Category: Reviews

3 Powerful Ways to Search in Accordance 10

Here are three powerful and creative ways that Accordance 10 allows you to search through its texts and resources. Add these three cool features to the four I highlighted earlier: analytics, the customizable toolbar, the magnify feature, and the one-volume IVP commentary and one-volume Eerdmans dictionary that come with the Starter Collection and higher.

1. Flex Search

Here is how Accordance’s site describes Flex Search, new in Accordance 10:

Flex Search is a new feature of Accordance 10 that finds variations of the words and phrases you search for. Specifically, Flex Search will find all inflected forms of verbs and all singular and plural forms of nouns. This mode also allows words to occur out of order or to have other words in between them.

If I wonder, for example, whether “Jesus wept” might have some other verses similar to it, I type in “jesus weep” in the search bar, make sure it’s set to “Flex Search,” then enter. You can see that in the results below, even though I searched with “weep,” Flex Search brought up results with any inflection of “to weep” (wept, weeping, weep). Just under the search bar is shown the statistic “18 flex hits.” Click on the image below or open in a new tab to view larger:

Order doesn’t matter here: “weep jesus” gives me the same results as “jesus weep.” You can even combine an Exact Search with a Flex Search by placing the term you want to search exactly in brackets. This is a good move for those of us who use Google frequently, where something like a Flex Search can happen somewhat intuitively.

This option is available only in the English versions–there is no Flex Search option for Hebrew or Greek texts, for example.

 2. Amplify

From the site again:

Accordance offers a highly efficient form of searching known as amplifying, which allows you to search for any word or phrase just by selecting it in the text you are reading and then clicking the Amplify icon in the toolbar. For example, if you are reading about the Ten Commandments in Exodus 34:28 you can amplify to a dictionary article on the topic by selecting the phrase “Ten Commandments” in the Bible text, clicking on the amplify icon in the toolbar, and then choosing the desired dictionary. You can also triple-click on any word to quickly amplify to your default dictionary or lexicon. This method of searching is much faster than opening a new module and manually typing in your search.

Using this feature has taken me a little bit of time to figure out, but now that I have I’m really enjoying it.

In Mark 1 below, I double-clicked on “wilderness” to highlight it and then went to the Amplify icon in the customizable toolbar up top:

Then a whole range of options is available to me. I can look up “wilderness” in English tools and find the definition in the Eerdmans dictionary. And the triple-click option is neat, too–by triple-clicking on a selected word, you look it up in your default dictionary or lexicon.

I can think of one possible way for a future update to improve the Amplify function (I know, I know! this one just came out). I was using Accordance with two Workspaces open: Accordance’s “NT Study” and my own “Hebrew Bible.” When I tried to look up an English word from the Hebrew Bible Workspace in the Eerdmans Dictionary, it moved me over to the NT Study Workspace where Eerdmans was already open. As a result I lost my initial place and had to go back to the “Hebrew Bible” Workspace.

There may be a good explanation for this and an easy way to prevent it from happening that I just don’t know about (if I find one out, I’ll post an update here). But it would have been nice to just have the Amplify search open the dictionary in my same Workspace. UPDATE: It’s an easy fix in the Preferences section. I just had to check “Confine amplify to the same workspace.”

Workspaces, by the way, are a great way to stay organized and working on multiple projects at the same time in Accordance.

3. Search All

The word “Trinity” does not appear in the Bible. But what if I want to see what biblical resources say about the Trinity, and where in the Bible they see the various interrelating persons of the Trinity? The “Search All” bar at the top right of Accordane allows the user to search all of Accordance’s resources by word (or even by Scripture reference). The screen shot below shows in the left sidebar the resources that returned a hit. You can see that Accordance gives me all the times “Trinity” appears in the NET Bible notes! That’s quite useful.

You can also use the “Search All” bar to access images.

There are a few more things I want to cover in my Accordance 10 review, but to those of you reading–are there any features you’d like me to comment on? Or questions you have about the program and its features, how it all works together? I’d be happy to try to take these up in future posts. Feel free to leave me a comment if so.

This series of reviews is made possible by my having received a review copy of Accordance 10, Original Languages Collection. I have not been asked or expected to provide a positive review–just an honest one. Part 1 of my review of Accordance 10 is here, and part 2 is here. UPDATE: Here is part 4, a review of the Original Languages Collection. UPDATE 2: Here is part 5, “Bells and Whistles.” UPDATE 3: part 6, “More Bells and Whistles.”

4 Cool Features in Accordance 10 (Review, part 2)

I am a new Accordance user. As I said in the first part of my review of Accordance: so far, so good.

I’m working my way through some of Accordance’s training materials so I can better utilize the program as I review it. Here is Episode 77 of their Lighting the Lamp podcast series. It is at the “basic level” and provides a “first look” at Accordance 10. It’s a good place to start.

Here I highlight, in no particular order, four cool features in Accordance 10. Each of these not only has a bit of a wow factor, but will also enhance my study of the Bible, especially in its original languages.

