.
Presentation: The Slideshow mode was particularly helpful in Brown's own presentation to the group. It's a great way to present while staying within the program. (I have found that I regularly am jumping back and forth between PowerPoint and the Bible software as I teach.) He showed the sort of resources he would use for teaching Amos 1.1-6 to a popular level and then repeated the exercise as he might use it with a more advanced level group who know Greek and/or Hebrew. One of the things he demonstrated was the Inference search which looks for passages that might stand as allusive parallels.
Participation: How can Accordance be used most effectively in an interactive environment? Brown provided an example of how one might start with the Amos text and move from resource to resource by means of simply highlighting words and using the extensive integration of links to maps, lexicons, timelines, graphics, dictionaries, etc. One can even rather effectively conduct searches in Hebrew without know Hebrew.
Some of the things that struck me in this presentation were:

They have accumulated an excellent collection of related resources for biblical study: grammatical/syntactical,
The program was quite fast when running searches and switching between resources.
The integration of resources and the intuitiveness of accessing them is excellent.
The program is quite attractive overall.
They have made the program accessible to both an academic/technical and popular level audiences.

He also demonstrated a recently added feature: a "dynamic interlinear." While standard interlinears (based on the English) and reverse interlinears (based on the original language), their dynamic interlinear provides linking to up to eight tagged English versions and includes all the tagged information including syntactical tags. For the NT, he showed how this dynamic interlinear could be used to line up various NT manuscripts for comparison.

Comments:

Brown did indicate that it is possible to share Accordance workspaces which would make it much easier for students to follow along.
It was an impressive display of linked resources that Brown demonstrated, but I'm also wondering what the total cost of all those resources is. Yes, it probably is cheaper than buying hard copy edition,and one can, of course, gradually build up one's Accordance library of resources, but I doubt many students would be able to afford it all at the outset.
Accordance is available for Mac, iPhone, and iPad. (It can be run on Windows under emulation.) Buy the Mac version, and you get the iPhone and iPad versions with it running all your Mac resources.

OliveTree Bible Software - BibleReader

Steven Johnson and Matthew Jonas, both from OliveTree, presented. Johnson provided an overview of the program while Jonas spoke more about its classroom use. They presented how it works on an iPad as well as demonstrating a beta version of the program for MacOS. They are certainly multi-device aware and offer (or are working on offering) the program for a variety of platforms: Macs, iWhatever, Kindle, Nook, PC, Android, etc.
Two main concerns for BibleReader are approachability and having everything available, everywhere, all the time. How quickly can someone start using the program? They try to have as simple and as intuitive interface as possible. Further, while there are some differences particular to each platform, they also try to have the interface as similar as possible so that students will be able to follow along regardless of platform. Everything is automatically synched, so that annotations and such are preserved as a user moves between their various devices. The Resource Guide was an effective center for moving around to related resources: related verses, commentaries, topics, dictionaries, images, maps, notes, charts, etc.
Do note that the program really has its roots as a Bible reader, so it is easy to switch to a simple reading view though all the resources are still easy to call up. Jonas demonstrated the features that allow BibleReader to be personalized: notes, highlighting, bookmarks, book ribbons, etc. They use their own cloud sync service to keep everything current, but you can also use an Evernote sync service.
For students, it's easy to get started with BibleReader using their 'freemium' model. The basic program is free and available for the various platforms. They also are looking at integrating social media tools. (E.g., it's only available on Android for now, but it is possible to share verses via Google+, FB, Twitter.)

Comments:

It is indeed a clean and intuitive interface.
It was impressive during his presentation how Johnson switched between devices. The program was consistent but still took advantages of the platform's capabilities. (E.g., iPad multi-touch, use of gestures)
While OliveTree certainly has a full collection of Greek and Hebrew resources, it strikes me as intended to be accessible for a somewhat more popular audience level.

Overall comments, questions, and observations:

It was an interesting choice on Logos' part to have instructors who use Logos present rather than company representatives. They did a good job, but it was a different presentation compared to the others.
How easy is it (or to what extent is it desirable) for instructors to share resources with students? How desirable is it to do this? I find that I usually do want to share what I am asking them to learn about the use of the program. I think it is important, therefore, to have easy ways to share workspaces/layouts, search parameters, etc.
It is great to have a 'buy once' policy which allows you to transfer your resources to the variety of platforms you use. All three companies basically offer this.
I also see how we are moving to a situation with students using a variety of platforms, and most of them are more portable: tablets, iPads, and smartphones. Logos leads the way here, and only OliveTree will compare with it (once they make the desktop versions available). It is important to have one's resources available regardless of platform and to have them available everywhere. I also find, however, that when I am doing in-depth work, I really want a lot of screen space, so I still favor a desktop or laptop setup.
I do believe that cloud syncing and backup will become a standard. This involves not only the syncing of resources but of one's personalizations. Logos and OliveTree lead the way in this respect.
BibleWorks was noticeably missing from this shootout. Since it is the program I am most familiar with, I can affirm that it can pretty much do everything the other programs can do and other tasks as well. And it does it all for cheaper considering the resources it includes. Still, there are some limitations to BW. It is a Windows program (that can be run under emulation on a Mac), but it cannot be used on a mobile, handheld device. Given the way the program works, the bigger the monitor the better, so I'm not sure it would be very useful on the small scale of a mobile device. Second, I have encouraged BW to make it easier to sync one's personalizations (e.g., annotations, searches...). It can be accomplished, but it requires the use of another cloud syncing service like DropBox or SugarSync. (I use SugarSync, and it works beautifully. I add my BWNotes, ase, and timeline subdirectories to the sync list, and it keeps everything up-to-date between my home and work computers. BTW, if you sign up for a SugarSync account after clicking on that link, we both get an extra .5Gb of storage in addition to the 5Gb free starter account, so please do so!)

Bottom Line: Thanks to the CARS (no longer the CARGroup since we are now a CARSection) for organizing this section. While it did give the companies an opportunity to demonstrate capabilities of their programs, it also provided some excellent ideas about how the programs can and are actually used in classroom settings.

AAR-SBL 2011 in San Francisco

2011-11-19T21:00:00.001-05:00

SBL 2011
Saturday, 19 November: I am at the annual AAR-SBL meeting held this year in San Francisco. It was a six-hour flight, but I picked up three hours getting here, so we will see how long I last today... I'm planning to post blog reports as much as I am able.
The first session I attended is "Engaging the ‘Wired-In Generation’: Knowledge and Learning in the Digital Age" with Tersa Calpino presiding.

Mark Goodacre:
“Pods, Blogs, and other Time-wasters: Do Electronic Media Detract from Proper Scholarship”
Pods and blogs and elists are not really a waste of time as long as you are finding some personal usefulness from them. Cf. Goodacre’s blog post for examples of how his work has turned out positively for him.
Why do I blog? Personally, I have found:

It provides incentive to articulate, organize, and summarize things I’m working on. I'm quite sure I would not have 'published' much of anything if it weren't for the possibility offered by the blogging platform.
It serves as a repository of work I have done. I use it for myself for looking up work I’ve done.
When I get questions about a particular topic, oftentimes I’m able simply to point the inquirer to a blog post instead of having to compose a whole new response.
It has served to expand my horizons of collegial discourse. It is gratifying to be part of a global discussion
It is perhaps peculiar to my Bible and technology focus, but I have been provided with software or resources that I can review.

Christian Brady (Targuman)
“On the Internet No One Knows You’re a Graduate Student, Or How Social Media Can Help You, Build You Up, and Tear You Down”
There are good reasons to maintain multiple personalities on the web. CB is not advocating anonymous identities but ways to organize different aspects of ones work. You do need to be mindful of potential readers and possible repercussions. (“Blogging can be similar to vomiting online.”) Do take it seriously and treat your readers seriously as well. You also need to be ready to accept rejection.
Kelley N. Coblentz Bautch
“Videoconferencing in the Classroom: Broadening the Horizons of Students through Interactive Scholarly Exchange”
KNCB has had positive results using videoconferencing and other social media tools in the classroom. E.g., she has brought in virtually experts in particular fields. It is exciting for students to engage with authors of books they have been reading or to bring in international perspectives.

Jim Davila (PaleoJudaica) was a last minute replacement and talked about his experiences online. One recent development is the increasing comfortableness students have for sharing online. It does mean, however, that educators perhaps have more responsibility helping them think about their online expression.

"I hate Twitter... Nothing is more perfectly designed to enable people to say every stupid thought that comes to mind."
"I don't have time to listen to podcasts. I would much rather read."
If we really wasted so much time in the 90's on elists, then we've done okay. Are blog posts much more ephemeral than a published article?
Blogging can be good... If you have one, have a reason for doing so. Identify a niche.
"Never write anything down that you can't picture appearing on the front page of the New York Times."

Perseus in Logos

2011-09-29T23:41:00.002-04:00

Logos has been advertising that they are making the Perseus Collections available within Logos... for FREE! But get it quickly. Right now they are taking pre-orders, but once it it ready to go live, they are going to stop taking orders for a while so that they don't get overwhelmed with downloads. I don't recall for sure, but I think it was only 70Mb or so. In any case pre-order until Friday, 30 September 2011.) Be sure to read my comments at the end of this post, but here's some basic info:

The Perseus Collections contain around 1,500 free books focused primarily on Greek and Latin classics, like Aristotle and Plato. They also cover the history, literature, philosophy, and culture of the Greco-Roman world—important contextual sources for biblical scholars. Additionally, they contain other key works of Renaissance literature, and literature from early America.

Of these 'libraries' within the collection, the ones of primary interest to Bible folks are:

Perseus Classics Collection (1,114 vols.)
Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri (256 vols.)
Perseus Arabic Collection (39 vols.)
Other collections include: Perseus Civil War and 19th Century American Collection (340 vols.), Perseus Renaissance Collection (22 vols.), Richmond Times-Dispatch (6 vols.), and Beowulf

This Logos video gives you a good idea of what can be accomplished:

Comments:

It has been possible for some time now to go directly to access the Perseus information at the Perseus Project web site. (And if you haven't been there in a while, it works quite well now compared to the 'glitchiness' of the site in the early days.) Logos itself has for some time provided an external link to the Perseus web site where one can gain access to Liddell-Scott-Jones (even the Great Scott edition). Having the text within Logos, however, is much faster and much handier.
Note that this Logos integration only includes the classical texts, not the reference works. If you want the Great Scott you will still have to go online or buy it from Logos. (Also note that the classical references in BDAG are not linked.)
UPDATE: Dave in the comments notes that the issue of linking to BDAG was addressed in the Logos forum. It's coming eventually!
The Greek is all morphologically tagged. If the word is one that occurs in a biblical text (LXX or NT), you will be able to access those lexicons directly.
Unless you know the classical work that you want to read, I suspect that the way most people wanting to access the texts when starting from a biblical passage are going to want to: A) Right-click, use lemma, do a Bible Word Study; B) Under the "Textual Searches" category, look for "Classics" usage. C) Click on that Classics to initiate a Word Search - NOTE: When working in the Classics, be sure you are using "Logos Greek Morphology"; D) When your listing of occurrences appears [and it could take a while if there a lot], you will be able to click to call up the text. - NOTE: Here's a little trick. If you click on the "Resource" link, it will bring up the original language text. If you hover your mouse over the "Reference" link, you will be able to see if there is an accompanying English translation. Click on that link to call it up.
I don't want to complain about a great, free resource, but one of the more frustrating aspects is trying to find English translations to accompany the Latin or Greek texts. I used the trick in the preceding bullet to show one way of getting at it. You can find English texts directly by creating your own collection, but it's still some work. (And why, for example, are there none of the English translations of Aristophanes?) You still may need to end up going to archive.org and searching the Loeb collection or to Project Gutenberg to find some English translations. (For example, Lucian's De Syria dea.)
UPDATE: Be sure to read Mark Barnes' comment about creating a Perseus collection with parallel resources enabled. That is a great way to find when English translations are available.

All in all, this is really nice, and you can't beat the price! Thank you, Logos! Get it right away, but if you miss the pre-order offer, my understanding is that Logos will offer it again after things settle down.

BibleWorks9 Texts and English BIbles

2011-09-27T01:06:00.001-04:00

I have completed updated listings of the texts in the recently released BibleWorks9. (Here is the previous list for BW8.)

I have compiled in a spreadsheet (what I think is) a complete list of texts for BibleWorks9 that are in Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Greek, Latin, Coptic, or English. I've organized them according to Language, Content, Source (whether they are included in BW9, available for purchase as an Addon Module, or as a downloadable User-Created resource), the Abbreviation for each resource, a Description of the Text, whether there is a Morphologically-paired text or a Translation-paired text, and if there is any other Related text. This resource should be particularly helpful if you are trying to find a resource or if you are trying to recall a resource's abbreviation.

BW9 TEXTS
HERE is the XLS spreadsheet you can download.

The first page has things organized largely according to content: OT&LXX, Targums, Intertestamental, Composite OT&NT, Greek NT, Greek NT Manuscripts, NT Peshitta, NT Misc, Latin, Early Christian, Other Jewish, English Versions, Islam, Classical, Doctrinal, and Miscellaneous. (Note that the Greek NT Manuscripts is one of the new features in BW9. Seven manuscripts--Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, Vaticanus, Bezae, Boernerianus, Washingtonianus, and GA 1141--have been transcribed and appear as regular texts in BW9's browse window. Sinaiticus is even morphologically tagged.)
The second page alphabetically organizes the abbreviations used for the resources.

The benefits of downloading this file are that you can have the listing available offline and can organize things as you wish. The drawback is that you'll have to keep it updated. I have also posted an online version HERE, and I will try to keep it updated.

ENGLISH BIBLES INCLUDED IN BW9

HERE is the DOCX file you can download. HERE is an online version of it. I compiled this resource particularly with BibleWorks users in mind, but it may prove helpful to anyone who is working with English Bible versions.This document consists of the following sections.

English Bibles included in BW9: The is an alphabetical listing by the abbreviations assigned to all the English Bibles available for BW9. It lists those included with BW9, user-created versions you can download/install, a listing of other important English versions and their online locations so that you can link to them using BW's External Links Editor, and some related English translations (e.g., for NT Peshitta, Targums, apocryphal and pseudepigraphical works, DSS...) In addition, I adapted a helpful list I found online by Bruce Terry which provides an approximate rating of each version from literal (or using formal equivalence) to dynamic or paraphrase. I edited this list and added a few evaluations of my own. The scale used is such that a "1" would be an interlinear Hebrew/Greek to English and a 10 would be a loose paraphrase. (The Cotton Patch Version gets a "10.")
The second section takes the alphabetical listing of the first section and puts them into "A Literal to Paraphrase Scale of English Bible Versions."
The third section is my listing of "Recommended Versions to Consult and Compare." This is the list I provide to my students.

For BW users, Ihave, however, already set up these versions in a logical order and saved it to afile you can download. These texts appear in the program in the order of mostliteral to most dynamic. For such an ordering, you need to specify a VersionDisplay Order (VDO) file. Save this VDO filein your BibleWorks9/init directory. In BW, then, you can open the Version Display Order option and choose this Literal2Dyanmic.vdo file.

I hope you will find this useful. Let me know if there are any problems.

Digital Dead Sea Scrolls Online

2011-09-26T11:15:00.000-04:00

This is great! It was announced today that five Dead Sea Scrolls have been published online as part of The Digital Dead Seas Scrolls project.

It’s taken 24 centuries, the work of archaeologists, scholars and historians, and the advent of the Internet to make the Dead Sea Scrolls accessible to anyone in the world. Today, as the new year approaches on the Hebrew calendar, we’re celebrating the launch of the Dead Sea Scrolls online; a project of The Israel Museum, Jerusalem powered by Google technology.

The five scrolls posted for now are: the Great Isaiah Scroll, Temple Scroll, War Scroll, Community Rule Scroll, and Commentary on the Habakkuk Scroll. Resolution on the images is outstanding with zooming, and navigation is easy. With the default view of the Isaiah Scroll, there are mouse hover highlights indicating the chapter:verse. Clicking on the highlight will bring a popup with an English translation of the Masoretic text. (I.e., it is an English translation of the MT, not of the scroll. A start at comparing the two is provided here. For the Isaiah Scroll, at least, you may want to consult the older Great Isaiah Scroll Directory which has a low-res, bw image, a description of the scroll, and line by line translation.)

