Bible Software Review Weblog

Further to my previous blog entry, I should point out that this type of research is a piece of cake for the main commercial packages that include a morphologically tagged Greek NT, though not all of them are equally flexible or intuitive. More on that when the reviews are ready.

For instance, in Libronix DLS you have to open Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament with Gramcord's morphological database and search for ἀγαπάω (just click the Search button and it will open the Morphological Bible Search dialog). Once you get the 143 occurrences in the Search Results window, click on the Graph Bible Search Results link, under Other Tools, and you'll see the breakdown by book (make sure you choose Number of Hits in Book on the Graph drop-down list. You can also view the Bible references by clicking the Export results to Verse List option (back in the Search Results window). The concordance is automatically built if you have selected the option Hits in Context under Current View.

To get the same results in BibleWorks, you need to choose either BNM (NA27 with Morphology) or GNM (UBS4 with Friberg's Morphology) as your search version and run the search for ἀγαπάω (i.e., enter the word on the Command Line and hit Enter or Return). You'll find the full concordance in the Verse Listbox (if you have chosen the Verse Listbox + Text or Show Entire Verse options) right there on the Command Center. To get the breakdown by book, click on the Display Detailed Statistics button (or the equivalent menu item under Tools) and there you have a plot showing the figures (provided you have the What to plot drop-down list set to Number of hits in the book). If you want to keep the references, right-click on the Verse Listbox and select Open Verse List Manager. From there you'll be able to import the entire verse list.

As for the method I outlined yesterday, David Lang makes a comment suggesting an even easier and more straightforward way of doing things with Accordance. The fact that it can be done in different ways (though not necessarily obtaining the same data, as you can read in my reply here) comes to show that there are different ways (but not always!) to approach and solve a given problem. There may not be a single right answer, and that's when the software should ideally adapt itself to the different needs and tastes of each type of user. The fact is that most top-notch programs have more than one way of performing common everyday tasks. You just have to find which one best suits your own way of doing things.

This was posted yesterday by Troy A. Griffitts to B-Greek:

Greetings,

My apologies for the only ancillary subject, but we try our best to keep you scholars/profs/students stocked with good free tools.

http://crosswire.org/~scribe/FlashCards.zip

Here's a first rev of a small new project: FlashCards. It seemed like an item in demand... So, here it is with the editor. It's only a rudimentary implementation, but it's basically functional for a first release. Uses the text control and Input Methods we wrote for the Leningradensis work (Project eL) a while back. Included are a few Greek lessons.

It has the ability to assign a font to a lesson. This feature is not tested really well. I'd love to hear the feedback of how it works with auxiliary fonts. I think Hebrew will still be shifted left in the editor, but should go RtoL automatically.

Just unzip it to a folder somewhere and double-click on either Flash.jar or FlashEditor.jar (for the lesson editor). You might need to copy any custom font .ttf file you'd like to try out to the FlashCards folder.

If it doesn't run when you double click, you probably don't have Java on your box. Go to: http://java.com and click "Get It Now!" (upper-right). Then go back and try double-clicking the .jar again.

Let me know if it's useful or if you have ideas. We're hoping to have a PocketPC and maybe Palm package ready for testing soon.

Current BibleWorks users, as well as potential users, will be glad to hear that a new series of web-based forums have been launched. BibleWorks User Forums will take over from the old BW Listserv.

Kevin Purcell has a blog entry focusing on what he calls a "mini review" of BibleWorks 6.

[Ed.] Sorry, link no longer active.

Jim Davila interacts with my entry on the importance of printed manuals, adding a few more reasons why he feels they are indeed valuable:

(g) If you're carrying around a device - say, a digital camera - you can easily enough carry around a printed manual too, but not a manual that only comes in a computer.

(h) Even if it's a laptop you're carrying around, the online manual (where the really useful information usually is) can only be accessed if you can find an Internet connection.

(i) If your computer isn't working, it's pretty hard to consult the manual to see if you can sort out the problem when the manual is only accessible on the working machine.

Software companies are being lazy and cheap, not "environmentally responsible."

Actually, regarding point (h), let me make clear that when I talked about "online help" I was referring to "onscreen help". Nevertheless, it is true that some companies are introducing help systems that require you to have a live Internet connection. Therefore, I think Jim's point is still valid. Anybody else got a few more reasons to add to the list?

