Category: Bible

Greek Isaiah in a Year, Week 1=Isaiah 1:1-25 (with Ottley text)

It is now Week 1 of Greek Isaiah in a Year. Here, for ease of reference, is the schedule for this week along with screenshots of the public domain R.R. Ottley text. (Download all of Ottley’s Book of Isaiah According to the Septuagint as a pdf here.) Sunday, December 2 could perhaps be spent reading all of the week’s text one time, then each day could go more in depth.

Monday, December 3: Isaiah 1:1-5

Isa 1.1-5

Tuesday, December 4: Isaiah 1:6–10

Isa 1.6-10

Wednesday, December 5: Isaiah 1:11–15

Isa 1.11_tempIsa 1.12-15_temp

Thursday, December 6: Isaiah 1:16–20

Isa 1.16-20

Friday, December 7: Isaiah 1:21–25

Isa 1.20-25a_tempIsa 1.25b_temp

See here for more resources and links to texts for Greek Isaiah.

Greek Isaiah in a Year: the reading plan, free online LXX texts, and more resources

Isaiah

The beginning of Greek Isaiah in a Year is nigh upon us. There are more than 100 people participating via Facebook, and others besides. This post compiles the reading plan, some texts of Greek Isaiah, and other resources. I’ll be adding to this post as often as I can.

The reading plan

Here it is. 5 verses a day (give or take), 5 days a week (Monday through Friday). 12/20/13 update: Here is the reading plan for the 2014 Greek Isaiah in a Year, the Sequel.

Texts of Greek Isaiah

Folks in the group will be reading whatever Greek texts they have available. My initial foray into Greek Isaiah has suggested that Codex Alexandrinus (A) is a better text than Codex Vaticanus (B) for this particular book. Moisés Silva writes, “While this important manuscript [Vaticanus=B] preserves an excellent text for most books of the LXX, it is less trustworthy in the case of Esaias [Isaiah].” R.R. Ottley and Ken M. Penner, both linked below, agree. Ottley bases his work on Alexandrinus, writing, “In the Book of Isaiah… it is thus quite allowable to suggest that B falls below its usual standard, relative or absolute.”

Without further ado, then, some texts to consider, and where to find them:

Rahlfs LXXIsaiah in Rahlfs LXX (German Bible Society, eclectic/critical text). Find it free, legal, and online here. Note that due to copyright restrictions I cannot post the Rahlfs text myself publicly, but you can access the whole thing from the site above. The Rahlfs edition has been called “semi-critical,” so that the textual notes in his apparatus are not extensive. But he does not base his text only on one manuscript.

Isaiah LXX OttleyR.R. Ottley’s Book of Isaiah According to the Septuagint (based on Codex Alexandrinus). See the archive.org site with description here. Or download a compressed pdf (17 MB instead of 57 MB) here from my site. (Thanks to Jim Darlack for combining both volumes 1 and 2 into a single pdf!) Volume 2 has the full Greek text with Ottley’s notes in an apparatus. This commentary is a gold mine of information about the Greek text, the Hebrew it translated, and more.

Isaiah in Swete’s edition (based on Codex Vaticanus). That’s here.

Isaiah in the NETS (New English Translation of the Septuagint), with an introduction by Moisés Silva. This is the leading English translation of the Septuagint. Find the pdf of Isaiah with intro here.

Isaiah by ZieglerThe Göttingen edition of Isaiah. Whereas everything above is available for free online, Göttingen is not. It’s here on Amazon (affiliate link) and here at the publisher’s site. It’s not cheap, but you may be able to find a used edition somewhere. This edition, edited by Joseph Ziegler, is also available from Accordance Bible Software as a single volume here, and from Logos Bible Software as part of a larger collection here. (If it’s Göttingen you’re using, I’ve begun a short primer on how to read and understand the Göttingen editions, their apparatuses, etc.)

More resources for Greek Isaiah

Ken M. Penner, who is writing the Isaiah volume for the Brill Septuagint Commentary series, graciously shared some of his notes with the Biblical Greek Forum last year. See here and here for detailed notes and discussion.

Do you like vocabulary? Like it or not, Septuagint vocabulary is more expansive than New Testament vocabulary. Here is a list (pdf) of all the words in Isaiah that occur 100 times or less in the Septuagint, sorted by frequency. Here is that same list sorted alphabetically. My friend, co-worker, and fellow churchgoer M. Ryan has put the vocabulary list into Quizlet.

The Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa) from the Dead Sea Scrolls is available online for viewing. When you hover over a part of the scroll, an English translation pops up. The scroll is in Hebrew, and is close to the Masoretic Text (MT) of Isaiah, which you can access here, if you want to look at the Hebrew of Isaiah at any point.

Did I miss anything? Please let me know in the comments, and I’ll keep this page updated. Happy reading! Before Monday I will post again with the coming week’s schedule and text.

Biblical Studies Carnival (November)

carnival

Bob MacDonald hosts this month’s Biblical Studies Carnival here. What, you thought blogs were so 2008? Well, they were. But they’re pretty 2012, too. Bob compiles a long list of blog posts in the field of Biblical Studies from the month of November.

I’m hosting the carnival next month, so if you know of good links I should include (anything that will be posted in December), please feel free to let me know.

Speed reading in another language?

Daniel R. Streett has some good thoughts on reading Greek, summarizing some information presented at the Society of Biblical Literature meeting last week:

For proficient reading, automaticity is necessary. In SLA [second language acquisition], automaticity means automatic recognition and understanding of a word or phrase. It actually happens involuntarily, without intervening analysis. It is not subject to introspection.

He continues to note that “reading is hearing.” He says:

Of course, the only way you can “hear” the words in your mind is to have heard them before in real-life, communicative situations where they were used in a comprehensible context.

I don’t disagree with this post (read the rest here). I do find it interesting, though, that one of the tenets of speed reading is to silence that inner voice you would otherwise hear when you read. Streett is not talking about speed reading, but wouldn’t it be great to get to the point of speed reading even in another language? It’s hard enough for me in my first language!

In the meantime, I’m getting stoked to start reading through Greek Isaiah (slowly) in less than a week and perhaps the Greek New Testament (at a bit of a quicker rate) starting January 1.

Anybody out there proficient in speed reading in a second language?

Resources for reading through Greek Isaiah

One more week until more than 50 folks and I start a read-through of Greek Isaiah! There’s an already active Facebook group page for the endeavor.

One of the readers has been working on the Isaiah volume in the Brill Septuagint Commentary Series. He’s graciously shared links with the group to some of his notes on Greek Isaiah, which he posted in the “B-Greek” Biblical Greek group last year.

Look here and here to see what Ken Penner has compiled. I’m really looking forward to his input and guidance as we work through Isaiah.

Read through Greek New Testament in a Year?

When I had a chance to ask N.T. Wright one question in January, I asked him how to improve my Greek. His reply: “Read the text. Read the text. Read the text.”

I decided not long ago to read through the Greek version of Isaiah in a year, starting one week from today. Amazingly, more than 50 people have already joined the corresponding Facebook group; we will be reading together.

On a related note, there are just 260 chapters in the Greek New Testament. This means that, even cutting the longer chapters in half, one can read through the New Testament (in Greek or any other language) with just a chapter a day.

That seems doable. Already in the Greek Isaiah Facebook group and through this blog, I’ve been able to correspond with folks who have read the Greek New Testament in a year. All of them have described it as a rich and rewarding experience.

So I’m not sure I’ll commit to reading all of the Greek NT in 2013, but I’m at least going to give it a shot. For anyone interested in doing the same, Lee Irons has a helpful two-page briefing on how he goes about it. He’s posted reading plans in years past, too (see here for 2012). He recommends using the Reader’s Edition of the Greek New Testament in the image above, which is my favorite Greek Bible for reading.

If anyone reading this post wants to leave a comment as to your experience with reading through the New Testament (Greek or otherwise) in a year, I’d love to hear about it. I do know that if I take it on, it will be to improve my Greek, yes, but primarily it will be a devotional exercise in which I seek to more fully immerse myself in God’s Word.

Greek Isaiah in a Year: Facebook group to join

I plan to read through the Greek version of Isaiah this coming year, starting December 2. (Here’s a vocab list I’ll use to help.)

If you want to join along, Greek Isaiah in a Year on Facebook is the central place for discussion, helpful files, questions, companions, etc. Come join in!

Vocabulary list for Greek Isaiah (via Accordance 10)

I’ve already gotten some good response to my last post about reading through Greek Isaiah in a year. More on that again soon.