Check out The Digital Dead Seas Scrolls project!

[HT: JS & BS]

Biblical Studies and Technological Tools App for Android

2011-09-22T23:20:00.000-04:00

Thanks to AppsGeyser, it's free and fairly easy to create an Android app from web content such as this blog. You can go to this page to download the Biblical Studies and Technological Tools Android app, or, if you prefer, use your Android device to scan this QR code.The app is free too!

[Thanks to ChurchMag for alerting me to AppsGeyser.]

On teaching Koine Greek

2011-09-21T17:57:00.001-04:00

On his και τα λοιπα blog, Daniel R. Streett has been running a great series on teaching Greek.

He's not done yet, but he's been building up an argument for an immersive, oral/aural, 'communicative' approach to learning Greek. His next post will be on how such an approach might be integrated into a typical seminary curriculum. I'm anxious to see what he proposes, because this is where I've been challenged. (I've replied to a couple of his posts, and I'm quoting large parts of my comments here.)

Back in the day when I was learning Greek at seminary (~1980), the Greek requirement was basically 2 years worth with follow-up in required exegetical courses. The result? I would estimate that at least 90% of pastors were no longer using Greek within 5 years of graduation from seminary. Why? They never achieved a level of competence to allow for truly “reading” Greek. In the seminary where I teach now, the Greek requirement has been reduced to about 1 year with follow-up in in required exegetical courses. There is absolutely no way I can teach students to “read” Greek. I have, therefore, had to change my goals. I try to create a foundation of Greek vocabulary and grammar, but I reduce the amount of vocab memory and analysis to a minimum. Instead, I focus on grammatical significance, syntax, using lexical tools, and learning ways of working with the Greek text. This also means, as you might guess, that Bible software becomes very important. I encourage students to use software about 2/3 of the way through the course. This also means that my quizzes and tests (apart from some foundational memory aspects) are usually open resource (i.e., they can use book, notes, software), based on biblical texts, and ask the students to compare English translations and then consult the Greek to analyze what is going on.

That was my early response to Streett's postings, but in his latest post he points out the challenge of using a 'tools' approach and just learning enough Greek to become 'dangerous' with it. He also sets up the admirable goal that we are helping students become biblical scholars, and argues that just learning 'tools' will not accomplish that. I'd like to think I'm doing something different. Here's why:

Given the year of required dedicated Greek course work plus follow up in exegetical classes, we can get deeper into Greek than simply going with a one semester tools course.
Almost all my students are planning to become pastors, not biblical scholars. Yes, I realize that sounds very bad, but the reality is that they want to be able to engage the Bible to support their ministries. They are not doing ministry to support their biblical scholarship. It's simply a matter of priority. They most certainly want to be fully aware of the Bible and to interpret and communicate it faithfully and with integrity, but the ultimate goal is to become a pastor or teacher in the church, not a biblical scholar. Those two things are certainly (and hopefully!) not exclusive, but priorities will dictate where time is spent.
As I think about it, there is probably more than just 'tools' or 'reading' levels of competence. I would be more comfortable defining my approach as something more like 'faithful engagement' with the text, a level somewhere between tools and reading. (I'll say more in a moment.) We should probably also note that there is a 'translator' level beyond the 'reader' one. Students sometimes think they will learn to 'translate' the Greek, but that is a far more complicated task. None of my students (and I will also include myself here) is likely to come up with a better translation than the leading English versions which are products of committees of scholars who know Greek and linguistics better than my students or I.
Given #3, one of the first things my students come to realize, however, is that no translation is perfect. Every translation is making some kind of compromise or is stuck trying not only to render Greek words into English but also to capture a whole culture, context, and tradition of their use.
Because of #4, I have found that one of the best ways for my students to get at the Greek is by looking at a range of English versions. This approach highlights the places where the translation committees were having the most difficulty getting it right, and these are the places where they need to look more closely at the Greek. Here, then, is where the tools start to come in to play. Are the differences the result of text critical issues? Is it a lexical matter? A grammatical matter? The tools will provide the lexical and parsing and analysis and such, but you will still actually need to know some Greek to figure out what a circumstantial participle is, and how it works in Greek, and what difference it makes that it is present and not aorist. At this point, they should also be able to understand what is being said about the Greek text in the more technical commentaries like ones in the NIGTC series. (I don't know that a simple 'tools' approach would achieve this level of competence.)

As I hope you can see, students actually have to learn some Greek in my classes. No, they will not be able to 'translate' nor even 'read' the Greek. They will, however:

understand something about how Koine Greek works grammatically,
have a grasp of syntactical features of Greek,
be able to use tools, especially Bible software,
know how to make sense of a lexical entry in BDAG (a simple tools approach can't do this either),
understand discussions about Greek texts in commentaries or the footnotes of the very helpful NET Bible, and
evaluate the relative merits of English versions.

All of this can be accomplished in a year. I’d love to think I could use a more ‘communicative’ approach (though we do sing Greek songs, recite the Lord’s Prayer…), but given the time constraints imposed by our curriculum, I am taking an approach that I think (and early feedback is tending to confirm) will allow students to “use” Greek with integrity for the rest of their careers.

Matthew 18.15-20

2011-08-31T13:18:00.001-04:00

I am happy to report that an article I wrote on Matthew 18.15-20 (the Gospel text for the upcoming Sunday, 2011.09.04) is now online at the Huffington Post in their Religion section. This is part of a collaborative venture with the Odyssey Networks ON Scripture project. The goal was to have very fresh and timely reflection on a lectionary text for the coming Sunday. It's an interesting project in that it is not intended particularly for pastors preparing for sermons but for inquisitive laypersons. It encourages a Christian perspective but one that is more outward directed than in-church directed. It was a good challenge.

And in the category of 'God-cidences,' this largely came about because one of my Greek students from long ago is now Director for Philanthropy at Odyssey Networks. Thanks, Mary Brown!

IGNTP Papyrus Transcriptions Available

2011-08-25T22:44:00.002-04:00

As noted on the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog:

Papyrus transcriptions made available through Institutional Repository
Following the release of the Vetus Latina Iohannes transcriptions, the International Greek New Testament Project (www.igntp.org) has made available its transcriptions of papyri which contain the Gospel according to John on the University of Birmingham Institutional Research Archive.

The following twenty-seven witnesses are available from the repository as raw XML or can be viewed as they appear in the prototype IGNTP transcripts website can be viewed HERE

Note that when click through to the transcripts, you actually have access to the whole Gospel of John project which includes this new collection of papyrii, Majuscules, and Latin. (The Minuscules and Coptic are not yet available.)

Biblical Texts for Kindles

2011-07-10T17:08:00.001-04:00

So, you got yourself a Kindle, and you are looking for some biblical stuff to put on it. (And the cheaper, the better...) Remember that these are not Bible software programs but just have the text. I'm also only considering biblical texts and not books or commentaries about the Bible. There are some odd-looking, privately-published texts available, and I'm not sure how Kindle-friendly each of these is, but here are some good options to consider to get started:

English

The Holy Bible English Standard Version (ESV) FREE

The Holy Bible: HCSB Digital Text Edition FREE

NET Bible First Edition (with notes) $4.99

ESV Study Bible $9.99

NRSV Bible $12.99 or NRSV Bible with the Apocrypha $14.99

The Message Remix 2.0: The Bible In Contemporary Language $9.99

Greek

The Greek New Testament: SBL Edition $0.99 OR FREE download from OSNOVA (Thanks to CNB in Comments!)

Koine Greek Bible: Septuagint, N.T., Apocrypha $1.99 (It appears that the NT is some edition of NA/UBS. No copyright or version info provided.)

(Croy's A Primer of Biblical Greek $16.50: for my Greek students! There are quite a few Greek grammars, lexicons, and other aids available.)

Hebrew

Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) + The Comprehensive Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic Glossary $9.99

Latin

The Clementine Vulgate $0.99

Interlinear Latin Vulgate (New Testament Bible) Vulgate Latin/Douay-Rheims English $3.99

Logos for Android released

2011-07-04T20:15:00.001-04:00

Logos has announced the release of a beta version of its Bible software for Android devices. For those who already have Logos software and an Android device this is welcome news, because it starts to provide access to one's library of resources on these mobile devices. This is indeed only a beta release with limited functionality, but improvements are promised that will bring its functionality in line with other existing Android Bible software. The current version offers the following:

Access to your Logos library (where licenses permit)
Online access to streaming books
Offline access to downloaded books
Footnotes
Preview Bible references
History
Navigate by

Verse picker

Table of contents

Typed reference

Slider

Position syncs with Logos 4

I've used it a bit, and here are some observations I can make for now:

It is great to have access to my Logos library with original language texts and also resources like BDAG, the Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, Apostolic Fathers (English and Greek), IVP Dictionary collection, Exegetical Dictionary of the NT, the ABS Handbook series, etc... I have been using Logos' online Biblia.com / which provides similar access to my books, but it's not the best for viewing on my Droid X browser. How fast resources appear depends on your connection, but with Logos for Android (LfA), I can choose to download some books for faster and for offline access. Graphical items (maps, charts) do appear, but they are not resizable.
The fonts look great--Greek, Hebrew, Syriac...--but my Hebrew is not displaying correctly in texts like the BHS. For now, it is not possible to specify font sizes.
One really can't designate any preferences, and there is limited functionality with original language texts. That is, there is no way to get morphological or lexical information. (Though some texts like Runge's Lexham Discourse Greek NT and Holmes' Apostolic Fathers displays in interlinear fashion with analysis and lemma and gloss.) One can't specify a preferred English Bible.
It is nice how footnotes and references in a text can be tapped and have a popup appear. One can then jump to that reference with another tap. This includes popups and jumps to texts in the Pseudepigrapha or Josephus. Unfortunately, it does not yet include links to the apparatus of the critical edition of NA27. The SBL Greek NT is linked to the apparatus, but it replaces the text window.
LfA works fine in portrait or landscape mode. To scroll through you library, you go up/down, but, oddly, you can only scroll text by sliding sideways, not up/down.

In any case, this is a good start, and I look forward to implementation of more functions.

BibleWorks9 Announced!

2011-06-29T18:06:00.000-04:00

The release of BibleWorks9 has been announced! I had the opportunity to be involved with beta testing, and I am excited about many of the new features. I'll be posting reviews in chunks and highlighting some of the more significant enhancements. (HERE for more info on new features and source for quotes below.) For now, I'll just point out some of the enhancements.

The first thing a user of BW8 will notice is the updated icons. They do indeed look better, and they indicate their function more clearly.


click to enlarge

Not a big deal, but a nice touch.

Two of the most important additions to BW9 that are likely to receive the most attention are related to New Testament textual criticism. I will blog more about these at another time, but for now, I can briefly illustrate what's available using Mark 1.1 as an example.

The BibleWorks Manuscript Project is a way for users to compare and analyze original manuscript text and images. "New transcriptions and complete image sets of Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Alexandrinus, Bezae, Washingtonianus, Boernerianus, and GA1141 (over 7.5 GB!!). Manuscripts are fully searchable using the full array of BibleWorks analysis tools." This project is ongoing, and there is even morphological tagging of the mss that will continue to be updated as they become available. (Michael Hanel, another beta tester, has already posted more info on this project.) BTW, in the graphic above, note that this resource appears in a new "Mss" tab.

The Center for New Testament Textual Studies (CNTTS) NT Critical Apparatus allows the user quickly to compare variant reading. "This exhaustive apparatus covers the entire New Testament. The BibleWorks version has been enhanced to show a matrix of Aland categories and time period for the mss for each reading. Users will especially appreciate having the apparatus track and update as the mouse moves over the text in the BibleWorks main window. In addition, the start of each verse entry summarizes the significant, insignificant, and singular variants. When examining a variant, the text of the verse is shown with the variant text highlighted." And btw again, note that this resource shows up in a new "Verse" tab. In this tab, in addition to the CNTTS Apparatus, you choose instead to display the Tischendorf Apparatus, the NET Bible notes (compiled in a running format), Metzger's Textual Commentary (a $20 addon), or the full ESV Study Bible (i.e., with all comments and graphical content; a $20 addon).

In terms of usability, convenience, and user-friendliness, I'll point out three things here:

The "Use" tab: This tab simplifies a task I regularly ask my students to do, namely, find out where else in the Bible or in a particular book a certain term appears. The Use tab automatically generates such results nearly instantaneously as you hover the mouse over a word in the central browsing pane. (I'm running BW9 on a 6+ year old WinXP machine.) This works for any language. You can choose to see the results for just the book of the Bible you are reading or for every instance in that version. (Note the stats provided in the graphic above.) You can choose whether it reports back on the form or the lemma of the word, and you can easily export your results to the search list.

click to see with and without 4th column

The Fourth Column: So, what are you going to do when you want to see that new "Use" tab, but you need to have the "Analysis" tab in view too? There has always been a ton of information lurking behind the texts in BW, but it oftentimes meant switching tab views or opening floating windows. You can still do that, but now there is an option to pop open a fourth column that extends to the right of the BW window. If you have a wide screen monitor, it is a wonderful thing. You can move around the tabs which display in each column, so I suspect it will become a matter of personal preference. I do use a wide screen monitor, and I like having the Analysis tab and Use tab visible in the 3rd and 4th columns.

Instant text comparison: There was a way to do this in BW8, but it now has become as simple as hitting a single keystroke. With your mouse anywhere in the browse column, hit the letter "e," and BW9 automatically highlights differences between any versions in the same language. Hit the "e" again to toggle the highlighting off. In the graphic above, you can see how it compared Greek, Latin, and English versions. BTW, in that graphic you can also see one of the new texts in BW9, the Vulgate with morphology and glosses in the Analysis tab.

Pricing and upgrades: It is also nice to note that, despite all the new resources included in BW9, the list price is $359, only $10 more than the previous version. They have clear upgrade policies (starting at $159 to upgrade from BW8), and group discounts are available. Note that you can place orders now for BW9, but it won't ship and you won't be charged until mid-July or so. An online distributor accidentally started advertising this new version before the BW folks were ready to make the official announcement, and so BW decided to let beta testers start sharing info about it.

There are many other new features and texts in BW9 (e.g., The Moody Atlas of the Bible by Beitzel), but this is a start. I still have some criticisms I will get to later, and it should be noted that BW9 still feels more like its own program than a program that has been built from the outset as a Windows program. There is no Mac version (though it runs quite nicely on a Mac under emulation), and there is no mobile version. I will eventually be posting some guides to help my students install, customize, and use BW9, but BW has already provided six hours of new how-to videos.

BOTTOM LINE: BibleWorks9 is a significant and attractive upgrade. It offers an updated interface that will be familiar to existing users and friendlier for new ones. The BibleWorks Manuscript Project and the CNTTS NT Critical Apparatus modules are remarkable resources that will especially appeal to those interested in New Testament textual criticism. All users will enjoy the easier access and increased functionality provided with new features like the pop-out fourth column, the “Use” tab, and the instant difference highlighting. Considering the other texts and resources provided, BibleWorks9 is a comprehensive study package and tremendous value.

Search Syriac eResources

2011-05-28T10:56:00.001-04:00

Select and Search Syriac eResources: For those who may be interested in Syriac and don't keep up with the Hugoye-list, Gareth Hughes put together a great custom Google search of Syriac eResources collected by Kristian Heal. It is helpful both for the search--which also allows you to filter for journal or manuscript entries--and for the handy links which Heal has been accumulating. Thanks to both for sharing!

SBL's Bible Odyssey Receives NEH Grant

2011-05-03T17:59:00.000-04:00

At its annual meeting last November (2010), the SBL was showcasing a Bible Odyssey web site for which they were applying for a NEH grant. I reported on it here, including some pics of the prototype. Today it was reported:

We are pleased to announce that the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) was awarded a $300,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to build an interactive website that invites general audiences to engage with biblical scholarship.