1. Pie charts, bar charts, statistics, oh my!

In Mark 1:42 I read: καὶ εὐθὺς ἀπῆλθεν ἀπ᾿ αὐτοῦ ἡ λέπρα, καὶ ἐκαθαρίσθη. (Note: I simply checked off a box in Preferences and was able to export this Greek text as unicode from Accordance into WordPress.) Then I “right click” on ἀπῆλθεν, select “Search For… Lemma,” and I can see all its New Testament occurrences pop up in a separate window. It also notes just under the search bar that my search results in 117 hits. The empty box at the bottom is the “Instant Details” window that shows parsing information when I hover over a word. See below and click for larger or open in a new tab:

You can see I have Mounce’s Greek Dictionary open at top right. This already includes word statistic information. But–and here’s cool feature #1–check out the “Analysis Pie Chart” at bottom right! This shows the ways and number of times ἀπέρχομαι is variously inflected. Or you can see it in bar chart form, which in this case affords a bit more detail than the pie chart:

I quickly discover, in a visually appealing way, that my word at hand (ἀπῆλθεν) is the most common inflection of ἀπέρχομαι. This analysis tool allows multiple configurations. You can search by inflection, gender, tense, person, etc.

2. Customizable Toolbar

This has so far been one of the things about Accordance I’ve appreciated the most. New to Accordance 10 is the customizable Toolbar. Mine looks like this at the moment:

Users can easily add and re-arrange what they want in the toolbar, simply by “right clicking” in the toolbar area and going from there. (Note: “right clicking” for me on my Mac is just a two finger tap on the trackpad.) Right clicking on the toolbar allows you to customize it, which then gives you this:

Then, simply set it up how you want it. You can always revert back to the default, as noted at the bottom. The “separator” and “space” options are an especially nice touch. See the Accordance blog post here for more ways a user could customize Accordance 10.

3. Magnify this zone

Here’s a setup I’ve been using to work through the Hebrew text. You’ll note my library on the left, the Hebrew Masoretic Text side-by-side with the NET Bible in the middle, the Instant Details (parsing) box on the bottom, and the dictionary pane on the right. That’s a good setup for analyzing my way through the text. But if I just wanted to read the Hebrew (with the English next to it) with no other distractions, I easily could, without losing my other windows. “Magnify this zone” allows me to turn this:

into this:

With a single click I can easily return back to my full setup when I’m done.

4. A great one-volume commentary, and a great Bible dictionary

Both the Starter Collection in Accordance and Original Languages Collection (what I’m reviewing) come with the IVP New Bible Commentary and the Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible. The IVP Commentary is integrated into the program such that you can have it sync with you through a passage while you read and study. Each of these is a handy resource to have at the ready while working through text.

My only complaint with these has been that the IVP commentary is a “Reference Tool” while the Eerdmans dictionary is an “English Tool.” This means that they’re in two separate places in the library, which wasn’t totally intuitive for me right away. However, this separation may be due to the fact that–from what I can tell–Reference Tools follow you with verse-by-verse integration whereas you have to do a specific look-up by word for the English Tools. All the same, it’s great having access to these texts.

There are more cool features in Accordance 10. I’ll continue to review the program in coming days. You can go here for an overview of some of Accordance’s newest features.

This series of reviews is made possible by my having received a review copy of Accordance 10, Original Languages Collection. I have not been asked or expected to provide a positive review–just an honest one. Part 1 of my review of Accordance 10 is here. UPDATE: Part 3 of my review is here. UPDATE 2: Here is part 4, a review of the Original Languages Collection. UPDATE 3: Here is part 5, “Bells and Whistles.” UPDATE 4: part 6, “More Bells and Whistles.”

Would Mark’s Jesus have us handle snakes and drink poison? (part 1 of 2) (BibleWorks 9 review, continued)

First century snake handler?

Many believe that Mark’s Gospel ends rather abruptly at 16:8 (“for they were afraid”), but others have found it difficult to think of a Gospel ending with Jesus’ followers’ being afraid to say anything to anyone about the resurrection.

So there is the so-called shorter (add-on) ending of Mark, which adds to the above, “…the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation” (RSV). This has 10 words that otherwise appear nowhere else in the book.  In my view the vocabulary and style of the shorter ending do not seem to fit well with the rest of the Gospel, and have the feel of an effort to give the book closure well after the fact of the writing.

Then there is the so-called longer ending of Mark, which is also not satisfied in ending with his followers’ fear. This records Jesus’ appearance to some of his followers, as well as the commissioning of his disciples, including the hard-to-understand reference to picking up snakes and drinking poison.

Mark could well have ended with “For they were afraid”–Mark is not unknown for being abrupt—nor would he have a problem upbraiding (or reporting Jesus’ upbraiding) people for their lack of faith or for their fear.  But would someone who started so positively with a proclamation of Jesus as “Son of God” in 1:1 have truly ended on such a dour note?  One possibility is that Mark’s original ending was lost.  R.T. France says, “It is one thing to emphasise and exploit paradoxical elements within the story of Jesus’ ministry and passion, as we have seen Mark doing again and again, but quite another to conclude his gospel with a note which appears to undermine not only his own message but also the received tradition of the church within which he was writing” (683).