For now, to whet all our appetites, I’ve just been able to use Accordance Bible software to generate this list.

VOCABULARY IN LXX ISAIAH (Rahlfs) (PDF)

It lists all the words in Isaiah, with their glosses (brief “definitions”), that occur 100 times or less in the Septuagint (Rahlfs). It also shows how many times that word occurs in Isaiah itself.

I used a multi-step process to compile this from Accordance. I’m sure there’s a more elegant way to do what I did, but I am happy to have this list, and know I’ll use it for less than frequently occurring LXX vocabulary when reading through Isaiah, starting December 2.

UPDATE: If you want to join along, here’s the central place on Facebook for discussion, helpful files, questions, companions, etc.

Reading through the Greek of Isaiah in a year

Here is a well put together reading plan for going through the Greek (“Septuagint”) of Isaiah in a year. I like that, as blog author John Meade writes, “The key is working a little each day for many days.”

So this (PDF) is the plan I want to start using, beginning with the new year. (UPDATE: This is the plan we’ll use (PDF download), with slightly different versification than Meade’s plan.) And by “new year,” of course I mean when Advent begins (the start of the church calendar year), December 2.

If anyone wants to join me… let me know in the comments or by emailing me through this form.

UPDATE: Go here for a vocabulary list to aid reading in the LXX of Isaiah.

UPDATE 2: If you want to join along, here’s the central place on Facebook for discussion, helpful files, questions, companions, etc.

Which Bible software program should I buy? Comparison of BibleWorks, Accordance, and Logos

 

Which Bible software program should I buy? It’s an important question for the student of the Bible, especially if she or he is on a limited budget. Having now reviewed BibleWorks 9 (here), Accordance 10 (here) and Logos 4 (here) and now 5 (here), I want to compare the three programs and offer some suggestions for moving forward with Bible software.

There are some free programs available for download (E-Sword, for example), but my sense has been that if you want to have something in-depth, you’ll probably want to consider BibleWorks, Accordance, and Logos.

If you’re in the market to buy Bible software, then, here’s how I recommend proceeding.

 

1. Think through why you want the Bible software.

 

I don’t mean in an existential sense; I mean: for what do you want to use Bible software? Personal Bible study? As a means to access electronic commentaries for sermon preparation? To do in-depth word studies in the original languages? To compare the Greek and the Hebrew texts of the Old Testament? For complex syntactical searches? To help generate graphics and handouts for a Sunday School class you teach? Some or all of the above?

Similarly, are there things you know you don’t need? Are you interested only in studying the Bible in English (or Spanish, or French…) but not necessarily in Greek and Hebrew? Are maps and graphics something you can easily access elsewhere? Is having a large library of electronic commentaries not a value?

I highlight these considerations because the answer to the question, “Which Bible software program should I buy?” is: It depends. It depends on why and for what you want Bible software. More on that below.

 

2. Explore BibleWorks, Accordance, and Logos on their own merits.

 

Get a sense of what each can do by visiting their respective Websites (BibleWorks here, Accordance here, and Logos here). Look through those sites for videos which will let you see the programs in action. You can also look through the full reviews I’ve done of BibleWorks here, Accordance here, and Logos here (v.4) and here (just-released v. 5). In these reviews I look at multiple features and resources in each program.

BibleWorks is a PC program. You can run it on a Mac, though. This either requires a separate Windows license (= more $$), where it runs nicely in Parallels, etc., or you can use a “native” Mac version of it. The former option is costly and requires a lot of your Mac machine (though you get a fully-functinoing BibleWorks on a Mac that way). I can’t yet recommend the latter option, where it is in “Public Preview,” since the “native” Mac version looks only native to about two Mac operating systems ago… I expect BibleWorks will make improvements here, but I haven’t found BibleWorks on my Mac to be as functional as I’d like. It’s excellent on a PC, though.

Accordance is a Mac program. They have announced that they’ll introduce Accordance for Windows in 2013, and they have said that they are previewing that at SBL/AAR this week. (I understand that you can run Accordance on Windows now via an emulator, per the above link, but that it’s not 100% functional in the same way Accordance on Mac is.) Accordance is silky smooth–if I may call a Bible software program that. It is very Mac-like, which is a goal and priority of Accordance. Using it is truly enjoyable. Accordance also has an iOS app, which I haven’t used, as I do not own an iPhone, iPad, iOverbrain, etc. It looks like a stripped-down version of Accordance, but it’s free. If I had an iPhone, that would definitely be on there.