Way to go, SBL! Follow the link for the full press release, but note that release is not projected until 2013.

Evaluation of Android Bible Apps

2011-05-03T14:13:00.003-04:00

I have a listing of Android Bible apps HERE to which I have now added a review of MySword HERE.

So what Android Bible apps do I use and recommend?

I'm finding that my first choice is almost always the free Cadre Bible. It's the fastest app, has good Greek texts (NA26, LXX), Hebrew Tanach, and English versions. The only thing I miss is some lexical help, but that can be purchased if you want to use the KJV or NASB with Strong's. (Mainly I just use the Parallel version feature to figure out what's going in the Greek/Hebrew. Cadre Bible also has a functional but clunky navigation interface.)
I occasionally use the YouVersion Bible, because of its outstanding access to so many English versions. (And remember that if you don't own or want to buy a version, you can still 'stream' it.)
UPDATE: Logos for Android is now available. My review HERE.
The And Bible still holds promise, but it still doesn't display Greek properly.
As noted in the MySword review, I keep it because of its "Analytic Septuagint."
And then there is Olive Tree... This was my app of choice back in the day on Dell Axim using WindowsMobile, but I'm just not using it much on my DroidX. It is just slow enough to load that I will use Cadre Bible instead. It still has the best collection of academic resources for original language study. I was able to transfer my license for the BHS to this device, but my Gramcord Greek NT would not transfer, and I don't need their new Greek module badly enough to pay $58 for the upgrade. They do have the SBLGNT for free, but there is no parallel version view, so I'm back to CadreBible or...
With internet access and my Logos resources, I use Biblia.com online. This works great, even to take a look at BDAG and all 885 books I have obtained in Logos4.
If you don't own Logos, then the other online site to try is the NET Bible Study Environment, but this site is not really optimized for mobile browsers.

What am I missing? Leave a comment!

MySword Bible App for Android

2011-05-03T13:38:00.001-04:00

I'm busy grading papers, but I wanted to get the word out about the free MySword for Android. (I have a larger listing of Android Bible apps HERE.) Copying the info I received from them:

Version 1.3 of MySword for Android

The following are the exciting features of MySword for Android:

Multiple offline Bibles, Commentaries and Dictionaries
Bible version verse comparison
Highlighting
Bookmarks
Type your personal notes and insights
Search (concordance) for Bible, Commentaries and Personal notes
Strongs number support linked to dictionary for easy access
Full screen mode support for more viewable text
Support for Morphological codes and link to the Dictionary view
The editor for Personal notes uses a simple wiki syntax for easy formating of your notes
Copying of current verse, all text and custom selection of text in all views (Bible, Commentary, Dictionary and Personal notes) including the Search results which is very useful for Personal notes editing
Resizeable text (custom text size for easy viewing)
Allow fine adjustment of text size
Page history navigation (back and forward)
Verse link in Commentaries and Dictionaries to the Bible view.
Links between documents, e.g. Commentary reference to Bible passage
Download of modules (Bibles, Commentaries, and Dictionaries)
Backup and restore of settings, highlights, bookmarks and Personal notes

Some quick observations/comments after briefly using MySword for Android.

The app is not available in the Google Android Market or the Amazon Appstore. You need to go to the website and download it from there. (See below for a QR code to get you there quickly. The developers hope to have it available in the Android Market in June.)
Once you install the program, you need to download modules. Choose wisely and don't just allow the default. (For now, there isn't a built-in option to uninstall modules. UPDATE: See here for info on manually uninstalling modules.)
There is a fine selection of free English Bibles for download. Check them out HERE. Beyond the usual (KJV, ASV, NET...), do note that you can get the Lexham English, but it is only the New Testament.
There are quite a few non-English versions, but there is no Hebrew module.
For Greek, you can get the LXX including also "The Analytic Septuagint" which provides both analysis and links to Strong's (though words in the LXX not occurring in the NT will not be linked). For the NT, the only option is "Textus Receptus (1550/1894) Greek NT with Strong's Numbers and parsing info." Note that the Greek is unaccented, and where there is accented Greek in the Strong's you will get font irregularities.
The usual batch of public domain commentaries: TSK, JFB...
The usual batch of public domain dictionaries: Strong's, BDB, Thayer, Nave's...

As for performance:

Display is attractive and works fine in either landscape or portrait.
Navigation is very easy for getting around the Bible.
It does have a verse compare feature so you can see multiple English versions or Greek/English, but you can't choose which versions to display. You get all the versions that are available.
As noted above, Search, Highlighting, Bookmarks, Notes all work as one would hope.

All in all, a fine implementation, and you can't complain about the price. (Donations are appreciated.) Rather than having to enter the URL on your Android browser, I generated a QR code to jump straight to the download page. (I'm assuming you have installed a barcode scanner or QR reader on your device. If not, why not?!)

BOTTOM LINE: I'm keeping this on my Android primarily because of the "Analytic Septuagint" module which is not available elsewhere that I see. (I still need some help getting through the LXX...)

Shibboleth: New version 0.9b... and typing in Greek

2011-03-31T22:47:00.003-04:00

I have posted about the free and very helpful Shibboleth program from Logos. (HERE with a full description when first released and HERE in relation to typing in biblical Hebrew.) Logos has now announced an update to it, and you can download the program HERE. As described on the Logos web site:

Shibboleth is a tool for typing Unicode text in ancient scripts. It was designed to help people unfamiliar with a script easily enter the correct characters, and then copy text to the clipboard in Unicode or another format.

While a keyboard layout is provided for several scripts, the emphasis is on helping the user recognize and select the proper characters. To that end, user input is shown in both typed and rendered format, with multiple font options, and all of the characters for each script are selectable from a well organized palette on the right side of the application window.

There have been a number of improvements to this new version, but of most importance to me:

New Rich Text copy mode that preserves font choice and doesn't put XML tags around the text.

What this means is that you can now type your text using the helpful and logically laid out keyboards or clicking on the symbols, then hit Copy, then paste directly into any RTF word processor without having to remove XML tags. You have a few choices of fonts you can use, including the new SBL Hebrew and SBL Greek. Excellent! With this new version, you can even type in Akkadian, Hittite and Old Persian Cuneiform, and Egyptian Hieroglyphs!

So far, so good, but I still have some quibbles with the Greek...

The main problem is that Shibboleth renders polytonic Greek with combining characters rather than with the precomposed ones. What does this mean?

UPDATE: Be sure to read the comment by Vincent Setterholm of Logos. He has correctly surmised that I am using Word 2007. The issues I describe below are in part due to the Word 2007 handles the glyphs and in part may be due to the font (especially Palatino Linotype). Shibboleth should NOT be the problem if you are using Word 2010.

What happens is that when type characters that have breathing marks and accents, there are two ways of creating the character you want. One way is to start with the vowel, then add the marks using glyphs that don't take their own space. In Unicode, each glyph has its own 4 character code, so as you can pick up from the first line in the graphic below, an η is 03B7, the iota subscript is 0345, the rough breathing is 0314, and the acute is 0301.

(Want to see for yourself? In MSWord, place the cursor after any character and hit Alt-X. Hit it again to return it to its normal appearance. Or, get the BabelMap program which maps every single Unicode character.)

The other way a character is formed is if the input method is smart enough to figure out when you are all done with the character which one you want and provide that specific character which has been precomposed in the Unicode system. As you can see in the second line above, that very same character that takes 4 glyphs to form in the first way is represented by a single character in the second.

So, what difference does this make? To look at it, not much. To look closely at it, a little. Since those placeholder glyphs have to work with all vowels, their location has to be estimated a bit to fit properly. With the precomposed characters, the character with all its glyphs can be formed exactly how you want it to look. So, you will have to look very closely, but the top line is the character with all the glyphs added. The bottom line is the precomposed one.

You might be able to discern in the second row that the acute accent
and rough breathing mark are just a bit more centered and tucked down.

No big deal you say... But part of the beauty of Unicode is that you should be able to use any polytonic Unicode Greek font and the character displayed should be exactly the same. (This was a major problem with the old TrueType fonts where designers placed different Greek characters on different keys.) The problem with polytonic Greek is those placeholder glyphs whose location relative to the vowel is not fixed. So, using combining characters, if you switch the Greek font, you may end up with an ugly mess.

As you can see, what may look quite attractive in SBL Greek may not look so good in Cardo, Gentium, or Palatino Linotype. If you just composing documents for your own use and only use the same font, this may not be important, but if you plan to send that document to someone else or to a publisher who may not have the same Unicode font as you, then it is a problem.

So again, thank you very much to Logos for sharing Shibboleth for free. Hey, how else other than Shibboleth are you going to easily type in Egyptian hieroglyphs?!

UPDATE: In light of Setterholm's comment, if you use Word 2007 or Google Docs or even WordPad, you will probably want to use one of the solutions given below for getting the precomposed characters.

Some notes:

How else do you get properly precomposed Greek characters? (The following solutions do work properly for Word 2007.) As far as I know, you can use:

Tavultesoft Keyman (a wonderful program for $19) integrates into your system so that you can type in brilliant Greek and Hebrew right in the program. No need to copy/paste...
Tavultesoft also has a free online notepad for typing in any language you want. If you want to use Greek, you have four different keyboards to choose from. (Where is that psi?) I find "Greek Classical" to be the most usable.
The free online composer at TypeGreek.com is very nice, and note that it is even smart enough that if you type a sigma followed by a space or punctuation, it will convert it into a final sigma. One problem with TypeGreek: if you are typing and don't know what character you need, you hit the "Alphabet Key." This provides the layouts, but when you go back to the previous page where you were typing, it will be all gone.
The free online composer at GreekInputter2. The keyboard is a bit less intuitive, but you can display the layouts so that they are visible while you type in the box.

What else?

There is a similar issue of markings with biblical Hebrew, but there really aren't that many precomposed characters. The Hebrew Unicode system does rely more on combining characters, and it is not really a problem.
Logos (and BibleWorks and Accordance) use the precomposed characters in their Greek texts. That is, if you copy a chunk of text in one of these programs and paste it into your word processor, you will get the precomposed forms, and any Unicode Greek font you use will look fine.

Corinth and Mycenae

2011-02-26T12:29:00.000-05:00

Corinth: Not a whole lot had changed at the site since my previous visit in 2004, except that more parts of the site are roped off. We did get to see another part of the museum. Lots of interesting stuff in the museum sections making it worth one's time to look around. There is a nice little area on the site that they have set aside that is convenient for conducting an informal worship service as we did. One does have a take an unmarked walk down to the area where the Erastus inscription is. (It was rather overgrown with weeds, and it was helpful that our guide knew where to find it.) I still have never made it up to the Acrocorinth. Next time...
Mycenae does not really have a biblical connection, but it is a fascinating site. Apparently, already by Roman times, its ruins were a tourist attraction.
HERE are the pics.

Translation: Statistics Not Linguistics

2011-02-22T00:29:00.000-05:00

I came across this interesting article in the Washington Post describing how Google Translate and Yahoo! BabelFish have improved their machine translations by using statistical instead of linguistic models. That is, with the massive abilities of computers today, better translations can be obtained by having them statistically analyze passages in two languages and generate translations on that basis rather than trying to linguistically analyze words and phrases. It does make sense given the idiomatic nature of so much of speech, but they are wise to go back now and try to provide some linguistic enhancement to their translations.
Give it a try using Hebrew or Greek (but remember that it is modern and not ancient).
Google Translate

Athens

2011-02-20T01:14:00.001-05:00

Finally got a little time to edit the Athens pics... HERE are some of the more interesting ones.
We started the day at the new Acropolis Museum. It's wonderful, and it's kind of neat to see them at work excavating the area under the museum through the floor. The Acropolis is stunning and beautiful, but I've never seen it without all sorts of cranes and scaffolding that clutter up the views. Someday... There are some steps now to help people get up on the Aeropagus. This used to be something of a treacherous adventure.
Our guide on this trip did a great job walking us through the museum and Acropolis, but she also gave us an excellent overview as she took us through the agora and the museum in the Stoa of Attalos. (The museum in the Stoa of Attalos was also a new experience for me, and a very worthwhile one.)
From the agora we headed over to the Plaka area to eat and we also had some time to take the Metro and catch Syntagma Plaza and Onamia Square. The Metro is quite nice and very reasonable for getting around Athens.
From a New Testament perspective, it is important to remember that Athens was probably a rather insignificant city in the first century. Given Athens' history and Paul's famous speech in Acts 17 and its role as the most prominent city in Greece today, we probably think of it in the same way when Paul went through. Yes, it had its history and reputation as a center of learning even in Paul's day, but it just wasn't that important. Philippi, Thessalonica, and Corinth were all more significant cities. It is not coincidental that in the history of Paul and the early church, those three cities are far more prominent in the literature of the NT.

Delphi

2011-02-16T14:30:00.000-05:00

Delphi has an appeal of its own, and it's not hard to imagine how ancients might have seen this as some kind of sacred place. On the other hand, I'm looking at ruins. Back in the day, it might have felt more like Las Vegas with its tourist appeal and opportunity for various groups to show off their successes. In any case, what happened in Delphi has pretty much stayed in Delphi...

Delphi is an important place in Greco-Roman history, and it does have one important biblical contribution, namely, the Gallio inscription.

Gallio is mentioned in Acts 18:12. This inscription from Emperor Claudius to Gallio, procounsel of Achaia, can be dated to 52 CE, and it thus gives us one of the few certain dates in Pauline chronology establishing that Paul was in Corinth in the year 51 CE. (More info here and here.)

The rest of the pics from our visit are HERE.

Viewing Texts in Parallel Using BibleWorks8

2011-02-16T01:02:00.000-05:00

In my previous post, I indicated all the English Bible versions that one might compare using a literal to dynamic scale.

For BibleWorks users, the next issue is how to view these versions in parallel. Do you want the texts horizontally or vertically aligned? How do you maximize the viewing area? How can you easily export them into a Word Doc?

I put together a PowerPoint that shows you eight different ways of doing so in BW8. You can either take a look at this PDF handout of the PowerPoint or play it online using SlideRocket.

If you have another favorite way of working with texts in parallel, please leave a comment!

English Bible Versions: Literal/Formal to Dynamic/Functional

2011-02-16T00:47:00.004-05:00

List of English Bible Versions (this is the file to download): Abbreviations, Literal to Dynamic, Notes, Recommendations
I have also posted this file as a Google Doc you can view online but not edit. (UPDATE: Sharing has now been enabled.)

I compiled this resource particularly for BibleWorks8 users in mind, but it may prove helpful to anyone who is working with English Bible versions. What I've done is made a listing of about 66 English versions, most of which are available in BibleWorks8. The first two pages of the DOC file pull together all these versions into three groups: those that come standard in BW8, those that are available as user-created downloads for BW8, and other versions for which it is usually possible to create an external link from within BW8. These have been organized alphabetically by their BW8 abbreviation. Since this is just a plain Word DOC, anyone can edit it as they see fit.

Next, I started with a helpful list I found online by Bruce Terry which provides an approximate rating of each version from literal (or using formal equivalence) to dynamic or paraphrase. I edited this list and added a few evaluations of my own. The scale used is where a "1" would be an interlinear Hebrew/Greek to English and a 10 would be a loose paraphrase. (The Cotton Patch Version gets a "10.")

On the third page, the English versions are organized according to this scale of 1-10.

On the fourth page, you will find the recommendations I give to my students in terms of the versions I think are most helpful for consulting. (The graphic below is from this page.) In addition to the notes on the table, I also provide additional rationale why I think each are worth looking at.

If you are a BibleWorks user, you may be interested in having these texts appear in the program in this order of most literal to most dynamic. For such an ordering, you need to specify a Version Display Order (VDO) file. Save this file in your BibleWorks8/init directory. In BibleWorks, click on the little setup wrench icon, choose "Version Order" on the left, then open this LitDyn.VDO file you just saved. You will need to specify the versions you want to display to see them all visible. You can, of course, also modify this VDO file to something you think is better.