The blog has been unreachable during most of the weekend (from Saturday 3, around 07:30 PM till Monday 5, 09:00 AM, CET). I'm sorry about that, and thanks to those who reported the problem. After doing some detective work, it turned out that an "offending" trackback somehow messed it all up, so that the weblog could not be accessed. I'm not exactly sure why this happened, but everything seems to work fine now. I regret the fact that many of you found just a blank page, and that I could only find and fix the problem this morning. Thanks for your understanding. BTW, this "black out" did not affect those who read the blog through an RSS aggregator like Bloglines.

An early "alpha" version of the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) for the website and weblog has been posted.

There are a zillion reasons why different Bible programs may return different results when we run the exact same search. One of them is the way the search engine counts the hits that are being found. For instance, in an AND-type search we could assume that the total number of hits will match the number of search terms (e.g., what AND are AND you AND doing would amount to 4 hits). However, not being an exact search (i.e., the literal string "what are you doing"), there can be more than one occurrence of any of those words in a given verse. This would be the case, for example, in Exodus 18:14 (NIV). The result would then be 7 hits (or matches, if you like - even though we would still have the same 4 different forms). But there is another way of counting, and that is computing hits by permutation. In such case, that verse in Exodus would only return 6 hits (i.e., all the possible combinations of each search term found in the verse). To put it another way, you multiply the number of hits of each separate word and get the amount of permutions.

So, next time you run a search, make sure you know how hits are counted or else you may be in for a little surprise. And how are you supposed to know? Well, THEY should tell you. This is just one of the reasons why user manuals should be really comprehensive.

I thank Sean Boisen for bringing this project to my attention. There's a lot of interesting stuff on his site, which I feel tempted to blog about, but today I'd just like to stick to the New Testament Hyper-concordance. In his Blogos he describes the project thus:

The basic idea is to navigate the space of Scripture directly using words. Most Scripture websites have a search box where you enter a word to find verses that use that word. For example, searching the English Standard Version New Testament for the word "pots" finds two verses, Mark 7:4 and Revelation 2:27 (you need to use the advanced search and select "Exact matches only"). From the standpoint of connecting information, this provides a link from a single word to one or more verses of Scripture.

Taking this idea one step further, given the text of the verse, you can just embed a hyperlink from the word in question to other verses, preserving the context. Now here's where the idea takes off: instead of just hyperlinking one word, suppose every word is hyperlinked? This more tightly connects the information and gets you directly from the context of one verse to another with similar content (because of similar words). With some special processing to index the words, every word can link to a list of verses, each word of which is in turn hyperlinked to others, each word of which ... you get the idea.

Here's an example from the page for "Scripture" (the links are live into Hyper-concordance):

2Tim.3.16
All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching , for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,

The word "scripture" isn't hyper-linked ([Ed.] It is now), since that would take you back where you already are. This is the only occurrence of the words "reproof" and "correction" in the New Testament, so there's no benefit in linking these: you'd only get to the same verse. The other unlinked words are high-frequency function words: they could be linked, but there would be little added value, and it would take a lot more space (the entire hyper-concordance as static HTML only amounts to about 30Mb).

Inflected verbs and plural nouns are linked to their base forms (in this example, "inspired" -> "inspire", "training" -> "train"). Most other Scripture search engines i've seen either match exactly (treating "inspired" and "inspire" as two different words), match substrings (for "pot", this has the peculiar result of matching "spots" and "Mesopotamia"!), or match from the beginning of the word ("pot" matches "pots", "potter", etc.). I wanted to try to do a better job about matching the real dictionary form of words...

The output looks really nice, as you can see for yourself if you click on the hyperlinks found in the verse above. I like his general approach, and since it is an open-source project, you can actually access the code, check his scripts, modify his baseforms lists (with sections on past tenses, regular plurals, irregular plurals, -ing forms, and irregular pasts), his list of stopwords, or even choose a different version (instead of the original RSV). The author welcomes suggestions and bug reports, which he hopes to fix in future versions.

One of the things that I found particularly interesting was his explanation of some of the linguistic issues he had to wrestle with in the course of his work. Although we are dealing here with an English version of the Bible, therefore a language with a rather limited amount of inflection, this is a good test case for the kinds of issues scholars have to face when they "tag" Hebrew or Greek texts. Sean tells of the list he created in order to map inflected forms and plurals to their bases (root o dictionary forms), and how complex this turned out to be. Apart from clear oversights (like keeping "child" and "children" as two separate forms), there is a whole philosophical framework that precedes the actual tagging of the text. I'll have more to blog about this issue one of these days, but suffice it to say here that it is very important to make explicit what our presuppositions are.