Logos works on PC and Macs. It’s also cloud-based, so that you can sync your work in Logos across computers, platforms, mobile devices, on the Internet using Biblia, and so on. Logos for the Mac feels fairly Mac-like, but not to the extent that Accordance does. However, being able to switch between a PC and a Mac in Logos and have everything sync via the cloud is a great feature. I noted in a Logos review recently how I was working in Logos 5 on a PC, then the next day opened Logos on my Mac to the exact same window I had just closed on a PC the day before.

 

3. Think about what your budget is.

 

You should actually probably do this before you check out the individual programs a whole lot–just to make sure you don’t end up spending money you don’t really have! Sometimes you’ll see a price tag associated with how much a base package would cost you if you bought all the resources in print. But this really doesn’t matter if you wouldn’t buy many of those resources in the first place (per point #1 above).

BibleWorks does not have packages, per se–it’s just the program and all its contents for $359. You can also purchase add-on modules in BibleWorks. Accordance has various collections (beginning with the basic Starter Collection at $49.99), which you can compare here. They sell various other products, as well. These base packages had been a little difficult to wade through and make sense of in Accordance 9, but the August release of Accordance 10 greatly simplified things. Logos also sells various base packages, starting at $294.95 retail price for their Starter package, and many other products. Note also that Accordance and Logos both offer discounts to academicians, ministers, etc.

 

4. Compare.

 

Keep firmly in mind the purposes for which you want Bible software as you read the below. But I will offer some general insights.

 
Speed

BibleWorks (PC) and Accordance (Mac) take the cake here. I wrote here about the sluggishness of Logos 4 for searching. That’s improved somewhat in Logos 5. Where BibleWorks stands out is in its Use tab, new in BibleWorks 9. Via the Use tab, you can instantaneously see all the uses of a given word in an open version just by hovering over that word. I’m not aware of anything comparable in Accordance or Logos, and it’s a mind-blowing feature. Accordance, however, returns search results as quickly as BibleWorks, and starts up faster. I continue to be impressed with the speed of both BibleWorks and Accordance. I’m glad for the improvements in Logos, but hope they’ll continue to improve search speed.

 
Package for the Price

Had I written this post six months ago, the no-brainer answer would be that BibleWorks is best. For $359 you get everything listed here.

Comparable in Accordance is the Original Languages Collection for $299 (full contents compared here). This collection six months ago was not really comparable to BibleWorks, but with the release of Accordance 10, Accordance significantly improved on and expanded what’s available in its Original Languages Collection. Someone wanting Bible software for detailed original languages work could get a lot of what they need in Accordance for under $300. However, it remains true that you get more in BibleWorks that you have to pay extra for in Accordance (like the Center for NT Textual Studies apparatus and images, Philo, Josephus, Church Fathers, the Tov-Polak MT-LXX Parallel, etc.). That’s true compared with Logos, too.

Logos 5 is a little more difficult for me to size up here. In Logos 4 there was an Original Languages Library for $400 or so that was at least comparable to BibleWorks and Accordance (and included the 10-volume Theological Dictionary of the New Testament). Based just on package for the price, I still would have picked BibleWorks over Logos, but the release of Logos 5 has seen a restructuring of base packages that seems less than ideal for something like original language study. They do now have the Theological Lexicon of the OT and of the NT in the “Bronze” package, but the nearly $300 Logos Starter package doesn’t include the necessary and basic lexica for studying the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, and the Greek New Testament.

This is where what you want out of a Bible software program should dictate which way you go. Are you a seminarian with a primary interest in original language exegesis, with a preference for commentaries in print? If so, I recommend Accordance on Mac or BibleWorks on PC. Accordance also has good commentaries as add-ons (not much here for BibleWorks), but Logos has a large amount of digitized books, and tends on the balance (though not always) to run cheaper than Accordance for the same modules. (The cheapest BDAG/HALOT lexicon bundle is in BibleWorks.) But the larger library in Logos is perhaps at the expense of program speed, so you’ll want to weigh options here. If you preach weekly and don’t make much reference to Greek and Hebrew, wanting extensive commentaries instead, Logos could be the way to go for you.

