In recent times I’ve heard individuals from different walks of life say how important it is that bloggers speak in positive terms about people, products and services. A good comment can help a lot — they say –, while a bad remark can cause quite a bit of damage. Last person I’ve seen write on this whole issue is Michael S. Hyatt, President and CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, in his excellent post on Defending Your Brand Online. What he says is also applicable to Bible software companies and developers.

But how much influence do bloggers really have? I suppose the question boils down to the actual number of people who read what you have to say. I don’t know about others, but I am very happy with the faithful crowd who read BSR (and the fact that is ranked number one in search engines like Google, Yahoo, Lycos or MSN — just type bible software review, no need to use quotes), and whenever I write, I feel responsible for my recommendations and criticisms. I always want to do my best to be impartial and fair. After all, what’s good is good, no matter who says it, and what’s subpar, unclear or simply doesn’t work, needs to be exposed, with respect and in a constructive manner, but firmly. But blogs are interactive by its very nature, so comments can also have an immediate effect, as shown by this recent example. All in all, the “viral” spreading of news that takes place today over the net does have an impact to one degree or another.

So, next time you hear me praise some feature, you can be absolutely sure that I love it. Conversely, when I complain about the lack of communication from this company or that individual, or how awkward a particular implementation is, I really mean it. Whether or not this affects companies in a real way, as Michael says in his post, I don’t know for sure. I do not feel that important, to be honest. One thing I do know, though. I am committed to carrying out this task, and in the final run both users and companies will benefit from it. As we read in Proverbs 27:17a, “Iron sharpens iron.”

There is something about Bible Software Review that makes people want to have their software reviewed here. Several times I’ve even had to make clear that we are only interested in Bible software and related programs (you’d be surprised at the requests I get from time to time). This is really exciting, and I feel very honored. Unfortunately, I have to apologize for the long delay in getting out some of these reviews. This is still very much a one-person effort, much to my chagrin, and it’s difficult to keep up. I need more reviewers! There is so much more that could be done if there were more of us involved! But I digress again, though not entirely.

Coming back to the matter of influence, my personal policy is to link as much as possible, to as many products as possible, when I feel it’s relevant. This is good to help Bible software get more exposure and publicity, particularly in the case of small companies or less well-known applications. I don’t do link exchanges or things like that. Paid ads are another story. Those are not only beneficial to the company that hires them, but they also help me pay the increasing costs of hosting and other site-related expenses.

So, if you want to have your product reviewed, or wish to place an ad on this site (or blog, or forum), by all means get in touch, with the understanding that this is not going to change one bit my perception of the software The better it is, the more likely it will receive a rave review. And if you made a request a long time ago, don’t dispair. I have flagged all those messages and will eventually be getting back to you.

I’m not sure I have answered the original question of this post, but at least I hope I have contributed to what I consider to be an interesting and worthwhile discussion.

Peter quotes Irenaeus, who apparently knew a text of Luke’s Gospel containing 72 names, and adds:

But I can’t locate a manuscript reflecting that number, although there are lots of possibilities: e.g. Bezae has 65 names; 1071 has 73 names; Vaticanus has 76 names; Sinaiticus has 77 names; Alexandrinus has 74 names (W and 579 omit the whole thing).

Apart from the two minuscules he cites (1071 and 579, which are collated, among many others, in the CNTTS Apparatus, but have no morphological tagging), I was able to check the other witnesses (except for Alexandrinus, which is not available yet in Accordance). I decided to use the search syntax [NOUN proper] AND [RANGE Luke 3:23-38] (although I could have easily created a custom range in the Range pop-up menu). As expected, Bezae turned up only 65 hits (names). The reason is that Luke 3:28 is missing altogether. As for Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, Accordance found 77 hits (I’m not sure why Peter came up with 76). Finally, it is true that W (Washingtonensis) only includes Luke 3:23 (so, technically, there are 3 names but no full genealogy).

Not only could I check the numbers, but also compare different codices, display the search details and break down the results according to different parameters, contrast the lemmas and inflected forms by means of the [HITS] command, and a lot more. It was nice to play around, er… I mean explore the different ways of finding and sorting out the data. All this shows how useful and powerful it is to be able to work with digital and morphologically-tagged biblical manuscripts.

The post ends explaining that NA27 includes the somewhat arbitrary number of 77 names. In fact, Accordance showed that Tischendorf also includes 77 names, whereas Westcott-Hort has 76 and Stephanus’ Textus Receptus, 75 (as does Maurice-Pierpont’s Byzantine text). To reiterate what I’ve said before, with these tools we can now go one or two steps beyond the reading found in the critical texts currently available.

