Posted on Tuesday, January 30th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
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A package came in the mail today (actually a couple of packages). Because I love books and purchase a lot of books from Amazon I get about one or two books a week from Amazon, but today I received a bigger box from Logos software. Because of my increased preaching and teaching duties I had to wait until I arrived home to install it on my laptop. I can only say that “Amazing” is the first word that comes to mind. I am only able to use the very basic features, yet already I am finding helpful pieces for my message on Sunday. I don’t get paid for advertising any software so this is simply a New Testament scholar’s opinion. Logos is a great, great tool. It is a wonderful way to build a library and be able to keep track of your books, find exactly what you need without digging around for two hours. I will be telling you more about what kind of great things the software can do in the Greek and Hebrew searches. I have already seen some amazing searches based on syntax rather than just words or morphology. Check it out, logos has packages for all budgets and levels of study. See them at http://www.logos.com. Tell them samlam sent you.
Posted on Monday, January 22nd, 2007 at 3:47 pm
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Being a professor has certain advantages. One of them is that book and software publishers are often willing to sell academic titles at a substantial discount. The reason is pretty clear. If the professor uses the book as an assigned text in class, there will be lots of copies sold. I know that I personally have been responsible for selling hundreds of Mounce’s Basics of Biblical Greek or Carson, Moo, and Morris’s (now just Carson and Moo) Introduction to the New Testament.
As long as I don’t take advantage of the process, I almost never have to pay retail for theological books. Some I buy for half off, some are given to me, and some are thirty to forty percent off. It is one of the great little perks of being a professor. What kind of special perks does your job offer you? You know, what things that are really cool, but that people who are not in your line of work would never know about?
I bring this up because this Saturday I watched a demo of Logos Software’s new syntax searching capabilities. It is, to put it mildly, amazing. This software enables the owner to do searches that would have taken months with any other software. The show was truly an amazing demonstration of how far computer search capabilities have come.
The amazing thing is that Logos software is not just a Greek or Hebrew searching tool. It is a library searching tool. One starts off with certain bundles (I started with the “scholar’s library� more on that in a moment) of books which include commentaries, grammars, English Bibles, lexicons, Bible introductions, maps, etc. One of the capabilities of the software is to find every mention of a particular text in every book in your library! That is quite a research tool.
I was in my office on a Saturday afternoon watching a computer demo because the fine people at Logos had promised me a “Scholar’s Library� (retails for around $650.00) as a gift just for watching the demo. A $650.00 Bible program for watching a demo for an afternoon? I would have glued my head to a desk for an afternoon if they had asked. It was all pretty simple, I watched, and now I am excited about getting my program.
Upon getting that program I will be using it, talking about it in the classroom, and telling students about the values of it which is exactly the reason that Logos wanted to make sure that I had it.
What kind of Bible software do you use? What do you find the best features to be? Thus far I have used BibleWorks, which is a program made primarily for searching the Greek/Hebrew text of the Scriptures. It is not full of other books like Logos, but there are a few, very important texts that come along with it. I have loved BibleWorks for searching the text of Scripture, but I am excited about seeing what this new software can do. I will let you know.
Study Hard
DrSamLam
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