Listing of texts available for BibleWorks

2011-02-16T00:22:00.001-05:00

I've been trying to pull together some resources for my students, and I have a few BibleWorks resources that others may find useful.
I have compiled in a spreadsheet (what I think is) a complete list of texts for BibleWorks8 that are in Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Greek, Latin, Coptic, or English. I've organized them according to Language, Content, Source (whether they are included in BW8, available for purchase as an Addon Module, or as a downloadable User-Created resource), the Abbreviation for each resource, a Description of the Text, whether there is a Morphologically-paired text or a Translation-paired text, and if there is any other Related text.
HERE is the XLS spreadsheet you can download. The first page has things organized largely according to content: OT&LXX, Targums, Intertestamental, Composite OT&NT, Greek NT, NT Peshitta, NT Misc, Latin, Early Christian, Other Jewish, English Versions, Islam, Classical, Doctrinal, and Miscellaneous. The second page alphabetically organizes the abbreviations used for the resources. The benefits of downloading this file are that you can have the listing available offline and can organize things as you wish. The drawback is that you'll have to keep it updated.
So, I also uploaded the spreadsheet to Google Docs where I and Michael Hanel and James Darlack will try to keep it updated. HERE is the online doc. (UPDATE: Sharing has now been enabled.)
In order to avoid problems, note that non-editors will not be able to change it. Now if anyone else wants to try to complete the list with all the other versions in BibleWorks, let me know, and I will give you editing privileges.

Meteora

2011-02-15T22:58:00.000-05:00

Meteora - Barlaam

Anyone who has visited the monasteries of Meteora knows what a fascinating place it is. Earliest monastics were here by the 10th century or so, and the first monasteries were built in the 14th century. Since then the place has both seen and preserved Hellenic history, been a place of prayer and meditation, bombed by the Nazis, and served as a locale for a James Bond movie. We visited Barlaam and St. Stephens. It was a beautiful day for taking pictures, and HERE they are.

Thessaloniki - Beroea - Meteora

2011-02-15T00:22:00.000-05:00

Thessaloniki - St. Demetri

HERE are the pics for this day.
We started out this day with a tour of Thessaloniki. We stopped first at the excavations of the Agora. I'm not sure why (maybe it was still being excavated?), but we didn't see this in 2004. There isn't too much to see, but Thessaloniki has been built over so much, it's really hard to get to the Roman level without destroying much of the city. We did note where a subway track is being built, and it looked like they came across the old Via Egnatia and were working around it. From the Agora, we walked to St. Demetri's Basilica. This is an old church which dates its history back to the martyr Demetrius in the 4th century. The building and interior are rather a mixed bag since it has been destroyed or burnt and rebuilt so many times. I found the crypt under the altar area to be the most interesting, and you'll note that 11 of the 28 pics I pulled for this day are from there. Our guide said that this had formerly been the 'locker room' of the stadium which was just to the north, and that it was here, according to tradition, that Demetrius had been killed. Be sure to take the time to go down there if you visit the basilica.
From there we went up to the Byzantine walls in the upper part of the city near the Round Tower with its wonderful view of the city below and across the harbor to Mt. Athos. Driving past the White Tower, we continued west basically following the Via Egnatia and Paul's route. (Acts 17.10-15) We stopped at Beroea (or Berea, modern Veria) where some of the ancient road is still visible alongside the modern one. Not much to see, but there is a monument and mosaic commemoration of Paul near where an ancient synagogue used to be.
(If we ever come by here again, apparently it is well worth the time to visit Vergina and the tomb of Philip II about 15 miles away.)
The rest of the day was spent driving to Kalambaka at the foot of the Meteora complex.
Enjoy the pics!

Neapolis > Philippi > Thessaloniki

2011-02-09T17:44:00.000-05:00

HERE are some pics...
We drove through Kavala which was ancient Neapolis where Paul first landed in Macedonia. (Acts 16:11) There is a church there to commemorate the event--with actual stones from the first century!
We next visited the location on the stream just west of Philippi which commemorates Lydia and her baptism (Acts 16:14-15), then headed to the ancient city itself. We were able to visit the area east of the agora (which had been closed in 2004) where the Octagonal Church is. Otherwise the rest of the site appears much the same as 7 years ago, though it looks like the theater (used for modern performances) has been fixed a bit. The main sites to see here are the bema in the forum (Acts 16:19-20), the Via Egnatia, and the 'traditional' prison of Paul and Silas.
Continuing on to Thessaloniki the road basically follows the old Via Egnatia (and that's what the highway is called still today). It passes by Amphipolis, but the new highway is now open on the north side of Lake Volvi, so you don't go through Appolonia any more. (Acts 17:1)
As for Bible and tech... I brought my Droid X with me on the trip. I knew phone service was unavailable, but I have my Android Bibles on it, and it also has GPS. I had downloaded the free Endomondo app which is an exercise tracker type of app, but I used it as we were walking around the various sites. Once I got back in WiFi range, it pulled up the path on Google Maps and also uploads it to the web where it includes elevation, pace, etc. It comes in handy for quickly locating where we were and walking through the pics I took as I reviewed them and organized them. Here is how it works on the web--Lydia and Philippi--but you can also see the graphic below. In the upper left is the Lydia site, and then you can see how we took the bus to Philippi itself and then walked around the site.

Turkey > Greece

2011-02-08T13:35:00.000-05:00

The next day was basically a travel day from Istanbul, cross the border into Greece, and heading on toward Kavala/Neapolis and Philippi. The pic above is in Alexandroupoli(s) where we stopped for lunch.

Istanbul: Blue Mosque, Topkapi, Hagia Sophia

2011-02-08T12:52:00.000-05:00

Spent the whole day in Istanbul and saw all the standard sites: Blue Mosque, Topkapi, Hagia Sophia, and the Grand Bazaar. When we visited in 2004, the interior of Hagia Sophia was filled with scaffolding, but it had been removed recently. (Apparently the work had been completed for some time, but it took a couple years to get the money to pay for the removal!) It's a big, impressive space... Not much else to add, so HERE are the pics.

Troy and Canakkale

2011-02-07T14:39:00.001-05:00

We stayed overnight in Canakkale and walked around the city a bit that evening. By the waterfront, you can now get a picture of the Trojan horse used in the 2004 movie Troy.

In the morning we backtracked a bit to visit the ancient city of Troy. I was glad to hear our knowledgeable guide described the site as "complicated," because I have found it to be a confusing place to visit. Two reasons:

It is such an old site and there are so many periods/layers. It's hard to get a sense of the place at any one time. This pic on the right tries to show the different layers, but you can see that it is hard to get a sense of the place.
The excavations are somewhat random, and it partly can be blamed on Schliemann and the clumsy trenches he dug in the late 19th century.

There is a small museum at the site that does have some very helpful illustrations showing the development of Troy and what it looked like at the various periods. Probably the highlight of the visit for most people (who by now have already seen a lot of ruins...) is to climb up into the Trojan horse that is there... Just 7 pics from this day HERE.

The rest of the day was spent traveling: back to Canakkale, the ferry across the Dardanelles, and on to Istanbul.

A few things: Troy does not have any biblical significance, but it seems to get confused regularly with the important port city of Alexandria Troas located about 10 miles south. (It is confused on quite a few biblical maps, e.g., the old Logos Deluxe Maps set. It is correctly located on the attractive new set of maps in Logos4. Pic on left shows locations of Assos, Troas, Troy, and Canakkale.) This Troas, along with Assos a bit further south, was an important gateway on Paul's travels (Acts 16:5-11; 2Cor 2:12; 2Tim 4:13) and was home to sleepy Eutychus (Acts 20:5-12). If I get another chance to visit Turkey again, I would be happy to skip Troy and instead visit Assos and Troas. They are not as easily accessible, so it may add an extra day, and they are still in early stages of excavations. For more info, here's a start:

An excellent overlay of Alexandria Troas
Info and pic on the recently excavated stadium at Troas
The Troas Project (PDF) as described by Robert Jewett (from 2005. I can't seem to find any recent info on how this project is progressing.)
Assos

Pergamum

2011-02-06T02:16:00.000-05:00

Leaving Izmir, we headed north and spent most of the day in Pergamum, now modern Bergama, aka, the place "where Satan's throne is." (Rev 2:13 - This could be a reference to the prominent Temple of Trajan, since Pergamum had a leading role in imperial worship.) When we had visited 7 years ago, there had been a light snow overnight, but it had cleared up by late morning, and the whole place was brillantly white. As you can see from the pics this time, we again had a beautiful day, and it was no less striking. 35 pics HERE.

The big development here is that there is now a cable car service you must use to get to the acropolis. It was a challenge for buses before to wind the way up to the small parking area, and the new system is quite nice. I didn't notice much new with the excavations.

From the Acropolis, we next stopped at the Red Hall, a building originally used for worship of Egyptian deities and later converted into a Christian church. We went next to the Asklepion. Again, nothing new that I recognized, but all these sites are well worth the visit.

I did especially appreciate Pergamum, because I had been reading (and since finished) Bruce W. Longenecker's The Lost Letters of Pergamum, The: A Story from the New Testament World

It is a historical fiction of a correspondence between Antipas--who is mentioned in Rev 2:13 as having been martyred in Pergamum--and Luke who is helping explain Jesus to Antipas as he is reading Luke's account of Jesus. I think it does an excellent job of highlighting the honor / shame dynamics of that time. It illustrates how radical Christianity must have seemed in the culture of that time and the sort of sacrifices Christians would have made to remain faithful. The book is well-written, and I highly recommend it.

Before heading to Canakkale for the night, we stopped at the Bergama Weavers' Association for a chance to see how Turkish rugs are made.

Philadelphia, Sardis, and Izmir / Smyrna

2011-02-03T17:08:00.000-05:00

HERE are the 36 pics from this day.

Continuing on from Pamukkale, we headed west, first stopping at Philadelphia. Not much to see here except the remains of a Byzantine church. No one would really stop here except that it is one of the churches mentioned in Revelation...

Sardis, on the other hand, is a great place to visit. Something about the place evokes the sense of its history. The setting of the Temple of Artemis does inspire a sense of awe. It is perhaps more notable that this magnificent temple, now reduced to ruins, has a very early Christian church (a chapel would be a better word) attached to it. No one is worshiping Artemis any more...

On to Izmir, formerly known as Smyrna... There are only some Byzantine remains on the Acropolis, but from there you can see the harbor and some excavations on the ancient agora.

So, we did visit the sites of the 7 churches of Revelation except for Thyatira (which is rather out of the way and not much to see...).

Aphrodisias, Laodicea, and Pammukale / Hierapolis

2011-02-02T13:21:00.001-05:00

We headed east on the next day of our tour to visit Aphrodisias, Laodicea, and Pammukale / Hierapolis. I had not visited this sites before. Aphrodisias does not really have any biblical connections, but it is a magnificent site that is well worth the visit. HERE are the pics. (Only 24 total) The Tetrapylon (Monumental Gate) is certainly picturesque, and the stadium is one of the best preserved, capable of holding 30,000 people. (It was damaged in a earthquake in the 7th (?) century and one end was converted to a theater.) The Temple of Aphrodite was converted into a church. Due to construction and time, we weren't able to see the theater and buildings at the southern end of the city. Time spent in the museum was worth while, however. Reliefs from the Sebasteion are well-preserved and quite remarkable, chronicling the triumphs of the emperors.

If you have multiple pictures of a single location, they can be joined into a multiple perspective picture using Photosynth. HERE is one I compiled of the Tetrapylon at Aphrodisias.

We next went on to Laodicea which has experienced tremendous archaeological renovations within the last few years, and work is in progress still. It is a rather impressive site, and we only got to see a portion of it. 9 miles to the east is the mound that is what's left of Colossae. 5 miles to the north is modern Pamukkale just below ancient Hierapolis. One of the drawbacks of traveling in January is that it gets dark rather early, and so we didn't have time to go through Hierapolis. I'll have to plan another trip back...

UPDATE: Thanks to a comment added, I've been looking for the reference to the church discovered in Laodicea. HERE is the article. As Todd Bolen notes, however, this 4th century building is not the "church" mentioned in Colossians 4:15-16 or Revelation 3:14-22.

Ephesus and Miletus

2011-02-01T14:36:00.000-05:00

After flying from Dulles > Munich > Izmir, took the bus to the hotel in Kusadasi. The first full day we spent visiting Ephesus and Miletus. I had visited these sites 7 years ago, and not too much has been done since then. The main progress at Ephesus was that the structure covering the excavations near the library has been improved. There was also a big crane at the theater, and a fence kept people from going more than halfway up. Virtually nothing had changed at Miletus. It always is a bit boggling that tourists can have such easy access to these sites poking around in the ruins... Notable artifacts like the "Place of the Jews and God-fearers" inscription at the theater in Miletus are just there for people to walk on. I suppose they've seen worse than tourists in their thousands of years.

In any case, HERE are 42 pics that don't necessarily try to illustrate the sites but were ones I found 'interesting' (for whatever artistic sense I may have...). These pics are reduced from the originals, but you can get the idea. They are all geotagged and linked to Google Maps and to Google Earth. In addition to Ephesus, we visited the Church of St. John the Theologian, the remains of the Ephesian Temple of Artemis (still just one column standing...), and Miletus.

In the Steps of Paul and Revelation: Pictures

2011-02-01T14:15:00.000-05:00

I had the great opportunity to co-lead a trip to Turkey and Greece last month. We covered most of the Paul and Revelation sites in western Turkey and Greece. We had beautiful weather, excellent guides, and wonderful food and lodging. In preparation for the trip, I got a nice entry-level DSLR camera (Pentax K-x) and spent a few months practicing with it. As compared to the mid-range digital point-and-shoot camera I had been using, I found that one can certainly take much better quality pics with a DSLR camera, but it is also much easier to take bad pics when the settings aren't correct. During our 2 weeks over there, I ended up taking about 2000 pics and deleted about 1/5 of them right away. Now I've been going through them, picking out the better ones, and doing some post-processing.
I got plenty of pics illustrating the significant features of a site, but I was also trying to take some pics that did more to evoke the site rather than just display it.

I've been using Picasa for most of the quick editing and Adobe PhotoElements 9 for extra work. One of the nice things about Picasa is that I've been geotagging the pics, and it is possible to locate the shot within meters of where I actually shot it. With Picasa I then also upload selected pics to space on the free Picasa web album. I'll start posting various day's worth of pics.

This trip was a wonderful experience, but one result is that I would love to go further east and south in Turkey to places like Cappadocia, Tarsus, Syrian and Pisidian Antioch, Derbe, Lystra...

Moulton & Milligan: The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament

2011-02-01T13:37:00.000-05:00

Larry Hurtado recently posted about the importance of Moulton & Milligan's The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament: Illustrated from the Papyri and Other Non-Literary Sources (M&M).

Where can you obtain this excellent resource?

It is available at Amazon for under $30. This is the 1995 Hendrickson edition which includes a Scripture Index.
Mike Heiser on The Naked Bible noted its availability in Logos (for $40). It is linked to the Greek NT texts and is searchable in both Greek and English. An extra benefit is that the entries in BDAG which refer to M&M are linked.
M&M is also included for free in BibleWorks, and words are all linked between the lexicon and the Greek NT texts. It also is searchable in both Greek and English.
(M&M does not appear to be available in Accordance?)
The 1929 edition is available on Archive.org for free. If you get it from here, be sure to use either one of the PDF versions or the DjVu version since they are page scans and will display the Greek. (Sadly, the Kindle version does not display the Greek.) These versions are searchable in English only.

Now you know...

BibleWorks and WORDsearch

2011-01-14T16:14:00.000-05:00

I don't see where there has been an announcement from BibleWorks, but WORDsearch has announced that it has "partnered" with BibleWorks to make several of the modules available as BW addins. (kennete had noted it on the BW Forum.) This is an unexpected but interesting development. BW has always focused primarily on the primary texts and translations. There a number of older dictionaries and encylopedias and addin modules already available for BW, and they have promised other developments down the line, but this is the first relationship of this kind for BW. Entries will show up cross-linked in the Resource tab of the Analysis window.
There are some decent resources available and WORDsearch is prominsing more. This link shows you which resources are available. The IVP Dictionaries are worthwhile additions. It looks like you only need to add an installer for the modules to work. Good deal for both companies and for us users...