Whatever course we decide to take, certain searches will be clearly word-based, while others will have to be based on related meanings (technically speaking, semantic domains). This dilemma is a very simple example of the creative tension that exists between form and meaning, between morphology and function. It is very clear to me that a single database cannot be all things to all people. Maybe we should stop asking for the impossible (i.e., absolute consistency in tagging) and start considering alternatives like multi-level tagging and specialized databases for specific types of uses. IMO, this is the way to go. Admittedly, this would be a quantum leap for Bible software, but a very necessary and stimulating one. Rubén dixit ;-)

Another of Sean Boisen's projects is called The SemANT Project, which he describes as "an ambitious vision to translate the New Testament into a formal meaning representation language based on open Internet standards, producing a sharable resource that supports automated processing and integration with other resources." Blogging about the "The Vision of a Semantic New Testament" he says, among other things, the following:

For example, suppose you want to search for Bible verses that address the sin of pride. Your only option is to imagine the various words that might express that concept in a particular translation. "pride" is an obvious choice: the adjectival version "proud" requires a little more thought. You'll probably need a thesaurus to come up with other synonyms like "haughty", "conceited", or "arrogant" (but don't forget "arrogance"). Only those with substantial Biblical experience are likely to think of figurative expressions like "puffed up". If you use the Message translation, you'll need to include "head" for 1 Timothy 3:6: "He must not be a new believer, lest the position go to his head ...": but of course, including a general word like this will bring in many other verses that have nothing to do with pride. On top of all this, any such search will mistakenly include a different sense of pride referring to legitimate pleasure in others: "I have great pride in you" (2 Cor 7:4, ESV).

The goal of the Semantically-Annotated New Testament Project (SemANT) is this:

To annotate the New Testament with a formal semantic representation based on open Internet standards, producing a sharable resource that supports practical applications like meaning-based automated processing and integration with other resources.

Admittedly, it is a truly ambitious project, not likely to see the light anytime soon. But there are already a few tools available that can be used by those interested in New Testament Semantic studies. Let's see:

First, there are two electronic resources worth noting: Friberg's Morphology (Analytical Greek New Testament) and its associated Greek Lexicon, available with BibleWorks, Bibloi, Libronix Digital Library System, QuickVerse, and WORDSearch, and Louw-Nida's Lexicon (Greek-English Lexicon of the NT: Based on Semantic Domains), included in the aforementioned programs (except for QuickVerse) and also in Accordance and PC Study Bible. Friberg's work follows a functional (rather than a formal) analysis. In my opinion is has been treated unfairly by adherents to a strictly formal analysis, but it can be really useful if handled with care. As for Louw-Nida, it was a ground-breaking endeavor that has already become a classic in its own right. This lexicon allows one to see "words" grouped according to the various meanings they display in different NT contexts. Those meanings are classified by "domains".

Secondly, there are certain electronic tools in some Bible software packages that can take advantage of the contents of the resources mentioned in the paragraph above. One very welcome addition is the ability to work with lists of words/hits returned by any given search. These lists can then be managed in different ways, but one of the most interesting uses is when you are able to build a custom list (with synonyms, antonyms, semantic families or what have you) and plug it back into an earlier or a new search argument (sort of like searching your search results and fine-tuning them). Another very powerful features is the option included in the Advanced Search Engine of BibleWorks to build search queries based on all or part of the items contained in Louw-Nida's domain. Suppose you want to use domain #22 (Trouble, Hardship, Relief, Favorable Circumstances), section D (Difficult, Hard). You would select any number of words (from 22.29 to 22.34), run the search and get all the verses in context with the appropriate word highlighted. By doing this, one single search is all you need to compile a significant number of terms that share a somewhat related meaning. Always remember that your results will be as good as the tagging and categorization of the texts used! And this holds true for both printed and electronic tools.

As you can see, the number of resources and the different ways these are electronically processed, is still relatively small. I have no doubt we are bound to see dramatic improvements in this area in the months/years ahead. In fact I would be extremely disappointed if we didn't, but don't hold your breath just yet. This is a mid-term race. It is costly, in terms of man-hours and moneys, but hopefully we'll get there!