 
Customizability and Usability

Here I favor Accordance of the three. BibleWorks is probably the least configurable. There are four columns in BibleWorks 9, but you can’t move things around much, whereas in Accordance and Logos you can put tabs/zones/resources more or less where you want them. Logos is plenty customizable, but the Workspaces feature in Accordance sets it apart from Logos. In Accordance you can save distinct Workspaces and have multiple ones open at a time. You can save “Layouts” in Logos, but from all I can see, you can only have one layout open at once. This has often slowed my study. You can detach tabs into separate windows with Logos, but for working on multiple projects at once (e.g., an NT use of the OT Workspace, an LXX Workspace, a Hebrew OT Workspace, an English Bible Study workspace, etc.), Accordance is tops.

For the record, both for my graduate studies and message preparation, Accordance is the first program I have open. Part of this is due to the fact that I prefer to use a Mac. (Within the last year I bought a cheap PC laptop just so I could keep using BibleWorks, which is still excellent.) But the multiple Workspaces option makes Accordance great for easy day-to-day use across multiple kinds of tasks. It’s been interesting to watch myself mouse over to the Accordance icon in my dock on my Mac before either Logos or BibleWorks.

 
Support

This is probably a toss-up. I’ve had positive interactions with everyone I’ve contacted in BibleWorks, Accordance, and Logos. All have active and helpful user forums. All offer help files and how-to videos. (BibleWorks has the most extensive set of videos.) I was surprised to see how many how-to videos and manuals you could buy from Logos, but many of these have been produced by approved third-parties. I don’t think you should have to pay more money to learn how to use a program you already paid for.

 
Note-taking

One thing I haven’t extensively reviewed is the note-taking features, which are available in BibleWorks, Accordance, and Logos. I particularly appreciate being able to highlight passages (which then stay highlighted every time I open that resource) in resources in both Accordance and Logos. Logos has an easier one-keystroke shortcut to highlight selected text, but there’s a delay in doing so; Accordance is faster here. But back when I was using only BibleWorks, I was concerned about saving notes in a file format that wouldn’t be accessible across computers and platforms, so all my notes were always just in Word or TextEdit (.rtf). I’ve continued this practice as I’ve begun using Accordance and Logos, so that any writing I generate is not confined within a given program.

 

In sum…

 

So, which Bible software program should you buy? It depends on why you want Bible software and the uses you’ll have for it. If you’re looking to build and access a large digital library, no one denies that Logos is the leader in that regard. It is also only Logos that connects to the cloud to sync across multiple devices. If you’re looking to really delve into the original languages, though, and do complex and fast searches, Accordance for Mac and BibleWorks for PC are preferable. (Logos 5 has offered significant improvement from Logos 4 in working closely with original language texts, but the search speed still needs to be improved.) BibleWorks gets you the most bang for your buck by including as many resources, versions, lexica, grammars, etc. as it does, but the interface and customizability of Accordance makes the latter more enjoyable and a little easier to use.

When it comes to the BibleWorks vs. Accordance vs. Logos question, I think at bottom each is a solid software program and good decision. You can’t go badly wrong with any of them. In fact, I now use all three on an almost daily basis. (Thanks again to each software company for the review copies.) But insofar as potential users may not want to have to purchase or learn how to use all three programs, I hope the above reflections are of use.

 

Next time…

 

I will post one more time in the near future along these same lines. In particular I plan to compare Septuagint study across BibleWorks, Accordance, and Logos. I’ve covered this in each of my individual reviews already, but I’ll look at the Tov-Polak MT-LXX Parallel database in particular in each of the three, so you can see in more detail how each software program handles the same basic resource. In that post I will also write about more complex search features in BibleWorks, Accordance, and Logos, assessing how they compare.

(2015 UPDATE: That would-be blog post ended up as a published article in a journal of Septuagint studies. See more here.)

If you’ve made it this far (more than 2,000 words later), congratulations! Please feel free to leave me a comment or contact me if you are seriously considering Bible software and want to ask any questions about anything I’ve reviewed… or haven’t covered in my reviews.

January 2014 UPDATE: I have begun reviewing the Bible Study app from Olive Tree. You can see those reviews gathered here.