Bible Software for Android

2011-01-01T19:15:00.001-05:00

Long story... but end result is that I am now using a Droid X (Verizon). I hate paying the data charge, but this is turning out to be one great phone replacing its 7 year old predecessor phone. In fact, after a couple weeks, it has also replaced my long-beloved Dell Axim x51v. In addition to the basic stuff of calendar, contacts, and stuff (I'm all Google synced for email and calendar...), one of my first needs was to get some Bible software on the device. There are quite a few Bible apps available, but here are the results of my searching and experimenting.

OliveTree

http://www.olivetree.com/android/index.php

Free BibleReader app with assortment of free Bibles: KJV, ASV, HCSB, JPS1917, NET (w/ limited notes)
Most developed, most resources
Study Bibles (e.g., ESV, HarperCollins, HCSB, NET w/ full notes: most in $10-30 range)
Greek and Hebrew Bibles (SBLGNT for free; BHS, LXX, NA27 also available in morphological versions w/ lexicons: $30-75 range)
Commentaries, dictionaries, devotionals, eBooks, maps, Strong's resources available
Josephus and Philo (English) are free
Android development lags behind iPhone/iPod Touch and earlier PalmOS and WinMobile, but they are busy expanding capabilities for Androi
Many non-English Bibles available
I have been a long time user of OliveTree, and I appreciate the ability to move my library from one platform to the next. (Palm > Axim > DroidX) I'm using versions I purchased previously like the NRSV and BHS, and the new SBL GNT is also on my DroidX. I have Philo and Josephus there too. The only problem is that I had purchased the Gramcord NT with its morphological analysis and dictionary, but this is not available on Android. They now offer a new morphologically tagged GNT (the Greek New Testament (NA27) with Mounce-Koivisto Morphology and UBS Dictionary), but it's still rather expensive, even with an upgrade path they offer. Given all the work OliveTree has done, their longevity in the business, and the wide collection of resources they offer, this one comes highly recommended.

YouVersion

http://www.youversion.com/mobile/android

Free
Use with an online account to keep notes, maintain a Bible reading plan, share on other social media
Good selection of translations, most of which are downloadable and able to be used offline (*online only): CEV, ESV, HCSB, KJV, Message, NET (apparently with full set of notes), NASB*, NIV84*, NIV2010*, NLT, TNIV2005*
Search, bookmarks, notes, reading plans
Easy navigation and ability to switch versions
Many non-English Bibles available
I have had an online account (free) with YouVersion, so this provides a nice transition. I highly recommend this Bible reader because it has the most extensive offering of free English versions (including the full NET).

CadreBible

http://cadrebible.com/index.php

"Over 60 Bibles, Dictionaries, Commentaries and Books available for offline reading"
Free versions include: ASV, KJV, NA26 GNT, Westcott-Hort NA26/UBS3 GNT, Scrivener GNT,
NET (w/ limited notes), Tanach (public domain Hebrew), LXX, Vulgate,
Search, bookmarks, notes, sharing, highlighting, reading plans
Parallel view (translations and/or commentaries; e.g., I have Gen 1:1 on screen showing NET, LXX, Hebrew, Vulgate!)
Can synchronize with Evernote
Non-English Bibles available
I am keeping this one on my DroidX because, as far as I have found, it's the only one to have a free LXX and Hebrew text. What's more, the Parallel view feature is extremely helpful to have Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and English versions of a verse all on screen together.

And-Bible

http://code.google.com/p/and-bible/

[Update from comment by Matthew]

Free and open source using JSword engine and CrossWire resources
Over 40 English versions of the bible including ESV, KJV and NET and in over 50 different languages
Can use CrossWire Bible resources often not found elsewhere such as: Apostolic Polyglot Bible (which gives LXX and NT w/ links to Strong's), Lexham English Bible, English translations of Peshitta NT, a number of Greek NT and Hebrew OT texts
Other resources such as Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
This one holds promise because of its ability to use CrossWire resources, but it still has some work to do. Greek diacritics do not display, and Hebrew right-to-left is not yet supported. It is worth checking out as it becomes further developed.

OTHER APPS: I have looked at the following, but they appear to be more basic Bible readers.

Tecarta

http://www.tecarta.com/bible/android/index.htm

Free Talking KJV

Other version addons $1-5 each: NIV, KJV, NKJV, MSG, NLT, ESV...

Others for purchase

Search, bookmarks, notes, split screen mode, sharing

Daily Bible

http://joansoft.com/db.htm

Supports NIV, KJV, ESV...

Includes most basic features

Bible Study Pro = MegaBible

http://biblestudypro.com/Mobile/default.aspx

$1.99 to get started

CrossConnect Bible

http://crossconnectbible.blogspot.com/

Interesting open source project that claims to be able to integrate Sword modules! If anyone has been using this and successfully using Sword modules, I'd love to hear about it.

Logos is coming...

http://www.logos.com/mobile/android

In the meantime, I am happily using their Biblia.com to access my Logos library

BOTTOM LINE

I have installed and am keeping OliveTree's BibleReader, the YouVersion Bible, and CadreBible. As I note above, each offers something distinctive. Since I do also have web access on my DroidX, I also have Biblia.com, Biblos.com, NETBible Learning Environment, and the BibleWebApp all bookmarked. That is an incredible collection of Bible resources. The only thing I'm saving for is morphologically tagged editions of the BHS and NA27 from OliveTree.

Eventually I hope to post some additional descriptions of usability of these apps, but in the meantime, if you have better advice or suggestions please share them in the comments.

Reporting from SBL - Logos

2010-12-23T12:55:00.000-05:00

Hmmm.... I wrote this up a month ago but forgot to "publish" it...

Steve Runge at Logos

Stopped by the Logos display and got a chance to visit with Steve Runge. It's good to hear that his Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament is being well received. (The link is to the book at Amazon, but it is, of course, also available as a digital download at Logos.) I'm introducing bits of it in my intro Greek class, but I want to do more with it. I think it's helpful in making students aware of the nuances of the Greek text and why an author has chosen to express something this way instead of that.

I've been remiss about updating all that's going on with Logos lately. The updates to Logos 4 (I'm now using 4.1 SR-4 - UPDATE 12/22: They have now released 4.2) have fixed some niggling issues and have brought up full capability so that I finally am comfortable to delete my old Libronix/Logos 3 from my system. Logos 4 has turned out to be a very nice update. The speed and interface are much improved. I really like the Biblical Places tool and the quality resources associated with it. I think it's great that my Logos library is synced across the computers I use and even available via the web (and hence even at my fingertips when using my old Dell Axim x51v online). To have it available on mobile platforms is also a nice benefit. Of course, Logos is particularly happy to be shipping their Mac version.

Reporting from SBL - Accordance

2010-12-02T18:07:00.000-05:00


Accordance Booth at SBL

Trying to find some time to catch up on stuff from SBL last week...

I had a good conversation with David Lang from Accordance at their booth here at SBL. (He's been busy working on and now happily finished with editing the Journal of Biblical Literature volumes to be accessible in Accordance.) I am still running Accordance 8 on a Windows machine using Basilisk, but the big news was the release of Accordance 9 (and now already a 9.1 release). In addition to updating the interface, the most appreciated improvement appears to be the Workspace Zones which "group, organize, and synchronize study texts and tools to maximize efficiency." Accordance has been very good at incorporating original language resources into their libraries (texts and images of codices, Samaritan Targum, DSS resources, etc.), and I am happy to see that they now have the collection of Carta publications available.

Accordance is now also at work at developing a syntactical database of the Greek NT. (Luke and John are available for now. Logos, working with OpenText.org, has already shown the benefit of this kind of database for analyzing the Greek text. Accordance appears to be using a somewhat simpler analysis [and this may well be a good thing...].)

Accordance also has announced an iPhone/iPad app which should be available soon that will allow access to all of one's modules. (Targuman has more to say about it here.)

Review of SBL GNT in the Gospels by Wieland Willker

2010-11-29T13:55:00.000-05:00

Wieland Willker (WW), who is active on the BibleWorks forum, has published an 8-page PDF "Analysis of the SBL GNT in the Gospels." (I, along with many others, reported on the recently announced and released SBL GNT edited by Michael Holmes here.)

You will want to read Willker's full analysis, but here are some highlights:

"It is good to see this new critical text by Mike Holmes. There are too few today. My opinion is that creating a critical text is the crowning achievement of a textual critic's career."
He applauds the lack of single bracketed readings. Decisions are made!
With regard to the apparatus, WW states that it "is a stopgap, to produce something better than nothing. It is noting many minutiae, but is omitting many important variants. So the student is not informed on all important textual variants, but only on those that are covered by the base texts."
WW notes that Holmes has "some fondness" for the Western text, but there are numerous non-Western readings chosen.
Noting that most people are interested in comparing this SBL GNT with the NA27, WW claims that (after disregarding some insignificant variations) "there are 232 differences between SBL and NA in the Gospels. Of these, SBL follows WH about 48% of the time and the Byzantine text about 44%."
"What one immediately recognizes is that Holmes is a lectio brevior man... This is the shortest GNT ever!"
In my opinion, WW has carefully studied and analyzed the Greek NT, so I respect his evaluation when he says, "Overall I agree more often than not with Holmes' textual choices."
"For the future I hope for another version to come out with a "real" apparatus, showing the manuscripts... I also hope that Mike Holmes is writing a commentary on his text."
WW includes an Appendix indicating "Agreements between Holmes and Willker against NA."

Thanks to Wieland Willker for posting this analysis and sharing it online.

Reporting from SBL - SBL's Bible Odyssey

2010-11-22T17:32:00.001-05:00

The SBL announced in their September newsletter:

This August SBL submitted to the National Endowment for the Humanities a grant to build a website for the general public, called Bible Odyssey (the previous working title was World of the Bible). In the past year SBL and an advisory team used an NEH planning grant to develop the site concept and a prototype design. (Stop by our table at the Annual meeting for a preview.)

The site will be a useful undergraduate classroom tool and will offer SBL members a chance to hone their public communication skills. We will hear from NEH about funding in April 2011.

I got to see and have attached pics of a few pages of this still-very-much-a-prototype project. (It is not yet close to ready to go online, so these are pictures of the screens.) If you look closely, you can see that it is organized by People, Places, Passages, Themes, Traditions, and Maps.

I am hoping the NEH funding comes through. The resource will be positioned as a high-quality site generated by reputable scholars that will be accessible to a popular audience. You can see that it is highly visual, but it does also maintain a text navigation system. I did encourage them to consider how it might function on mobile platforms where it seems more and more people are working online. I see it as a good resource to refer students and laypersons for quick reference.

Reporting from SBL - OliveTree

2010-11-22T17:13:00.001-05:00

Visited with the folks at OliveTree whose BibleReader program resides on my Dell Axim and is the program I use to have the Greek and Hebrew texts in my hand. One thing I've appreciated is that, as I've migrated from an old Palm III back in the day to the Dell Axim running WinMobile 5, I have been able to transfer over the books I have purchased. Check out their support for the various mobile platforms including iPhone, iPad Touch, Blackberry, Android, WindowsMobile, Palm OS, and Symbian. They anticipate providing support for Windows Phone 7. BTW, they do also have the SBL Greek New Testament with apparatus available as a free download.

Reporting from SBL - Blogger and Online Publication Section

2010-11-22T15:41:00.000-05:00

Rough notes from the SBL Blogger and Online Publication Section - 2010.11.22

Robert R. Cargill from UCLA presiding

James Davila, University of St. Andrews (Scotland): PaleoJudaica

What Just Happened: The rise of "biblioblogging" in the first decade of the 21st century"

His presentation is available online with links at his blog, PaleoJudaica. This is a really helpful summary and overview of "the rise and development of 'biblioblogging' or blogging devoted to the area of academic biblical studies." His conclusion:

Blogging has found a solid niche in academic biblical studies in the first decade of the twenty-first century. It has enriched the field in numerous ways and its expansion over the decade has been exponential, at least until recently... And all indicators are that biblioblogging will be with biblical studies for a long time to come.

Christian Brady at Penn State, well-known online as the blog author of Targuman and also the online editor for the Newsletter for Targumic and Cognate Studies

Online Biblical Studies: Past, Present, Promise, and Peril

Brady has also posted his presentation online at his blog. His main proposal: "I would like to propose the formation of an SBL sanctioned review committee." Why?

(1) It is a viable business model...
(2) Such an assessment would provide the necessary recognition required of P and T committees and department heads...
(3) Knowing that such a review and subsequent recognition is possibility we would all step up our game...

My institution has been supportive of my explorations in the online world, but I would support this kind of review committee. Some questions were raised:

regarding the financial viability
would the prospect of knowing online work would be reviewed take the fun out of blogging? I suspect that we would still maintain different types of online writing. A site like Online Critical Pseudepigrapha is in a whole other class whose contribution needs to be properly recognized.

Michael Barber, John Paul the Great Catholic University: The Sacred Page

Weblogs and the Academy: The Benefits and Challenges of Biblioblogging

(He promises to post his presentation later on his blog.) Is it even appropriate (given some of the blog site names) to be considering biblioblogging at SBL? Yes... It does not serve as a replacement of traditional formats, but it is helpful and worthwhile. Reported on a survey of academic librarians and their suspicion of blog writing, especially because of lack of peer review. People who blog are more likely to regard blog writing as having academic value as compared to those who don't blog. (duh!) There appears to be a generational gap, with younger scholars viewing blogs as scholarly publications as compared to older ones (even ones who blog). "Bloggership" as a useful neologism... 3 types of publishing: traditional, blogging w/ scholarly aspirations, other types of blogs. Facilitation of learning through 'edublogs' does seem to be appreciated....

Turning specifically to biblioblogging: note that traditional publishers are now regularly pointing to an author's blog on their book promotions.

Barber related his own positive experience of blogging in the research and development of his recently completed PhD dissertation at Fuller. ("Scot McKnight has claimed that historical Jesus research is dead, but apparently no one has alerted the publishers yet!") Unable to keep up with all publications, the blogosphere did provide keys to important directions and developments. (Especially Bird and Willitts at Euangellion)

Even non-academic posts are useful in humanizing us as scholars... Really, must a serious scholar always remain serious and objective? Isn't it truer to display the subjective reality of who we are as scholars? This will not undermine our scholarship but increase honesty and sharing between scholars.

Discussion: What about 'vitriolic blogging'? ~ We would want to treat each other with charity and respect, but online exchanges may able to be more open and honest in a 'rough and tumble' way.

James McGrath, Butler University: Exploring Our Matrix

The Blogging Revolution: New Technologies and their Impact on How We Do Scholarship

Started with question: What is a blog? -- (NOT: Lost + LOLcats + YouTube mashups) but a format for making content available
Blogging = reading + writing + linking + commenting | better: commenting with posts organized by date

Graphic of the circle of "knowledge creation":

Analysis Interpretation ~ Authoring/Presenting/ ~Sharing/Networking ~ Publishing/Dissemination ~ Archiving/Preservation ~ Research/Data Collection

What does this mean for the future of actually meeting together?

"If everyone is blogging... then no one is blogging." True?Is blogging the future? Need to define future of what? It is here to stay. It won't supplant traditional publishing, but does provide new venue.One of the best things about blogging is that it is encouraging new ways of thinking about and presenting content.

McGrath provided a lively (and often humorous) analysis and defense of the value of scholarly blogging.

Robert R. Cargill, UCLA: XKV8R

Instruction, Research, and the Future of Online Educational Technologies

Referred to a NYT article on "Digital Keys for Unlocking the Humanities' Riches."

How do the new technologies fundamentally change our instruction? (Ie, not just adapting a traditional class to an online setting.)

Noted his work with the UCLA Qumran Visualization Project which really could be accomplished only through the use of new technologies. Further, there was no real way to share findings through traditional channels. (Cf. Cargill's Qumran through (Real) Time)

Part of problem is convincing academy to adopt new forms of publication

Motivation for publishing is not based on financial hopes but on considerations for promotion and tenure.

