New Microsoft Fonts

Like AKMAdam who regularly blogs about it, I'm fascinated with fonts. With Microsoft's release of Vista and the new Office 2007 suite, they have provided ten new fonts. (For their appearance and some evaluations, check them out HERE and additionally HERE.) I personally find them to be quite attractive in general with a 'fresh' look to them while not becoming simply 'casual.' Interestingly, Calibri, a sans serif font, is the new Microsoft default font replacing Times New Roman. Calibri is nice, but I think I like Candara better. Still, I prefer a serif font for reading. Cambria and Constantia are the two new serif fonts, and I think I will find occasion to use both of them. BTW, Constantia was designed by John Hudson, the same person who is designing the SBL Greek and Hebrew fonts. Of the new Microsoft fonts, none of them carry Hebrew characters. Only Segoe UI (a Unicode font) contains a full set of Greek characters. For your viewing pleasure, I've included here a graphic displaying the still-in-beta SBL Greek, SBL Hebrew, and the new Microsoft Segoe UI. (click to enlarge)

Catching up...

Been away and simply catching up on some good sites:

• Tyndale Tech Emails: David Instone-Brewer at Tyndale House has been providing an extremely helpful collection of online resources. I've previously referred to the font kit he provides on the site, but it is worthwhile to peruse his well-organized and annotated list of resources related to Bibles, fonts, translation, writing, etc. Be sure to check out the latest one on "Lexicons for Biblical Studies." In connection with this, he has provided an incredibly useful and handy lookup system for Hebrew/Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic, and Akkadian at his 2LetterLookup site. Using data from the online lexicons, the user first chooses the language, then the first two letters of the word (this approach actually works quite well), and the entries appear in a linked pane. For Hebrew/Aramaic, you get links to Gesenius and Jastrow, for Greek to the Liddell&Scoot (from Persesus via Resurgence Greek Project = Re:Greek = the zhubert.com site now redesignated), for Latin to an abbreviated lexicon at Notre Dame, for Syriac to a PDF page from Payne Smith, for Coptic to PDFs of the Crum dictionary, and more.
• Rubén Gómez on his Bible Software Review site has posted a very thorough and positive review of Logos3 Gold.
• This is not new information, but if you have not yet checked it out, Roy E. Ciampa has been accumulating resources and has a great collection of links on his Resources for New Testament Exegesis page. There are some fine bibliography lists, and I especially like his Resources for Textual Criticism. On that page, you will want to consider downloading his Reference Charts for Textual Criticism PDF.
• Another great resource I just discovered is Vernon K. Robbins' Dictionary of Socio-Rhetorical Terms.

Unicode fonts for biblical studies

A post over on Tim Bulkeley's SansBlogue focuses on the advantages of Unicode. I want to add a few comments. (BTW, my comments are based on using WinXP. I'm not certain what differences are involved with Vista.)

• What font should I use? Personally, I most use and have required my students to use David J. Perry's Cardo font. I like it because it is attractive, is weighted enough to be easily viewed when using PowerPoint or in print, is free, and contains all the characters needed for biblical scholars using Greek or Hebrew or doing textual criticism. That said, John Hudson working on behalf of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) has been creating Unicode fonts, and these are likely to become publishing standards. (Here is the SBL page. Note that keyboard drivers and the SBL legacy fonts are also available here.) For now, only the SBLHebrew has been released, though SBLGreek has been released in beta. When both are done, there will also be a SBLBibLit released that combines the two. There are quite a few other nice fonts out there, and the best place to see picture samples of almost all the Greek Unicode fonts is here. Links are provided to download sites. The beauty of Unicode, of course, is that you can any of these fonts for now, and it will be easy to change them to any other Unicode font later on.
• How do I install the font? This may seem like a simple question for many people who have been working with fonts and know to download, unzip, install. My experience has taught me that this is a confusing and frustrating process for many. For this reason, I set up a page of instructions for my students, but the bottom line is that the easiest way to install fonts is to go to: "Fonts for Biblical Studies" (Tyndale House). Use the "Tyndale Unicode Font Kit" available for either PCs or Macs. This will automatically install the Cardo font and setup keyboards (see below). If you just want to install Cardo on its own or the SBL Hebrew among some other fonts, try the GreekGeek.net's Font Installation Wizard. BTW, on my page of instructions, I also provide some guidance on making sure the fonts work in your internet browser. I also strongly encourage and give directions on enabling ClearType. It almost always makes a drastic improvement in font legibility.
• How do I type in Greek/Hebrew? If you use the Tyndale Unicode Font Kit I just mentioned, it provides very clear, step-by-step instructions for enabling typing in polytonic Greek and Hebrew. I am not, however, particularly fond of their keyboard, especially with its treatment of accents and breathing marks. (They have to be typed before you type the vowel.) I prefer the keyboards that Logos provides on this page. (A couple notes: I personally like having the Greek chi mapped to "x" and xi mapped to "z" as with the old SPIonic or SGreek font. I modified the Logos keyboard and you can follow steps to use it here. There appear to be a few quirks with how accents are rendered, and I have been having some troubles as I have been experimenting with the new Word 2007.)