Of course, lacking evidence of such a “lost” ending means that to postulate one is speculative, and it is perhaps a wiser hermeneutic to accept the text as we have it to be the intended one.

Can BibleWorks help here? One of the major new features in BibleWorks 9 is the BibleWorks Manuscript Project. From the BibleWorks site:

This massive project has been years in the making. BibleWorks 9 includes the first installment of this ongoing work. The BibleWorks Manuscript Project’s initial release covers the following:

  • Sinaiticus
  • Vaticanus
  • Alexandrinus
  • Bezae
  • Washingtonianus
  • Boernerianus
  • GA1141

For these manuscripts, the BibleWorks Manuscript Project includes the following:

  • New full NT transcriptions
  • Complete NT digital image sets (over 7.5 GB!!)
  • Verse location tagging in images
  • Extensive transcription notes
  • MSS comparison tool
  • Morphological tagging (not complete for all manuscripts but updates will be provided free of charge to BibleWorks 9 users as they become available)

Manuscripts are fully searchable and integrated with the full array of BibleWorks analysis tools. As you change verses in BibleWorks, the MS image display tracks with the current verse. Compare, inspect, and analyze the text and images of key original manuscripts. Tweak and enhance the manuscript images using the sophisticated image processing panel now included in BibleWorks.

Before I could even get into the manuscripts, there were two ways BibleWorks immediately helped me to explore this issue. First, with my NET Bible notes open in the Verse Tab (which I review here), I see a nice, lengthy note that explains the options–with manuscript evidence–for Mark’s possible ending. (You can see the NET note itself by clicking on footnote 9 here.) That much I’ve come to expect from BibleWorks.

What pleasantly caught me by surprise was that the NET note mentions a section in Wallace’s Greek Grammar that discusses the grammar of the contested snake-handling verses. I quickly and easily navigated over to the “Resources” tab in my analysis window and looked it up (click for larger image, or open in a new tab):

Wallace’s grammar is free with BibleWorks, a nice bonus. And it’s set up so that as you’re working your way through a text, Wallace tracks with you, so you can easily look up what he has to say about a given verse or grammatical topic.

Already some great help from BibleWorks in exploring a difficult textual issue. In my next post, I’ll use BibleWorks to get into the Mark manuscripts themselves, exploring the possible endings of the Gospel of Mark.

See all that’s new in BibleWorks 9 here.

I received a free upgrade to BibleWorks 9 in exchange for an unbiased review. See my prolegomenon to a review here, part 1 (setup and layout) here, and part 2 (the Verse tab) here. You can order the full program here or upgrade here. It’s on Amazon, too.

My 4-year-old son reviews Zoom, Rocket, Zoom!

5, 4, 3… liftoff! It says, “Whoo-oom!”

The astronauts are flying in the rocket ship. They’re in orange shirts. And they have space helmets on, and one is dark-skinned, and one is light-skinned. And there’s two seats, even cords, even channels to see how fast they go.

Lunar landers–they shoot flying out on the side to get it landing. And one big one on the bottom, one big spike, two big spike, three big spike, four big spike, five big spike, six big spike, seven big spike. And three on one of the shooters.

The earth’s right by kind of a circle of stars, and the lunar lander is right by this astronaut that’s going “Byoo!” He’s not really saying something; that’s just how he’s flying. “Byoo!” means he’s going, like jumping. This astronaut is digging, even working in space. Even there’s 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 bumps here and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16… 16 lumps over here!

“Moon buggies are good at roll, roll, rolling,” as they travel in space. Space rockets are good at–bam!–flying.

Rocket ships are good for playing, eating, and typing, and sleeping and good for “weightless somersaulting.” [laughs] That’s so funny!

Astronauts are “good at space walking… almost dancing.” Space satellites fly around in circles, around planets.

There’s wheels, some lumps… and the stars. And the machine driving around on the Mars.

The moon buggy’s rolling around, and it’s right by the lunar lander.

The end.

This book is good because it has astronauts in it, and every age should read it… even grown ups. Every, every, every person. Even you!

Find more about Zoom, Rocket, Zoom on Amazon. Read the rest of my 4-year-old son’s reviews here.

In which I finally try out Accordance Bible Software for Mac (new version 10!)

I have been an avid and happy BibleWorks user since version 7 (they are now in version 9). But my first computing love is a Mac. (Too bad for expensive taste in that regard!) I have a cheap PC laptop at home on which I run BibleWorks, but have been interested in exploring Accordance for some time. Now, thanks to the kind folks at Accordance who have given me a copy for review, I can take Accordance for a spin.

I apparently got into Accordance at just the right time. This week they launched an upgrade from Accordance 9 to Accordance 10. And it looks like users are pretty happy with the switch.

In a series of posts, I will offer my review of Accordance 10, Original Languages Collection. In this post I report on my installation process and initial impressions as to the program’s layout and interface.

