Accordance Blog

More on Red-Letter Bibles

2008-05-14T22:27:00.003-05:00

In an interesting bit of synchronicity, Peter Head blogs about red-letter Bibles over at Evangelical Textual Criticism. It's well worth checking out.

Hiding Red Letter

2008-05-14T11:38:00.001-05:00

Many print Bibles highlight the words of Jesus in red. Some people love this feature, while others hate it. Those who object to it argue that since there were no quotation marks in the Greek, it is not always clear which words are direct quotations from Jesus and which are not.

For example, in John 3, most Bibles interpret verses 10-21 as being directly spoken by Jesus. However, some interpreters think the quotation ends after verse 15, and that verses 16-21 are an explanation by the author of the Gospel. Having all those verses in red, or even enclosing them in quotation marks, is an interpretive decision made by the translators.

Those who are red-green color-blind object to red-letter Bibles for an even more fundamental reason: for them the words of Jesus disappear altogether!

Whether your reasons for objecting to red-letter Bibles are philosophical or ophthalmological, Accordance allows you to hide the red-lettering in any Bibles which include it. Simply use command-T (the one keyboard shortcut you absolutely must learn) to open the Set Text Display Dialog box for a given Bible, and check the Hide Red Letter option. You can also do this for all Bibles by going to the Text Display settings in the Preferences.

Even if you like red-letter Bibles, there may be times when you want to hide it. Today I ran into one of those. I did a search which seemed to find the phrase "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord" in Matthew 23:39. I say "seemed to find" because the search I had done should not have highlighted all the words in that phrase. I was confused until I realized that the Bible I was searching (the HCSB) places the words of Jesus in red and boldfaces Old Testament quotations in the New Testament. Of course, Accordance highlights search hits by making them red and boldfaced, so I was mistakenly assuming that this phrase was part of my search result, when in fact it was merely part of that particular Bible's formatting. When I changed the display settings to hide the red letter, I could then distinguish my search hits from the OT quotations spoken by Jesus. Alternatively, I could have chosen to leave the red letter turned on, and chosen a different color and/or style for my search hits.

Regardless of your reasons for customizing the appearance of a Bible text, it's nice to have the flexibility to do so.

Highlighting the Past

2008-05-12T09:25:00.004-05:00

My senior year of high school, I invested in a good, leather-bound study Bible in preparation for college, and it served me well for years. I recently found it in a box in my garage. It's pretty beat up and I no longer use it, but I've been unable to get rid of it because of the highlights and marginal notes it contains. Those highlights and notes are not particularly extensive, but they are a little window into how I was reading the Bible back in high school and college. So I decided to go through my old college Bible and create Accordance equivalents of whatever notes and highlights I found.

I started by creating a new Highlights file called College Highlights, and duplicating the marking system I used back then. Basically, I had four colors with which I would underline words and verses: black for verses of doctrinal importance, red for verses which I felt were personally applicable, blue for verses of encouragement or beauty, and green for prophecies. I also created a new User Notes file called College Notes.

I then began in Genesis scanning page by page for any highlights or notes. With the exception of a few "encouragement" verses in Genesis, there really wasn't much to speak of until I got to Deuteronomy, which I apparently studied in some depth. Most of the highlighted passages were obviously important: the shema, the commandments, the call to choose life rather than death, etc. Less obvious were passages like Deuteronomy 8:17-18, which I underlined as "encouraging." This passage tells us not to take credit for the wealth we receive but to remember that the Lord gives us the ability to create wealth. Since I had no money in college I'm not sure why this passage jumped out at me, but it is certainly encouraging to me today as I work to provide for my family.

There was only one note scribbled in the margins of Deuteronomy, and that was beside Deuteronomy 10:12-13:

And now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the LORD'S commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good?

Beside this passage, I wrote simply, "God asks little of us." I dutifully recorded this comment in the College Notes, and then it occurred to me that it might be interesting to interact with this comment from my current perspective. I wrote the following:

20 Years Later: From the perspective of time and having failed many times to fear the Lord, walk in his ways, love him, serve him with all I am, and observe his commands, I wonder why in my youth I remarked that God asks little of us. I can only assume that I meant this: that complete devotion is little to ask of those who have been lovingly created and graciously redeemed. If I meant anything other than that, I was a fool.

While the idea of recreating the highlights and notes from an old print Bible may seem tedious, I actually found it to be a good devotional exercise. It was fascinating to find the verses which stood out to me as a young man and to consider how my perspective on those verses has changed with years of work, marriage, fatherhood, and life experience. Best of all, I now have these youthful insights archived in a way I can access any time, rather than tucked inside a Bible in a box in the garage.

How to Do a Topical Study, Part 3

2008-05-09T09:03:00.002-05:00

In my previous two posts, I've been looking at ways to do a topical study using Accordance. In the first post, we opened Nave's Topical Bible and did a search for "Love." We then followed the links under the subheading "Love of Man for God." In the second post, we manually went through each of those 65 verses, marking the ones which made some connection between loving God and keeping his commands. Once we had finished marking the relevant verses, we placed those verses in a separate reference list window for future study.

Today, I want to back up and look at how I might have automated the process of looking for verses which equate loving God with keeping his commands. Rather than reading all 65 verses and manually marking the ones which spoke of keeping God's commands, wouldn't it be easier to search those 65 verses for the word "commands"? Certainly it would.

To do this, I will add all 65 verses to a Reference List, then search those verses using the CONTENTS command. The CONTENTS command enables me to take the list of verses from one window and use them as part of a search argument in another window. If you're following along, here's what to do (I'll go all the way back to the beginning just so we're all on the same page):

Open Nave's from the English Tools pop-up of the Resource palette.
Search the Entry field for "Love."
Command-click any of the verses under the heading "Love of Man for God."
In the text window that appears, select all the verses by clicking in the text pane and choosing Select All from the Edit menu (or using the keyboard shortcut command-A).
Add all those verses to a new Reference List by choosing New Reference List from the Add Selection To submenu of the Selection menu.
Open a new Search window containing whatever Bible text you wish to search.
Click the Search for Words radio button, then enter "commands", the AND command (shift-command-A), and the CONTENTS command (shift-command-C).

Note: If there is more than one valid window open, Accordance will ask you which window you want to use the contents of. Choose the Reference List window listing the verses from Nave's.
Click OK to perform the search.

When I search the HCSB this way, I get 11 verses which contain the word "commands." Obviously, there are more than 11 verses in the whole Bible which contain the word "commands," but by using the CONTENTS command, I have restricted my search to the 65 verses Nave's listed as pertaining to the love of man for God. Think of the CONTENTS command as a way to create a custom search range out of any list of verses.

Now that I have these 11 verses, I can select them all and add them to a new Reference List which contains only verses which speak of loving God by keeping his commands.

In this post, I've shown how you can use Reference Lists and the CONTENTS command to sift through a list of verses from a topical Bible. Using this strategy, we found the 11 verses which speak of "commands" much faster than we would have using the previous post's strategy of reading through each verse and marking the ones of interest.

How to Do a Topical Study, Part 2

2008-05-06T10:54:00.001-05:00

In my previous post, I described how to do a topical study using topical resources like Nave's Topical Bible or Torrey's New Topical Textbook. With these tools, you search for a particular topic and then follow the list of verses provided. In this post, I'll pick up where I left off and look at ways to sift through those verses to find the ones of greatest interest.