Let me know if you have better solutions, or if you have experience with how Vista is dealing with fonts and such. Thanks.

Biblical Mapping - BibleMap.org update

I described the BibleMap.org site in an earlier posting and noted some of it strengths and limitations. They are indeed busy improving the site. In an earlier version of their site, I had chosen Acts 2 to see how all those difficult to pronounce places in the Pentecost story were located on the map, but only a couple places had shown up. I wrote to them and suggested this might be a worthwhile overview, and idou!, I just got an email back noting that the site had been updated. Nice work! Here's what it looks like, but why not go to the site and see for yourself.

Humor...

Something I was reading on another site made me think of this... just a bit of humor to lighten up this site.
I'm told this is a true story, but you can decide. Apparently someone wanted to make two banners for our seminary chapel for Reformation Sunday. So she took the opening and closing phrases of Luther's hymn, "A Mighty Fortress." Two banners, then, with appropriate and tasteful decoration, one which read, "A Mighty Fortress is our God," and the other which read, "On Earth Is Not His Equal." Only one little problem... well, read the hymn verse for yourself:

A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing;
Our helper He, amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing:
For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe;
His craft and power are great, and, armed with cruel hate,
On earth is not his equal.

Hymn verse from CyberHymnal

Biblical art on the web

As I've searched for visuals to accompany work on biblical presentations, I've scoured the web for various resources. I posted on this topic before, but the occasion for this expanded posting is that I recently came across a new site (to me) for images to add to the list of links I've roughly compiled on this page.

• As noted there, if I am looking for artwork related to a specific text, I start with Biblical Art on the WWW. I like it because it is a large database, and thumbnails of the images are provided which saves me time. One can search by biblical subject, biblical text, artist, or even a word in the subject or artwork.
  
• The Art Index on Textweek is also very helpful, and though it doesn't list quite as many hits as the first site, it does provide some different ones. The listing are organized and can be found by theme, scripture text, or relationship to the readings of a given lectionary date.
  
• The latest site for art I just found is Art and the Bible. It is not intended to be comprehensive, but it provides a tasteful selection of works that are connected to the full KJV text that is provided. One can browse through the text and see the related art or search by text or artwork title. There are nice overviews of the Last Supper, the Sistine Chapel, and Rembrandt.
  

As always, be sure to use copyrighted works appropriately!

Jerusalem PhotoCarousel

Experimenting here... Enjoy this photo carousel that is a mashup using Microsoft's new Silverlight development tool on their Popfly site. This particular mashup uses the photo carrousel as one block, and then I set it up to draw in any picture from flickr that has a "Jerusalem" tag. (It's supposed to work on both IE and Firefox, but I can only get it to work on IE. Note that you can 'pull' the images around and click to magnify. BTW, this looks much better on a full screen like THIS rather than this small column.)

Do you speak Greek?

In light of a response to a previous post, I thought it would be interesting to see how people are dealing with the matter of the spoken word in NT Greek instruction.
I believe that some spoken familiarity is necessary, of course, simply because we have to be able to speak about words and letters in class. I also think that memorization is helped by hearing a word in addition to seeing and writing it. (Note that both BibleWorks and Logos have pronunciation aids embedded in their programs. In BibleWorks, you need to access the sound files through the vocabulary Flashcard module. In Logos, you can right click on a word in a Greek text to get the lexical pronunciation, or you can use the menu: Tools > Bible Data > Pronounce Original Language.) I also do a number of oral exercises with my students to aid in language familiarity, e.g., sing "Jesus Loves Me" (ο Χριστος με αγαπα..) and recite Matthew's version of the Lord's prayer.
This, however, raises the next issue. Which pronunciation scheme should one use? The so-called Erasmian one or one of its variants is helpful because it tries to help distinguish every letter so that there is an easier correlation between seeing and hearing. The problem is, though, that no native Greek speaker ever used this scheme. (I once was in Greece and spoke the Lord's Prayer as I had learned it. I gave them all a good laugh...) There certainly would be benefits to learning the original pronunciations, especially in terms of hearing wordplays and understanding how some text variants may have arisen, but there is more overlap between sounds that would make seeing/speaking more difficult. Another advantage of learning the ancient scheme, however, is that it is much closer to the modern pronunciation of Greek. On the other hand, learning biblical Greek is really not going to be all that helpful for getting directions to a restroom... (BTW, a good survey of the history of pronunciation schemes is HERE.)
So, how about another little poll? Whether you teach or were taught, how much emphasize was placed on speaking the Greek and which scheme did you use? If you have more to say on this topic, please leave a comment. Thanks!