Download and installation was mercifully fast, even over a wireless Internet connection. In 30 minutes or so I was able to download the Accordance application to my computer and the Original Languages Collection with its various modules.

I appreciated the flexibility offered me even in the initial setup. For example, I could make choices at the following spots:

(Although, I confess, I don’t know what “Helvetica Neue Light” looks like off the top of my head! No matter–this can always be changed later.) This next option for text formatting immediately endeared me to Accordance:

These are perhaps little things, but Accordance’s customizability seems obvious from the beginning.

The only snag I hit in installation was being able to install one of the included modules, even after multiple attempts (the BHS Latin Key). Although, taking a look at the forums, I’m not alone. I expect the Accordance team is mighty busy with the new release. Accordance 10 is already in 10.0.1. I don’t think this is a sign of a buggy version released too soon, but rather an indication that the folks behind the software are quick, responsive, and eager to improve upon the program.

Once finishing installation, I played around a bit with my resources, and within just a few minutes and no prior knowledge of Accordance, was able to set things up this way (click image for larger or open in new tab):

On the left you can see my “library” which in this view shows some of the texts that come with the Original Languages Collection. Thing of beauty: it has the New English Translation of the Septuagint. With how often I am in (and blogging about) the Septuagint, this makes me happy to see. The NETS is far from a perfect translation, but it’s the best English translation on the market right now.

In the middle you can see I have the Greek of Genesis 1 open, with the NETS right next to it and the IVP New Bible Commentary on the right of the middle section.

Then in the top right corner I opened the LEH Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint, available in previous Accordance versions only as a paid, add-on module (from what I understand). The bottom right corner shows the Hebrew text of Genesis 1.

Each of these boxes/windows are changeable and rearrangeable. I look forward to spending more time exploring the various configurations available to me through Accordance.

In sum: A quick, easy install with just that one hiccup of a missing module–soon to be resolved with a released fix, I’m sure. (UPDATE 8/23/12: It’s fixed!) And the layout and its flexibility has really impressed me on first use.

And, oh. The interface? Absolutely stellar. I love seeing a high-powered Biblical languages-oriented program native to a Mac. The interface in Accordance is as smooth as any program I’ve ever seen from Apple.

So far, so good.

UPDATE: Parts 2 and 3 of my review are here and here.
UPDATE 2: Here is part 4, a review of the Original Languages Collection.
UPDATE 3: Here is part 5, “Bells and Whistles.” UPDATE 4: part 6, “More Bells and Whistles.”

A New Reader’s Lexicon of the Greek New Testament, Reviewed

Unfamiliar vocabulary proves to be an enduring challenge for students of New Testament Greek. Even students who understand the rules of the language get bogged down having to look up uncommon words while translating. Nevertheless the correct interpretation of many passages of Scripture hinges on the meaning of its rare words.

–Michael H. Burer and Jeffrey E. Miller, Preface

Vocabulary acquisition is key to being able to read any language, but so is just reading a text straight through. A “reader’s lexicon” or “reader’s Bible” seeks to bridge the gap so students can both improve their vocabulary and engage in a continuous reading of the text. To that end, Kregel Academic and Professional has published A New Reader’s Lexicon of the Greek New Testament by Michael H. Burer and Jeffrey E. Miller.

But why a new reader’s lexicon when the old one (by Kubo) has been useful to students of the Greek New Testament for so long? That’s been the primary question before me as I’ve reviewed the New Reader’s Lexicon (NRL). Daniel B. Wallace in the preface gives the reasons for this new lexicon:

But as helpful as Kubo was, there were weaknesses. First, it was not updated to the glosses found in the third edition of the Bauer Lexicon (BDAG). Second, there were numerous errors (involving word frequency numbers, omissions of words, inappropriate glosses, etc.) that went uncorrected. Third, the special vocabulary section at the beginning of each book, involving all the words that occurred more than five times in that book but less than fifty times in the New Testament, created its own problems: designed for efficiency of space, it did not prove helpful for efficiency in learning.

While I think Wallace has it right on the first two points, I (sort of) disagree with the third–that list that Kubo offers at the beginning has actually been helpful to me for learning a given book’s vocabulary, since it groups some of that book’s common words together. However, it does mean that words in that beginning list don’t then appear in Kubo’s lexicon throughout the rest of the book. To overcome this, I would make a copy of the list and use it as a bookmark, referring to it often so I didn’t have to keep flipping pages.

Herein lies one area of strength for the New Reader’s Lexicon. There is no common vocabulary list at the beginning of each book (users now can generate those easily enough through Bible software), but it means that every word that occurs less than 50 times in the New Testament is in this lexicon… in the verse in which it appears. So as I’m beginning my way through Mark 6, I can look in the NRL to quickly see that ἐκεῖθεν in verse 1 means “from there.”

To Wallace’s first two points, that the NRL uses the updated BDAG is a great relief–readers now don’t have to guess whether recent advances in lexicography or discoveries of new papyri mean that the word in front of them actually has a slightly different nuance. The NRL updates Kubo here well.