When you command-click or click and drag to hypertext to multiple verses (see previous post for more on that), you get a text window displaying each of those verses. In the example we used previously, Nave's article on "love of man for God," we get 65 verses. Let's say I want to go through these verses and find all the ones which make an explicit connection between loving God and keeping his commands. To do that, I would read through each verse and option-click the ones I want to mark. This will place a blue bookmark icon next to the verses clicked.

Once I've marked the verses I want to zero in on, I can place them in a separate verse list window by choosing New Reference List Window from the Add Marked Verses To submenu of the Selection menu. Now that I have this subset of verses collected in one place, I can place a description such as "Loving God means keeping His commands" in the Description field at the top of the window, and save it so that I can call it up again later.

Collecting verses in a reference list window enables me to interact with my search results and focus on particular connections. Now if I wanted to add a note to each of these verses, I could do so relatively quickly, without having to wade past other verses which are not relevant to this particular topic. Or, if I wanted to paste a list of references on this topic into a paper or sermon outline, I could select all the verses in the Reference List and choose References from the Copy As submenu of the Edit menu.

In my next post, I'll talk about ways you can use your reference list as the basis for other searches.

How to Do a Topical Study

2008-05-02T09:22:00.001-05:00

Someone on our forums recently asked for advice on how best to do a topical study and record his findings. The responses he got focused primarily on the question of whether he should record his findings in User Notes or a User Tool, but in this post I want to focus on the entire process of doing a topical study.

The first place to turn for information on a given topic is one of the resources designed for that purpose, such as Nave's Topical Bible or Torrey's New Topical Textbook, both of which are included in every level of the Library CD-ROM. Another excellent resource is The Thompson Chain Reference Bible.

When you open one of these resources and search for a given topic, such as "love," you'll get a listing of verses which relate to that topic, often organized into more manageable subtopics:

Nave's article on love has a long list of verses dealing with the "love of man for God." You can look up these verses in a variety of ways. First, you can simply drag your mouse over each reference to preview it in the Instant Details box. This is a good approach when you're looking for a particular verse and want to zero in on it quickly, but if you're wanting to read through all these passages, it's better to open them all at once.

The easiest way to do that is to command-click on any one of the references in the series. Alternatively, you can drag a selection from anywhere in the middle of the first reference to anywhere in the middle of the last reference, like this:

Either approach will open a new text window displaying all of the references in the paragraph. This makes it easy to scan through the verses quickly. If you want to see the verses in context, simply check the Show all text checkbox at the top of the window.

In my next post, I'll look at ways you can interact with the verses on a given topic.

Anchor Bible Dictionary: Back and Better Than Ever

2008-04-23T12:03:00.005-05:00

A while back, I blogged about the importance of Anchor Bible Dictionary, not only as a seminal resource for Biblical studies, but also as the impetus for creating many of the features Accordance users enjoy today.

A few months after that post, Anchor Bible Dictionary was sold to another publisher, and we had to suspend sales of the product until we could negotiate a contract with the new publisher. I'm pleased to say that all of that has now been resolved, and we are once again able to offer Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary for sale.

This new edition of Anchor has been updated with various corrections and extensive improvements to the hypertext links.

If you've been waiting for Anchor to be made available again, the wait is over. Anchor is on sale through the end of May for just $249, and those who already own Anchor (and Accordance 7) can get the updated edition for a whopping ten bucks!

PhotoGuide Upgraded Again

2008-04-21T13:00:00.006-05:00

I'm excited to announce a major new upgrade to the Bible Lands PhotoGuide. With more than 400 new photos and improvements to the quality of many existing ones, this third edition of the PhotoGuide now offers more than 1600 high-resolution photos with in depth annotations.

The articles on Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Caesarea, Caesarea Philippi, Dan, Elah, Gibeon, Nazareth, Capernaum, Masada, Rome, and more have all been extensively updated. The article on Jerusalem includes photos of recent discoveries such as a Canaanite water-tunnel dating to the same period as Warren's shaft, the so-called palace of David, and the possible first-century location of the Pool of Siloam. Additional photos of the Second Temple model help flesh out what the various excavation sites would have looked like in the first century. And a new article on Flora explains the biblical significance of plants such as olive trees, figs, acacia trees, grape vines, wheat, and mustard seeds. Here are a few of the new photos which are included:

Model of Herod's Temple

Herod's palace at Masada was richly decorated with colorful frescoes. New photos such as this one bring that opulence to life.

Worship Center of the Golden Calf at Tell Dan

PhotoGuide 3 is available on our new Graphics DVD, along with our Atlas and Timeline. Upgrade pricing is available for those who own the first or second editions of the PhotoGuide.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

2008-04-14T09:21:00.001-05:00

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

This famous saying, which I'd always heard attributed to Mark Twain, apparently originated with Benjamin D'Israeli. Whoever first said it, its meaning is clear: numbers can be very misleading.

Last week, I searched the MT/LXX for all occurrences of the Hebrew word bara using the Merge command, and got 54 hits. Then I searched for all the places where bara is translated with poieo in the Greek Septuagint. The number of hits returned was 30. Next I searched for all the places bara is not translated with poieo. This returned 39 hits.

I then asked you to explain the apparent anomaly in the Hit counts for these various searches. If there are 54 occurrences of bara and 30 of them are translated with poieo, we would expect our search for those cases which are not translated with poieo to number just 24 (54 - 30 = 24), rather than 39.

I only got one response explaining the numbers, but that response was so thorough and clearly written that I suspect no one else felt the need to respond. Here is the explanation given in the comments on the last post:

In the first search where you merge the BHS and the LXX using the AND operator, each occurrence of bara and each occurrence of poiew are counted as hits separately--i.e. each pairing of bara/poiew counts as 2 hits (one for each word). So, the 30 hits reduces to 15 actual results.
In the other search--BHS NOT LXX--this phenomenon doesn't occur since negated search terms don't produce any counted hits. Thus, only the occurrences of bara in the result set are counted as hits, and the 39 hits equals 39 results.
Therefore, the problem with the calculation in the previous post is that you're including the number of hits on poiew from the first search. When you exclude those, the numbers work out as expected: 54 - 15 = 39

That's exactly right, and I couldn't have explained it more clearly. I'm glad the commenter wasn't fooled by my intentional misreading of the numbers. I hope others of you found this little exercise to be illustrative. It's important, when looking at the statistical information in Accordance, to make sure you understand how things are being counted.

In general, any single search element will be counted as a hit. So for example, if I search for "Moses AND Aaron," each occurrence of Moses and each occurrence of Aaron will be counted as a single hit. If, however, I search for the actual phrase "Moses and Aaron," each occurrence of that phrase will be counted as a hit. If the phrase occurs five times, Accordance will give a hit count of 5. If it were counting each word separately, it would give a hit count of 15, which would be confusing in most cases.

If I were to search for two phrases joined by a Search command, such as "Moses and Aaron OR Jacob and Esau," Accordance would count each occurrence of the phrase "Moses and Aaron" and each occurrence of the phrase "Jacob and Esau." It would not count each of the words in those phrases.

Similarly, if I develop a search using a Construct window, each occurrence of the entire contruction is counted as a hit, as opposed to the individual words within that construction.

Finally, as our commenter made clear, negated items are not counted as hits. In the search "Moses NOT Aaron," each occurrence of Moses is counted. Aaron can't be counted because it would not exist in the set of verses returned by such a search.

