Visual Links to Education Faves

AllMyFaves: Very nice visual display of links to Education favorites. There is also a general page of links and other pages for Canada or the UK, travel, shopping, etc. The links associated with the Religion subcategory are pretty decent
[HT: Downes]

Google Proves: Jesus Is Bigger than the Beatles!

Okay, now that my title got your attention, it's an excuse to point out another Google Labs tool called Google Trends. It allows you to compare up to five terms, and it returns results showing relative frequency in search requests and news articles. Results can be further refined by date and (sub)regions. So, I tried comparing: jesus, beatles, "michael jackson".
As the chart shows (clicking on the chart will bring you to the actual results), Jesus has always been bigger than the Beatles! Michael Jackson (during his trial in 2005 and now with his death reflected in the sharp spike at the latest date) has occasionally outdone Jesus.

As with all statistics, results may not be entirely meaningful and can be easily manipulated. (E.g., in my search above, it doesn't distinguish between Jesus Christ and any person named Jesus.) I was trying to think of some other meaningful searches, however. How about: "old testament" apocrypha "new testament"
As you would expect, the Apocrypha greatly trails either of the Testaments, but perhaps you might not have predicted that the OT and NT would in fact be so close in 'popularity'. Also note in this example that the most popular references are highlighted in news articles. Clicking on the "More news results" option will bring you to the News Archives Timeline where you can refine time periods for your search.

One more example I searched for is: "gospel matthew" "gospel mark" "gospel luke" "gospel john" (Note that I had to do it this way, because if I just did "matthew, mark, luke, john," all the references to John McCain and the presidential elections dwarfed everything else.) Now before looking at the chart, do you have a guess about which Gospel is most popular? (And in this case, I focused my results on just the United States.)
As one might have expected, John is the most 'popular' Gospel. I had thought that I might see some changes in interest related to the changes in focus based on the lectionary cycle, but the results are minimal. Do note in this example the additional data about results related to regions. Nebraska and Rhode Island (go figure?!) were the top spots searching for the Gospels. The relative popularity between the Gospels is also distinctive with Tennessee, Alabama, and North Carolina showing a distinct preference for John. Rhode Island showed the most balance.
The data can also be exported into a CSV file for further inspection/manipulation in Excel.

In any case, I'm not exactly sure how to make good use of this research tool, but it is interesting. If you come up with something significant, please share it here.

Beta Exporter and Silver Humana 2 Font

Some of you may recall Silver Mountain software as one of the early leaders in Bible software with their Bible Windows program which was later renamed as Bibloi and their Silver fonts (SGreek and SHebrew) which were widely used. (I haven't used Bibloi since moving to BibleWorks and Logos, but it remains as a fast and functional program that includes all the most important basic biblical texts, is expandable, and is relatively inexpensive at $95.) They were also known for their Workplace Pack that provided the fastest and easiest ways to access the TLG and PHI CD-ROMs that include "most literary texts written in Greek from Homer to the fall of Byzantium in AD 1453."
I just received notice that Silver Mountain has released a Beta Exporter that takes the TLG/PHI data and turns them into Unicode text. Connected with this is the release of the Silver Humana 2 font which includes all known characters used in that Greek database. I don't know if there is any other more complete Greek Unicode font set.

VirtualBoard Presentation Software

I had looked at some presentation software previously (Microsoft's free ZoomIt, Remote Point from L.S.I., and the free KeyJnote). From a comment on the Logos forum, I see that VirtualBoard from Lightools is now freeware. (There previously was a cost for it, but development has been discontinued, and it is now free.) It works quite well with quite a few options for marking, highlighting, zooming, modifying, freezing, etc. your screen. It can be used effectively both with PowerPoints and with something like Bible software. (HERE is a video example using BibleWorks by SCSaunders.)

Give it a try!

