Mark Vitalis started it on his blog, and David Lang followed suit. Now we know how to go about it with BibleWorks and Accordance, respectively.

These kinds of exercises could well become a classic after this past SBL Bible Software Shootout.

Update (March 25): And here is how to do it with Logos Bible Software.

Mark Barnes has posted an excellent review comparing OliveTree BibleReader and Logos for the iPhone/iPod Touch. This is one of the most exciting areas right now for Bible software, and I’m sure it will be even more so when the new iPad is launched. It’s definitely worth a read.

After the successful SBL Bible Software Shootout session, there seems to be a renewed interest in demoing Bible software and comparing how different packages face real-life, daily study and research challenges. This is most welcome, and I have already tried to address a very practical test case earlier this week.

Mark L. Ward posted a pop quiz he set for users of BibleWorks. Nothing terribly difficult, just the kinds of searches many people have to use while studying the Bible. There is a little bit for everyone: English searches, Greek searches (both GNT and LXX), Strong’s searches, Lexicon lookups, graphical analysis of search results… Well, you get the idea.

Sean Boisen has taken up the challenge and showed how to answer the quiz with Logos 4. He actually works for Logos, but makes it very clear that he’s “not trying to start (or fuel) any “my software can beat your software”-type competitions, or take pot shots at other products.” There is nothing of that sort in his post, just step-by-step instructions on how he did the test and the results he got (make sure you read the comments too!).

I took a few minutes (very few, actually) to read Mark’s original quiz, fired up Accordance (since I was on my iMac) and completed the quiz in no time. I then read Sean’s explanations and compared his results with mine (not quite the same as his in some cases). All in all it was an interesting exercise, and it would be great to see how other people go about it performing these tasks with their Bible software. I did not have the opportunity to check the results with BibleWorks, but it would be good if Mark or somebody else would give us their results. I may do it myself, but not today.

Browsing BibleWorks User Forums I found this thread where Mark Vitalis was talking about creating a custom search range with all Q-texts (those pericopes in Matthew and Luke that are not found in Mark’s gospel). The task was not an easy one, due to the large number of references from Matthew and Luke, so I decided to do a screencast showing how that might be accomplished in BibleWorks and Accordance. I had to split the video in two parts to make it more manageable. I think it makes more sense to watch the one on BW first, but since they both deal with the same issue, you may prefer to go straight to the program you are most familiar with.

BibleWorks

Accordance

Both applications get the job done, but they do so in widely different ways. Thus, BW uses a text-driven, verse list approach (with references only), and requires a graphical search engine in order to reuse the list of verses, whereas Accordance’s approach is more visual, more Mac-like, displaying references and content, and can run the searches straight from the main search window (although graphical construct windows can be easily used too). Both programs can map the verses to a different Bible version and save them to a file for later use. Finally, only Accordance can use highlighting to both identify biblical passages and include the highlighting style as part of the search argument.

The full list of Q texts has been derived from Robert J. Miller’s edition of The Complete Gospels.

Please notice that these are the first screencasts made available here on BSR, and that they are far from perfect. Hopefully, though, they will be of use to some of you. Comments and feedback are particularly welcome, since I hope to be making many more of these. Thanks!

Update (December 1): Less than 24 hours after I posted my screencast, BibleWorks has already increased the size of custom search limit ranges so that it is now possible to paste the whole list of references into the Range text box and set a search range for all of Q. Is this great customer service or what?!

Note to self: I should do screencasts more often and take the opportunity to hint at some areas for improvement. This seems to encourage developers to actually implement nice enhancements…

Over at Ligonier Ministries Blog, Keith Mathison has been reviewing Accordance,  BibleWorks and Logos. Now he makes some concluding remarks comparing the strengths he finds in each program.

After introducing the subject in Part I and Part II, it is time to see how this all works in real life.

Let me emphasize that the ability provided by some Bible software programs to search a Bible tagged with Strong’s numbers is important for a number of reasons (despite other opinions).

First of all, it allows us to search on English and Hebrew/Greek words at the same time. Thus, it is possible to find “master” only when it is a translation of the Greek term κύριος (Strong’s number 2962). This automatically excludes from the search any verse where “master” is used to translate another Greek word (δεσπότης, διδάσκαλος, ῥαββί, and so on).

