As you probably know, I’m an ‘information architect’ at Logos Bible Software. We recently (today!) released Logos Bible Software 5. There are lots of bug fixes and new features and stuff, but the big deal with Logos 5 are the new data sets that allow for examination of the scripture like we’ve never done before. I think it is a huge step forward, though admittedly I might be biased.

This is data we’ve been working on for a long time (some of it before we even released Logos 4 in 2009, believe it or not). The data sets I’m most excited about include:

• Biblical Referents: So, you’ve always been able to search for “Jesus” and “said” and find where Jesus says something. But that’s only where the word “Jesus” is explicitly used. What about when it is “he said”? Biblical Referents solve that problem. We’ve analyzed the Hebrew Bible and Greek New Testament and resolved these sorts of things. Because the data is annotated on the original languages, that means it bubbles up all over the place through our linking of the original languages to modern translations.
• Bible Sense Lexicon: This is just the start of a massive project that will allow for incredible things. If you’re familiar with WordNet, then this is like WordNet for the Bible. We are analyzing every word (nouns, adjectives, verbs, , determining sense used, and annotating them. Further, we have a cross-linguistic approach that allows us to map from Hebrew to Greek, which means that we can find when a sense occurs in the Bible, not just in the NT or the OT. Right now we have an initial annotation of nouns in both Hebrew and Greek, and are starting work on verbs. It is very cool.
• Clause Search: Clause search allows one to search for clauses and clause components. It integrates several data sets: Biblical People, Places and Things, Referents, Syntax data, morphological data, and makes it all searchable bounded to a clause. Search for “subject:Jesus verb-lemma:θεραπεύω” (the verb for “to heal”) and find everything. Even stuff like “he healed them” (Mt 4.24, ESV).
• Reported Speech: Sometimes it is handy to know who or what is speaking. We have annotated “reported speech” through the whole of the Bible. One way this is viewable is through a visual filter for “Speaker Labels” in Bibles with reverse interlinears.
• Roots in Greek NT and Hebrew Bible. Roots (both Greek and Hebrew) are integrated with original language texts and reverse interlinears. This has been a much-requested feature over the years, and we’re glad to finally make it available to users!

Here's a video from YouTube that describes many of these features.

On top of this, we have new resources. There are a few I am personally very happy to have see the light of day in that I either produced it myself or was the lead editor. Here they are.

The Lexham English Septuagint. The Lexham English Septuagint (LES) is a new translation of the Septuagint (LXX, the Greek version of the Old Testament) based on Henry Barclay Swete's edition of the Septuagint, The Old Testament in Greek According to the Septuagint. Based on the work of the popular The Lexham Greek-English Interlinear Septuagint, the LES provides a literal, readable and transparent English edition of the Greek Old Testament, which was the edition of the Old Testament writings most popularly used during New Testament times and in the early church.

There was a small but stellar group that did the primary editing of the translation, including myself, Ken M. Penner, Israel Loken, Michael Aubrey and Isaiah Hoogendyk.

One of the things I really like about the LES is the approach to proper nouns. Septuagint Lexicons typically do not handle proper nouns. Septuagint translations typically transliterate all but the most important (e.g. David, Jerusalem, Moses). What this means is that the names most English readers are familiar with (from translations of the Hebrew Bible) are not used in LXX translations. So it is hard to track who does what. Read something like First Chronicles, and you’re completely lost because the majority of the names are not familiar at all.

In the LES, we were able to use, where possible, names familiar to those who have only worked with English translations of the Hebrew Bible and the apocryphal books. So Reuben is Reuben, Manasseh is Manasseh. Cities use names you’re probably expecting (e.g. Gibeah, not Gabaa). However, because the differences in spelling/representation are sometimes insightful, we’ve footnoted the transliterated form of proper nouns — where the transliteration is different from the familiar representation — so the information is not lost.