Scroll and Screen

Some day I hope to move this blogger blog over to my own site: Scroll and Screen. In the meantime, I've been using that site to hold a variety of files, resources, and pages that I've described on this blog. I just finished some updating and reorganizing, so you may wish to scan the stuff I share in these categories:

General Bible Study Resources

• Suggested Resources for Basic Bible Study
• Resources Every Seminarian Should Have for Original Language Bible Study
• Greek Notes by Terry Cook (pdf)
• Charts of Ancient Biblical Versions
  • History of Biblical Versions.pdf
  • History of Versions of the Psalter.pdf
• Book Lists
  • Recommended Books on the Gospel of Mark
  • Recommended Bible Atlases
  • Books on the Parables of Jesus
  • Bible Study Resources Purchase Links

Biblical Mapping Resources

• Digital Resources for Biblical Mapping

Bible Software Resources

• Bible Study Resources in Accordance, BibleWorks, and Logos: XLS / PDF and see this post
• Greek New Testament Texts in Accordance, BibleWorks, and Logos: XLS / PDF and see this post
• Comparing Greek New Testament Texts (Accordance8, BibleWorks8, Logos3, Manuscript Comparator)
• The Doré Gallery of Bible Illustrations: Online and in Bible Software (blog) - includes links for Accordance, BibleWorks, E-Sword, LaParola, and Logos
• "Review of BibleWorks7 and Logos3 Silver" by MGVH from Teaching Theology and Religion (the definitive version of this article is available at www.blackwell-synergy.com)
• BibleWorks Resources
  • List of BibleWorks Texts: XLS spreadsheet / PDF:grouped / PDF:A>Z
  • Parts of speech color files.zip (blog description)
  • Words used 49 times or less color file.zip (blog description)
• Logos Resources
  • Create customized vocabulary flash cards from Logos by Philip Spitzer
  • Part of Speech Coloring MGVH.lbxvmp (blog description)
  • Visual Filter: Morphology- Verbs.zip (blog description)
  • David Hooton's Libronix Backup and Restore Utility: First read the Instructions then download Backup_Restore_XP_Vista.zip (and Robocopy_XP.zip for WinXP users)

Original Language Resources: Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Latin

• Free Online-Downloadable Hebrew Grammar Instruction
• Syriac Tools and Resources
• Latin Bible Texts Available in Accordance8, BibleWorks7, Logos3, VulSearch4, and LaParola: XLS / PDF and see this post
• Things to Consider When Working with Greek.pdf
• Teaching and Learning Greek- John 3.16 (blog description)
• Greek instruction: (blog description)
  • The Lord's Prayer
  • Ho Ihsous me agapa (Jesus Loves Me)
  • Jeopardy style PowerPoint game for Greek grammar. Here's my version you can download.

Media: Art, Pictures, Music, Video

• Pictures of Biblical Places
• Sites for Art, Pictures, Music, and Video Related to the Bible/Christianity

Miscellaneous

• "Can Real Academics Do Flash" by MGVH - pdf
• Excel tricks useful for generating grades: blog and sample XLS file

Logos Bible Software Forums

I and many others never were entirely happy with the newsgroup support for Logos software. It meant having to open up and set up Outlook Express (or some other news reader) and then plowing through the multitude of posts. The size of the newsgroup postings kept getting bigger, and if you deleted any thread, it would still come back to life in the ongoing responses to it. And if you deleted a thread and then wanted to find something in a deleted thread, it meant unsubscribing and resubscribing and then having the whole mess back on your computer. Another major problem for me was that I am regularly using two different computers, and that meant having to plow through the same stuff twice.
So, I am happy to report that Logos has now started the Logos Bible Software Forums, a web-based, online discussion and support forum. The newsgroups will be allowed to continue, but they will eventually become irrelevant. (Material from the newsgroups will not be moved into the new forums.)
This is very good news, and in just a few days of being online, there is a ton of activity.
Some good things:

• You can browse by forum topic (General, Mac, Suggestions, Beta, Espanol) or by recent activity.
• It's easy to see unread messages, and you can mark all messages read in a forum.
• You can jump in to the forums from any computer at any time and it will remember what you've read or not.
• You can subscribe to a forum, but I'm not sure how often it shoots out updates to you. (Does someone know?)
• You can get updates as an RSS feed.
• You can also browse the posts by using the tag cloud.