At first blush, all this talk of what gets counted might seem a little confusing. On the one hand, it might be more consistent just to count each individual word that was found by any search, regardless of whether you were using search commands, searching for phrases, or searching for constructs. But when you search for a three-word phrase, do you really want to have to divide the number of hits by three to get the actual number of times that phrase occurs? I certainly don't. Accordance therefore attempts to count the number of hits as intelligently as possible, so that the number you get is most likely to be the number that makes the most sense.

Nevertheless, if statistics are one of the three kinds of lies, it doesn't hurt to know how Accordance is arriving at the figures it gives.

Understanding the Hit Counts

2008-04-10T07:59:00.000-05:00

In yesterday's post, I did a series of searches of the MT/LXX. First, I searched for all occurrences of the Hebrew word bara using the Merge command. This returned 54 hits. Then I searched for all the places where bara is translated with poieo in the Greek Septuagint. The number of hits returned was 30. Then I searched for all the places bara is not translated with poieo. This returned 39 hits.

Does anyone see a problem with those numbers? If there are 54 occurrences of bara and 30 of them are translated with poieo, we would expect our search for those cases which are not translated with poieo to number just 24 (54 - 30 = 24), not 39!

There's a logical explanation for these numbers, but I want to see if you can tell me what it is. Feel free to leave your explanations in the comments on this post, and I'll follow up with a more complete explanation.

Determining What Gets Displayed in MT/LXX

2008-04-09T12:02:00.002-05:00

Last week, I talked about how the settings in the Show pop-up menu of the Tools window enable you to determine what kind of information gets displayed. This week I want to give you a very practical example of how this feature can be useful in sophisticated tools such as the MT/LXX. But before I can do that, I need to introduce you to the MT/LXX and how it works.

MT/LXX is a tool which places each word or phrase of the Masoretic Hebrew text in parallel with the corresponding Greek words from the Septuagint. This makes possible some very interesting comparisons.

For example, let's say I want to find every place where the Hebrew word bara, "create," is translated by the Greek word poieo.

As with all tools, the MT/LXX is divided into different fields of content. Search the Entry field to find particular verses, the Hebrew field to search for Hebrew words, the Greek field for LXX words, etc.

If I search the Hebrew field for the word bara, I find just 20 occurrences. But when I search the BHS-W4 for this word, I get no less than 54 occurrences. Since the MT/LXX is supposed to have every word in both the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Septuagint, shouldn't I expect my search for bara to deliver the same result I get when searching the Hebrew Bible?

The discrepancy is due to the fact that the MT/LXX is not grammatically tagged like the BHS-W4. Thus, when we search the MT/LXX for bara, we will find the twenty times bara appears in that exact inflected form, but miss the 34 times when it appears in other forms.

Fortunately, we can overcome this limitation of the MT/LXX by piggy-backing on the tagging of the Hebrew Bible. We’ll do this through the use of an advanced search command called the MERGE command.

The MERGE command joins two windows together so that they both reflect the same search result. In this case, I need a Search window containing the BHS-W4, and a Tool window containing MT/LXX. In the Search window, I'll search for bara. In the MT/LXX window, I'll enter the MERGE command (by selecting it from the Enter Command submenu of the Search menu) and select the window I want to merge to (BHS-W4). When I click OK in the MT/LXX window, the results of my lexical search of the Hebrew Bible are reflected in the MT/LXX.

Using the MERGE command in this way makes for some very powerful searches, especially when I Merge with additional Search windows. To find every place where the LXX translates the Hebrew word bara by some form of the word poieo, I would need to open a new Search window containing the Septuagint, and search for poieo. I would then return to my MT/LXX window, add the AND command, followed by a second MERGE command which points to the window containing the LXX.

When I click OK, this search turns up 52 hits, and I can see that both the Hebrew word bara and the Greek word poieo are highlighted.

As I scroll down to Genesis 2:4, however, I find a place where bara and poieo both appear in the same verse, but where poieo is actually being used to translate a different Hebrew word.

I can exclude such false hits by opening the More Options section and specifying that I want the Greek and Hebrew words to appear in the same paragraph—that is, on the same line—rather than just in the same article. When I click OK to perform this search again, the number of hits goes down to 30, and Genesis 2:4 becomes excluded.

If I want to see all the places the LXX translates bara with some word other than poieo, I need only change the AND command to a NOT, like this:

Here's where the Show pop-up menu comes in handy. If I set the window to show only the hit paragraphs, I can quickly scan my results to see all the different ways bara is translated.

Of course, the downside of this view is that I can't easily see which verse each hit comes from. The reference for the verse at the top of the pane is shown in the Go To box at the bottom right corner of the window, but I have no easy way of telling where the other hits I'm looking at are found. Choosing Add Titles from the Show pop-up solves this problem by giving me the verse references for each hit.

That was a lot of set up just to reinforce the usefulness of the Show pop-up menu, but hopefully you've also learned something about the MT/LXX, the Merge Command, searching within every paragraph as opposed to every article, etc. The MT/LXX is an extremely powerful tool which is made all the more powerful when you know how to use the various options Accordance provides.

New Accordance Trainer Shares His Experiences

2008-04-04T12:00:00.002-05:00

[Today's guest blogger is Rick Mansfield, one of several new Accordance trainers who have been leading free training seminars across the country this Spring. I asked Rick to share his experience of leading a seminar for the first time, and much of what he's written echoes my own experience of leading seminars. Except, that is, when he chronicles all the preparation he did. I'm afraid I'm not that much of a go-getter! ;-) —David]

Last Fall, OakTree Software invited me and a few others to come down to Florida for a weekend with the purpose of training us to be Accordance trainers. I jumped at the chance because I've been using Accordance for about a decade now and it is absolutely integral to my work and daily routines. It was a great experience to finally meet folks at OakTree with whom I had corresponded over the years, but had never actually met in person. The weekend itself was fairly intense as we spent many hours, sometimes late into the night, going over the workings of Accordance—from the big picture and philosophy of the software to the very minutiae of its extremely powerful capabilities. Then on Monday following our weekend of training, each one of the trainers-in-training took about an hour to present a segment at an actual Accordance Training Seminar in Orlando.

Flash forward six months. This past week, I had my first opportunity to "fly solo" as a trainer: leading a seminar on Friday at Asbury Theological Seminary and on Saturday at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. I'm no stranger to the classroom, but one thing I've learned over the years is that whenever I have a new "prep," I don't let the students know I'm teaching something for the first time. I've found that if I demonstrate confidence in my presentation, the students will have confidence in their learning.

But that doesn't mean that I didn't have some initial concerns as I prepared to lead an Accordance seminar completely by myself for the first time. Even though I've used Accordance for almost a decade now, it's no secret that it's a very sophisticated program. It's simple enough for a casual user to sit down and go straight to work, but at the same time it's complex enough for the most advanced biblical scholar.

I'll admit to my own initial anxieties about going on my own for the first time. The Accordance Training Seminars last from 9 AM in the morning to 5 PM in the afternoon. Taking time for breaks and lunch, that still leaves roughly six and a half hours of straight instruction time. Could I possibly talk about Accordance for that long, or would I—like a new minister preaching his first sermon—run through all my material in a mere matter of minutes? And although I use Accordance almost every day, I don't use all of it everyday. I don't build elaborate constructs regularly. What if I got asked questions I couldn't answer? What if the attendees conspired together to play "stump the teacher"?