It also gives us the opportunity to study how different translations have decided to render a particular word or sentence in a given context. This gives us a hint about the different translation philosophy (literal, dynamic, etc.) followed in each particular case.

It is also noteworthy that words without a corresponding Strong’s number (i.e., “untagged”) have their importance. Many of these are often understood or implied in the original, or else are simply supplied in the modern language translation for stylistic reasons.

Using Boolean operators, mixed phrases (that is, Strong’s numbers combined with English words) and wild cards can greatly enhance these types of searches and allow for a greater amount of flexibility.

Having said that, do keep in mind the caveats I have mentioned in my previous posts. In this regard, you might want to check David Lang’s series of posts “Contra Strongnosticism” (parts 1, 2, 3 and 4).

Today I would like to focus on the implementation of Strong’s searches in Accordance 8.2.3, BibleWorks 8 and Logos Bible Software 3.0f. These three high-end programs can do pretty much anything we require them to do.

In the table below I have listed a sample of searches and the different syntax used by each one of the programs. I have limited the examples to text searches, although there are alternate ways to build these kinds of searches in a graphical environment.

^* In Logos one can use “@” instead of ANDEQUALS and “!@” in place of NOTEQUALS. Other search symbols are also accepted (“&” – AND, “|” – OR, “!” – NOT, for example). On a side note, in order to get Logos to return roughly the same results as Accordance and BibleWorks, the syntax shown here has to be tweaked. Thus, unless term modifiers like nostem, marks, etc. are used, results will generally be way too broad due to stemming.

Accordance never displays Strong’s numbers in the Bible window. All the related information (number, English translation, original language word and English transliteration) appears in the Instant Details box instead when the mouse rests on a tagged word. To set up a search, Hebrew numbers must be preceded by an “H” and Greek numbers by a “G.” This is not necessary, of course, if we run the search by right-clicking or control-clicking a tagged text. On the other hand, by opening an original language text in parallel with a Bible keyed with Strong’s numbers, the original text will highlight as we move the cursor on the corresponding English term.

If using the NASB, Logos includes a somewhat similar feature whereby right-clicking on the English text one can navigate to the associated Greek word (in NA27), but it is not highlighted automatically.

BibleWorks can display Strong’s numbers inline (right after the word it is attached to) or hide them altogether, and offers the ability to do studies of word groups “associated” with a particular Strong’s number when the option “Extend <> Tags to All Words” is on. As for typing searches, a zero must precede OT numbers, and no prefix is needed for NT numbers. I should also say that BW can run cross-language searches (but only with the Graphical Search Engine [GSE]) and automatically highlight all the occurrences in both the English and Greek (or Hebrew text). Thus, we could easily find verses with Strong’s number 435 when it has been translated as “husband*” and the Greek version has some form of ἀνήρ.

Accordance can do that with two windows linked by the [CONTENTS] command. As for Logos, the way to do it is via a Reverse Interlinear, by writing the search syntax greekstrongs=435 ANDEQUALS husband AND lemma: ανηρ in a Bible Search window.

Logos can display Strong’s numbers inline, in an interlinear format (below the English text), or hide it from one’s view. A nice touch is the fact that when there is more than a single search term, each one of them is highlighted with a different color.

Further reading:

For a slightly outdated but still relevant article on the various ways to work with Strong’s numbers with Mac-based Bible software, see Getting the Bible’s Numbers, by David Lang.

To know more about how to work with Strong’s numbers in BibleWorks, check out the appropriate Study Guide from within BW8.

Finally, Logos has two recent blog posts on how to use Strong’s numbers, here and here.

Contributed by guest blogger Ken Ristau

In tandem with the release of Accordance 7, I thought it would be appropriate to release a review of the morphologically tagged Greek texts (PDF) available on the Scholar’s Collection 6.9 CD-ROM. I have reviewed the texts in comparison with BibleWorks 7 and Logos Bible Software 3.

My review concentrates on the databases themselves rather than the actual programs but nevertheless there are some points at which I do comment on all three new programs. I encourage you to share your thoughts in the comment thread. These are happy times for fans of Bible software!

