This Wednesday I am leading a brand new Accordance Bible Software webinar: Key Resources for your Accordance Library. As I say in the webinar description, the session will:
• be appropriate for all levels: from beginner to advanced
• be interactive, with opportunities to ask questions as Abram is presenting
• offer an overview of what is available in the Accordance Web store, and how it is organized
• provide a hands-on demo of some resources in Accordance
Really looking forward to this one. Sign up info is here.
I’ve made no secret of my love of Jewish Publication Society’s works. The JPS Torah Commentaries have greatly enhanced my reading of the first five books of the Bible. I have particularly appreciated the seamless blend of critical scholarship and devotional posture that series offers.
In 2013 JPS published a massive, three-volume set, Outside the Bible:Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture. The print edition has 3,302 pages. Accordance is the only Bible software program to have made the electronic edition available; it releases today.
Outside the Bible (hereafter referred to as OTB) covers an impressive array of Jewish extrabiblical texts from the 6th century B.C. to the 2nd century A.D. The texts in OTB are ones that were “for various reasons, taken off the official Jewish bookshelf.”
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The editors of Outside the Bible are Louis H. Feldman, James L. Kugel, and Lawrence H. Schiffman. The skilled lineup of contributors includes: Harold W. Attridge, David E. Aune, John J. Collins, David A. deSilva, Michael V. Fox, Emanuel Tov, Benjamin G. Wright III, and many others.
Broadly speaking, the editors and contributors treat writings from the following groupings:
The Septuagint
The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha
Philo
Josephus
Dead Sea Scrolls
OTB begins with some of the best, most succinct introductory material you can find on each corpus. Emanuel Tov, for example, gets right to the heart (using few words) of the potentially vexing concept of LXX translation technique:
When trying to analyze the Hebrew and Aramaic words, the translators could not resort to tools such as dictionaries or other sources of lexical information; they had to rely on their living knowledge of these languages and on exegetic traditions relating to words and contexts. … By the same token, the identification of difficult words was often guided by the context. Such a procedure frequently was little more than guesswork, especially in the case of rare and unique Hebrew words.
Practically speaking the reader finds explanatory comments like this one (from 1 Samuel 2) throughout OTB:
*there is none holy besides you Cf. the MT: “There is no rock like our God.” As elsewhere in the LXX, the translator avoids the description of God as a “rock,” possibly because he did not like the comparison of God to a stone, and instead stresses his holiness as in the first part of the verse.
When it comes to the texts themselves, here is how OTB is organized:
Each text in Outside the Bible is preceded by a brief introduction that gives a summary of its contents, a history of its composition and transmission, its significance for Jewish (and sometimes Christian) history and biblical interpretation, and a guide to reading that highlights specific issues for understanding the text. A short list of additional readings points the interested reader to more detailed or focused treatments of the text.
You can see the Table of Contents here, via Accordance Mobile:
Included in OTB is an entire commentary on 1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees, among other texts. Here is David A. deSilva, offering the reader of OTB guidance for working through 4 Maccabees:
The author gives two important cues concerning how to read his work. First, he asks us to read it as an essay that offers both argumentation and exemplary evidence for the proposition that the religiously trained mind can gain the upper hand over all the contrary forces within us and outside us that drag us away from doing what we know to be best before God. Second, he invites us to join him in admiring the outstanding achievements of nine Jewish martyrs, whose courageous and praiseworthy example rivals that of the heroes of any other culture or tradition and can encourage us to hold fast to virtue in our lesser contests.
I could multiply examples of how OTB strikes an excellent balance of brevity and substance. One could open the pages of OTB, having never heard of the Damascus Document–or any of more than 150 other texts–and walk away with a solid understanding of that writing’s legal and theological teachings.
OTB has a nice focus not only on the extrabiblical texts as such; it also addresses their import for biblical interpretation. Further, the editors and contributors are careful to point out how these non-canonical texts function as windows into the culture and beliefs of Judaism in the Second Temple period.
And the interplay OTB highlights between Judaism and Christianity is fascinating:
Philo’s writings had practically no influence on Judaism as it developed after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE and the disastrous Jewish revolt in Egypt in 115–117 CE. … On the other hand his writings were warmly embraced by early Christian thinkers, who saw in him a kindred spirit. They were attracted to his use of the Greek Bible and the allegorical method, as well as to doctrines such as the transcendence of God, the creation of the cosmos, the Logos, and providence.