Some things to improve/fix:

• I may be missing a preference setting, but it does not seem to me that you can see any threaded view. I.e., if I reply to a specific post in the middle of a forum thread, my response will show up at the end of the thread with no indication of the post to which I am responding.
• There must be a glitch in the response window. I can't seem to insert any links. The insert link box appears (which looks to be based on WordPress), and I enter the data, but clicking on Insert does nothing. (I had to use the HTML view to create links.)

Thanks for this support resource, Logos!

Wordnik

Wordnik is an online resource which you (whether you are a native English speaker or not) might find useful. It is something of a multipurpose English dictionary. So far they claim to have a database of 1.7 million words, but it is an expandable database where users can add definitions, pronunciations, notes, tags, and related words. Wordnik draws upon a number of other online databases to compile each entry.
The example above is looking up "eschatology." (Click on the graphic to see the page for yourself in full size.)
What you will find are some example sentences where the word occurs. (Click on the Examples heading to get even more.) The examples I find came from quite a few different sources. They even include "real-time examples from Twitter."
The definitions are drawn from the American Heritage Dictionary, Century Dictionary, Webster's 1913 unabridged, and WordNet. Pronunciations come from the American Heritage Dictionary, but you can record your own. A statistics graph attempts to chart how often the word was used in a particular year (going back to 1800) and the "unusualness" of its use. Related words are suggested. (I created my own free account and added "apocalyptic" as a related word to "eschatology.") Images tagged with the word in Flickr are displayed. (Apparently a little Flickr humor that some rearends of cows and horses are included...) You also get etymologies from a couple dictionaries.
There are, of course, quite a few online English dictionaries, e.g., Wikipedia, Encarta [via Bing], Merriam-Webster, Answers.com [which draws from a number of other dictionaries and encyclopedias], Dictionary.com [which also draws on a number of sources], wordiQ, KartOO [which is rather unique in its presentation and definitely worth checking], and more. Add Wordnik to your bookmarks.
[HT: Downes]

Google Squared and Biblical Studies

Another interesting new project from the Google folks is called Google Squared. What it does is attempt to create a grid of related data based on search parameters entered by the user. According to its developers:

Google Squared is a search tool that helps you quickly build a collection of facts from the Web for any topic you specify.

• Facts about your topic are organized as a table of items and attributes (we call them "Squares" for fun).
• Customize these Squares to see just the items and attributes you're interested in.
• See the websites that served as sources for the information in your Square.
• Save and share Squares with others.

There are some interesting examples of what it can do here, but I thought I would try some examples related to biblical studies. I was trying to think of some things that might be interesting in a grid, and I first tried listing the codices "alexandrinus sinaiticus vaticanus bezae." As you can see in the results below, it got some aspects correct but missed badly on others.
Fortunately, you can easily delete rows or columns and just as easily create a new row or column with your own description.
It also has a nice feature (when signed in to a Google account) of being able to save the grid. For example, if you click HERE, you can see a grid I generated using various English versions of the Bible. The results seem a bit more apt than my previous example, but there are some strange ones here too. (LOLcat is a textual basis?)
As an another experiment, I tried listing each of the four Gospels and came up with THIS. It does not provided particularly satisfying results. So, using another option with this tool, I started out with an empty square and built up my own grid by row and added columns using suggested parameters. (See the graphic below or click HERE.)
Again, some odd results... a picture of Matthew McConaughey for Matthew and Luke Skywalker for Luke? The descriptions, mostly from Wikipedia, are more often correctly linked, but using the suggested column parameters of Date of Birth and Died provided a very strange mix.
So far this tool has provided some interesting connections but mostly it has provided comic relief. So I tried one more query that actually did return some perhaps insightful results. I typed in "Mark 6:34" and THIS is what I got. It appears to have taken the more significant words from that verse and returned separate analysis for each. That might have some value... (Different verses returned quite different results though...)
BOTTOM LINE: You would probably have to do quite a bit of customization to generate useful results, but some of the returns may be of occasional interest.
If you come up with an interesting query with helpful results, please share them here.
[HT: StephensWeb]