In addition to “concisely defin[ing] in context” each word, the NRL gives statistics for how many times that word appears. (Names and proper nouns are included.) There are up to three numbers listed:

  • How many times the word appears in that given book of the New Testament
  • How many times that word appears “in all canonical works by the traditional author of the book at hand”
  • How many times the word appears in the whole NT

Kubo had the first and third numbers. This second statistic now allows me to see not only how many times ἀνάθεμα appears in 1 Corinthians (twice) and in the NT (six times), but it tells me that five of the six uses of this word in the NT are with Paul.

And here’s where the lexicon is unique and really stands out–in the instance of such a rarely occurring word, it lists cross references, so I can quickly see that the other use of ἀνάθεμα in I Corinthians is at 16:22, and that Paul also uses the word in Romans 9:3, Galatians 1:8,9, and that the only non-Pauline NT occurrence of the word is at Acts 23:14.

The NRL truly does improve upon Kubo’s lexicon. It accomplishes its mission quite well.

But don’t take my word for it. I’ve found that what original language resources to own and invest in is often a matter of personal preference and what works best for an individual. If you’re still on the fence about this resource, download a free sample of the lexicon for Colossians here (pdf). Read through Colossians with it in hand and see how it goes. Personally I’ve found this to be an indispensable resource for making my way through the Greek New Testament.

One huge bonus: the book is designed well. The pages are smooth and thick and bright. The font is clear and easy to read. And the binding is sewn! This means it will stand the test of time well, which you’d hope a reference work like this would.

My thanks to Kregel Academic for providing me with a review copy of this book. Find out more about the book at Kregel’s site or look inside on Amazon.

Reviews of various Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek books, commentaries, and software

I’ve now reviewed enough Biblical languages textbooks, lexicons, commentaries, and other resources, that I thought it was time to put them together all in one place. Grouped by language and title, with hyperlinks to each review, here are the language resources reviewed-to-date at Words on the Word. I plan to keep this page updated for future reviews, so feel free to bookmark it.

Hebrew

Aramaic

New Testament Greek

Septuagint Greek

Other Biblical Commentaries

Bible Software

Review of Biblical Hebrew: A Compact Guide

At long last, a compact reference guide to Biblical Hebrew!  Not long ago Zondervan released Biblical Greek: A Compact Guide, a helpful and portable distillation of Mounce’s oft-used grammar. Many such little books already exist for easily reviewing Koine Greek: Dale Russell Bowne’s Paradigms and Principal Parts for the Greek New Testament, Paul Fullmer and Robert H. Smith’s Greek at a Glance, and even the back of Kubo’s Reader’s Lexicon has a good summary of Greek grammar with paradigm charts.

There seem to be more resources available to students of Biblical Greek than to students of Biblical Hebrew.  For example, while there is just one (excellent!) “Reader’s” Hebrew Bible (uncommon vocabulary is glossed at the bottom of the page), I am aware of at least three Reader’s Bibles that exist for the Greek New Testament.  So Miles Van Pelt’s Compact Guide, based on his and Gary Pratico’s Basics of Biblical Hebrew, is a welcome addition as far as this eager Hebrew student is concerned.

The book is not terribly dissimilar from Pratico/Van Pelt’s Charts of Biblical Hebrew, but unlike that work, A Compact Guide is more than just a collection of charts and paradigms.  Each section includes a distillation of what is in the larger grammar textbook, followed by paradigms and charts for quick reference. Seeing Van Pelt’s world-famous color-coded verbal diagnostics is a highlight.

Oddly enough, at times there seems to be more precision and detail in this little book than in the larger grammar.  Or perhaps it’s just more nuance or smoother grouping of material that has come about with the passage of time since the publishing of the grammar’s second edition. For example, there is a section in the Compact Guide on “particles” that is a unique and clearer grouping than what is in the larger grammar. And whereas the grammar lists three kinds of Hebrew prepositions (independent, Maqqef, and inseparable), the Compact Guide adds a fourth: compound prepositions, where “two different prepositions, or a preposition and a noun” (28) combine to make a new preposition. (This fourth category appeared in the larger textbook later in its chapter as “Advanced Information”; having everything grouped together in the Compact Guide was easier.)

The primary focus of the guide is morphology (how words are formed, including paradigm charts) and syntax (how words are used in sentences, i.e., grammar).  Unlike Basics of Biblical Hebrew there is not much in the Compact Guide by way of vocabulary, save for a Hebrew-English mini-lexicon at the back of the book.  Unfortunately, there was no explanatory note as to what constituted inclusion on the lexicon.  (In Mounce’s Greek Compact Guide, the lexicon notes that it includes words that occur in the New Testament 10 times or more.)

From what I can tell, though, the Hebrew Compact Guide reproduces exactly the Hebrew-English lexicon in its larger textbook counterpart. In this case, the lexicon covers Hebrew words that occur 50 times or more in the biblical text. The Basics of Biblical Hebrew lexicon notes that it also adds “less frequently occurring words that appear in the grammar and workbook.”