Fortunately, because I had quite a bit of lead time for my first two seminars, I prepared as if I were studying for the Bar Exam (well maybe not quite that intensely). I had David Lang's own instruction in the very excellent Accordance Training DVD that contains about five and a half hours of material. I watched the entire DVD completely through twice and watched certain segments more than that. I pored through the printed version of the Accordance 7.4 manual, underlining, highlighting, and placing sticky notes all throughout the pages marking significant spots. Perhaps most significantly, I had my own experience to draw from that included not only my own routines for using Accordance, but also little tips and tricks that I've picked up over the years.

Early on in my preparation I prepared a basic outline for what I would cover during a full day's seminar. The morning would be introductory, focused on the philosophy and basics of the Accordance interface including a Resource Palette and Search Window overview. From there, I planned to move to basic searches and cover search commands and symbols. The time after lunch would be reserved for more advanced topics such as Greek and Hebrew searching and the construct window. I also planned to cover topics such as tools and tool searching, the Atlas and Timeline, and creating one's own user tools and Bibles if time allowed. As I continued in my preparation, my outline grew more and more detailed. In some places, I gave myself very simple instructions: "Run through elements of the search window from top to bottom"—a very simple instruction that took 45 minutes or so to actually do. In other places, I wrote down bullet points that included exact elements to put in a search field or in a construct window, step by step. For those kind of demonstrations, I wanted to make sure it worked right the first time, and I wanted to be sure that I had every element in place so that I wouldn't accidentally forget something. By the time I was ready to actually lead the seminar, my notes had grown from that simple outline to an eleven-page document.

I also thought about what the attendees would see from my screen. I have a MacBook that I use for most of my work, but I knew I needed to clean it up a bit. Teaching software is different from teaching a class using presentation software such as PowerPoint or Keynote. Using those programs, learners only see what you've included in the slides. But in teaching software like Accordance, the projected screen is going to mirror my own. So I cleaned up my desktop, placing all those stray files that have been piling up there for a while elsewhere on my hard drive. I downloaded a nice Accordance-themed wallpaper from the Accordance Exchange. I switched the Mac OS X dock to autohide rather than remaining visible so I could use as much of the screen as possible. I removed all the little system icons from the top menu bar except for a basic minimum. Thinking that I might show attendees the Accordance website, forums and Exchange, I set Safari's homepage to accordancebible.com to save time. And finally, although I prefer to use the Accordance toolbar horizontally on top of the screen, I set it back to the default vertical position so as not to confuse new users. In fact, so as to change my habits, I did this a full week before my first presentation so that I would not confuse myself!

All this preparation really paid off. In the end, none of my worries were really warranted (of course careful preparation itself didn't hurt!). I found that a full day's seminar really wasn't enough time to cover everything. In fact, I think I could have very easily used an entire other day as well! That fact, of course, is testimony to the richness of the Accordance program itself.

At the beginning of each session, I informally polled the room in an attempt to determine the various levels of proficiencies among the attendees. I wanted to be careful not to rush into anything too difficult, but I also didn't want the experienced user to get bored during the morning sessions. On each day, there were enough "new" users that I felt justified in not assuming anything and starting with the very basics. At the first break, I asked a few of the folks who had been using Accordance for a while if what I had covered so far was too elementary for them. No one said that it was. Even these users were picking up little tips and tricks or discovering a basic feature here or there that they didn't know about.

These kinds of lightbulb moments lasted all day. The attendees were encouraged to ask questions or even ask me to go through a particular procedure again. The setting was very informal, and even though everyone had his or her own Mac laptop, it was very much a "group" learning experience. We had a variety of ages in attendance ranging from those who were in college, all the way to a 76-year-old retired Greek teacher!

Although I spent most of my time teaching the group, I also had the opportunity to provide quite a bit of one-on-one assistance. During the breaks and even after the seminars were officially over each day, I stayed and helped attendees individually by giving further instruction, offering clarification or occasionally troubleshooting something that wasn't working correctly for a user.

In addition to essentially following my initial outline for the day, I also showed attendees how to get more help using the Accordance forums. Plus, I introduced them to the Accordance Exchange and encouraged them to offer up their own user tools to the rest of us. Bravely, I decided to give out my own email address. Although I suggested using the forums or technical support for a first line of defense when needing assistance, I told the attendees that I wouldn't mind helping out as well if I could. Already I've received a handful of emails and have been able to have some positive follow-up correspondence from the seminars.

I should note, too, that as someone who gets to teach adults fairly regularly, I'm used to looking at the back of laptops. But normally, I see Dells and Toshibas and a small number of token Macs. How exciting it was to look out and see nothing but glowing white Apple logos shining back at me! Well…with one exception. On the second day of seminars, there was one lone individual who was actually running Accordance in Windows in the emulator. Such creatures really do exist! She testified that it worked quite well, but has already decided that her next computer will have to be a Mac. Good idea :-)

Even though I led both days by myself as far as the training goes, I wasn't by myself. OakTree sent a member of their sales staff to join me for the purpose of selling any additional Accordance software and modules to the attendees. I believe we made a very good team, and from what I understand, the bags she carried home were much lighter than when she first arrived.

At the end of both days, although I was tired, I also felt very good about the entire experience. It's very rewarding as a teacher to know that I've helped people learn something new. All the feedback (at least what I've heard!) has been very positive. But in reflection, it's not just some random piece of software I've helped folks with. Accordance allows us to study the Bible—God's Word—more efficiently. Studying God's word at any level allows us to understand Him better and our relationship to Him. By helping people better use Accordance, I've been able to instruct people how to "self feed" in their own spiritual journey. When I first agreed to become a trainer, I never realized there was an aspect of ministry to it as well, but there is.

So what now? After the seminars were both over, I was pumped. When's the next one? I'm ready to do this again! We are in talks for me to lead another one, but right now I've been told it would probably take place in the Fall. The Fall? Hey, OakTree, I think I could lead one of these every other week. Line it up, and I'm there!

Determining What Gets Displayed, Part 2

2008-04-03T08:28:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, I talked about how the settings in the Show pop-up menu of the Tools window enable you to determine what kind of information gets displayed. All text will display your search results in the context of the entire tool. That means every paragraph and article will be displayed regardless of whether it actually contains the word you were searching for. Selecting Articles will show every paragraph of any article which contains your search term. Selecting Paragraphs means that only those paragraphs which actually contain the word you were searching for will be displayed. The narrower the context you select, the easier it is to scan all your search results, but the harder it becomes to know where you are in the broader context.

I said yesterday that the default setting for the Show pop-up menu is All text. For example, if you just open Louw & Nida from the Resource palette, the Show pop-up menu will be set to All text and the entire text of Louw & Nida will be displayed. But now I'm going to let you in on a little secret: this is not what happens when you amplify to Louw & Nida.

Remember that amplifying is what we call it when you select a word before choosing a resource from the Resource palette. If I select the word ginomai in the Greek New Testament and then select Louw & Nida from the Resource palette, Louw & Nida will automatically be searched for the word ginomai. Most readers of this blog already know that. But what you may not have noticed is that when you amplify to Louw & Nida, the Show pop-up menu is set to Articles rather than All text.

Why this difference? When we develop an Accordance tool, we think carefully about how the text should display after you amplify to that tool. Should it show the hits in the context of the entire text, or should it just show the articles which contain a hit, so that you can easily scan all the words that were found?