On the horizon: Google Wave

Google Wave looks very interesting. It is an email client (replacing Google Mail?), but it is also something of a collaborative document editor. I took a look at part of the developer announcement, and here is what you might want to know for now.
Traditional email works like this:
I.e., one person sends an email to one or more persons much in the way that traditional snail mail has worked. It's just easier to write to many persons at one time and to respond to messages. Google Wave is conceptualizing a different model which looks like this: I.e., it thinks of a conversation as a centrally (i.e., server-based) object which involves two or more persons. The huge benefit of this approach is that it allows a much clearer view of conversations, and anyone can be invited to join the conversation at any point and have the whole conversation in front of them. Conversations, instead of being a collection of "forward/reply to all" emails with a bottom up chain of earlier messages, will now look like threaded message boards. In addition, participants can jump in at any point and respond to particular parts of a message, and it will all be clear in its threaded outline. In addition, this is all happening in real time, so, in effect, it can also replace your instant messaging devices with the advantage of providing a clear conversation among multiple participants. (NOTE: This looks to me to be a much superior method as compared to carrying on conversations in Twitter, AIM, Facebook, etc.)
Google Wave is also intended as a way of sharing and editing text, photos, maps, etc. with others. The API is open, so they are leaving room for further development to extend its capabilities with other gadgets.
Google Wave is supposed to be available later this year, and I am eager to try it out. In particular, from an educational perspective, this is the best way I have seen to carry out threaded discussions and allow for sharing of resources and do it all in real time if desired. At our seminary, we are trying to think about how we might conduct classes online in cases of emergency. (Think of a blizzard closing campus or a H1N1 flu epidemic causing restrictions.) Google Wave would be a great way to conduct discussion for an online class.
UPDATE: 2009.06.01: HERE is a great overview of Google Wave terminology and capabilities.

On the horizon: BING

Bing is, in many ways, Microsoft's response to Google search, and it will replace Microsoft's LiveSearch. However, it is promoting itself not as a "search engine" but as a "decision maker." I.e., it intends to process information to help you make a decision about such things as (and here is where the initial focus appears to be) shopping, health, travel, and local businesses. If you click on the logo above, you can see the brief video promo, and you'll note how it tries to incorporate reviews with the shopping or local search experience or use 'expert' sites for health info or provide 'farecasts' with travel planning. (The travel part looks to be a combination of Expedia and Farecast, both of which are Microsoft related sites.)
I recently mentioned Wolfram|Alpha which bills itself as a "computational knowledge engine," but its value for biblical studies is rather limited, and I'm guessing that bing won't be of any particular extra benefit in this field either unless you find its presentation of results more appealing.
More info here and here.

Zotero 2

Zotero 2 (a stable beta, at least) has been released, and you will want to check out some of the highlights noted on Dan Cohen's blog. To highlight just a few things:

• The syncing of collections works great and is done automatically on the Zotero server. This means that you any additions or changes you make on one computer will be reflected on another one you use. It also means that you can access your library data from any computer by logging in to Zotero and checking your library on that web site.
• You can create your own free account and then complete a profile to make yourself visible to other Zotero users. As of today, 156 users list themselves as working in the "Religion" discipline. You can search for other labels. E.g., I find 16 users associated with "seminary." This works a bit like Academia.edu as a way of finding others with similar interests, but Academia.edu has done more for organizing by schools and/or disciplines.
• Perhaps more interesting is the Group colloboration to create library collections. There aren't too many at this time, but as an example, I started a "Parables of Jesus" group. You can view the bibliography of books I've started to organize here. You can also join the group (if you are logged in to Zotero), and then the resources will show up in the Zotero frame in your own collections. I have set this group up so that others can add resources to it. This looks to be a very promising way to build collections that appears to be more group-friendly than some of the other library management tools.
  

In any case, check out the updates and let us know what other ways you are using Zotero.
From the comments: check out additional info at nerdlets.