Internet links are difficult to keep up with. They seem to be in a continuous state of flux, and when you really need them, they are gone! Anyway, here are some links you won't find at Bible Software Review, but I thought they would be appropriate for the weblog.

The first one comes from WEMTC (the West of England Ministerial Training Course) website, which includes a section on Bible Software Recommendations.

This one is an excerpt of a fuller review written by Randy Leedy, featured in the Newsletter of the United Bible Societies Translation Information Clearinghouse. In it, the author compares morphological searches performed with two academic Bible software packages. I like his concluding remarks on the value of using multiple programs, but I recommend you read the whole piece:

At one point I had the natural desire to find the one best Bible software package. I have since come to realize that there is no such thing and that it is not likely that there ever will be. And even if there were a program that in every point of functionality stood head and shoulders above the rest, complex searches when important issues are at stake ought to be checked against some other source for a second opinion. Differences in search algorithms and database details will always generate differences in results that the user will profit from analyzing. And the more complex one's search requirements, the more important it is to get a second opinion, because the more likely it is that any one program has erred at some point. BW has a certain amount of "second opinion" built into its New Testament package in the form of its two completely different databases (Friberg and BW's own tagging that makes it possible to use the LXX and GNT together). Serious scholars should learn to use both of these databases profitably. Further, BW actually has two search engines: the Command Line and the ASE. These two search engines, though they share some programming code, do not always return identical results. But an even more radically different search engine is needed for adequate cross-checking, and only GRAMCORD provides a sufficiently powerful alternative. Furthermore, besides the problems within each program that may be uncovered by using the other, the user often errs in his thinking about how to formulate a search, and being forced to reformulate it for another search engine or another database can bring these faults to the surface. It is also easy, when building a search query, to overlook small but crucial details like punctuation settings; most likely the search in the other program will have different settings in these areas, or the user will not forget them, and comparing the results will reveal the user's initial mistake. The prospect of paying for and learning to use multiple programs is not attractive; however, the prospect of significant flaws in one's research because of the limitations imposed by the use of only one is less attractive yet.

The last one is not exactly an Internet link, but a reference: Vern S. Poythress, "Greek Lexicography And Translation: Comparing Bauer's And Louw-Nida's Lexicons," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 44.2 (2001): 285-296. If you have access to this article (available in electronic form as part of the Theological Journal Library CD for Windows or Macintosh), read it! It offers an insightful comparison of two of the most relevant tools available in academic Bible software: BDAG (A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature) and Louw-Nida (Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains). I'm afraid he falls into the trap of trying to compare apples with oranges (read "form" and "function" - you'll recall that we've hinted at the different purposes and uses of tagged morphologies before, for example here), but it's a good read anyway.

Silver Mountain Software announces the availability of the latest version of TLG/PHI Workplace programs. These applications are designed to view and search the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG) and Packard Humanities Index (PHI) CD-ROMs. Libronix support and Regular Expression Searches are among the various improvements included in this new version. There is even an update contest: those users who send in examples of useful regular expressions will become elligible for a free update if their searches are considered to be the best. More details can be found at the website.

My email account rubeng (at) infotelecom (dot) es is unable to receive or send any messages since last Thursday afternoon, and I'm afraid it will be rather difficult to fix this problem over the long Easter weekend. If you have sent anything to that address in the last couple of days or so, there is a good chance it will never reach me, or else be greatly delayed. Please try this one instead: rgomezp (at) wanadoo (dot) es ([Ed.] No longer available -- (naturally without the spaces and using @ and .) Sorry for the inconvenience!

Meanwhile, I'll take this opportunity to answer a couple of recent emails. I hope my correspondents won't mind, since there is nothing too personal about them. In fact they may be of interest to other readers of this weblog.

Glen McCluskey tells me that "the archives are not viewable with the Mozilla 1.3.1 browser, I think because the names lack the '.htm' or '.html' extension." Well, this is the first time I hear about someone having problems trying to access the blog's archives. On my end there is nothing I can do about it, since the archives are generated automatically. I wonder if anyone else using that particular browser could enlighten us as to the nature of the problem. Ideas are welcome!