Update: In response to criticism I received in the BibleWorks forum, I have made corrections to my review to better communicate my points regarding their implementation of morphological databases. I have also updated my review to reflect the additional information provided by Ken Penner, who is presently working on the Logos Pseudepigrapha. I apologize for some of my imprecise language and regret any unintended misrepresentation of the implementation of morphological databases in BibleWorks 7. At the same time, I stand by my assessment as it is now written and am disturbed at the treatment I have received in the BibleWorks forum (to be distinguished from BibleWorks, LLC with which I have no qualms). I believe that posts in the forum overstate the nature and extent of my mistake and attempt to insulate BibleWorks from my otherwise fair and responsible criticism.

Writing general product reviews is a worthwhile exercise, but writing comparative reviews is even more fun. However, it can also be a bit of a headache. No matter how hard you try to be objective, fair, and all the rest of it, you are probably going to leave just about everybody unhappy

Despite the difficulties, I do have a few comparative reviews “in the back burner.” Hopefully they will elicit some interesting exchanges (they always do), and help improve our general understanding of some of the key areas of Bible software. At least I hope so.

For a long time I have wanted to run a graphical search based on a comment made by H. Van Dyke Parunak in his article “Computers and Biblical Studies,” ABD, vol. I, pp. 1112-1124, where he talks about a search for “all verbs that occur within three words of the phrase ‘in Christ,’ without intervening verbs.”

Today I decided it was about time to put some Bible software programs to the test, so I fired up Accordance, BibleWorks and Logos to perform this particular search, using the different graphical search engines available in each package. The goal of this little exercise was simply to find out which one of them offered a cleaner, more intuitive way to build the search. Here are the results (in alphabetical order):

Accordance seems to be very straightforward, and I didn’t need to refer to the online help at all.

BibleWorks took me a bit longer, because there are different ways to “filter out” intervening words, and I had to look them up.

Logos’ search was more involved, since I had to specify the Greek words and their morphology independently. I also needed to refer to the help files.

As for the results, Accordance and BibleWorks agree in returning 34 hits. Logos, on the other hand, finds only 31 verses (missing 4 true occurrences and returning one spurious hit). The reason for this is that Logos doesn’t really count words, but characters. So, even though I specified 0-3 intervening words, the program in fact takes it as 0-21 characters (i.e., each “word” would amount to seven “characters”). For Greek, that includes accents and breathing marks, not just letters. Therefore, this explains why in one case four intervening (shorter) terms were returned as hits, while in four other cases three intervening (longer) terms were missed altogether. I have been told that the new Logos 3, with its ability to perform syntactical searches, handles these types of queries in a better and more powerful way. Unfortunately, I’m still waiting for my copy, so I haven’t been able to make use of the latest version. I’ll be glad to update any relevant info once I get it. BTW, I want to thank Rick Brannan and Vincent Setterholm for their help in explaining the behavior of Logos’s graphical search in this particular instance.

Now, I want you to be the judge. Apart from your own familiarity (or lack of it) with any of these three programs, which one of the screenshots strikes you as been the most “user-friendly”? Evidently, there’s more to these searches than just what is displayed here (number of steps required, dialog boxes, and so on), but I’m more interested in letting you see the interface of the graphical query and interpret the information shown in each particular case.

Update:

- I forgot to explain that this search looks for all those verbs that not only occur within the set distance but also precede the phrase ‘in Christ.’

- I hope I did not give the impression that I was looking for the more aesthetically appealing screenshot. What we are concerned about here is clarity and ease of use.

- Vincent (Setterholm) sends me a screenshot with a somewhat more organized layout, which I gladly reproduce below (slightly reduced in size). Note that some unnecessary proximity operators have been removed, and the morphological codes changed to full descriptions.

I am also told that the new database engine and syntactical tools in Logos version 3 do not have the same limitation noted above and, consequently, return the exact number of intervening words specified by the user.