Tavultesoft Keyman Web - Multilingual web input

I have just noticed that Tavultesoft, makers of the Keyman program for inputting characters for any kind of Unicode languages, has released a Keyman Web program. They describe it as "a multilingual input solution for your website":

With an increasingly connected global community and rapidly growing markets in Asia and Africa, the need for a simple and effective multilingual input solution has never been greater. KeymanWeb is a solution that works with:
* Any computer keyboard
* Any language
* Any web site
* Unicode
With KeymanWeb, your web site will provide better access to more users, enabling fast and efficient text input in their preferred language.

They offer a variety of subscription plans including a FREE one that allows for one keyboard and up to 3000 hits/month. (The next step up is unlimited keyboards and 10000 hits/month for AUD9.99 [about US$8] per month.)

If you want to give the Greek keyboard a try, go to my Scroll and Screen site. As depicted above, go to the bottom of the screen, click on the Search box, and you will see the Keyman Web toggle button. Click to choose Greek. Try something like λογος and you will get some hits drawn from my Greek class resources. (BTW, you will note that I am using a Google Custom Search I created to search across my various web sites.)

Accordance8, BibleWorks7, Logos3, VulSearch4, LaParola: Latin Bible Texts Available

I've previously posted about Latin versions of the Bible available in various Bible software packages. Now that BibleWorks8 is out and in light of some recent user-created additions (way to go, Pasquale!) as well as other developments with Logos, I've updated the charts.

Here is the table available either as an XLS spreadsheet or a PDF file.

Wolfram|Alpha and Biblical Studies

There has been considerable buzz lately about WolframAlpha, a "computational knowledge engine." Designed by the brilliant guy who developed Mathematica used in serious mathematical calculations, it is a web search engine that, unlike Google and others, does not direct you to other sites (though it does sometimes offer to send you to Wikipedia), but attempts to calculate and compute your query and return what you actually are hoping to find. It has just gone live today (2009.05.18) on the web, and I thought I would run some biblically related queries through it to see what value it might have for the kind of work I do.

As you can see above, it understands "Jesus" as a person and gives suitable biographical information you might expect for any historical person. Interestingly, it picks up his name in Aramaic but provides modern names for birth and death places. It appropriately identifies some uncertainty in the birth date but is quite confident about the death (though this is a typical date surmised by many).

A query for "Bible" turned up this result. Not much there... but its attention to the sales number hints at what WolframAlpha is more interested in.

I tried searching the "Gospel of Mark," and it did not understand my query. Looking for "Qumran" did no better.

WolframAlpha does like things related to dates. "30 ce" will get you the following.
Also check entities that are associated with dates, e.g., "Roman Empire."

It does seem heavily tilted to USA-centric matters, and it does best at things requiring computational work: numbers, dates, and especially business matters. It has some adeptness with geographical concerns. I tried "jerusalem to jericho." It assumed Jerusalem, Israel and Jericho, New York, but it understood that I may have intended a different Jericho and provide a link to correct it to Ariha, West Bank. Here is the result, and it helpfully provided distance, local times, a map, populations, and elevations.

It also can compute n-grams. According to Wikipedia, "N-gram models are a type of probabilistic model for predicting the next item in a sequence. n-grams are used in various areas of statistical natural language processing and genetic sequence analysis." I was pleased to see that WolframAlpha is unicode-friendly, so it was able to accept unicode Greek. Here is the n-gram of John 1.1 in the Greek. Perhaps linguists will be excited about the potential for this tool, but this word-level bigram can give you an idea of what it might be able to do.

BOTTOM LINE: WolframAlpha is not going to replace Google or other search engines you may be using for doing research related to biblical studies. It does have some interesting potential for computations involving dates or words. Play around with it and let us know if you discover something unique that it can do for the biblical studies field.

An excuse ... and an Excel tidbit

As blogs go, sometimes there is time to write and sometimes not. I'm in the midst of having finished the semester, getting grading done, have done a number of presentations, and trying to sell and buy a house. It will still be bit before I'm regularly blogging...

UPDATE (2009.05.20): Thanks to Dick and James who contacted me off-blog, I have learned new and wonderful Excel tricks. In particular, what I describe below does work, but it is using the brute force approach. A more elegant method is to use named ranges. Very nice. To see an example, check out this XLS file. I also learned the $cellname trick to refer to an absolute cell. Thanks again to Dick and James!