Academic Prestige still resides in the printed format of books and traditional journals.

dot coms thrived and established businesses panicked and responded by buying and rebranding dot coms. Traditional newspapers and magazines have lost ground to the online sites.

This year, for first time, Amazon has sold more ebooks than traditional books. The academy is being left behind. Result: "The academy must embrace online publication." Online publication should not just be recognized as acceptable but as preferable.

In the past, institutions valued for their hoarding of 'sacred knowledge.' With the new paradigm shift, value resides in the sharing of knowledge. How can an academic institution increase their value and 'preserve their brand' by being known for their sharing of knowledge rather than the hoarding of it?

Solutions:

For publishers: we need more online journals and more scholars who will write for them (Eg, Bible and Interpretation)
For authors: when appropriate, scholars must publish digitally (eg, The Dynamics of Change in the Computer Imagin of the DSS and Other Ancient Inscriptions which shows how a traditional format can be preserved but dramatically enhanced using digital options)
For instructors: make use of tools like Moodle and iTunesU; view toward hybrid or blended courses; use the digital possibilities to take the lead in online education

The future of online course management systems is the textbook. (Digital textbooks, that is!)

We need to embrace the digital humanities and overcome the challenges of simply commercial and less reputable alternatives.

For institutions, technological support needs to be understood as an utility like electricity rather than a luxury.

Reporting from SBL - Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies

2010-11-22T11:30:00.002-05:00

Rough notes from SBL “Workshop on Interactive Technologies for Teaching and Learning” 2010.11.22

Kelley Coblentz Bautch from St. Edward’s University

“The Hype about Skype: Using Videoconferencing to Enhance Our Teaching”

Goal is to bring more voices, including global ones, into the classroom
KCB has been experimenting w/ the use of Skype in the classroom, including inviting the author of the required textbook
Both session-long and also short Skype sessions (e.g., have an expert provide a top 5 list…)
Students appreciate opportunity to interact w/ experts in the field and to hear contrasting views; also personalizes the scholarship behind the texts and technicalities
Helps students become aware of how the Bible is received in contexts other than one’s own
Skype is free and relatively easy to use (other options include Illuminate or iChat or panopto)
There are potential challenges of technology and Internet connection
The SBL International Voices … identifies scholars around the world who are willing to participate
Students largely found it helpful, especially when used in moderation

Brooke Lester from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

“‘To Those Far and Near’: The Case for ‘Community’ at a Distance”

In the academic context, the divide he identifies is not so much a technological one as it a distinction between those who have / not experienced ‘community’ online
One frequently encounter skepticism re: the reality of online ‘community,’ but this really is reflecting a very limited perspective
Provided links for his web tour HERE
Note the fine introduction provided at A Community of Scholarship, Emory’s Candler School of Theology, but note the caricaturization of typical online
Pharyngula as an example of community
Twitter as another example (eg, follow along at #slb10)
‘Getting over the hump’ in an online class eventually ends up with a mutually supportive group
Community, Infed (Informal Education) as an example from the field of sociology; community and communion (profound meeting with an/other); openness, reciprocity, trust
What are good ways to assess whether students are or not experiencing community in online classes? I.e., what specific questions can we ask in evaluations which can provide some quantitative data for determing this?
Some experiments Lester is inviting other scholars to participate in:
60 day invitation to community by interacting w/ other blogs HERE
A wetpaint wiki experiment to discuss the ‘Hendel’ matter HERE

David Howell of Ferrum College

“Using Technology Not to Manage but to Connect Course Teaching and Learning”

Examples of programs he has used in teaching

TimeGlider: students completed chronology assignments online here w/ some guided questions (Who is the person? Why is s/he important? Why should I care?)
Wordle: E.g., used Wordle to visualize apocalyptic literature texts; also cf. Tagxedo or Word It Out (Another alternative I would recommend is ImageChef)
Flickr for creating visual collections (eg., the Four Horsemen) and allow for comments and direct annotation of visuals
Google Maps and Google Earth: Create one’s own annotated maps
Diigo as a tool for social networking; bookmarking, sharing, tagging, and annotating online resources

Adam L. Porter of Illinois College

“The Power of Zotero for Student Learning”

I’ve been a longtime fan of Zotero, and Porter gave a fine introduction of its use and benefits. Do note that Zotero is in the process of creating Zotero Everywhere which will work in browsers other than Firefox as well as function as a standalone. Again, Zotero is a great bibliographic tool that allows you to accumulate, tag, and annotate resources from both online and local locations. With its integration with Microsoft Word, it provides an excellent way of footnoting papers and generating bibliographies. One thing I'm still hoping we can do is work on developing shared group bibliographies such as this one I've started for the Parables of Jesus. Also note that the SBL style needs to be installed separately and is available on this page.

Nicolai Winther-Nielsen

“Bereshit Basic Biblical Hebrew (3BH): Interactive Technology for Language Learning”

To get an idea of how the 3BH program works, login as a guest HERE. It is an interesting program that makes use of Moodle in the learning process. Winther-Nielsen uses the program in conjunction with Logos software. He also demonstrated Ezer Emdros-based Exercise Tool (3ET) as a self-tutored Bible reading program. Useful approach also involving linguistic analysis in conjunction with SESB in Logos. He also showed possibilities for Persuasive Learning Objects Tools (PLOTs). Consider also how we share and engage globally.

Reporting from SBL - E-Publish or Perish

2010-11-21T22:43:00.001-05:00

Here are some rough notes from the E-Publish or Perish seminar at the 2010 SBL meeting.

The session was introduced by Charles Jones of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World who described the 30 or so years of work he has done as a librarian. He’s both encouraged and discouraged by online developments. Check out some of the work Jones has done at Abzu ("Abzu is a guide to networked open access data relevant to the study and public presentation of the Ancient Near East and the Ancient Mediterranean world") and AWOL (Ancient World Online).

Christian Brady at Penn State, well-known online as the blog author of Targuman and also the online editor for the Newsletter for Targumic and Cognate Studies, talked about his experiences as an academic who has been active on the Internet. (He encouraged scholars to participate in Academia.edu as a kind of Facebook for academics.)
He used the example of the iPad app Elements as a kind of engaging instructional resource that we should be imagining for biblically related materials. He recognized the amount of time required for producing online resources. From his experience, publishing with online journals is generally recognized as a valid and tenure-worthy form of publication. Other types of online sharing still face some scrutiny.

Ehud Ben Zvi of the University of Alberta and author of more books and online material than can be summarized spoke next. E-publication of journal articles has become an acceptable commonplace. More problematic is the e-publication of monographs. He sees that it will likely become an acceptable standard, but there are challenges and opportunities. One aspect he emphasized is that knowledge is part of the common good, but what does this mean in terms of open access? He is especially concerned about a global openness that makes the common knowledge available to the 80% of the world that does not have access to it now. To this end, check out the open access project, International Voices in Biblical Studies that specifically addresses this need. This project does not want to assume that the model is simply one of the privileged providing sharing with the needy. Hcnce, there is also an incentive to get scholars from the 80% world to publish as well.

Caroline Vander Stichele of the Universiteit van Amsterdam who has worked with the online journal lectio difficilior (European Electronic Journal for Feminist Exegesis) spoke next and described how she got started in online publishing in 1998. With others, she quickly realized the atractiveness of publishing an online journal: lower costs, global access, and fast and effective publication. Those are all good reasons for why one would start an ejournal, and it also allows us to think of experimental directions we might take in terms of topics, interactions, multilinguality, media, etc. So how does one start an ejournal? Her first step was to obtain institutional support for both financial and technological assistance. Institutional cooperation provides some security for a journal’s longevity and legitimacy while also giving publicity to the institution. The issue of control is a challenge—observing copyrights, protecting from plagiarism—but has been addressed in part by preserving physical copies of the online publications.

Ian Scott of Tyndale University College and Seminary (Ontario) and co-editor with Ken Penner of the Online Critical Pseudepigrapha (OCP) was next. His frustration finding texts prompted him to begin the creation of the site. He wanted, however, not simply to provide the most conveniently available out of copyright texts (oftentimes inferior ones) but to make the best primary texts available. Why would we not publish the best critical editions online with open access? We do want to be aware of the rapid technological changes that even allow us to ask this question. With the advent of the printing press arose all sorts of issues regarding intellectual property, paying for publications, etc. The Internet poses even more significant issues. The primary costs for physical printing are in the actual production of the artifact, not in the writing, editing, and peer review. The OCP shows the kind of possibilities for a dynamic and ‘dense’ document. Still, there are costs. The biggest costs for OCP involve platform and software development. Scott would like for academics to adopt a common platform, and to that end they will soon (next week?) be releasing the Grammateus Reader which will be freely available. The Grammateus Reader is flexible and extensible and once installed (Drupal setup), scholars will be able to upload documents and have them available. They are also planning to develop an online editor that scholars will be able to use without technical training. One major challenge is obtaining permission to print texts held in copyright by publishing houses. The SBL is an example of a positive interaction in that they both identified OCP as a SBL endorsed ‘publisher’ and have provided permissions for copyrighted texts that are therefore being released in both print and online versions.

It was an interesting seminar, and we all are benefiting from the work these participants have done. I am especially excited about Scott's announcement of the forthcoming Grammateus Reader. I have often made good use of the OCP site, and this looks to enhance it even further. Thanks!

Reporting from SBL - CARG

2010-11-21T12:04:00.003-05:00

The CARG (Computer Assisted Research Group) session was disappointingly poorly attended today. John Schwandt from BiblicalGreek.org talked about his frustrations with inputting polytonic Unicode Greek. Some issues we face:

What basic keyboard layout to use: Some of us have the NotaBene or Bible Windows or other system we've long used and don't want to change. Main issues are where to map chi, psi, xi, and upsilon. Schwandt would like to encourage use of the Greek national keyboard. (Personally, I've become pretty accustomed to the layout I learned when using NotaBene and Bible Windows.)
A bigger problem is with the application of diacritical marks. The Tyndale kit is nice because it rather easily installs the Cardo font and a Greek polytonic keyboard, but I share Schwant's frustration with that and similar keyboards that require one to type the diacritical marks before typing the character.
I find the Logos keyboard to be intuitive, but it does not do a good job of rendering all the correct precombined forms.
Schwandt encouraged the use of his own EZAccent solution. I have not checked it, but another good solution is to use Tavultesoft Keyman. If you just need to type a short section, TypeGreek is the way to go.

Reporting from SBL - BibleWorks

2010-11-21T00:32:00.001-05:00

Greetings from the Society of Biblical Literature in Atlanta! The weather is great here, and it's even better to catch up with friends. Here's a pic of me with Glenn Weaver of BibleWorks. I got a chance to see some of the things that BW has indicated that they've been working on. Nothing definite to report for now, but BW has some exciting projects in the works.
There are a number of things to report, but I will do them in short snippets. It's been a long day (starting at 4:30am...), so I'll get to them when I can. Another way to keep up with what's been happening here is to follow the twitter feeds.

SBL Greek New Testament Now Available!

2010-10-28T14:03:00.002-04:00

As noted in a number of places, this is great news on the SBLGNT site! I am grateful we have a new critical edition (of sorts) of the GNT. I am grateful that is free. I am grateful that Logos has worked with the SBL to make this possible, that one version of it can be integrated into Logos (cf. below), and other versions of it are or will be available in Logos' iPhone app, at the online Biblia.com site, and as XML and TXT files which means that other Bible software programs will be able to integrate it as well. [UPDATE: As Michael Hanel notes in the comments, it's already been ported to BibleWorks.] I am also grateful that we finally have a critical Greek text like this that is free from the hegemony of the German Bible Society! Yes, I will continue to consult my Nestle-Aland, but now I have a reasonable alternative that will alert me to points of divergences in the Greek text that are worth considering.

You will want to read the introduction to this edition, but basically what the editor Michael Holmes has done is started with the Westcott & Hort text and compared it to Tregelles' GNT, the reconstructed Greek text upon which was used by the NIV translation committee (edition by Goodrich and Lukaszewski), and the Byzantine text as compiled by Robinson and Pierpont. This approach does give preference to the Alexandrian tradition, but Holmes ultimately makes his own decisions. Holmes is not, therefore, working directly with the Greek manuscripts, but he is looking over the shoulder of these various text critics and editors and trying to make the best sense of all their direct research.

I was able to incorporate the text into my Logos4 program by following the download link, ordering it, and then starting Logos4 which immediately made it available to me. As you can see in the screen capture below, I can have quick access to the easily understandable apparatus (something that cannot necessarily be said of NA apparatus), and I do still have my NA27 at the ready. For example, from this shot of Mark 1.1, you can see that Holmes has chosen as the best reading to omit the υἱοῦ θεοῦ, but the apparatus indicates that he is following Westcott & Hort in doing so but that the inclusion is supported by the other Greek editions.

So head on over to the SBLGNT site, check out the resources there, and download this text in whatever format works best for you.

Zotero Everywhere!

2010-09-23T09:47:00.000-04:00

I've been a big fan of Zotero, and yesterday (2010.09.22) they announced a new initiative called Zotero Everywhere. Be sure to check the whole announcement, but here's the key part.

Zotero Everywhere is aimed at dramatically increasing the accessibility of Zotero to the widest possible range of users today and in the future. Zotero Everywhere will have two main components: a standalone desktop version of Zotero with full integration into a variety of web browsers and a radically expanded application programming interface (API) to provide web and mobile access to Zotero libraries.

What does this mean and why is it important? Until now, Zotero has been limited to users of Firefox, and it largely works within the Firefox browser. (Remember, though, that Zotero has a plugin that allows easy integration with Microsoft Word or Open Office for easy generation of footnotes and bibliographies.) Now, they are promising integration with Microsoft Internet Explorer, Apple Safari, and Google Chrome. There will also be the standalone version available for Mac, Windows, and Linux.

I know that I use Zotero for creating my bibliographies as I work online, but I also use it to annotate entries, link to reviews of a book, link to my own resources, etc. It truly is a great research tool.

Zotero Everywhere is not yet available, and the announcement doesn't indicate when it will be, but this is good news.
[HT: Dan Cohen]

Microsoft Zoom.it

2010-08-07T11:19:00.002-04:00

Microsoft's Live Labs has come up with a neat way of sharing pics on the web called Zoom.it.
Here's an example of Caesarea Maritime aqueduct.

This was a stitched together panorama, so the resolution isn't the greatest, but you get the idea. Use the buttons at the lower right to zoom or go to full screen. You can grab and move the image around. Use your mouse wheel for zooming...
Zoom.it also works for capturing full web pages like this:

(Do note that it captures an image of the page. Links do not work.)
It's easy to create your own, so give it a try. For more info, also check HERE.

BibleWorks8 - Setting Search Limits

2010-08-07T11:10:00.001-04:00

A student recently asked me how to use BibleWorks8 to search the Old and New Testaments, but to exclude the results from the Apocrypha. If you are searching in English (what?!?), then just use a version that doesn't have the Apocrypha... e.g., NET or NAU.
It's trickier in Greek. That is, we want to search only the books in the LXX that are part of Hebrew Bible canon, along with the NT Greek.The task is complicated by the way that the books of the OT are ordered in the Hebrew, Greek, and English versions. There are a couple ways of accomplishing the task, and if you click the graphic above, it will show you a 2'11" video on how to do so. One of the ways I'll show is setting up a custom search limit. You will need to copy the text below and paste it in to BW8.

Gen;Exo;Lev;Num;Deu;Jos;Jdg;Rut;1Sa;2Sa;1Ki;2Ki;1Ch;2Ch;Ezr;Neh;Est;Job;Psa;Pro;Ecc;Sol;Isa;Jer;Lam;Eze;Dan;Hos;Joe;Amo;Oba;Jon;Mic;Nah;Hab;Zep;Hag;Zec;Mal;Mat-Rev

If I get a chance, I'll try to show how to do the same in Accordance and Logos unless someone else can pull those together quickly. (I'm not as capable at Accordance, so I'm not sure how to do such a full Bible search with a single command. In Logos, I think it requires setting up a LXX/NT collection using the same morphology.)