Accordance Updates

Alerted by a posting on Deinde, I see that Accordance has updated and released some new resources (including the DSS Bible in English).

Tim Bulkeley's Biblical Studies Work

I've long admired the work that Tim Bulkeley has done on the web, especially his pioneering Amos Hypertext Bible Commentary that serves as the starting point for the larger Hypertext Bible Project. If you haven't done so already, it really is worthwhile to visit the Amos site. This project demonstrates a whole new approach to Bible commentaries, not simply because it is online, but also because it demonstrates the possibilities of linking all sorts of material together in ways that are simply impossible with a book. Furthermore, the project is envisioned as a collaborative and ongoing, peer-reviewed project.
Tim has also been busy with the podbible site, a collection of podcast readings of chapters from the Bible using the CEV. Even more interesting, I think, are the podcasts he is now sharing at his 5 Minute Bible site. These 5 minute or so reflections on biblical passages are a great way for people to grab some helpful perspectives on a text. Sort of like biblical studies in healthy, snack food packaging!
But wait, there's more... more of Tim's work is posted on his ebibletools site, but I especially want to highlight the work he is doing on images, descriptions, and video of archaeological sites. He shares some fine pictures of some selected sites in Israel, but I especially like the "Introductory Tour" videos he has produced. This provide excellent overviews that I find extremely helpful.
In all this work, I think Tim is exploring some new edges for biblical studies using the new technologies available to us.

Original Language Bible Software Poll

From my first poll, I can see now that I can be a bit more specific. I'm also trying to figure out which free polling service works best. Thanks for voting (or voting again!).

Bible Software Usage Poll

Please take a moment to respond to this poll. (Note that viewing the results will take you away from this site. Use your BACK button to return to this page.) Thanks!

What is your experience with Bible software? (answer all that apply)
	I used it regularly.
	I use it occasionally.
	I don't bother to use it any more.
	I really have not ever used it.
	---What Bible software do you use?
	Accordance
	BibleWorks
	Logos
	eSword
	Other
	---Background
	I am in a parish setting.
	I am in an academic setting.
	Neither parish nor academic.
Free polls from Pollhost.com

It really is still Greek to me...

One of my long range plans is to enhance the ways of teaching/learning Greek so that it remains a practical tool for biblical study long after one has left seminary. From both formal and informal surveys, it appears that almost all the pastors in my tradition (ELCA) rarely use their Greek at all in sermon or teaching preparation. I am becoming convinced that learning how to use Bible software as part of Greek instruction is key to being able to use Greek longterm. I'm not the first to think this way (cf. the articles posted on the Logos site), but I'm still trying to discern exactly what this kind of instruction looks like. (I'm also just focusing on Greek for now, though this would of course also extend to the use of Hebrew.) I would appreciate insight and advice any of you may have to offer. In particular, I'm thinking of questions like:

• What are the most important skills/understandings needed to use Greek profitably? How can Bible software address those needs?
• What are some ways that you regularly use the NT Greek? What sort of 'exercises' could be taught to make learners proficient in such uses?
• What other questions or considerations should I keep in mind?
  

Thanks for sharing!

More maps and biblical studies (sort of...)

A post by Suzanne McCarthy on the Better Bibles Blog brought my attention to yet another mapping project related to the Bible. At worldmap.org, working with the MissionsAtlasProject, you will find maps of the whole world. You can then choose to view various aspects of the maps, and one aspect that relates to this blog is the status of Bible Translation. (Click on a country, then click on the map, then choose the "Bible Translation" map.) There appears to be lots of translating work yet to be done! (Also check out the interactive map feature on this site for access to some excellent maps and selective layering.)

iTunes U. and Greek

On this thread in the BibleWorks forum, Michael Hanel notes that Concordia Seminary (LCMS in St. Louis) has posted quite a few lessons and lectures on the iTunes U. site. (HERE is the direct link.) As Michael notes,

There you will find some great things like an entire Elementary Greek course taught by James Voelz (author of a Greek grammar among other things), Lectionary at Lunch (weekly readings of the Hebrew and Greek text appointed for the Sunday), an entire course on Exodus and Torah, Day of Homiletical Reflection which includes two lectures by Leonard Sweet, etc.

There is quite a bit more, and these are all free downloads. Both audio and video are available. It will be interesting to see if this technological step proves to be popular/successful, but for now, this looks very cool to me.
AKMAdam provides additional comments on this offering at his blog.