Louw & Nida is a Greek lexicon which groups the words it defines according to semantic domain, or category of meaning. Where a traditional lexicon like BDAG will list each word once, and then list all the different meanings of that word, Louw & Nida will list the various categories of meaning (semantic domains), and then list all of the words which express each meaning. Thus, a word like ginomai, which can express a state of being, the act of becoming, linear movement, behavior, possession, etc. will appear multiple times throughout Louw & Nida, listed under those various semantic domains.

If we were to show All text by default whenever you amplify to Louw & Nida, you might be misled into thinking that the first meaning listed is the only meaning. Because of the way Louw & Nida is arranged, the first meaning listed may not even be the primary meaning of the word. So when we created Louw & Nida, we actually set a flag which tells Accordance to show only the hit Articles after you amplify. That way, someone new to Louw & Nida can easily see that there is more than one entry for the word they wanted to look up.

Now, what if you want to see each entry for that word in its surrounding context? After all, the whole point of Louw & Nida's arrangement is to show you related words within a given semantic domain. To see the surrounding context, simply choose All text from the Show pop-up menu. Because Accordance recycles windows, you only need to change this setting once. The next time you amplify to Louw & Nida, the window will update to show the new word while preserving your All text setting. Of course, if you close the window and then amplify to Louw & Nida later, a new window will open with the Show pop-up set to Articles.

In this way, we try to build our modules so that they deliver the results of a search in a way that makes sense and is not misleading. It's not many tools that we set to show Articles by default after an amplify, but there are a few which make more sense that way. That's just one example of the kind of thought which goes into the development of each Accordance module, as well as the kind of flexibility provided by the Show pop-up menu.

Determining What Gets Displayed

2008-04-02T07:55:00.002-05:00

One of the fundamental design elements of the Accordance interface is the ability to determine how the results of a search are displayed. For example, when you do a word search in a Search window, Accordance displays only those verses which contain the word or phrase you were searching for. The advantage of this view is that you can quickly scan the results of a search, without having to scroll past all the surrounding context.

There may be times, however, when you prefer to have your hit verses displayed with a little more context. The Add context pop-up menu in the More options section lets you choose to view a certain number of verses on either side of the hit verse, or to view the hit verses in the context of the entire text.

This concept is pretty easy to grasp when dealing with Bible texts, but did you know you have similar display options for tools? The Show pop-up menu lets you choose how much of the surrounding context you want to see.

For most tools, the Show pop-up menu is set to All Text. This means that when you do a search, the entire text of the tool is displayed, and the hit paragraphs are bookmarked. To advance to the next hit, you would click the down Mark button.

The advantage of viewing the entire text of a tool is that nothing is hidden from view. But there may be times when you want to focus on your search results without having to scroll past the surrounding context.

For example, let's say I want to find all the quotations in Gathered Gold that mention "courage." I search the Content field for the word "courage" and get a variety of quotes in different articles. With the Show pop-up menu set to All text, I need to jump from hit to hit using the Mark button.

If I want an easy way to scan all the quotes that were found, I need only change the Show pop-up menu to Paragraphs:

If I want to see which articles these quotes come from, I can choose Add Titles, which basically shows the hit paragraphs plus the titles of the articles which contain those paragraphs.

Finally, the Articles option lets me see the complete text of any article which contains a hit (as opposed to just the titles).

In this way, I can control how much of the text I deal with at any given time. For example, if I want to print out all the quotes on courage, I can just show the hit paragraphs and print. If your only option was to view the text in its entirety, you would have to jump to each hit paragraph, copy and paste that quote into a word processor, and then print the word processing document you created. By giving you the flexibility to adjust the display to your needs, Accordance makes it easier to work with the information you find.

No Foolin' . . . Serious Savings in April

2008-04-01T09:18:00.001-05:00

No, it's not an April Fool's joke. This month, we're offering a sale on all our primary collections: The Library, the Scholar's Collection, the Catholic Collection, and the Jewish Collection. If you've been waiting to buy one of these packages, now's the time to do it.

We're also offering a substantial discount on the Context of Scripture, which is this month's featured module.

So after you're done reading about such revolutionary new products as the iPod Nada, be sure to take advantage of the "serious" savings we're offering. :-)

Apostles and Apostrophes

2008-03-27T08:29:00.003-05:00

It sounds a little like some new fantasy role-playing game, but the title of this post actually refers to an interesting search someone recently presented me with. He wanted to search an untagged English text for the plural possessive apostles', and he couldn't figure out how to do it.

By default, Accordance ignores case and apostrophes for purposes of searching. Thus, a search for sons' will find Sons, sons, Son's, son's, Sons', and sons'. If I want to find a specific form, like son's, I simply need to use the equals sign (=), like this: =son's.

But if I want to find a possessive plural, like sons' or apostles', placing the equals sign before those words will not work. If I try to search for =sons', the word list comes up to indicate that this word does not exist.

But it does exist! In Genesis 6:18, most translations have the phrase "your sons' wives." Yet if I try to do an exact search for sons' I get an error. What's going on here?

Whenever we create an Accordance module, we build an index of every word in the text. The list of words in this index is what comes up in the Select Words dialog box whenever you try to enter a word which is not in the text. When the program used to build this index runs across a word followed by an apostrophe, like sons' or apostles', it is ambiguous whether this is an apostrophe which is actually part of the word, or a single quotation mark which is not part of the word. We therefore index these words simply as sons and apostles. If you scan through the word list, you'll notice it has no plural possessives ending in apostrophes.

So how do we find a plural possessive? By searching for a phrase consisting of the plural word followed by an apostrophe. Like this:

The period symbol will find every occurrence of whatever character immediately follows it, and is especially useful for finding punctuation, Greek accents, Hebrew cantillation marks and vowel points, etc. So by entering the word "apostles," a space, and a period followed by an apostrophe, Accordance will find every plural possessive of apostle. Note that because the apostrophe can also be a single quotation mark, this search will also find any occurrence of "apostles" at the end of a quotation enclosed within single quotes.

This has been a pretty drawn out explanation of a relatively simple search, but I wanted you to understand the why as well as the how behind this search for apostles and apostrophes.

Is the Writing on the Wall? Part 2

2008-03-24T13:26:00.002-05:00

On Friday, I began to engage the comments of a blogger who wrote that Accordance has been "left in the dust" by the alpha release of a Mac port of a major Windows Bible program. I don't generally respond to negative reviews here, but I felt it necessary in this case because of this blogger's position as an executive at a Christian publishing house and the misleading nature of his assertions.

In my previous post, I dealt at length with the first of his four reasons that Mac users should opt for the Windows program over Accordance: namely, that it is the "largest provider of digital texts" (true) and "All major Christian publishers are using them as their platform of choice" (simply not true). Today, I want briefly to address the blogger's last three assertions.

His second assertion is that Accordance's historical advantages in terms of original language study have been practically eliminated by this other program's more recent efforts and offerings. That is something users must decide for themselves, and I'll leave it to those who have tried both programs' original language capabilities to make those comparisons. I will simply point out that there are plenty of people who specialize in original language study who would strongly disagree with this blogger's assessment. I would also point out that Accordance is not standing still. Some groundbreaking original language features are slated for the next version of Accordance.

