Logos what?! If that is your first reaction you definitely need to read the Wiki Getting Started Faq and the Wiki Wiki Web Faq. Logos has launched a Logos wiki. According to Bob Pritchett, “It’s an open, freely editable web site where anyone can contribute and add content.” A longer general description goes like this:

Wiki is a discussion medium, a repository, a mail system, and a chat room! It’s a tool for collaboration. In fact, we don’t really know what it is, but try it and explore some links – it’s a fun way to communicate! The concept may seem weird at first, but you will come to love it! The name ‘Wiki’ may seem strange too — what does it mean, and where does it come from? The WikiWikiWebFaq answers this and other questions, but the short answer is that “wiki-wiki” is Hawaiian for “quick”. Watch the pages grow and refine here; watch the discussions that surround the process. Watch information automagically crystallize before your eyes!

Whatever it is, it is available to users of Logos Bible Software, and should prove to be an interesting collaborative effort. Hey, man, this is Internet at its best!

Today I’d like to draw your attention to The SWORD Project, which I think is one of the most exciting open-source endeavors currently taking place. The CrossWire Bible Society is pursuing a number of projects, and their aim is “to produce a free, open-source, cross-platform Bible software engine: the SWORD API.” I welcome the idea and personally feel it’s got a great potential. I am finishing a review on MacSword (hope to post it soon!), which is the Mac OS X front-end for their search engine, and another one will follow on The Sword Project for Windows.

The whole thing works this way: different developers volunteer to build applications and graphical interfaces for the various platforms. Each application is OS-specific (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.), but it is based on the same search engine and the same collection of electronic texts. This has a number of advantages. Although I would not say any of the incarnations of the core engine that I’ve seen and used is a “finished” product yet (particularly if you compare them with the commercial packages — or even some of the more sophisticated freeware/software alternatives), we’ll have to follow future enhancements very closely. It does look promising.

I could certainly do with some help in the area of Bible software for the different Linux distros. Is there anybody out there who’s actually using any Bible package developed specifically for Linux systems? I would love to hear from you! I openly confess that my experience with Linux is rather limited, although I do like what I’ve used.

Dove Booksellers
offers a limited quantity of copies of Perseus 2.0 (both the Complete and Concise edition) at reduced prices while supplies last. Here is a brief description of the product taken from DoveNews:

Named for the Hellenic hero who explored the world to its most distant reaches, Perseus is a remarkable, award-winning digital resource that is revolutionizing the study of ancient Greece by expanding the ways in which ancient Greek literature, history, art, and archaeology can be examined. Now available for the first time for PCs and Windows-based computers, Perseus has been widely praised as one of the most innovative educational tools ever published Perseus is the work of a collaborative team including philologists, historians, and archaeologists.

Perseus 2.0 is the most comprehensive collection of primary sources and supporting reference materials on ancient Greece ever created. It contains over 380 texts in Greek and in translation, representing all of the major authors of the classical period and
others, extensive morphological tools, art and archaeology resources, and much more. Superb navigational tools and hypertextual links make searching this enormous resource quick, intuitive, and effective. This unparalleled program supports teaching and study in literature, art, history, and language and is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the ancient world.
Comprehensive EditionFour CD-ROMs contain the complete textual database, encyclopedia, lexicon, and atlas, plus the complete visual database of 25,000 full-screen images.

Concise EditionOne CD-ROM provides the complete textual database, encyclopedia, lexicon, and atlas with 5,200 full-screen images and an online catalogue of all 25,000 images in small format (1.3″ x 1.1″) for reference.

The issue of whether or not Strong’s numbers, or other similar schemes, are helpful for those who are not versed in the original languages has been hotly debated. The potential for misuse is probably very high, but there are also a number of advantages associated with its correct use. David Lang has just posted an informative article about the practical use of these numbers in Bible software, from a Mac perspective. Except for the test cases, everything else should be relevant to users of Bible software packages for Windows.

The purpose of all these numbering systems (Strong’s, revised Strong’s, or Goodrick-Kohlenberger’s) is to allow the user who has no familiarity with Greek and Hebrew to carry out some research on the underlying original terms behind some English translations of the Bible. We keep coming back to the well-known and often discussed “a little knowledge of Greek or Hebrew is a dangerous thing”, but I’m afraid that just about anything can become a source of exegetical fallacies (e.g., the popular use made by some modern preachers of the Amplified Bible — a.k.a. the totality-transfer fallacy). So, I guess the bottom line is this: any system or method is as good as the people who use it. We probably need to stress the importance of a good solid preparation in the field of the humanities — including classical languages and a fair amount of critical thinking. This, I think, is woefully lacking in most churches and seminaries today.