Tomorrow is Labour Day Holiday, and I am going to give myself a treat and take a break over the weekend. Hope to be back on Monday. Have a great weekend!

This was posted by David Lang to the Mac Ministry List:

It’s hard to believe that a year has already passed since CMUG ran its first Mac Bible Software Survey, but it’s now time for our SECOND ANNUAL Mac Bible Software Survey! A lot has changed in the Mac Bible Software landscape since last year, and a lot has changed in the way CMUG is handling the survey. This year, we’ve set up a web form that you can fill out and submit, and this new approach should make it a lot easier to process the data. This is all new territory for me, so I really need all you Mac-Min’ers to try this out before I publicize it more widely. So please, be the first to voice your opinion, and help me work out any kinks, by going to http://www.cmug.org/articles/Survey04.html, filling out the survey as completely as possible, and clicking the Submit button. I appreciate it, and I look forward to hearing what you have to say.

If you are a Macintosh user, there you have your opportunity to share your opinions on the subject. It would be good to have another survey for Windows users, and I wouldn’t mind setting up one, but I’m just buried in work right now Maybe later…

David McClister, who teaches at Florida College, has put together some notes under the general title A Review of Some Bible Study Software. Sketchy and introductory, but worth checking out.

Susan Lochrie Graham reviews the Libronix version of The United Bible Society’s New Testament Handbook Series at Review of Biblical Literature. You can follow the link to the PDF version.

Sean Boisen recently announced the release of a semantic knowledge base called New Testament Names. It basically consists of a multilevel categorization of almost every name that appears in the NT, including a whole grid of relationships between them.

Since this is not really an application geared to end-users, but rather a structured data (best viewed with editors like Protege), I did not comment on it initially. However, yesterday he blogged about a prototype graphical interface, under the name of NT Names Explorer, that he is hoping to develop for it. This in itself is good news, but there’s a comment that caught particularly my attention, since it is something I have been giving some thought to lately:

Of course, data isn’t all that exciting (unless you’re a serious geek). I could make a good argument that, in the long run, the data is actually much more valuable than individual applications (and i hope to get around to writing that argument down one of these days), and it’s arguably much harder to come by as well. But most people can still appreciate a good application more than the data behind it, though of course the data is what makes the application possible. The best evidence of this is the NT Hyper-concordance. This continues to be the one thing on SemanticBible that brings most people around (according to the server logs), even though the data behind it is a pretty minor transformation of an OSIS-formatted New Testament text.

I think he’s got a point here. When most people think about a Bible program, they do it in terms of the interface, not the data. I’m afraid we won’t be able to change that. In a day and age where even Linux has taken on a friendly face (e.g., KDE, Gnome), we all (and that includes me!) expect to work with an appealing and intuitive graphical user interface. This is not bad in and of itself — after all, we cannot expect every user to be a computer geek! — but we must never lose sight of the fact that the “bells and whistles” of a user interface are not necessarily a mark of the quality of the data contained in the program. I am all for nice and advanced interfaces, but data must come first. Without good data, everything else will be a waste of time. However, having said that, I think it is fair to expect that quality data will be matched by an equally well-designed and visually pleasant graphical user interface. Software developers face the challenge of having to strike the balance between the two. Do give us some attractive, easy to use (yet powerful) interfaces, but don’t forget to pay special attention to the content you offer. Will you do that for us? Please? Meanwhile, Sean, I will be looking forward to that article on the value of the data…and to the finished NT Names Explorer.

This afternoon I was looking at some material on the Synoptic Gospels, and came across the Synoptic
Concordance: A Greek Concordance to the First Three Gospels in Synoptic Arrangement: Statistically Evaluated, Including Occurences in Acts, 4 vols. by Paul Hoffmann, Thomas Hieke, and Ulrich Bauer (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1999-2000). It is a massive work, with a price tag that takes away your breath. There is more information here, some more in PDF format here, and a sample page here. This is how Thomas Hieke, one of the authors, describes the work:

Under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Paul Hoffmann, this research project was undertaken by Dr. Thomas Hieke, and by Dr. Ulrich Bauer, who developed the necessary computer programs. After preliminary planning and experimentation, financed by the University of Bamberg, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft has supported the project since 1996. The Synoptic Concordance is a new research tool for the analysis of the first three Gospels, in that it presents an extensive mass of data that facilitates in a major way their literary and linguistic analysis. The advantages of a concordance are combined with those of a synopsis: Each occurrence of a word in the synoptic Gospels, along with a swath of text that provides its context, is displayed in three columns. The effect is that one not only sees the occurrences of a certain word in one Gospel, but also the parallels in the other two Gospels. Prior to the availability of this new scholarly tool, it was necessary first to check the concordance for the occurrences of a certain word, then to look up one by one each reference in a synopsis, and, finally, to take notes, before moving to the next entry in the concordance, and so on. However, by means of the Synoptic Concordance one has in view the whole synoptic situation at one time. One can see all differences and agreements at a glance, so as to compare the first three Gospels regarding their diverging terminology and syntax. In terms of the Two Document Hypothesis, one can see, for example, how Matthew or Luke takes over and changes his Markan source, or how they differ in the redaction of their Q text.