Open Source Textbooks

2010-08-03T02:06:00.000-04:00

There's been a progression of comments regarding the creation of a free, online Old Testament textbook. Here's the latest from Mark Goodacre, and you can track back from that post to AKMA. There is a parallel movement in the kindergarten to high school textbook field as well as described in a recent NY Times article, "$200 Textbook vs. Free. You Do the Math." Scott McNealy (of Sun Microsystems fame) is behind a nonprofit, online hub for free textbooks called Curriki. Some aspects of the discussion are the same, but there are differences as well. The article indicates that McNealy with others "shuns basic math textbooks as bloated monstrosities: their price keeps rising while the core information inside of them stays the same." So, from their perspective and with respect to the kind of textbooks they are interested in having, the information is static. It's the cost of textbooks that is the main problem.

The discussion about a FOSSOTT (free, open source Old Testament textbook) has highlighted some of its advantages for fostering the possibility of including different viewpoints. I.e., we do not necessarily assume in the biblical studies field that all information is static. Further, as James McGrath has outlined, there are a number of potential different models for rethinking what we want in a 'textbook.'

In response to the NY Times article, Mark Guzdial at the Computing Education Blog weighs in with some considerations regarding quality (in the process and in the material), innovation (Is it possible in an open source approach? Is the innovation in the approach or the textbook?), and sustainability. He is somewhat skeptical about the whole thing...

Personally, I'm thinking changes are not only needed but are inevitable. With the increase of portable reading devices (which still need to get a bit better to substitute for physical textbooks), I think we are headed to all digital. With Mark Goodacre, I would hope we move to something less "texty" and more open, interactive, connected, and social. (I.e., both teachers and students should be able to do more than 'use' a textbook. They should be able to note disagreement, questions, etc.) I've had something like this in mind on a small scale with my Parables of Jesus site, but it is still in its infancy. In any case, we are able to see a future which offers the possibility for some exciting options in creating more flexible (and hopefully also free or low-cost) 'textbooks.'

Greek and Hebrew in Google Docs and Windows Live SkyDrive

2010-07-17T22:50:00.002-04:00

I've used Google Docs for some time and recently Microsoft placed a version of its Office suite online under the Windows Live SkyDrive banner. One of the important considerations for me is how well they handle Greek and Hebrew. I ran through a number of configurations, and if you want to see how they look, you can check them out HERE along with additional comments. For a simple summary of what works or not, here's what I've been able to determine.

It makes a difference whether you use Firefox or Internet Explorer. There are some differences in line spacing, but more important differences are based on how you have your font settings. For my test, I had switched my default Greek font in Firefox to Cardo but had left IE8's Greek default to TimesNewRoman.
In FF, use Tools - Options - Content tab - Fonts and Colors - Advanced. Choose Greek from the dropdown and choose your desired font.
In IE8, use Tools - Options - General tab - Fonts - Choose Hebrew or Greek Language script and choose your desired font.
I still recommend the free Cardo font.
Google has acquired rights to Cardo, but it is not yet implemented with a full set of characters to do Greek/English editing.
SkyDrive likes to use Microsoft's Calibri font as an English default for composing or editing. Calibri is not available in GDocs, and it uses Arial instead.
If you have Greek or Hebrew Unicode keyboards installed, you can type directly in Greek/Hebrew in either SkyDrive or GDocs. It is also possible to copy/paste.
Saving my mixed English/Hebrew/Greek file in SkyDrive regularly crashed it (i.e., the SkyDrive tab, not the browser.) It was an easy and quick matter to restart but a bit of a pain nonetheless.
Note that the option to open and edit an online document in SkyDrive in MSWord on your computer requires that you be running it in IE8.
If you have a Unicode Syriac font installed and a Syriac keyboard, you can compose in Syriac as well.
The only font you can count on for a consistent display of Greek (i.e., all the characters are in that font) is Tahoma.
Other fonts may look a bit strange with the font substitutions for accented characters, but the Unicode is accurately preserved. So, when you apply an appropriate Greek Unicode font offline in your local word processor, everything will look fine.
Note that some of the Hebrew does not display correctly (e.g. אֱלֹהִים - the holem takes up its own space), but when used offline and a font like Cardo is applied, it will appear accurately.
In GDocs, you can right align text, but it does not allow for right to left orientation. In SkyDrive, you can apply right to left orientation, so, if you are doing a lot of typing in Hebrew, SkyDrive is more helpful.

BOTTOM LINE: You can work in Greek or Hebrew (or Syriac) in either GoogleDocs or Windows Live SkyDrive. I don't see a huge advantage of one over the other. If you want to have multiple persons working on a document at the same time, however, use GDocs. If you are familiar with MSOffice and its editing ribbon, SkyDrive will be very familiar. If you are mainly working in Hebrew, SkyDrive is better.

Adding Bible Search Engines to the Opera Browser

2010-06-30T12:03:00.000-04:00

Michael Ballai on his Theologica site describes steps one can take to add Bible search engines to the Opera browser. This provides a quick way to access online Bible resources like the ESV or NET Bible text or link to sites like Bible Study Tools. If you use Opera, check it out!

Hebrew Legacy Fonts Converters

2010-06-20T02:37:00.002-04:00

Hebrew Legacy Fonts Converters

I have previously tried to list "Greek Legacy Fonts to Unicode Converters." Here are the Hebrew legacy fonts converters of which I am aware. If you know of others, please add a comment, and I will update this post.

Ken Penner's SPTiberian (SBL legacy TrueType) to Unicode (Word macro)

This is a MS Word macro from Ken Penner, author of Flash! Pro Vocabulary Memorization Software

You need to understand how to paste text into the Word Macro editor. This is a text file of coding to paste in.

Thanks to Ken for sharing this!

Galaxie BibleScript (Word macro/template)

Use the Windows Installer to install Galaxie Greek/Hebrew fonts and Word template

Involves a two-step process converting legacy fonts to Galaxie fonts and then to Unicode

Hebrew fonts handled: Hebraica/II,
Bwhebb (BibleWorks), SuperHebrew, SHebrew (Bibloi)

Greek fonts handled: Alexandria,
Koine, Gideon, Mounce, Bwgrkl, SymbolGreekP, Graeca, WinGreek, GraecaII, SuperGreek, Sgreek

SHebrew (from Silver Mountain; used in BibleWindows and Bibloi)

Bibloi 8.0 includes a Unicode Type Assistant for SHebrew to Unicode

SIL (Word template and standalone SILConverters 3.1)

This package provides tools through which you can change the encoding, font, and/or script of text in Microsoft Word and other Office documents, XML documents, and SFM text and lexicon documents. It also installs a system-wide repository to manage your encoding converters and transliterators.

Among many others, it contains encoding converter map(s) for the following encoding/fonts:

SIL Ezra to/from Unicode
Hebrew Unicode 4.0 to/from Hebrew Unicode 5.0

Greek and Hebrew Encoding Converter (Ken Penner - online: copy/paste textbox)

From: SPTiberian, Linguist HebraicaII, B-Hebrew transliteration, Unicode, SPIonic, Greek BETA, SGreek, LaserGreek, AG, Greek Unicode NFD, Unaccented Greek Unicode, Greek Code Page

To: Unicode, Code Page 1255 (Hebrew Windows), SPTiberian, B-Hebrew transliteration, SuperHebrew, Unaccented Greek Unicode, Greek Unicode NFD, Greek BETA, Unaccented B-Greek,

JBLC (paid conversion service for RTF files)

Transforms texts with legacy fonts like SuperHebrew, SPIonic, SuperGreek, Bwgrkl, and others to any Unicode font

LaserHebrew Converter

$79.95 available for Win or Mac from Linguist's Software

LaserHebrew and LaserHebrew II to LaserHebrew in Unicode

Note that the Jerusalem font uses the same key mapping as LaserHebrew.

Accordit from Accordance Bible Software (look for it near the bottom of the page)

Check AccordIt 2.0 User's Guide

Converts LaserHebrew (Linguist's) or Jerusalem (MacBible-Zondervan) to Yehudit (both are non-Unicode)

Converts Hebrew to Hebraica II

BibleWorks BWHEBB to Unicode

Section 59 on "OLE and DDE" in the BibleWorks8 Help file provides the MSWord macro text to conduct the conversion

Review of Thomas Naef's Holy Bits: A Guide for Using Computers in Biblical Scholarship

2010-06-19T20:37:00.000-04:00

I've just completed a somewhat lengthy review of Thomas Naef's Holy Bits: A Guide for Using Computers in Biblical Scholarship. Instead of posting it all here, you can read/download the PDF. Though it is a review, I actually write more as a dialogue partner with Naef and suggest some alternatives to his suggestions. The title hints at the rather wide range of the topic, so I suspect you will discover some sites or applications of which you are now not aware. If you have other suggestions, leave a comment here or go to the book's site and leave a note for Naef himself.

Cambridge University Digitization Project

2010-06-17T11:59:00.000-04:00

In case you had not already heard...
Cambridge University Library has announced plans to become a digital library for the world... The first collections to be digitised will be entitled The Foundations of Faith and The Foundations of Science. The goal for both is that they become ‘living libraries’ with the capacity to grow and evolve... The library also holds the world’s largest and most important collection of Jewish Genizah materials, including the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection – 193,000 fragments of manuscripts as significant as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Its Christian holdings include the Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis, one of the most important Greek New Testament manuscripts, the Book of Deer and the Book of Cerne. [ChristianToday]
Very nice... [HT: TW at ETC]

Quick Notes: Greek Flashcards and Glo Bible

2010-06-05T11:54:00.000-04:00

Danny Zacharias over on Deinde has compiled a great list of Greek flashcard vocabulary options. (Previously discussed here with further info.) So I had to make a link to this Flashcard Scholarship opportunity posted HERE where you have the chance to win $500 by posting a video of you destroying your paper flashcards! (I suspect many students would be happy to do this for free...)

The Washington Post has an article today on: "Glo digital Bible designed to reach a younger generation". It provides some background and describes some applications of it in church settings. Founder of Glo's Immersion Digital, Nelson Saba, is quoted as saying that "it is currently available only for personal computers and laptops, but the intent from its inception was that it would be applicable to mobile devices." (I've posted my own reviews of the Glo Bible HERE and HERE.)

Typing Biblical Hebrew

2010-06-05T02:49:00.005-04:00

What are the best ways to type biblical Hebrew? Personally, while I have strong preferences about how my polytonic Greek keyboard is laid out, I haven't typed frequently enough in Hebrew to have clear preferences. For example,

Do you want to use an English keyboard which matches the Hebrew phonetically? Or do you prefer an Israeli keyboard?
Should the shift state serve to provide final forms or doubled forms?
Where do the vowel points go? Try to match them with English phonetically? Or put them all on special keys (123...)?
Where is the aleph key? (I'm always searching for it if it's not on the "a".) Or the vav/waw? Or the het or tet?

That's only one set of issues related to the keyboards. You also have to consider whether/how Hebrew with its right-to-left typing is handled in your word processor. Or maybe you want to compose all your Hebrew in your Bible software and copy/paste it into your documents. Or do you want a system-wide switch so you can type in Hebrew in your word processor, email, web page...

I'll try to sort out some of the options, but in all cases I will assume that you are wanting to end up with Unicode Hebrew using a font like Cardo or SBL Hebrew. Even if you go with transliteration, you will need some help to get the special characters... I'm also providing screenshots of keyboard layouts where possible so you have a better idea of the layout philosophy of the various options. (Click on the graphics to enlarge them.)

System-wide Hebrew Keyboard

The idea here is that your operating system understands that you want to type in Hebrew and switches to a Hebrew keyboard and a Unicode Hebrew font using right-to-left formatting. (For Windows users, at least, this is going to mean enabling a buried regional parameter to allow the right-to-left typing.) Do note that most English users are not going to want to use an Israeli keyboard but rather one that is laid out for an English keyboard and optimized for biblical Hebrew needs. An advantage in using a Windows system keyboard is that you also can use the onscreen keyboard which is included for free. (It is part of the accessibility options in Windows. For WinXP see here or here and for Win7 see here. [HT: bkMitchell]) What about Macs? I don't have much experience with Macs, but I have noted some solutions below.

TYNDALE UNICODE FONT KIT

One of the easiest ways to get started typing in Hebrew is to use the Tyndale Unicode Font Kit. It provides clear instructions for installing everything, the fine Cardo font, and an installer. It's available for WinXP, WinVista (& 7, I presume), and Mac. For the Hebrew keyboard, it uses a combination of sound-alike and look-alike positions. (E.g., note that the aleph is on the "x", shin is on the "w", and vowels go with their sound-alikes.) Cf. the graphic above. (A transliteration keyboard is included in the Greek keyboard using the Cardo font and activated by turning on caps lock.)

TAVULTESOFT KEYMAN

Another excellent way to type in Hebrew (and other languages) is Tavultesoft's Keyman program. (Pricing is $19 for 2 keyboards. Windows only) Once you have the program, then get Galaxie's BibleScript Greek and Hebrew Keyboard. (Here is a PDF of the installation manual and keyboard layouts.) As you can see in the graphic above, the shift state is used for doubling and most of the vowels are on the shifted number row. It's a bit of a trick finding the final form. A nice feature is that it does include a pop-up keyboard if you need help.

SBL HEBREW SIL KEYBOARD

In addition to the fine SBL Hebrew font, SBL also provides Hebrew keyboards. Here is the SIL keyboard manual. It's mainly phonetically based, but the aleph and ayin are on the shifted angle brackets, and you'll find the het on the "x" and the tet on the "v".

SBL HEBREW TIRO KEYBOARD

SBL also provides a Tiro Hebrew keyboard. Here is the Tiro keyboard manual. It's mainly based on the Israeli standard keyboard, so it is probably not a preferred keyboard for those not familiar with that layout.

HEBREW QWERTY KEYBOARD

Based on a Hebrew keyboard for the Mac, this Hebrew QWERTY keyboard has been made available for Windows. (Link is to a ZIP file. Extract all files and run the .msi file. [HT: Mikhtav]) There a few 'qwirks' to this layout, but it may work for you...

LOGOS KEYBOARDS

Logos provides a Hebrew keyboard for use in Windows. The placement is largely phonetic (but the aleph on ") and the shift state is used for finals and for related letters. (E.g., t is tav, and Shift+t is tet. A transliteration keyboard is also available on that page.)

MULTIKEY

MultiKey by Stefan Hagel is a free program that supports Unicode input in many Windows programs. (I.e., it isn't exactly a system keyboard like the ones listed above.) It includes keyboard tables for Hebrew and 17 other languages using Unicode and 3 older Hebrew keyboard tables. (WL Hebrew, WinGreek Hebrew, BWHEBB) You can customize your keyboards, but it will take some work since it's primarily geared for modern Hebrew. (E.g., I can't find the final forms...)

DO IT YOURSELF (OR MODIFY EXISTING ONES)

Don't like a keyboard layout? Tyndale provides some instructions for changing the layout using SIL's Ukelele program for the Mac or the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator for Windows. Basically these allow you to assign Unicode characters to keystrokes, but matters are complicated with Hebrew (and Greek) because you will want to add vowels and accents and such and have the keyboard reference the proper precombined character. You will probably want to get familiar with BabelMap which is a great free Unicode character mapping program for Windows.

... and for Macs
TYNDALE UNICODE FONT KIT
Cf. the description above.

HEBREW QWERTY KEYBOARD

Here is a good place to start for some basic information on installing and using a Hebrew keyboard. Info is given on how to activate the Keyboard Viewer. Instead of using the standard Hebrew keyboard layout, it is recommended that you use the Hebrew QWERTY keyboard displayed above.

SBL HEBREW KEYBOARD DRIVERS

SBL provides Hebrew keyboard Drivers for SIL and Tiro (OS X) Cf. graphics above for these keyboards.

HEBREW-ZC KEYBOARD

Bill / Ze'ev Clementson provides his own well-considered Hebrew-ZC Keyboard. It's well-considered, because he has tried to incorporate the best of both the SIL and Tiro keyboards as well as frequency of Hebrew character and vowel stats. The keyboard download, installation instructions, and layout diagrams are on that page.