The Apostolic Fathers in English (with reverse interlinear). This is a new translation of the writings of the Apostolic Fathers in English. It is a follow-up to my Apostolic Fathers Greek-English Interlinear. Here’s an excerpt from the introduction:

This translation is not meant to replace either Holmes' or Ehrman's editions in print. Instead, my goal in creating a new English translation was to create a tighter and more transparent relationship with the underlying Greek text. As this translation has its genesis with my Apostolic Fathers Greek-English Interlinear, it began with a direct relationship with every word and phrase of the underlying Greek. From here, the English translation was reviewed and edited to become more readable yet still retain its relationship with the Greek text. Finally, using tools provided by Logos Bible Software, the English text was completely re-aligned with the Greek text, word by word, phrase by phrase. When the English text is read with the reverse interlinearized Greek text displayed in Logos Bible Software, the result is an English translation that shows exactly where each word and phrase has its origin.

This level of alignment becomes more useful in reading and particularly when studing how words and structures found in the New Testament are used in contemporary literature. And this, to my mind, can help the writings of the Apostolic Fathers play a larger role in one's study of the New Testament and Septuagint, which is my larger goal.

I’m super-excited about this one too. It has been hard to not talk about as it has been complete for almost a year!

Anyway, to sum it up, I’m excited about Logos 5!

You may think “Huh?! Finally?!! I just heard about Logos4!” but Logos4 has been my life for at least the past 18 months. But now I can talk about it to whomever I please. Logos4 is public. Released. Not a beta. You can buy it now. You can cross-grade, upgrade, or flat-out buy it today. Download the whole thing if you want. That’s pretty awesome.

If you haven’t heard, please check out the Logos4 web site. Oh, and don’t forget about the iPhone app, either. Yes, there is a Logos iPhone app. I’m not making this up.

Logos4 is a complete change. It is new from the bottom up. It does things differently. I’ve fallen in love with the windowing system, rule-driven collections mean my collections can finally keep up with my library, floating windows are a dream on multi-monitor setups, and there are a ton of new resources too.

Instead of all that stuff (which others will cover, I’m sure), I just wanted to point to a few things dear to my heart in Logos4.

• The Apostolic Fathers Reverse Interlinear
• Cascadia Syntax Graphs of the New Testament
• Templates for Syntax Searching
• Grammatical Relationships in Bible Word Study
• Facilitate Serendipitous Discovery

1: The Apostolic Fathers Reverse Interlinear. Logos4 has a great selection of reverse interlinears (OT and NT for ESV, NRSV, NKJV, KJV, NASB95; an alignment of the LXX and BHS; and the in-progress Lexham English Bible (LEB) is also reverse-interlinearized for the available content [Rom-Rev]). But reverse interlinears aren’t just for Bible text anymore, they can be implemented on non-Bible text as well. Really all that is needed is a text and its underlying source. So a few years back I pitched the idea of having a reverse interlinear of the Apostolic Fathers text (English with underlying Greek; sorry, no Latin). Our first editor was unable to take on the project due to personal circumstances. I wanted this one so much I ended up doing the reverse interlinear alignment myself as a side project! It was fun, and now you can use a reverse interlinear with Greek text outside of the NT.

This brings up another feature that works with all texts that share a common alignment text (or are the alignment text): Something called “Sympathetic Highlighting”. For you Logos old-timers, this is “Navigate to Associated Word” on steroids. Basically, you highlight something in one text, and the other text highlights it too. You can see this above; I’ve highlighted text in the English, the underlying Greek gets highlighted too. This works in the OT and NT. Highlight something in the ESV and see how the NASB95 treats it. Even better: Highlight something in the LXX and see it highlight in the BHS (!)

2: Cascadia Syntax Graphs of the New Testament. If you’ve followed Logos at all over the past five years, you know that we’ve been very innovative in applying syntactic analyses (analysis above the word level) to the Hebrew Bible and Greek New Testament. Logos4 continues this innovation with the Cascadia Syntax Graphs of the New Testament. These are based on work done by the Asia Bible Society in their Greek Syntactic Treebank Project. They use simple, approachable terms (like “Subject”, “Indirect Object”, “Clause”, “nominal phrase”, “prepositional phrase”, etc.) for their structures.