Since these volumes are fairly recent, and given the fact that “the necessary computer programs” were developed ad hoc, I wonder if it’s ever going to be available in electronic format. I cannot comment on the quality of the Concordance (I once read that Stephen Carlson had bought a copy of the first volume, and surely most theological libraries must have copies of it), but this is just the kind of work that would lend itself nicely to electronic use… Any takers (at a reasonable price!)?

Both Jim Davila on PaleoJudaica.com and Mark Goodacre on NT Gateway Weblog comment on the latest Tyndale Tech Emails by David Instone-Brewer. His notes on the use of Greek and Hebrew Unicode fonts for both Mac and PC are worth checking out. Jim Davila aptly points out that Macs seem to be lagging behind on the whole issue of Unicode (although Mac OS X renders it beautifully), and I share his disappointment. However, my own experience is that many of the Greek and Hebrew Unicode fonts I’ve used on my PC leave a lot to be desired in comparison with similar True Type fonts. Perhaps it’s just me! Anyway, I guess we’ll see an increase in use and some dramatic improvements as Unicode becomes a de facto standard.

UPDATE (April 24): There have been some misunderstandings about Unicode and Mac OS X. I did say that Unicode fonts are rendered “beautifully”, and I had Apple’s Safari (the web browser) in mind. I still think that Macs lag behind as far as Unicode goes, but that does not mean that it cannot handle it. Furthermore, the problems and shortcomings are due to certain programs (i.e., Internet Explorer, Word…), and not to the OS as such. Hope this makes things a little clearer. If you have the right word processor you should be okay. Of course, “right” means different things to different people

For more info, see what Paul Nikkel has to say in his entry Mac OS and unicode fonts on deinde.

Stephen Carlson of Hypotyposeis interacts with my previous comments on some of his blog entries on the statistical use of certain words in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. He says that he’s not out to establish some sort of literary dependence, and adds:

the purpose of my exercise, however, is somewhat more preliminary to that question, which is to begin to set up some criteria for distinguishing words that are actually more relatively frequent from those that are apparently so due to our limited samplings of the vocabulary of each of the evangelists.

I couldn’t agree more. As a matter of fact, that’s how I view the relevance of the use of statistical studies of
that nature. They are good at showing us the choice of words the authors/redactors have made in order to best suit the points they are trying to get across. IMO, vocabulary has a lot more – or at least as much – to do with subject matter than with any kind of dependence (which obviously has taken place anyway and should certainly be kept in mind!) It goes without saying that the subject matter of the Gospels is similar, but the outlook, theological emphases, etc. aren’t. That’s why, me thinks, there are peculiarities (known as Mattheanisms, Lukanisms, and so on).

As for my “subtle” invitation to share a bit about the tools used in his study, he has clearly gone beyond the call of duty. He used Bibloi and a custom made C program. I would recommend you to read the whole blog entry.

Finally, Stephen has added my weblog to his blogroll. Much obliged!

Logos has announced the creation of a new publishing imprint: Fairhaven Bible Reference Series. The first title to appear under this imprint will be a brand new Hebrew-English interlinear Bible. This work has been commissioned by Logos and is being developed exclusively for Logos Bible Software Series X. Looks like a major project, and is the clear sign of a new direction for the company. You can read the full press release or find more details and screenshots here. Here are some brief excerpts describing the project:

The first new Hebrew-English interlinear Bible to be published in 17 years is being created by a team of the world’s top Hebrew scholars specifically for Logos Bible Software Series X (…) The Fairhaven Hebrew-English Interlinear Bible is a new breed of interlinear, designed for electronic reference and based on the latest linguistic research. Rather than present a single gloss for each Hebrew word, it will take advantage of the digital medium and offer multiple layers of English glosses that reflect the complexity of biblical Hebrew language structure. The goal of this “grid” approach is to provide interlinear translations at the lexical, word, phrase and clause level, as well as a wide range of annotations (…) The Fairhaven Bible Reference Series imprint will be placed on select titles as they are created, and a few existing titles will be added to the series. All titles published under the imprint will be commissioned by Logos and scholarly in nature.

Update (July 15): This product is now offered as a Pre-publication Special. Additional information (including a screenshot of an early prototype) can be found
here.

Theology.me.uk features a chart with the “Top Ten Bible News Sites“. Bible Software Review is ranked number 8 in the Biblical Studies section. According to the site, they “have searched the Internet to find the Top Ten News, Feeds and Web Logs”. I just have two comments to make: “Thank you!” and “The best is yet to come!”.