Anyone wanting to further chase down what OTB has to say about Christianity can perform a search to instantaneously pull up all the instances of “Christian,” “Christianity,” or even, “Christ.” (The search to use is simply Christ* in the English Content search field in Accordance.)
…which leads to why Outside the Bible is a resource especially suited for the Accordance format.
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One obvious reason a person would want to consider the Accordance module (and not just the print edition) is the portability factor. JPS books tend to be bound beautifully and constructed well, so there’s nothing to complain about in their aesthetics. But you can’t really take 3,300 pages of awesomeness to the library, coffee shop, or office with you, at least not easily. Keeping OTB on a laptop, iPad, and/or iPhone is appealing.
Another benefit to OTB on Accordance is the extensive system of tagging and hyperlinking the developers have used. For one, you can adjust the search field to search OTB in all of the following ways:
For another, where there is commentary on the texts, the Accordance module allows you to view it simply by hovering over a hyperlink. Causing my mouse to rest on an asterisk shown in the text of the Prayer of Manasseh calls up the corresponding commentary in the Instant Details at the bottom of the screen:
(click to enlarge image)
Hyperlinked content is, of course, just a tap away on the iPad:
You can search just certain sections of OTB for a given word. You can highlight, take notes, and even share text via the share sheets in iOS–maybe you want to send some selected wording to Evernote or Drafts as part of your research. Just a few taps get me from 11QMelch (Melchizedek) into Drafts, a primary hub for my iOS research:
Using the share sheet, one could email information to oneself or others, or even share on social media. (And what says “rewritten Bible” better than Facebook and Twitter, amirite?)
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Treat yourself to a perusal of the Table of Contents and some material on Jubilees (which interacts with Genesis) by following this link to a PDF excerpt. And, by all means, do go check out this majestic resource in Accordance here. Students, professors, and pastors… Jews, Christians, and agnostics–all who can access Outside the Bible are indebted to its editors and contributors for a thorough and engaging resource.
Thanks to Accordance for the review copy of Outside the Bible in Accordance 11. See my other Accordance posts (there are many) gathered here.
This Sunday I preached about Sabbath-keeping as a way of life. The below is the concluding, application-based portion of the message.
Let’s get specific for a minute, and talk about how a Sabbath way of life can make its way onto our calendars.
For an hour
You could think small, to begin with: one hour. Right, God didn’t say, “Remember a Sabbath hour and keep it holy,” but I think observing a Sabbath hour is very much in line with God’s intentions for our God-centered rest.
I’ve alluded a couple of times from the pulpit to my inordinate love for personal productivity literature and related apps. There’s a classic book called Getting Things Done by David Allen. His basic goal is to get his readers and clients to a point where they are not using their brains to keep track of commitments—get everything out of your head and into a trusted system you know you’ll keep coming back to. The end result of implementing such a system is that in any given moment, you know that you are doing what you should be doing. What you are saying yes to is what you should be saying yes to, and what you are saying no to is out of mind.
This may seem simplistic, but if you don’t have a dedicated hour like this each day or at least every other day, the alternative is that every hour available to you is an hour where you could be doing something… anything… 100 hundred different things. A Sabbath lifestyle, on the other hand, includes setting apart chunks of time where we put all work aside and rest. And we don’t feel guilty about it, because we are doing it deliberately, as a way to train our attentions on God.
A Daylong Sabbath
Another way that we can put Sabbath-ing into our schedules is through a weekly Sabbath day. Sunday is a good candidate here. It didn’t take the early church very long to move from the observance of Saturday as Sabbath to Sunday as Sabbath. One big reason for this was that Sunday was the day of resurrection, so it became the day the church gathered weekly for worship. To make their Sabbath about both leisure and Lordship, it shifted to Sunday.
Which day we take a Sabbath is less important than that we have one every week. And times when we can least afford to take a Sabbath are the times we most need to. So put it into your day planner or phone or wherever you keep your schedule—make it a daylong appointment: “Sabbath.” And if one of your primary vocations is parenting or caretaking, and those sweet loved ones of yours won’t let you observe a “day off,” talk to one of your church leaders and we’ll help you get childcare lined up!