The blogger's third reason for recommending that Mac users eschew Accordance is Accordance's "clunky" interface and failure to keep up with the "evolving Mac interface." I'm really not sure what that means, since Accordance was the first Bible program for OS X, and since we have systematically added support for Aqua interface standards and such OS X technologies as Quartz rendering, OpenGL, Services, Widgets, multiple users, Universal Binary (coming very soon), etc.

I have looked at the Mac alpha to which this gentleman has compared Accordance, and saw nothing particularly Mac-like about the interface. Most of the interface conventions follow a web-browser model rather than anything specific to the Mac, and at least some of the interface widgets are carried over directly from the Windows product rather than replaced with Aqua controls. To be fair, it is an alpha release, and the interface may well change dramatically. My point is simply that this blogger's statements about interface make little sense to me.

Now, as a long-time user of this other Bible program, I can certainly understand this gentleman finding Accordance's radically different interface approach to be disconcerting. Any time you have to adjust to a new way of doing things, the new way can feel awkward and clumsy, even if it is actually more streamlined and efficient.

I worked in an office way back in the days of Windows 3.1, and I was surprised to find our secretary complaining about how "clunky" Word for Windows was in comparison to WordPerfect for DOS! This woman had been using WordPerfect for years and knew every arcane alt-ctrl-function key combination by heart. Now all of a sudden she was digging through menus trying to find out how to italicize text. Although most would agree that the menu-driven interface was easier (heck, even the keyboard shortcuts were simpler!), it was clunky to her. The same thing is true for most Windows users who switch to the Mac. They struggle with the differences and find themselves thinking of the Mac as "clunky."

That's not to say that the Accordance interface can't be improved. It certainly can. But if the Accordance interface is judged by how much it is or is not like another program with which a user is more familiar, Accordance will always suffer in the comparison.

This blogger's final reason for recommending his readers choose this other program over Accordance is that it is the only program which offers certain Lutheran resources, such as those published by his employer. This point is hard to argue with, but the reasoning behind it is strikingly circular. If the publishing house has chosen to work exclusively with one Bible software program, then of course that program will offer more of those materials! Conversely, this one real advantage could easily be removed if that company would also choose to license its materials for use with Accordance. As this blogger has himself written, "competition is a good thing." Publishers can choose to squelch competition by deciding which Bible software program their customers must use, or they can encourage competition by licensing to multiple software developers and letting the users decide which is best.

As it was originally stated, this blogger's case against Accordance sounded particularly damning. Fortunately, most of his assertions were based on erroneous assumptions and hasty conclusions. Ultimately, I know that Accordance is not for everyone, and that some people do prefer other approaches to Bible study. There is certainly room in the Macintosh world for competing and complementary Bible software programs. The appearance of one need not spell the death of another. And where Accordance is concerned, you can rest assured it will not.

Is the Writing on the Wall?

2008-03-21T11:12:00.002-05:00

Recently, a major Windows Bible software developer released a preliminary alpha of their long-awaited Mac version. The reaction so far has been decidedly . . . mixed. On the one hand, recent Mac switchers who have long used this program on the PC are happy to be able to access at least some of the resources they once purchased without having to use Parallels or BootCamp. On the other hand, most people have reported that there is still a long way to go before this program is truly ready for release. In spite of claims that the "wait is finally over," it would appear that, in fact, it is not.

The most curious reaction I've seen is from those who are already predicting the inevitable demise of Accordance. It won't be the first time. In the early nineties there were those who questioned our sanity for developing Bible software for the "shrinking Mac market." In 1997 there were those who told us that Apple would soon go out of business and Accordance would sink with them. Three years ago, when this Windows developer announced it would release a Mac version in six months, some predicted that Accordance would be unable to survive the increased competition. This week, I stumbled across the blog of a book publisher who thinks that Accordance has effectively been "left in the dust" by the release of this alpha.

I'm beginning to feel a bit like Mark Twain when he returned from overseas to discover that most Americans believed him to have died: "Ladies and gentlemen, the rumors of [our] demise have been greatly exaggerated."

Normally, I wouldn't bother addressing these gloomy prophecies of our inevitable demise, but the blogger mentioned above actually gave reasons he thought the writing was on the wall. And since his position may give the impression that he actually knows whereof he speaks, I feel it necessary to point out that most of what he's written is simply inaccurate.

First, he argues that this Windows developer is the largest provider of digital texts. That much is true. But he goes on to say that "All major Christian publishers are using them as their platform of choice." That simply is not true.

By all accounts, I would think Zondervan would qualify as a "major" Christian publisher, yet most of their electronic materials are exclusive to their own Pradis software on the PC, and Accordance on the Mac. That means resources like NIDNTT and NIDOTTE, the Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, Expositor's Bible Commentary, the NIV Study Bible and Student Bible, Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek grammar, etc. are simply not available for the "largest provider of digital texts." Then there's Hendrickson, which as far as I know, has not licensed materials like Spicq's Theological Lexicon of the New Testament, Jenni-Westermann's Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament, or the New International Biblical Commentary to the other guys. And of course, if we're talking about resources which are unique to Accordance, there are also numerous original language resources as well as our unparalleled Bible Atlas, PhotoGuide, and Timeline.

Personally, I would prefer not to list all the resources which are "exclusive" to Accordance, because I've always felt that Bible programs should be judged by their feature sets and interfaces rather than by who offers which resource. It is users who are hurt by being forced to use this program or that program in order to have access to a given book, and it's unfortunate that it has to be that way. This is partly the fault of we software developers, and partly the result of publishers' inability or unwillingness to support every conceivable software format. Thus, while unfortunate, the you-need-this-program-for-this-book syndrome in Bible software is not likely to change any time soon. And when pushed, I guess I'm not above listing the resources you can only get here! :-)

There's another thing which is misleading about this blogger's statement that "All major Christian publishers are using them as their platform of choice." It implies that publishers like IVP, Eerdmann's, Brill, University of Chicago Press, Thomas Nelson, Moody, Biblical Archaeology Society, Jewish Publication Society, Broadman and Holman, and countless others are working exclusively with that other software developer. On the contrary, some of these publishers have licensed their materials to multiple Bible software programs. Many have chosen to work with two, and only two, programs. Happily, Accordance is one of the two.

That means Accordance users don't have to go anywhere else for BDAG, HALOT, the IVP Reference Collection, the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Word Biblical Commentary, NIGTC and Pillar, MacArthur's commentary, the JPS Torah Commentary, Context of Scripture, and numerous other major titles. This year we'll offer more journals, massive commentary sets, and lots of other materials I'm not at liberty to talk about yet. Right now, we have all the new material in the pipeline we can handle.

In short, we've worked very hard to put together a library of materials which exceeds that of nearly every other software vendor, including companies which are many times our size. We have a great relationship with a wide range of publishers, including some who have not shown an interest in working with the "largest provider of digital texts." Just as Microsoft's size and the greater number of software titles available for Windows were not enough to bring about the death of Apple, so another Windows Bible program ported to Mac does not make our demise inevitable. Apple didn't stand still in the face of Windows' hegemony, and we certainly aren't standing still either.

Well, I've spent more time than I had intended answering the first of this particular blogger's points. Ultimately, it all boils down to this: Yes, the other guys have more stuff, but most of the really good stuff we already have. Some of the really good stuff we have and they don't, so the available resources argument cuts both ways. Unfortunately, some really good stuff they currently have exclusive access to; and we may or may not ever be able to license it. For those who need that material, this company's new Mac alpha will be a welcome complement to Accordance. If Mac users showed a penchant for choosing quantity over quality, the fact that the other guys offer "more stuff" might be a serious cause for concern. Since Mac users do value quality, we're not likely to be run out of business any time soon!