The Syntax Search dialog has been completely revamped as well. For example, below is a query for the Cascadia Syntax Graphs that locates where a prepositional phrase has φοβος as its object:

In comparison with LDLS3 (and OpenText.org), Cascadia needs fewer properties, uses more approachable terminology, and is conceptually easier in structure.

3: Templates for Syntax Searching. As much as I love syntax searching, I’m enough of a realist to know that it is a great feature with a very limited audience. Most folks just want to know when something is the subject, or the object, or where it occurs as the main verb. Or even perhaps what sorts of adjectives modify the word. Templates provide this. From the syntax search, hit the query drop-down. Templates are on the left. Select one, and go. Let’s say I want to find where the verb φοβεω is negated (so, “do not fear” instead of “fear”):

Click “Go” when the word is there (select from the list or hit enter), and you’re doing a syntax search.

Alternately, you could open the desired template for the desired database from the syntax search editor. This would open the actual structure to search. From here, just fill in as necessary.

4: Grammatical Relationships in Bible Word Study. The primary difference between v3 and v4 in Grammatical Relationships is speed. In Logos4, it’s faster. Much faster. Like, real fast. But there’s this new section that shows up (where applicable) called Preposition Use. This is where the study word is the object of the preposition. There’s this cool graphic used to help show how the preposition is used. Here is an example with φοβος (fear) as the study word:

Fret not, there’s a Preposition Use chart for Hebrew too.

5: Facilitate Serendipitous Discovery. Go to the command bar. Start to type in “Facilitate”. You should see:

What does it do? Try it. Let me know what you find. Need some background? Try this three-and-a-half year old blog post.

What am I not mentioning?

There’s all sorts of stuff I’m not mentioning, including:

• Scads of new resources available in the new “LE” collections.
• Maps. Awesome maps. Zoomable maps. Linked to dictionaries maps. Linked to the text maps. Linked to Google maps maps.
• Infographics. Images of all sorts. Images in Dictionaries are integrated. Stereoscopic images.
• Customizable Guides. Ever wanted to create your own Passage Guide from a template of options? Now you can. Same for Exegetical Guide and Bible Word Study Guide.
• Passage Analysis. This is cool. OK, I’ll give you a picture of this one:

There is so much other stuff, I’ve just gotta stop now. There is not enough time to mention it all in a blog post. Check it out for yourself.

[Disclaimer: I work for Logos Bible Software and love every minute of it. The links to Logos below are just that, links. I get no commission or brownie points from click-thrus or any sales.]

Logos will be at the national meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society (in Providence, RI, Nov 19-21, 2008) and also at the national meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (in Boston, MA, Nov 21-25, 2008).

The specials mentioned below are only available at these conferences. And I'm not even listing all of them, just the ones that I find interesting and which I think you (my humble reader) may be interested in. There are 12 specials designed for the conferences, I'm only listing three of them below. If you'll be at the conferences, please stop by the booth for more info on all of the conference collections, or to purchase them.

These are awesome collections of top-notch texts useful for Biblical Studies. Listed first is perhaps the best deal you'll ever find on the combination of ICC NT vols and several (33!) very useful JSNTS monographs.

New Testament Studies Bundle (64 Vols.)

• International Critical Commentary (ICC): New Testament (30 vols.)
• Library of NT Studies: JSNTS on the Gospels and Acts (16 vols.)
• Library of NT Studies: JSNTS on Paul (17 vols.)
• Linguistics and NT Interpretation – Black, Barnwell, Levinsohn

Show Only Price  $1,199.95
Show Savings (off Retail): $4,541.45

Advanced Greek Supplement (6 Vols.)

• BDAG
• Grammar of the Greek NT in Light of Historical Research – A. T. Robertson
• Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics – Daniel B. Wallace
• Idioms of the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. – Stanley Porter
• Intermediate NT Greek: A Linguistic and Exegetical Approach – R. A. Young
• Learning the Basics of NT Greek with Workbook – Hadjiantoniou

Show Only Price $299.95
Show Savings (off Retail) $111.91

ANE Studies Bundle (30 Vols.)