Gene Thomas, a seasoned user of Bible Companion Series who admits to feeling sad at its demise (I'm pretty sure he is not the only one), writes, "I have been doing research to determine what to replace it with and been looking for reviews that compare Quickverse, PC Study Bible, and Logos Series X. I noticed you do not include reviews of these yet. Do you know any reviews that compare the top packages from each?" Quite honestly I do not. I am aware of a comparative review of Accordance, BibleWorks and Logos here, as for my website, it will be including reviews of the programs you mention, but not just yet.

I thank Bruce Miller for his technical suggestions for solving the problem about the archives not being readable. In fact, contrary to what I had believed, there was something I could do via my blog's configuration options. I think I've got it right now, and I apologize for not having realized it before. It should work fine from now on. However, if an old archive file or link does not work, try to add the ".html" extension at the end (e.g., change http://perso.wanadoo.es/rgomezp/weblog/archive/2004_04_04_archive.#108127154749772465 to http://perso.wanadoo.es/rgomezp/weblog/archive/2004_04_04_archive.html#108127154749772465, or http://perso.wanadoo.es/rgomezp/weblog/archive/2004_02_22_archive to http://perso.wanadoo.es/rgomezp/weblog/archive/2004_02_22_archive.html). That should do the trick.

I really appreciate your comments and emails. They definitely make a difference and help me improve the service I am trying to offer. Thank you very much one and all!

My ISP has confirmed that the whole email system slowed down (to all practical intents and purposes read collapsed) due to a massive attack of infected emails that were received within a very short period of time. The messages were not lost (so I'm told), but queued. Today, things seem to be working again, and I am receiving mails from the last 3-4 days. I hope to catch up with everything by tomorrow. Apparently this was a general problem that has affected a good number of Internet Service Providers in Spain. This only comes to show how relatively easy it is to disrupt the normal operation of a basic Internet service as a result of the general spread of a malicious virus (big sigh...)

Jim Davila of PaleoJudaica.com notes a couple of interesting articles published on the SBL website and includes some excerpts. I recommend both, but the one by Robert A. Kraft, entitled How I Met the Computer, and How it Changed my Life, will probably be of greater interest to the readers of this blog, given the role he has played in the early stages of the whole field of computer-assisted Bible studies. For the full article, go here.

I have always marveled at the work of James H. Strong (1822-1894), well-known author of the Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. I think he was a true forerunner of electronic Bible concordances. Sean Boisen has a nice piece about him at Blogos, called James Strong, IT Heavyweight. I recommend it. Here is a brief excerpt:

The author of Strong's Exhaustive Concordance was serious about data long before anybody had conceived of Information Technology as an occupation. My print version of Strong's has 1390 pages of small font, three-column excerpts from Bible verses, indexed by each and every single word in the King James Version. Even function words like "the" are included, though they're presented in a compressed format that just references the verse (10 pages for "the" in an 18-column format!). (...) i've been impressed at Strong's intuitive grasp of the value of structured data, even though in a pre-computer era he could only express it via typography.

Apart from being omnipresent in just about every Bible software program, you can find a complete online version (KJV with Strong's numbers and Greek and Hebrew dictionaries) here. Note that the New Testament includes the unaccented Textus Receptus as well.

Here you have a couple of links that may be of interest:

Bible Study Software: What's Right for You?, by David Alan Rech. Online edition of a Biblical Archaeology Review article on five different packages for Windows. (Some of the links don't seem to work, but the content of the article is fully accesible).[Ed.] Apparently, the link is no longer available.

The Westminster Hebrew Institute (WHI). This page offers quite a bit of information about different projects under development (most of them centered around the electronic text of the Biblica Hebraica Stuttgartensia), and offers a list of the Bible software products that include the Westminster Hebrew Morphology.

I haven't blogged over the weekend. Was too busy with some hardware changes (yes, again!). I should be able to resume normal activity tomorrow, God willing.

If you are into the whole field of statistics, you won't want to miss Stephen Carlson's blog entries on Lukanisms and Mattheanisms. It's interesting reading, but one has to be very careful when it comes to interpreting the data. IMO, the use of distinctive or frequent words to try to establish literary dependence is problematic, at best. It would be nice to know what "tool of the trade" Stephen made use of in order to collect the data... hint, hint...

There is a new Online Bible Forum run by the Official Web Site of North America. I have added the link to my section on Bible Software User Groups.

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!".

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.

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!

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.

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!)?

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.

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.

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.

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...

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!