Well, that's one leg of the argument this blogger put forward which is decidedly weak. As I wrote above, I hesitate to interact with such comments because I know most of you already see through them. But even the best of us can be misled by a little disinformation, so I felt it necessary to clear up the misconceptions being propagated. I'll deal with the rest of those misconceptions in a follow-up post.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

2008-03-17T08:33:00.001-05:00

It's St. Patrick's Day, and as with Bible Software, there's a lot of "blarney" out there about this celebrated missionary to Ireland. To get at the truth about Patrick, try consulting the following Accordance resources, many of which you may already have.

St. Patrick: The Premier Level of the Library CD-ROM contains a module called St. Patrick which includes a brief biographical sketch of the man, a more detailed biography excerpted from Wylie's History of the Scottish Nation, Patrick's own Confession, and a prayer attributed to Patrick called the "Shield of St. Patrick."

Church History: All levels of the Library include Sketches of Church History, which contains a brief account of church history from the first century to the eve of the Protestant Reformation. The Church History module contains a good overview of Patrick's life.

Christian Biography: Another module contained in all levels of the Library is Wace's Dictionary of Early Christian Biography. This module contains a quite scholarly treatment of the life of Patrick, including an evaluation of the historical authenticity of the various source documents. This module lists Patrick under the Latin name "Patricius," but Accordance takes all that into account for you, so that you can simply search for "Patrick."

Schaff's History: Our Church Fathers add-on CD-ROM contains 38 volumes of the early church fathers in English, along with Philip Schaff's 8-volume History of the Christian Church. Schaff describes the life of Patrick within the wider context of the Christianization of Ireland as a whole.

NIDCC: The Zondervan Scholarly Bible Study Suite CD-ROM includes the New International Dictionary of the Christian Church. This dictionary contains a brief entry on Patrick of Ireland, as well as other Christian figures, movements, and theological and liturgical terms.

As you can see, there are lots of places you can turn for information about historical figures such as Patrick of Ireland. Some of these modules you may already have. Others, such as Schaff's History or the NIDCC, you'll definitely want to consider getting.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Shortcuts and Timesavers, Part 3

2008-03-12T10:46:00.001-05:00

This third installment in our series on shortcuts and timesavers will focus on ways to speed up the entry of a search argument.

Use command-;. The keyboard shortcut command-; will toggle between word searches and verse searches, enabling you to switch to a different kind of searching without lifting your hands from the keyboard.

Use the tab key. The tab key automatically selects the contents of the argument entry box, enabling you to begin typing a new search right away. Any previous search will be replaced with the new search you enter.

Remember shift-command for search commands. If you want to use Boolean commands like AND, OR, and NOT, proximity commands like WITHIN, or more sophisticated stand-alone commands like COUNT or HITS, you'll find them all listed in the Enter Command submenu of the Search menu. Selecting a command from the menu will insert that command into your search argument.

When you look at the menu, you'll notice that they all use keyboard shortcuts involving the shift and command keys. We have reserved the shift-command keyboard combinations for search commands, so that you'll have easy to remember shortcuts for inserting all these commands. If you can remember shift-command, the rest is easy: A for AND, O for OR, N for NOT, W for WITHIN, etc. Okay, B for FOLLOWED BY and U for COUNT are not quite so obvious, but that's only because we had already used F for FIELD and C for CONTENTS. At any rate, using these keyboard shortcuts is the quickest way to enter these commands into your search arguments, and if you can remember shift-command, they'll soon become second nature.

Use the return key. Hitting the return key after you enter a search is the same as clicking the OK button beside the argument entry box: it will cause Accordance to perform the search and display the results. By hitting the tab key to select the argument entry box, typing your search terms and using shift-command shortcuts to insert search commands, and hitting return to perform the search, you can enter and perform most searches without ever taking your hands away from the keyboard.

Your searches are History. The History pop-up just above the OK button keeps a running history of all the searches you've performed. It even remembers whether the search was for verses or for words. Going back to a search you entered previously is as simple as selecting it from the pop-up menu.

Hopefully at least one of these tips will help you streamline and speed up your Accordance workflow.

Wrapping Up the Christmas Challenge Results

2008-03-04T11:49:00.002-05:00

It's now March, and I have yet to deliver on my promised third installment of the Accordance Christmas Challenge Results. For those who have forgotten or who have just begun following this blog, I challenged readers to use Accordance to find out why most modern translations of Luke 2:14 read so differently from the KJV's familiar "peace, good will toward men." Twenty-one people responded to this "challenge" by e-mailing me a description of how they found the answer.

In my first post summarizing the different approaches taken, I pointed out that most users turned to the NET Bible Notes for an easy-to-understand summary of the text-critical issues involved. Others turned to Metzger's Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament for a more in depth answer, while still others compared the actual Greek texts themselves.

In my second post, I summarized some other approaches, such as one user who did a search all for every reference to Luke 2:14, other users who found a helpful discussion in the notes to the Expositor's Bible Commentary, and one user who started out with Accordance and then turned to a favorite print commentary.

In this post, there are a few more approaches to the problem which I need to mention.

One user actually has a workspace with a preset tab for looking up text-critical kinds of issues. In this tab, he has the Nestle-Aland (GNT-T) and Textus Receptus (GNT-TR) Greek texts in parallel, along with the NA27 apparatus. By turning to Luke 2:14, he was able to see the difference between the NA27 and the TR, as well as the manuscript support for each reading.

By the way, this user also mentioned having a tab set up for the purpose of comparing multiple English translations. By setting up these various tabs for different purposes ahead of time, he can turn to them for ready answers to various kinds of questions. This is the kind of forethought which I've been trying to encourage in my recent "Shortcuts and Timesavers" series of posts.

Another user with a preset window arrangement had panes showing three translations, the NET Notes, and Calvin's commentary. Again, all he had to do was look up Luke 2:14 to see the discussion in the NET Notes and Calvin. Interestingly, Calvin does address the textual issue even though he only had access to Greek texts with the "peace, good will toward men" reading. This is because the Latin Vulgate reads "peace to men of good will."

One user, after comparing the Greek texts, was intrigued by this expression "men of good will." He rightly wondered whether these were "men who are characterized by good will, or men who are pleasing to someone else, i.e., to God.; or is it that it is God's pleasure to give peace on earth among men?" He decided to investigate further by control-clicking the Greek word for "good will" and choosing Search for Lemma from the contextual menu. This turned up eight other uses of eudokia in the Greek New Testament, which this user analyzed as follows:

It seems to me to be a quality of the desire or pleasure of one who is doing something, rather than something that is given to others (good will to men) (egs., Ro. 10:1, Eph. 1:5). I found one other use of the word in the genitive case, Php 2:13. In both examples, God is the subject, he is doing something among men, and the sense of the genitive eudokias seems to be that it is according to his (not the men's) good pleasure or will.

The last resource which was used to answer the Christmas Challenge was Mounce's Greek grammar. Two users discovered the following excerpt in Mounce, one by searching for Luke 2:14, and one because he specifically remembered reading the excerpt before:

The Greek manuscripts used to translate the KJV contain εὐδοκία (nominative), whereas the older manuscripts used to translate the modern versions contain εὐδοκίας (genitive)—literally translated, "of good will" or "characterized by [God's] good pleasure." In other words, the peace that the angels sang that belonged to the earth as a result of the birth of Christ is not a generic, worldwide peace for all humankind, but a peace limited to those who obtain favor with God by believing in his Son Jesus (see Romans 5:1). What a difference a single letter can make in the meaning of the text!