I thought this might be of interest to those on the list who teach. I am a seminary student who has studied both Hebrew and Greek; and I have put together a web site with information for blind students and college/seminary professors about issues of special concern when a blind student studies biblical languages. Of particular interest to you who teach will be the overview article at the top of the resources section, which explains the technology commonly used by students who are blind and how it is useful in the study of biblical languages.

The site is located at
http://faith.growingstrong.org/languages.html

Accordance 8.0.5, a point release, provides improved import of HTML files into user tools, and more options for the export of selected text. Some keyboard shortcuts have been changed: option-command-X removes selected verses from the Reference List window, and shift-command-N adds a new folder to the Library window (instead of F). As it’s usually the case with these kinds of releases, a number of obscure bugs have also been corrected. Also, since these updates are incremental, all previously reported bugs since the initial release of version 8 have been fixed.

Version 8.0.5 is available here, and it is a free upgrade to current users of version 8.0.x, whereas the working Accordance demo has also been upgraded to 8.0.5.

Gonzalo Díaz informs us of the availability of Kalós version 4.13 (for Mac and Windows), which includes an improved look-and-feel, as well as several hundred new entries, covering all NT canonical forms. Here is the full list of improvements.

Danny Zacharias has been keeping busy, developing sets of multimedia Greek flashcards. These NT Vocabulary Expansion Packs, designed for use with Flash! Pro (PC) and iFlash (Mac), are keyed to the following 1st year Greek textbooks: Learn To Read New Testament Greek, A Primer of Biblical Greek, Basics of Biblical Greek and New Testament Greek Primer. See the demo video or these screenshots. He has also made available some free Greek flash animations. You can download them here. They were originally created by Glenn Wooden and he developed them specifically to work with Bill Mounce’s Basics of Biblical Greek. Hint: Danny embeds them in his Keynote presentations.

Mark G. Vitalis Hoffman reviews a Vulgate-based Bible software called VulSearch 4. Despite being freeware, it has some nice features not always found in commercial programs. It allows users to view and search the Latin Vulgate alongside an English or French Bible.

Finally, webmasters who run websites, blogs or forums which make frequent use of Bible references might be interested to know that Logos has enhanced a nice little script called RefTagger. This free utility is now highly customizeable and makes the full Bible text pop up when you hover over any Bible reference. The currently available versions are NLT, ESV, KJV and NKJV.

Last I know is that LaRosa Johnson is still a WORDsearch employee, but there is no trace of the blog posts I linked to. If you search his blog archives you will not find any of the six entries on the subject. They are gone, vanished. Pure coincidence? Not likely. Logos blog talked about Making the Switch to Logos. I simply called my entry An Interesting Challenge. Was that too much publicity for another company’s software? Who decided to delete those posts and why? I’m now sorry I did not copy them, since they were written under a Creative Commons License.

I’m not talking about a conspiracy theory. God forbid! I don’t even know the man, and my emails to the company he works for have been repeatedly ignored. In fact I congratulated Randy Beck (the owner) in very friendly terms just a month ago, and invited him, yet again, to submit an interview for BSR. Never heard back from him. Does make you think… (please don’t read any kind of hostility into my comment, I’m simply sad).

I wish I were wrong, but I’m afraid LaRosa’s balanced and open-minded comments probably proved too much of a challenge for some people. And this is precisely one of the reasons that gave birth to Bible Software Review. I believe in freedom. I believe we can point out the good things about Bible software packages, learn from them and try to improve things with constructive criticisms and suggestions. I believe we can learn to disagree in a civil and even friendly manner. I believe in diversity. I believe that no matter how much we like our own software, it is plain stupid to think there is no life beyond it. I believe we can learn from one another and help one another. I don’t understand why comparing certain features (let alone writing comparative reviews) makes certain people feel so nervous.

I have been under pressure myself. Unfortunately some folks are more concerned about marketing and PR than they are about reaching excellency in developing tools that will help people study the Scriptures more efficiently. I know it’s difficult to stand for what you think is right, particularly in a highly competitive market, but “a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.”

I am sorry I’ve had to write this post, and would love to stand corrected. That has never been a problem for me. Really, I would be happy to say, “hey I blew it! I got carried away with no reason. I apologize.” I would love to have to delete this entry, but facts are facts, and unless there is some plausible explanation for the “mysterious” disappearance of LaRosa’s original blog entries, I am entitled to voice my opinion.

This engine (requiring Windows XP or better) is able to search for the Hebrew vowel marks (nikudos) and tropes (te’amim) in many different and rather complex ways, so you may want to take a look. There are a number of screen shots available, but no demo version.

Again, I know this is not what Danny had in mind, but it gave me an excellent excuse to mention what I consider to be a great tool that, in many ways, is much more powerful and flexible than the kind of digitization projects I have already mentioned before. In actual fact, the availability of these electronic editions enable us to go one step further than simply using the current critical texts available in many Bible software packages.

I expect to see more exciting developments in this area in the near future.