BibleWorks Lectionary Module Addin

Thanks to the work that Jenee Woodard does at The Text This Week (textweek.com) in providing lectionary resources (and for her permission to use the tables she created for years A, B, and C) and the amazing job that Pasquale Amicarelli does in converting html into BibleWorks modules, there is now a BibleWorks module that lists all the texts for Years A, B, and C of the Revised Common Lectionary. Within BW, it is a great way to see if and when a text is used. (The link will show up in the Resource Summary tab.) As a help file, it is very nice to have the weekly texts at your fingertip or just hover over them to get a quick idea of what the text is about.

Click HERE to download the module. (Unzip the files into your /databases directory. If necessary be sure to "unblock" the .CHM file.) I'll also pass the zip file along for Hanel and Darlack to post on the master list at The BibleWorks Blog. (ZIP file updated 2007.05.24 and now works correctly)

Christian Computing Magazine

Though directed primarily to those working in churches, Christian Computing Magazine is a free, monthly digital journal that often includes ads, announcements, or reviews of electronic resources related to biblical studies. (For example, in the latest issue there is a review of the eBible.com site.) The most recent volume is available as a PDF HERE.

Updates on Bible mapping

I've updated an earlier posting on Bible mapping. In particular, note that I've spend some time with the free version of the Bible Mapper program (and recommend it). I also added another website--BibleMap.org--to the list of online resources.

Online biblical research tools

There is a fine article by Danny Zacharias (contributor to the equally fine deinde.org blog on "discussion and resources for biblical scholars") on the Society of Biblical Literature site entitled, "The Wired Scholar: Five Free Tools You May Not Know About." He describes some of the neat resources available through Google and LibraryThing. I would particularly highlight (and I now have bookmarked) his references to the following sites: BIBLE, JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY via Google Book Search (which contains a listing of links to Migne's Patrologia Graeca and Patrologia Latina) and the Free Books in Biblical Studies and Related Fields. As if I didn't already have too much to read...
Two items I would add to the list:

• Amazon's Search Inside feature: If you search on Amazon for keywords, it not only looks at titles, but it also look inside books. This only applies to some books which have the "Search Inside" feature indicating that the books have been scanned, but I have definitely benefited from using this technology to find sources I would otherwise have missed.
• Amazon's YourMediaLibrary: If you have an Amazon account, it already knows everything you have ever purchased. You can add tags and comments to anything, and you can also add any item whether you've purchased it or not using ISBN, UPC, or ASIN codes. It's similar to LibraryThing, although it isn't as helpful as an academic resource linking to other book lovers, but it doesn't appear to have any limits. Printing options are very limited, and it is not really a bibliographic tool, but it is a great organizer.

Logos Greek NT Workspace

Some postings on the Logos newsgroup have been discussing what peoples' Greek NT Workspace looks like, so I thought I would share mine. Since I regularly go back and forth between Logos and BibleWorks, I have tried to have some continuity between them. In particular, I like BW's tri-column layout of searching > browsing > research.
In the picture below of my workspace, then, you will see that in the top left are my search windows: the Bible Study Starter, and then tabbed below it a Bible Speed Search window and a Search Results one. (Note that I keep the "Target" button enabled on these last two. That way, when I do a search, the results show up in those windows and don't open a new window that covers up my other ones.)
At the top of the center column are my English versions. I mainly use the NRSV along with the NET Bible and its excellent notes. For comparison sake, I also keep a copy of Peterson's The Message (for a dynamic translation) and the NASB95 (for a formal, literal one).
Below that I keep my Greek NT which for me is the SESB version of NA27. In another tab in that pane I put my BHS Hebrew OT.
To the left on the bottom, I then have resources that match up with the Greek NT, namely, the NA27 Apparatus, Metzger's Textual Commentary, and a copy of the LXX. In this way I can easily have my text in front of me and check out variants, or, when there is a citation of or allusion to the OT, I can have the LXX alongside (and switch to the BHS as desired).
Note that I have my English versions, the Greek NT and its Apparatus, and Metzger all linked. I also have the LXX and BHS linked.
In the right column are all my research tools. BDAG is my primary lexicon, but I also like the Exegetical Dictionary of the NT (EDNT), Louw-Nida's semantic domain lexicon, and the TDNT. I set up my keylink in the Greek NT to find the word in BDAG, and since I have all these lexicons linked, the others follow right behind.
Also in this column, in addition to the lexicons, I keep two very handy general references for quick lookup work: Harper's Bible Dictionary and Harper's Bible Commentary.
Finally, note that I have added a few icons on the top for quick access to a few other favorite books including some text books and the OpenText Greek NT.
(Click on image for full size.)