In addition to a thorough listing of paradigms (the 11-page section on pronominal suffixes is particularly helpful), the book is filled with examples from the Hebrew Bible (with English translation).  The Hebrew font used, while not quite as easy to read as that of the grammar, is readable enough. (And that may just be a matter of personal preference anyway.)

The section on verbs is a particular strength of this work–in addition to examining all the forms and stems (both strong and weak), there are extensive listings of paradigms for easy review.

All in all, I give a hearty two thumbs up to this work–and express my gratitude that it is now on the scene for those who want to keep their Biblical Hebrew fresh!  For a beginner in Biblical Hebrew I would recommend the full-length grammar textbook, but for those with even a semester or two of Hebrew (and beyond), this small reference guide will be a valuable and inexpensive addition to their library. As Van Pelt notes in his preface, even “veterans” of Hebrew will be able to utlize the guide to “keep fit” in their language use.

Icing on the cake: the pocket-sized paperback comes encased in a sturdy, translucent plastic cover.

You can preview the book here.

Note: I received a review copy from Zondervan for the purposes of this review. I had initially reviewed a digital galley version of this book through Net Galley. The above reproduces my galley review, checked now against the hard copy for accuracy.

Basics of Biblical Aramaic

This textbook is a great one. I’m amazed at how much Aramaic it helped me pick up in just a long afternoon and evening. What follows is my review of Miles V. Van Pelt’s stellar text, Basics of Biblical Aramaic. It’s a winner!

Basics of Biblical Aramaic (BBA hereafter) is a “Complete Grammar, Lexicon, and Annotated Text.” I’ll review each of these components in turn.

Scope, Aim and Audience

BBA seeks to include “everything you need to learn biblical Aramaic” and is “designed for those who already have a working knowledge of biblical Hebrew.” This is a fair expectation, since most students of Aramaic only come to Aramaic having already had Hebrew (and often Greek, too). This allows Van Pelt to use Hebrew as a springboard for Aramaic throughout the book, which he does to great effect. He writes “for those students who desire to study, teach, and preach faithfully from those portions of the Bible that appear in Aramaic.”

I write as a member of Van Pelt’s target audience. I’ve had (more than) a year of Hebrew but no Aramaic to date.

Grammar

Van Pelt divides the grammar into the following sections:

  • Phonology, in which he introduces the Aramaic alphabet, vowels, and syllabification
  • The Nominal System, in which he covers nouns (absolute, determined, and construct states), conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns and pronominal suffixes, adjectives, numerals, adverbs, and particles
  • The Verbal system, in which he covers the simple Peal stem in all its conjugations (perfect, imperfect, imperative, etc.), followed by the derived stems in their multiple conjugations
  • Six pages of quick-reference Charts and Paradigms

Here is a sample pdf of the Table of Contents and first few chapters. In the book’s layout and in many other ways, BBA is like Van Pelt’s Basics of Biblical Hebrew (BBH), which he co-authored with Gary D. Pratico.

As with BBH the typical chapter layout of BBA is grammar followed by vocabulary. And in this case, since the workbook is essentially included in the text, chapters close with exercises. There is no answer key included, but the book lists the site from which it can be downloaded.

Van Pelt classifies verbs according to the “Peal” stem and its derived stems–also explaining alternate verbal terminology (G-stem, etc.). As he explains the various conjugations, he keeps aspect firmly in mind:

The incomplete (or imperfective) aspect of the Imperfect conjugation is well suited for describing present and future actions and so a present or future tense English translation is common with this verbal form. However, it is important to remember that that imperfective aspect of the imperfect conjugation may refer to actions in the past, present, or future….

One of Van Pelt’s aims in this textbook is “pedagogical sensitivity,” which he notes has not always appeared in Aramaic grammars. (He may have this one by Alger F. Johns in mind, which, good as it is, is not as user-friendly.) He succeeds immensely in this regard. That Van Pelt is a professor in an actual classroom is on display throughout the text; his tone is warm and even encouraging in many places. Each chapter concludes with a “Before You Move On” section, which helps the reader distinguish between things he or she needs to commit to memory and what he or she can leave for future reference.

Van Pelt’s grouping of vocabulary also exhibits “pedagogical sensitivity.” Initial lists have vocabulary that is similar or identical to Hebrew, so that an Aramaic student can get a quick jump on vocabulary acquisition. Van Pelt groups several lists according to semantic domain and also parts of speech. This is merciful to the students who will work their way through BBA (and good pedagogy). He includes all Aramaic words occurring four times or more in the OT, which constitute 91% of the text.

Lexicon

The lexicon is a comprehensive one that includes every Aramaic word occurring in the OT. Van Pelt bases the definitions/glosses on HALOT. There are definitions for different stems of each verb, too. There are no word frequency counts, either here or in the vocabulary lists. (Basics of Biblical Hebrew has frequencies in the vocab lists at the end of each chapter, one of its great features.) However, this may not be as essential as in Hebrew, since the Aramaic corpus in the OT is smaller. Van Pelt does include frequency statistics for many prepositions, conjunctions, adverbs, particles, and stems as he introduces them throughout the text.