If there's anything we've learned from the Christmas Challenge, it is that one letter can indeed make all the difference in the meaning of a passage. Hopefully, you've also learned a few tricks and techniques which will help you use Accordance to solve other "challenges" in the future.

Shortcuts and Timesavers, Part 2

2008-03-03T11:17:00.002-05:00

Last week, we looked at several options in the Preferences which enable you to save time launching Accordance, opening new modules, and closing windows. Today, I want to look at streamlining the way Accordance starts up.

Set up your default Search window. When you first launch Accordance, you get a Search window displaying the entire text of whichever Bible got installed first. If this Bible is not the one you want to start with, you can, of course, change the default. Yet I'm amazed how many people never bother to do this. They'll just change the Bible text every time they launch Accordance! To alleviate this problem, we added a setup assistant for new users in version 7 which will help them set their default Bible; but if you started using Accordance before version 7, the setup assistant doesn't appear (since it would overwrite certain preferences you might have set).

To set your default Bible text, simply go to Preferences and choose the Search window settings. These settings let you specify how you want a new Search window to open. Choose the default Bible in the pop-up labeled Text. You can also set the Search window to open in word search mode rather than verse search mode, specify that you want the More Options section of the window to be open all the time, etc.

Use a default session. Let's say you launch Accordance and your Search window is displaying the right Bible, but you always want your window to display two other Bibles in parallel along with Word Biblical Commentary. You spend a few seconds each time you launch Accordance adding those panes before you start studying. And while we're at it, you always end up looking stuff up in Zondervan's Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible (ZPEB), so it would be nice to have that already open when you start up as well. To do this, simply set up a series of Accordance windows as you would like them to appear when you start up.

For example, in the following screenshot, I've set up a Workspace with two tabs. The first contains three Bibles and Word Biblical Commentary displayed in parallel, while the second contains the ZPEB.

If I want to start up with this arrangement every time, I can simply go to the Preferences, choose General settings, then select Default Session from the pop-up menu in the Default Startup section of the dialog. When I choose this option, the Set Default Session button becomes undimmed. Clicking this button will save the current window arrangement as the default session, and I'll get that window arrangement every time I launch Accordance.

Pick up where you left off. The final option in the Default Startup section of the General Preferences lets you start up Accordance using the "Last Session." This means that you'll start up with whatever windows you had open when you last quit Accordance. This is the option I tend to prefer, since I typically want to go back to whatever I was last working on, and I don't want to bother saving my windows before I quit.

However you choose to have Accordance start up, taking a few minutes to customize your start up can save you a tremendous amount of time and effort.

Shortcuts and Timesavers, Part 1

2008-02-25T13:11:00.001-05:00

Whenever I do a training seminar, it's always interesting to me how excited people get over basic shortcuts and timesavers. Few people will use the construct window to create complex grammatical searches, but everyone likes to save time and streamline their workflow. Here are the first in a series of tips that should help you do just that.

Launch Accordance Faster. Whenever you launch Accordance, you're presented with a splash screen containing the program's lamp logo and copyright information. This stays on the screen for a second or two to give you time to read it. But let's face it, once you've seen it once you don't need to see it again. You can do two things to dismiss this splash screen more quickly so that you can get busy studying the Bible. First, you can simply click on the splash screen to dismiss it as soon as it appears and move straight on to your default startup. Even better, you can turn the splash screen off altogether. To do this, simply go to Preferences, select the General settings, and check the box which reads "Suppress opening splash screen." The next time you launch Accordance, you'll go straight to your default startup and shave a couple seconds off the launch time.

Open new modules faster. Whenever you open a new text or tool in Accordance, a window appears showing the copyright information for that text. Again, you are given a second or two so that you actually have time to read it. This copyright info only appears once per session, so if you open Easton's Bible Dictionary ten times during a session, the copyright info will only appear the first time. Still, if you ask me, that's one time too many. So turn it off by going to the General Preferences and checking the box labeled "Suppress opening text information."

Close windows faster. Whenever you close a window in Accordance, Accordance asks you if you would like to save the contents of that window. If you always decline to save your windows, why be bothered with that annoying alert? Again, you can go to the General Preferences and check "Suppress save warning for all windows."

If you haven't taken advantage of these options, I'd encourage you to do so. I'll cover more timesavers and shortcuts in upcoming posts.

Buried Comments on Blogs

2008-02-07T13:45:00.000-05:00

In contrast to the inflammatory exchanges on some of the news sites which I frequent, the comments on our blog posts are usually pretty tame (for which I am thankful). However, I am surprised when people comment on really old blog posts (yesterday it was an 18 months old post) as if anyone is likely to see or care about the comment. This is OK on the Forum, but not a good idea on the Blog.

Here's the difference: on the Forum when you add a reply to a topic, that topic jumps to the top of the list in that forum, as well as appearing in Today's Posts and New Posts. Thus anyone browsing the Forums is likely at least to scan the title and be aware of your reply.

The Blog, in contrast, is strictly linear. While you can search it for keywords, you cannot look for new comments. Only David and I are notified of each comment posted (and we do try to reply where necessary). Thus the comments to older posts are essentially buried, and there is not a lot of point in adding to them, or continuing a discussion on any post over a month old.

The other advantage to the Forum is that any member can start a new topic, whereas this Blog is more personal, and mainly written by David (when he has time). ;-)

I hope this helps to explain the difference between these sections of our website. Your comments are welcome on both....

The "Pastoral" Epistle of James

2008-02-05T12:01:00.000-05:00

Over the past several weeks, I've been team-teaching an inductive study of the book of James at my church. Basically, our pastor will introduce the passage, then divide the class into groups. Each group will examine a different sub-section of the passage, and then the pastor will close the study by synthesizing and summarizing the various observations which have been made. My role is to help lead one of the groups.

As we've been working through the epistle, we've repeatedly observed James' pastoral perspective. Although this epistle was written to be circulated among a variety of churches (as opposed to one in particular), James exudes pastoral concern for the recipients of his letter. James' epistle is no stale ethical treatise, but a passionate and compassionate written sermon.

All this talk of James' pastoral emphasis reminded me of an interesting pattern I sometimes show when demonstrating Accordance's various graphing tools. I'll search the tagged Greek New Testament (GNT-T) for every imperative verb in the book of James. Then I'll click the Details button and select Analysis Graph from the Graph pop-up menu. I'll choose Person from the pop-up menu at the bottom right, and get a graph comparing James' use of second person imperatives and third person imperatives:

Okay, what's so great about that? Well, you need to understand that second person imperatives are direct commands like "Go!" Third-person imperatives are indirect commands, they tend to be more subtle and roundabout ways of telling someone to do something. We usually would translate a third-person imperative as something like "Let him go." Knowing that, we can look at this chart again and see that James begins and ends his epistle with a higher frequency of third person imperatives, while in the middle he relies on more direct second person imperatives. This gives us a sense of James' pastoral style: start out subtly, end on a good note, and drive your message hard in the middle. The ability to visualize patterns like this is what that innocuous-looking Details button on your search window is all about.