• Ancient Near Eastern Texts (ANET) – James Pritchard
• Dictionary of Deities & Demons in the Bible
• Ugaritic Library, 12 vols.
• Writings From the Ancient World, 16 vols. 

Show Only Price $639.95
Show Savings (off Retail): $806.94

As I said, that is only three of the twelve bundles. If you're at the show, be sure to ask about the "Scholar's Reference Bundle" which includes all of ICC, all of WBC, and a few other commentary sets. These are specials on the big stuff that you won't want to miss.

I'd like to see John Hobbins (Ancient Hebrew Poetry), Tyler Williams (Codex), and Chris Heard (Higgaion) blog about what "Selah" means in the Psalms and how it should affect our reading of the Psalms.

But please, nothing over-long or in multiple parts.

Where does this come from? Sometime over the summer I'll be speaking on Psalm 20 at an evening church service, and I'm just curious about how Selah is used there. Sure, I'll read up on it, but I'd be interested to read what these gents might have to say.

Update (2007-06-27): Chris Heard obliges and posts on "Oh! Oh, Selah!". You're awesome, Chris. Thanks. Also note Bob MacDonald in the comments who mentions that selah is sometimes thought to be equivalent to a pause. Bob also points us to his own diagramming of Psalm 20.

Update II (2007-06-27): Though somewhat unrelated, note that Kevin P. Edgecomb (biblicalia) has begun a series to provide 'formal' and 'informal' translations of the Psalms. He's got Psalm 1 & 2 up.

Update III (2007-07-07): John Hobbins obliges as well and posts on "Selah in the Psalms". Thanks, John. Is it just me, or is it refreshing to others when scholars can survey evidence and say, "we really don't know" like John and Chris have. We have clues, certainly (some sort of musical interlude?) but nothing hard-and-fast. And don't worry, John, I'm nowhere near done with the Ella pictures.

I just received a reminder about the SBL / Logos Technology Paper Awards. I'm anxious to see what folks are working on!

The dealine for papers is May 1, 2007 with winners announced at International SBL in Vienna. Here's a blurb for the uninformed:

Logos Bible Software and the Society of Biblical Literature announce two sets of awards for papers that creatively use technology in exploring questions of grammar and syntax in biblical studies: one focusing on the Hebrew Bible, the other on the Greek New Testament. The contests are open to all those engaged in the study of those disciplines, and prizes will be awarded in both areas for student and faculty/professional categories. A total of twelve awards will be given.

There's some decent winnings ($1000 cash, $1000 Logos software credit, and $200 SBL book credit for first place entries (4 available) for winning papers, and lots of chance to win with both student and professional entries for the areas of Hebrew Bible and also Greek New Testament. I'd enter, but Logos employees are not eligible.

Get thee to thine syntax annotations!

Update (2007-03-31): ricoblog reader Tom notes that syntax searching can be difficult to get a grasp on. I agree; the multi-dimensionality of the data alone is a new sort of concept to master in thinking about the Greek New Testament. For me, I've found a deductive method to work. If you are somewhat familiar with NT Greek, begin with a passage you know cold. Compare the syntax graph to what you know of and see mentally when  you examine the text itself. See how the syntax maps the structures you're thinking of. Then, using the graph as a guide, try to reproduce some structures. Start small and general, like a clause component that has the same wordgroup->head term->word (insert the proper lemma) as what you're looking at. Search and tweak until you get your template passage as a hit. Then add new components and tweak to get an idea of how to map the basic structure you already know. "Lather, rinse, repeat" is how I end up describing it. Also, beginning with a passage you know, you could do a Bible Word Study on a word and examine the sorts of things the Grammatical Relationships section returns. Under the hood, that's doing a lot of template-based syntax searching. So that's another way to start to play with syntax data without having to master the search dialog.