Annotated Text

This is the best feature of an already great textbook. In the same way that Van Pelt and Pratico’s Graded Reader of Biblical Hebrew helps the student to really dig into the text, the Annotated Text in the back of BBA allows the student to put his or her new knowledge of Aramaic into practice. Every OT verse and passage in Aramaic is included: Genesis 31:47, Jeremiah 10:11, Daniel 2:4b-7:28, Ezra 4:8-6:18, and Ezra 7:12-26. The footnotes link back to specific chapters and sections of the text, and Van Pelt includes detailed morphological and lexical analysis of various words.

Further reflections

I have only two (minor) critiques of this textbook, which are as much as anything hopes for small adjustments that might be made in a future printing or edition of this book.

First, there is little about Aramaic in its Northwest Semitic context. This isn’t an oversight; Van Pelt says his grammar is not “written for Aramaic scholars or for students interested in comparative Semitic grammar.” Instead he wants to help produce a “working knowledge” for those who will “study, teach, and preach faithfully” from the Aramaic portions of the Bible. Fair enough. And he does allude to further discussions of Aramaic as a language in his footnotes. But as I imagine myself teaching and preaching Aramaic portions of the Bible, I think it would be helpful to know something of Aramaic’s context and development, to explain to my congregation. This could simply be a few paragraphs in a future edition.

Second, the verbal diagnostics Van Pelt highlights (using “the identification of distinctive verbal features unique to a group of related verbal forms”) are explained in the individual chapters, but not color-coded in the paradigm charts. They are given in red in the Hebrew textbook Van Pelt co-authored, and this was one of the most useful parts of that book–it really aided in learning the paradigms. Van Pelt does explain what diagnostics to look for, but I’d love if a future edition or printing could color-code the vowels/consonants that constitute the various verbal diagnostics. (UPDATE: I had thought that perhaps the lack of color in verbal diagnostics was a print cost issue. I’ve now been able to confirm that there will eventually be an electronic release of the grammar with color.)

Also, though this might be asking a lot of a single text, I found the English to Hebrew composition exercises in the BBH workbook to be a great way to improve my Hebrew. Perhaps supplemental composition exercises could find their way onto Van Pelt’s site in the future?

I initially thought a $45 retail price was steep for a paperback. But considering that this includes a grammar text, workbook exercises, a comprehensive Aramaic lexicon, and an annotated text of all the Aramaic in the Old Testament… it’s actually reasonable. In the Hebrew and Greek equivalents to this textbook, the text, workbook, and set of annotated readings are all separate volumes. This was a good move on the book’s part, I thought, and makes it easy to refer to it time and again as a one-stop shop for Aramaic acquisition and development.

What stands out most to me about Basics of Biblical Aramaic is the very-nice-to-have Annotated Text at the back with all the Aramaic OT passages. And another standout feature of this text is that Van Pelt truly does display “pedagogical sensitivity” throughout the text. Who would have thought an Aramaic textbook could have such a conversational tone without sacrificing thoroughness and good pedagogy?

Five stars. I imagine this textbook will become the standard in seminary and upper-level college courses where students learn biblical Aramaic.

My thanks to Zondervan for the review copy of this textbook. Find it here on Powell’s or here at Zondervan’s product page.

James (Zondervan ECNT), reviewed

James is no “epistle of straw,” as Martin Luther once (in)famously said of the book. But many–with Luther–find it difficult to reconcile Paul and James on faith and works.

Paul: “A person is justified by faith apart from works of the law.”

James: “A person is considered righteous [i.e., justified] by what they do and not by faith alone.”

Here I review James by Craig L. Blomberg and Mariam J. Kamell, from Zondervan’s Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (ZECNT) series. (Click here to find my review of Luke in that same series; below I use some of my same wording from that post to introduce the ZECNT series more generally.)

Like the rest of the ZECNT series, James is “designed for the pastor and Bible teacher.” The authors assume a basic knowledge of Greek, but Greek is not required to understand the commentary. For each passage the commentary gives the broader literary context, the main idea (great for preachers!), an original translation of the Greek and its graphical layout, the structure, an outline, explanation, and “theology in application” section.

The introduction covers an outline and structure of James, the circumstances surrounding its writing, authorship and date, and significance of the book. It is shorter and less detailed than the introductions in Douglas Moo’s James commentary and that of Peter Davids. Immediately I looked for how the authors would resolve the Paul/James (alleged) discrepancy, but they note in the introduction that they discuss James’s theology after “the commentary proper.” (The ZECNT series has a separate “Theology” section at the back of the book that most other commentaries include as part of the introduction.)

They give just two paragraphs in their theology section–with a bit more in the body of the commentary–to “Faith and Works” (compare Moo’s lengthier discussion in his introduction), but they have their reasons for this:

Contrary to what the extent of the discussion of the topic might suggest, faith and works is not the main focus of James’s letter. It is a subordinate point that grows out of his concern for the poor and the dispossessed (2:14-26; cf. 2:1-13).