In the meantime, I'm bragging a bit here for having figured out a neat little Excel trick to help me as I report grades. At our seminary, students have the option of choosing to take a course as Pass/Fail or as a letter grade. What I usually do is assign number values to assignments throughout the semester. Then at the end, I come up with a total score based on the percentage values for each component. What I then need to do is either assign a P or F if they chose pass/fail or assign a letter grade if that is what they want. I figured out how to make Excel assign the correct value in a single step by using this heavily nested IF statement (which is set in cell N2 in my example):

=IF(B2="P",(IF(M2<70,"fail","pass")),(IF(m2<70,"f",(IF(m2<80,"c",(IF(m2<93,"b","a")))))))>

In this statement, B2 is where I've pasted in the Registrar's listing of the students' choice for a letter grade (the value is "L") or pass/fail (the value is "P"). So, the formula first checks if B2 is a "P," and if it is, then it looks at M2 where the total grade score is entered. If M2 is less than 70, then a "Fail" is entered in N2. If that is not the case, then a "Pass" is entered. If B2 does not have a "P," then I know they want a letter grade, and so the last set of nested IFs works through my grading ranges to assign a grade in cell N2. (Note that it starts with looking at less than 70 is an F, if not but less than 80 a C, if not but less than 93 a B, otherwise it is an A.

We also need to have established desired outcomes for our courses and listed how those outcomes will be evaluated. For me, this is a combination of scores of various quizzes, exercises, classroom participation, etc. So, for each desired outcome, I can come up with a number value based on the various assignments and their percentage values. What I also need to do, however, is assign a level of competency: Fail, Minimal, Satisfactory, or Superior. Here's the IF formula I use to run that through:

=IF(AG2<70,"fail",(IF(ag2<79,"minimal",(if(ag2<92.5,"satisfactory","superior")))))

AG2 is the cell with the score total, and the correct value gets entered in.

I drag/copy these formulas into the neighboring cells, and so I get all the values I want without much more effort. Now I can compose my Descriptive Reports in Microsoft Word and use this spreadsheet as the mail merge source to enter in all the values. In the past I had manually entered the grades and values, but from now on I can use these formulas to speed up the process considerably. You will doubtless have to change the cell names, but I hope this trick can help someone else. For someone who knows Excel well, this is probably pretty basic, but how many seminary teachers have the time to figure out the intricacies of Excel?

World Digital Library Officially Launched

Another fascinating collection of old items to add to your bookmarked pages...
According to the official announcement:

UNESCO and 32 partner institutions today [2009.04.21] launched the World Digital Library, a Web site that features unique cultural materials from libraries and archives from around the world. The site includes manuscripts, maps, rare books, films, sound recordings, prints and photographs. It provides unrestricted public access, free of charge, to this material.

You'll want to look around a bit at the site, but I did find a number of interesting items. The full Codex Gigas is here. (Though I had previously noted its availability here also.) Here is the Book of Hours. I especially liked the collection of ancient maps of the middle East. Depicted below is a map of 1659 that is quite detailed and surprisingly accurate.

Other maps are more of a curiosity, such as this map of 1585 which is remarkably inaccurate. (Nazareth and Cana are located quite a bit north of the Sea of Galilee among other strange locations.)
[HT to Stephen's Web who notes that for $10 million you would think they would be able process a bit more than 1170 items.]

Google Labs: "Similar Images" and "News Timeline"

Lots of stuff going on leaving little time to blog, so this will need to be brief...
Google Labs released a couple neat new tools yesterday. (Another report here.)
One is "Similar Images" which uses the colors and shapes of one image to become the basis for a subsequent search on similar images. For example, I searched for "Jerusalem" and two clicks later on pictures that are closest to the view I want, and I have about 600 pics simply of the Temple Mount viewed from the Mount of Olives.
The other new release is Google News Timeline. It is mainly intended for more recent history, and one can specify a view (day/week/month/year/decade), a date, and then apply additional filters either by search term or news source. (Click on "Add More Queries" to include additional Wikipedia items, a number of newpapers [Pittsburgh Post and St. Petersburg Times] or magazines [Time, Baseball Digest, Popular Science, and Vegetarian Times: go figure!], and other options with varying degrees of accessible material.) It appears that one can only go back to 1400 to find material.
For more ancient events, the other option you have is to use one of the Google Labs Experimental projects and enable "Alternate views for search results."
Google also updated their Google Labs page, and you can have some fun checking out some of their other projects.