Independent Hebrew Typing Aids

SHIBBOLETH

Shibboleth is a great free tool from Logos I have previously mentioned for entering text in 10 languages as well as a transliteration mode. Logos states:

Shibboleth is a tool for typing Unicode text in ancient scripts. It was designed to help people unfamiliar with a script easily enter the correct characters, and then copy text to the clipboard in Unicode or another format.
While a keyboard layout is provided for several scripts, the emphasis is on helping the user recognize and select the proper characters. To that end, user input is shown in both typed and rendered format, with multiple font options, and all of the characters for each script are selectable from a well organized palette on the right side of the application window.

You can enter text using your keyboard or pointing/clicking on the characters you want. This is particularly helpful if you need to include cantillation marks and have trouble remembering where to locate them on a keyboard. Do note that the output is actually in XML, so when you paste your text you will see the XML Hebrew encoding indicators. In a word processing document, you will probably want to delete those. It works great in a web page since you will only see the text, as I am demonstrating here: בּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִם. (In a word processor you would see angle brackets enclosing "he" and "/he" codes.)
Note also that Shibboleth does require Microsoft's .NET Framework 4 Client to run. Also available on the download page are other fonts you can install to use your output in other applications.

KEYMAN WEB

Keyman Web is a free, online notepad from Tavultesoft for typing in just about any language and then copy/paste into your document. For Hebrew, you can choose to use the Galaxie Hebrew keyboard described above as part of the Tavultesoft Keyman program. As you can see in the graphic, you can activate an onscreen keyboard. (But it won't show you all the vowels on the shift state.) You can see that the אֱלֹהִים doesn't look correctly spaced, but when you paste it into your word processor, it will be fine.

HEBREW KEYBOARD BOOKMARKLETS
Here's a clever idea if you are needing to input Hebrew on a web page, and you are not using your own computer. Hebrew Keyboard Bookmarklets from Bill (Ze'ev) Clementson provides your choice of four Hebrew keyboards (Tiro, SIL, QWERTY, or his own ZC--cf. above) that you can activate (using javascript) as a bookmarklet. You are also provided bookmarklets to turn off the Hebrew keyboard and adjust LtR or RtL text direction.

AM HA-ARETZ

Now only available on Internet Archive, Am ha-Aretz is another notepad type of online app that allows you to type / copy / paste. There is an Internet Explorer version that works well and an "other browser" version that works with Firefox but not very well.

Integrated English-Hebrew Word Processors

Another option is to use a word processor that is designed for scholarly work that requires a variety of fonts including a mix of left-to-right and right-to-left languages.

NOTA BENE LINGUA

Nota Bene Lingua is much more than a word processor, but it is incredibly easy to use for typing in Hebrew and handles mixing typing direction well. It has popup keyboards and smart characters that automatically convert to final forms as you type where appropriate. It uses a largely phonetic layout, but vowels are accessed through using F6 and then selecting the one you want.

DAVKAWRITER

DavkaWriter is "the world's most innovative Hebrew / English Word Processor." I personally have never used it, but I have only heard positive comments from people who do. (It appears to be Windows only.)

MELLEL

"Mellel is the leading word processor for Mac OS X designed especially for creative and technical writing, scholars and anyone who wants a reliable word processor." "If right-to-left languages, or languages related to biblical studies are important to your work, Mellel is probably what you need."

CLASSICAL TEXT EDITOR

Classical Text Editor is "the word-processor for critical editions, commentaries and parallel texts..." Allows for any number of notes and apparatus, bidirectional text. Created by Stefan Hagel. (Cf. MultiKey above) For Windows and Macintosh with emulated Windows.

MICROSOFT WORD

You can actually do quite well in MSWord using a system keyboard as described above. The graphic shows how I can type in Hebrew mixed in with English and Greek. I have activated the on-screen keyboard (also described above) and am using the Logos Hebrew keyboard which I activated by using the ALT-SHIFT strike to toggle through my available keyboards. (Cf. the "HE" for Hebrew in my system bar at the bottom near the right.)

OTHER WORD PROCESSORS [UPDATED]
As indicated in the comments, Nisus Writer Pro (Mac) reportedly does well with right to left fonts and NeoOffice (Mac) is also usable. OpenOffice (Windows, Mac, Linux) is also an excellent choice.

UNITYPE

I have no experience with Unitype, but you can buy this program (starting at $150USD) as part of either the standalone Global Writer or Global Office which integrates with MS Word.

ANTIOCH

Antioch "is a utility which allows you to type classical Greek and Hebrew in Word. It includes fully programmable Greek and Hebrew keyboards, a uniquely simple and flexible system for handling diacritics and vowel points, an elegant font with all necessary characters, and converters for documents in many other formats." It works with all versions of MS Word (including 2010) for Windows. Vowels are on the number row and also on the keypad. It allows for personalization of the characters. Cost is US$50.

Bible Software Editors

If you have one of the major Bible software programs, you can use their built-in editors and then copy/paste into other applications or documents.

Accordance

Accordance provides a good explanation of font usage in this PDF file. The font used for Hebrew is Yehudit. Keyboard diagrams are provided. Accordance does not actually use Unicode, but it can export Unicode.

BibleWorks

BibleWorks has a rather robust editor that allows for typing either in its own BWHEBB font (shown above) or in Unicode. (When using the Unicode Hebrew, it actually uses the Hebrew system keyboard you have installed.) The 'busy' buttonbar shown can be simplified, and the editing works for both the editor and chapter/verse notes entries. The files are actually RTF files, so you could do your work in the editor and then open the file in your word processor.

LOGOS

Logos works entirely with Unicode, so anything you type will use the system keyboard you have installed (cf. the choices above), and you can easily copy/paste text into documents outside Logos in full Unicode beauty.

BOTTOM LINE
Well... pulling this info together took way longer than I anticipated, but I am gearing up for a writing project that does involve a lot of Hebrew, and so I wanted to get myself properly situated. For that project, I may try to do everything in Nota Bene. For now, I've been using the Logos Hebrew keyboard in MSWord and also in the BibleWorks editor. When I've gotten frustrated with finding vowels or other markings, I've pulled up Shibboleth. Keyman Web is another quick option, and I am considering whether I should go ahead and buy the Keyman Desktop program, since it really does the best job with polytonic Greek. I've provided graphics of the keyboard layouts, because that really is the most important factor.

At least now you know many of your choices, but I have to suppose I've missed other options out there. Please post a comment on your preferred way of typing Hebrew, and I will try to update this entry. Thanks.

Greek Legacy Fonts to Unicode Converters

2010-05-31T01:41:00.001-04:00

This is an update of a post from 2008.
Everyone should really be using Unicode for Greek fonts now, but there are still a few publishers who request Greek be rendered in one of the older legacy fonts. You may also have some older documents with non-Unicode Greek fonts, and you want to convert them to Unicode. The problem with the older TrueType fonts (e.g., Sgreek, SPIonic, Graeca, etc.) is that they each have their own character encoding, so there is no single way to convert these fonts to Unicode. What's the solution? I have gathered all the Greek font converters of which I am aware. Many of them allow conversion to/from Unicode. Note that it is possible to convert from a legacy font to Unicode back to a different legacy font if necessary.
Also note that most of the converters are Microsoft Word macros or templates. If you try to convert a file that has footnotes with Greek, the footnotes might not get converted.
Let me know if I missed any.

Greek Transcoder (Word document template) - excellent, free converter; handles the following fonts

Beta Code (Betaread)
GreekKeys (Athenian, Bosporos, Kadmos, Xanthippe)
Ismini
LaserGreek (GraecaII, GraecaUBS, GreekSansII, GreekSansLS, Hellenica, Odyssea _/F/UBS, Payne, Payne Condensed, SymbolGreekII, UncialII)
Paulina Greek
SGreek (SGRead, SGreek, SgreekFixed)
SPIonic (SPIonic, Tadzoatrekei, Takeros, Talaurinos)
SuperGreek (Achille, Graeca, GreekSans, SSuperGreek, SuperGreek, SymbolGreek, UncialLS)
Vilnius University (Anacreon, Attica, Corinthus, Corinthus Lector, Grecs du roi, Greek Old Face V, Greek Grotesque, Hellenica, Hierapolis, Milan Greek V, Odyssea)
WinGreek and Son of WinGreek (Aisa, Angaros, Athenian, Grammata, Grecs du roi WG, Greek, Greek Garamond, Greek Old Face _/C, Korinthus, Milan Greek, Standard Greek)
Unicode

Galaxie BibleScript (Word macro/template)

Use the Windows Installer to Galaxie Greek/Hebrew fonts and Word template
Involves a two-step process converting legacy fonts to Galaxie fonts and then to Unicode
Greek fonts handled: Alexandria, Koine, Gideon, Mounce, Bwgrkl, SymbolGreekP, Graeca, WinGreek, GraecaII, SuperGreek, Sgreek (also Hebraica/II, Bwhebb, SuperHebrew, Shebrew)

BibleWorks BWGRKL to Unicode (Word macro)

Look for the Word macro on this forum thread. (An alternative macro here.)
There is also a Unicode > bwgrkl posted here.

Sgreek (from Silver Mountain; used in BibleWindows and Bibloi)

Bibloi 8.0 includes a Unicode Type Assistant for Sgreek to Unicode
Silver Mountain also sells ($49) a Beta Export program for use with the Beta Code TLG and PHI data which converts those texts to Unicode.

SIL (Word template and standalone SILConverters 3.1)

IPA93 legacy fonts (Doulos, Sophia, Manuscript) to Unicode
Check here and here.

Meander's Nod (online)

GreekKeys (Athenian, Attika, Sparta, Salamis)
WinGreek
Bosporus(GreekKeys format)
Kadmos (GreekKeys format)
ISO 8859-7 (Modern Greek)
Beta Code
> Unicode, Beta Code, GreekKeys, WinGreek

Logos3: Graeca/GraecaII to Unicode (within Logos program converting Word docs - I cannot find a similar converter in Logos4.)

Multikey (Word macro)

Aisa
Logos Gramma
Athenian
OldGreekSerif
WinGreek
WP Greek Century
WP GreekTimes Ancient
MgPolAplaM
TimesTenGreekP
Kadmos
Grk

Greek and Hebrew Encoding Converter (Ken Penner - online: copy/paste textbox)

From: Unicode, SPIonic, Greek BETA, SGreek, LaserGreek, AG, SPTiberian, Linguist HebraicaII, B-Hebrew transliteration, Greek Unicode NFD, Unaccented Greek Unicode, Greek Code Page
To: Greek Unicode NFD, Greek BETA, Unaccented B-Greek, SPTiberian, B-Hebrew transliteration, SuperHebrew, Unaccented Greek Unicode

JBLC (paid conversion service for RTF files)

"...transforms texts with legacy fonts like SPIonic, SuperGreek, Bwgrkl, and others to any Unicode font"

Antioch ($50 for registered version: Word macro)

includes keyboard and converter
To Unicode from WinGreek / Son of WinGreek, SGreek, GreekKeys, Linguist's Software (also called LaserGreek), Vilnius University coding, SIL, SPIonic, Lector, Titus and Ismini.

Cardo and Google Web Fonts

2010-05-30T20:32:00.000-04:00

Google recently opened up 18 fonts that can be freely used on the web. (A selection is displayed above. More info here and here.) What is important about this is that it means you can reference those fonts on your web pages and be assured that they will show up as you intend even if the person does not have that particular font on their system. You can get the embed code by clicking on the font from here and following the links. There is a nice font previewer here that even generates the code you want with text effects applied. To download the fonts so that you can use them as you design web pages, grab them here.

Of particular interest is that Cardo--a long time favorite for those using biblical languages because it contains a complete set of Unicode Greek, Hebrew, and diacritical marks--is among those released. Cardo's designer, David Perry, has provided some additional information about this development. He's been working on a updated edition of his resource, and now book, Document Preparation for Classical Languages, which will be released in June. He is also going to provide an update to the Cardo font set which was last revised in 2004. This is all good news!

Now for the disclaimers...

For now, at least, the Cardo font that Google is providing is only a subset and does not include the Greek and Hebrew characters. (I don't know that they will ever do so, but it sure would be nice...) OTOH, Weston Ruter pointed me to FontSquirrel. For someone who is industrious and knows their way around CSS, it makes it possible to create and serve up your own font set.

BOTTOM LINE: Thanks to Google, the web should be a more attractive place and hopefully one more attuned to Greek and Hebrew. Thanks to David Perry, we can look forward to an update to Cardo and a great new resource.

Considerations for Translating New Testament Greek to English

2010-05-03T00:19:00.000-04:00

A bit off-focus for this blog, but this is the best place I have for soliciting some help from others of you who regularly with the Greek NT. I am teaching an Advanced Greek class, and I have split the class into translation teams working on translating Luke 16:19-31, the story of the rich man and Lazarus. As one part of the course, we have spent nearly the whole semester working through each verse of the text. Now I am asking them not to simply translate the Greek but to compose a translation of the text. (There is a difference...) I was unable to find any resource that concisely described the types of things I wanted them to keep in mind as they worked. So, I have tried to compose and organize a list of considerations when composing a translation. Here's the introduction I wrote:

When translating New Testament Greek into English, we sometimes are seeking simply to confirm the accuracy of an existing English version. Sometimes we can look at the Greek and produce a translation in our mind that reflects our understanding of the text. In the considerations that follow, however, I am trying to note the kinds of things we should be thinking about if we are actually trying to produce a share-able translation. That is, we are trying to produce a translation that is faithful to the original Greek text, will stand independently from our explanation of it, and will communicate effectively to its readers.

HERE is the 3 page PDF of what I pulled together. If anyone is interested enough to read it and comment upon it (corrections, additions, suggestions...), I would be grateful. If you know of a similar sort of list to which you can point me, that would be appreciated too.

Google Maps > Google Earth

2010-04-28T02:08:00.003-04:00

Google just announced this week that Google Earth views are now available within Google Maps. Here's their own video description:

Once you get to the location you want using Google Maps, it's a simple matter of clicking on the "Earth" button to gain the advantage of the 3D imaging available. (You may be prompted to install the Google Earth plugin if you don't already have it.) If you are already familiar with Google Earth, all the navigation will be familiar to you including the shortcuts for tilting and rotating.

What's the advantage of having this new view available?

The dimensionality of Earth views can give you a better sense of a place.
The integration of map, satellite, and earth views allows for fast and easy switching so that one can become more familiar with a place. (Also note that terrain view is still available under the More dropdown.)
The earth view also includes 3D models that have been created. (In fact, I don't see how you can turn off the 3D models.) Some of these have actual photographic 'skins' wrapped around the objects. Take a look at some of these examples I made. (You can click on the link to go to Google Maps yourself.)
Here is Athens >

Here is Ephesus with models of the theater and the Library of Celsus.

Using tilt and zoom, you can even stand at the threshold of the Ephesian theater and relive Acts 19:29-40!

And here's a view of Jerusalem.

Also note under the More dropdown that you have access to links to Wikipedia references, photos from Panoramio, YouTube videos taken on location, and even live webcams where available.

There are still some extra things you can do in Google Earth (e.g., have indices of biblical sites [like this or this] or create tours [

BTW, one thing that Google Earth does not yet do is provide relief maps. To get that, either use the free Bible Mapper program or use the fine maps-for-free site. Here's an example of a relief map. Can you figure out what biblical region it's depicting?

˙pǝʇɐɔol ǝɹǝʍ uoıʇɐlǝʌǝɹ ɟo sǝɥɔɹnɥɔ ㄥ ǝɥʇ ǝɹǝɥʍ ʎǝʞɹnʇ uɹǝʇsǝʍ

iGoogle Home Page - Caesarea Aqueduct theme

2010-04-10T22:21:00.001-04:00

I use iGoogle as one of my home pages. It's possible to customize the banner theme, and a long time ago, I stitched together a panoramic view of the aqueduct at Caesarea Maritima. I allowed it to be shared, and I see that it finally has become available. So, if you too want a Google home page that look likes this, just choose the "Change theme" option and search for Caesarea.