I’m a little embarrassed to admit that this idea of faith and works as a subordinate point in James had not really occurred to me prior to working with this commentary. (A good trait in a commentary to produce such thoughts!) But if you click on the references above or look through James 2 (and the rest of James) in your Bible, it’s easy to see where the authors are coming from.

In fact, the “three key topics” in James, according to Blomberg and Kamell, are “trials in the Christian life,” “wisdom,” and “riches and poverty.” They follow Davids here, and note that James 1:2-11 lays out each of the major themes, which James then restates in 1:12-27. 2:1-5:18 then consist of “the three themes expanded,” in reverse order, followed by a closing in 5:19-20.

Blomberg and Kamell are “the first to grant that we may still be imposing more structure on the text than James had in mind.” All the same, their outline of James makes it easier to work through the book, and then finally does, I think, justify their claim in the theology section that “faith and works” is not the central theme of the letter and should be considered in its broader context. Still, they do have a good way forward in understanding Paul and James together: “But this action, these deeds or works, are not put forward in any attempt to merit God’s favor but as the natural, spiritual outgrowth of one’s faith.”

As with Luke, the graphical layout of each passage (in original English translation) is a unique contribution in James. Being able to see main clauses in bold with subordinate clauses indented under them (plus how they relate back to the main clause) gives the reader a quick, visual grasp of the entire passage at hand. See page 45 of the commentary in this sample pdf to see how it looks. This is a highlight of the ZECNT series, and the fact that it’s in English makes it all the more accessible. The translation is smooth and readable, doing great justice to both the Greek it translates and the English language.

James has the full Greek text of James, verse by verse, and the full English translation (passage by passage in the graphical layout, then again verse by verse next to the Greek). As I’ve said before, a value for me in using reference works is not having to pull five more reference works off the shelf to use the first reference work! The authors make comments like this one in 1:5 throughout the work, wedding grammatical and lexical analysis to exegetical application:

We are told to ask of the “giving God” (διδόντος θεοῦ). Here the present participle suggests that “giving” represents a continuous characteristic of God.

To take another example, on James 2:20, which they translate, “Do you want to know, O empty person, that faith without works is workless?” they write:

James incorporates a pun on the word “work” (ἔργον), using the negative adjective from the same root–“workless” (ἀργή). The term can also mean idle or useless. Faith that lacks works does not work! In other words, it is entirely ineffective to save.

Teachers and preachers especially will appreciate the “Theology in Application” section that concludes each passage. James may already strike the preacher as a book that just preaches itself, but the authors do well in helping the preacher connect the text with today’s concerns. For example, for 2:14-17 they note that although James

provides no treatise on the most effective ways to help the poor…, true believers will take some kind of action. At the very least, they must cultivate generous, even sacrificial giving to help the poor as part of their ongoing personal and corporate stewardship of their possessions. But in light of systemic injustice, we probably need to do much more.

Amen. The authors go on, “James certainly would share the concern of liberation theologians to do far more for the poor, individually and systemically, than many branches of recent Christianity have attempted” (my italics). Moo agrees–though he wants to distance himself “from an extreme ‘liberation’ perspective,” he says “we must be careful not to rob his denunciation of the rich of its power.” And James 5:1-6 are pretty damning of the powerful rich who use their power to oppress the poor.

The authors write,

[These oppressors] are the financially wealthy in a world where the rich occupied a miniscule percentage of the population. James does not call them to change their behavior. Instead, he warns them of impending disaster in their lives by commanding them to mourn their coming fate. …”Wail” [ὀλολύζοντες] appears in the LXX of the Prophets in contexts of judgment and can refer to inarticulate shrieks of terror. …James makes it clear that these rich people are going to undergo a terrible ordeal.

There were a few times in the “Theology in Application” section that I wondered (as other reviewers have) whether the authors weren’t getting a bit off-topic from the text. For example, on 3:9-12 they say,

Abortion and euthanasia offend God deeply because they take lives made in his image. But abuse or neglect of the poor and outcast (including the homosexual) proves equally offensive because such treatments likewise demean individuals God made to reflect himself.

They say this to argue against the “stereotypical agendas of both the political and religious ‘right’ and ‘left,'” but it was hard for me to decide whether this was a case of applying an ancient text well to a contemporary set of issues, or if it was an anachronistic stretch. Nothing they say here is incongruent with James, but I did wonder here (and in another place) whether those verses in James really speak to issues like abortion and homosexuality. A minor critique, though.

Those working their way through the Greek of James may still want to have Davids on hand. But as with the Luke volume in this series, the combination of close attention to the Greek text with contemporary application makes James a commentary very much worth using. I know I will want to go back to this commentary right away when I am doing work with the book of James in the future.

(I am grateful to Zondervan for the free review copy of this commentary, which was sent to me with the understanding that I would then write an unbiased review. You can find the book on Amazon or at Zondervan.)