New "Greek and Hebrew Reader's Bible" Site!

John Dyer, on his blog don't eat the fruit, recently described a new project he has posted online. Reflecting his concern for a technological minimalism in relation to faith (a topic he described more fully at BibleTech09; MP3 of his presentation here), he developed a "Greek and Hebrew Reader's Bible" site. This is really nice. Once at the site (as noted on the site, it does not work with IE; use Firefox or other browser), simply highlight the current reference and start typing in the passage you want. (Note: you must use a colon to separate chapter:verse/s.) The Hebrew is based on the BHS with definitions from Strong's (and BDB if you use popups), but the morphology is not yet functional. The Greek text is Tischendorf's with definitions from Strong's (and Thayer if you use popups). Note that you can indicate the word frequency for which definitions are provided and choose whether you want the part of speech, morphology, or frequency displayed. Optional popups provide additional lexical info. Parts of speech can be colored as you wish. Fonts and size can also be selected.

This is a fine implementation of a "reader's Bible," and while it works well online, Dyer also anticipates that one could easily print out the page for offline use. (Note that background shading will not print.) Thanks to John Dyer for sharing this resource!
[HT: BiblePlaces]

Saint Catherine's Monastery in Sinai in Virtual 3D

I've previously mentioned the work of ARSights which provides virtual 3D, 'in your hand' representations of various locations. (Check these models of the Roman Coliseum and Solomon's Temple and accompanying videos to see how you can rotate and tilt the model in your hand.)
They just recently added Saint Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai to the collection now making 100 models available. Saint Catherine's is connected to the traditions of Moses and the burning bush, but it is also notable as the location where Codex Sinaiticus was found. As you can see in the static image above, it is a very attractive model. If you have already downloaded the free AR software, here is the direct link to the monastery.

Comparing Greek New Testament Texts using Accordance8, BibleWorks8, Logos3, and Manuscript Comparator

A blog post by Matthew Burgess, responding to a debate between Bart Ehrman and James White, notes that the reliability of the Greek New Testament is at least 95% even between the two most extreme text traditions (Textus Receptus vs. Westcott & Hort). That led me to this posting where I compare the tools available for comparing Greek NT textual traditions using Accordance8, BibleWorks8, Logos3, and the online Manuscript Comparator. Actually, it ended up being a rather long post with lots of graphics, so to read the full review, you can READ THIS PAGE on my Scroll and Screen site. Here, though, is my conclusion UPDATED (2009.04.07) in light of the comments:

Each program has its strengths and special capabilities. Manuscript Comparator does the best job of displaying differences, but it lacks the NA27 and is intended as an online resource. Accordance does a good job of display, allows for a variety of comparison options, and creates useful lists of differences. BibleWorks has the most versatility and is the fastest Windows application. Logos has the most texts available for comparison, provides numerical and graphical comparisons, and results export easily.

BOTTOM LINE:

• If you don't have any of the Bible software packages, Manuscript Comparator will achieve most of the the results you need.
• If you do own one of the programs, my best advice is to familiarize yourself with the text comparison implementation in that package.
• If you are looking to buy a Bible software program, the text comparison tools will probably not be a deciding factor, but the descriptions I provide here should make you aware of what is possible with each.

I am most familiar with BibleWorks, so if I have missed something significant in one of the other programs or in BW8, please let me know.

BTW, Logos provides a percentage difference between two versions. I ran a comparison of Scrivener's Textus Receptus (1894) against Westcott & Hort for the whole NT, and I came up with a 6.6% variance. (It took well over an hour to get that result.) So, a 93.4% reliable Greek NT? (And remember that this includes some spelling variations, insignificant transpositions, etc.)