Update (May 11):

- Rick Brannan blogs about syntactical searches, and the ways in which they can take us further than the current morphologically-based queries when it comes to doing exegesis. It’s an interesting piece, but I am clearly at a disadvantage here, since I won’t be able to speak intelligently about these new syntactical tools in Logos 3 until I actually use them. Got to be patient… Meanwhile I guess I should say that morphology and syntaxis must always go hand in hand, and the line between the two is often blurred. In fact, some morphologically tagged e-texts already take a more functional approach, and by doing so take us closer to what would be a typical syntactical analysis. But I digress, I’ll get back to this fascinating issue in a future review. One thing is true, though: we have come a long way since Parunak’s article was written.

- David Lang also interacts with my search over at Accordance blog, describing the steps that lead up to the construct window I showed above and commenting on some of the ways the resultant data can be handled by Accordance to enhance our research of this typically Pauline expression. I appreciate it, since I had no space to dwell on the implications of the search.

- Now, is anyone from BibleWorks going to give us some insights? I really wish they would set up an official blog

A few days ago, Rick Brannan posted an interesting example of a graphical search performed with Libronix. He wanted to find instances of the Greek adjective καλός (“good”) followed or preceded by a noun. The conditions were that they had to be 0-3 words apart, and agree in case and number. The search was restricted to the Pastoral Epistles, and he used a grammatically tagged version of NA27. The whole article explains, step by step, how to build this search, and the end result is shown below.

The Graphical Query Editor was introduced not so long ago, and its features are explained in some detail in this tutorial.

Later that same day, David Lang, member of the development team of Accordance, compared Rick’s procedure with the Construct Window that has been available in Accordance from the very beginning. His post (number 6 in the thread) glossed the simplicity and intuitiveness of Accordance when compared to Libronix.

Last Monday, Tyler F. Williams — without previous knowledge of David’s comments –, blogged about this, comparing the graphical search capabilities of these two programs.

The original query presented by Rick would look thus in Accordance:

The thread caught my attention from the start, and I was planning on writing some comments on it, but both David and Tyler drew their guns faster than me, so to speak Nonetheless, I would like to introduce another element that has not been mentioned yet.

There is another contestant in this area of graphical searches: the Advanced Search Engine in BibleWorks. The same search discussed above would look like this in the ASE:

As one would expect, all three programs yield the same results. They use the same databases, but their user interface and workflow are vastly different.

I decided to test the same search in Libronix, Accordance, and BibleWorks (in this particular order). If you look at the screenshots you will immediately realize some of the differences. Let me summarize them for you:

1. Libronix uses more “cryptic” language than both Accordance and BibleWorks, and requires the user to go through far more steps, in the form of dialog boxes and drop-down menus.

2. In Libronix, “At most 3″ allows for up to 2 intervening words, just like “WITHIN 3″ in Accordance. However, BibleWorks allows up to 3, so I had to use “At most 2″ in order to get the same result.

3. Both Libronix and Accordance have a Sentence search field. BibleWorks lacks a specific field, but can look for sentences and clauses by allowing or disallowing certain punctuation marks and crossing verse boundaries. Incidentally, in 1 Timothty 6:11, the term πραϋπαθίαν found by BibleWorks is a wrong hit, since it is followed by a period and should not be counted. UPDATE (August 12): It has been brought to my attention that if one specifies which punctuation marks are NOT allowed, rather than the other way round, then the search yields the right results.

4. Libronix and BibleWorks have an option to ignore word order. Accordance does not, hence the need to duplicate the Construct window, invert the search terms, and perform an OR search.

5. Each one of the programs return different statistics, but they are all right, since they follow a slightly different logic. Thus, Libronix finds 47 occurrences (hits) in 19 articles (i.e., sentences). Accordance yields 25 hits (containing the same 47 hit words found by Libronix) in 40 verses (but only 20 of those displayed contain hits). Finally, BibleWorks’ search results in 26 hits and 21 verses. Here the figures would be the same as Accordance, except for the false hit already mentioned in point 3 above. UPDATE (August 12): But see the Update. By reversing the logic of the punctuation settings one gets 25 hits in 20 verses.

My personal conclusion regarding this type of search is that BibleWorks requires slightly less steps than Accordance, and a lot less than Libronix. On the other hand, Accordance is considerably more intuitive and easier to set up than the others. As for Libronix, it’s catching up fast (considering it is only at version 2.1, and the Graphical Query Editor has been developed only recently compared to Accordance and BibleWorks).