Get Away
You could go even bigger with Sabbath-keeping: a day or half day every month where you go on retreat… not just taking a day off, but actually physically going somewhere else—to the beach, for a daylong hike in the woods, for an overnight camping trip.
Techno Sabbath
Finally—one more suggestion for a specific way to practice keeping a holy, God-focused Sabbath: one of our former church attenders shared with me his regular practice of a techno Sabbath. No, it’s not a day devoted to Electronic Dance Music (though that’s not a bad idea), but it’s a Sabbath from technology. I’d heard of these and always thought about taking one, but there was something about a conversation with him that made me feel like I finally had permission to unplug, to disconnect.
Of course, you can turn all your devices off for a short period of time—an hour, for the morning, during dinner and after it. But I’ve found a full 24-hour break each week from technology is both embarrassingly difficult and surprisingly life-giving. It serves the same purpose as fasting. Rather than reaching for a device that has a potentially life-changing notification on it, I try to offer those energies instead to God.
At first, there are feelings of withdrawal—no access to notifications that increase the rush of adrenaline and excitement when someone replies to that email you were so eager about, or when someone hearts your Instagram photo or retweets your witty observation about humanity. All that stuff just goes on… without you. At least for a day.
You could even try to have your techno Sabbath coincide with your weekly Sabbath.
Establish Your School Year Practices Now
As we begin a new school year, we have the opportunity to establish and re-establish practices of faithful living. Take some time this week, if you haven’t already, and think about what Sabbath-keeping this fall is going to look like for you. If you have other people with whom your schedule is interdependent, involve them in the conversation—sit down with your calendar and actually write in your Sabbath-keeping practices, so that they don’t get forgotten, or scheduled on top of.
I pray that God would give us the strength to be deliberate about making Sabbath observances central to how we go through our hours, days, and weeks. As we do so, may we find that prayer of Isaiah fulfilled: “O God, you will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are fixed on you; for in returning and rest we shall be saved; in quietness and trust shall be our strength.”
Yep, that’s right… another Accordance Webinar coming your way! Check all of this week’s sessions out here. I’m leading this one Wednesday:
Sermon Preparation in Action Wednesday, August 26, 12:00 – 1:15 PM EDT
Learn how to tap Accordance’s power for sermon preparation from brainstorming sermon ideas to finished message.
We had a great turnout last week at the session I led on setting up workspaces. Sign up is free, even if you don’t have Accordance. Learn more and save a spot here.
There’s still time to sign up for today’s Accordance Webinar I’m leading at noon. You can sign up here. Here are the details:
Setting Up Workspaces with Abram K-J Friday, August 21, 12:00 – 1:00 PM
Abram will gear this session toward the basic-level Accordance user. The webinar is interactive throughout, offering users a chance to see how to set up, customize, and save a Workspace in Accordance.
Here is what I’ll cover:
1. Terminology: Panes, Tabs, Zones, Workspaces
2. Setting Up a Simple Workspace: Bible, Commentary, User Notes
3. Setting Up a More Robust Workspace: Multiple Bible Texts, Multiple Commentaries, and Tools
4. Creating Different Workspaces for Different Tasks
The new school year is almost year. (Some folk in the South have already started!)
If you’re a pastor or professor who is looking to reinvigorate your sermon prep or teaching workflow, Accordance Bible Software is a great tool. It’s also an indispensable aid for seminarians. (Speaking of which: Back to School sale.)
This coming week Accordance is offering a host of free webinars. I’ve attended a few of these, and they’re always informative and well-done. I also teach a couple webinars now, which is a lot of fun. I’m leading one on Friday:
Setting Up Workspaces with Abram K-J Friday, August 21, 12:00 – 1:00 PM
Abram will gear this session toward the basic-level Accordance user. The webinar is interactive throughout, offering users a chance to see how to set up, customize, and save a Workspace in Accordance.
Here is what I’ll cover:
1. Terminology: Panes, Tabs, Zones, Workspaces
2. Setting Up a Simple Workspace: Bible, Commentary, User Notes
3. Setting Up a More Robust Workspace: Multiple Bible Texts, Multiple Commentaries, and Tools
4. Creating Different Workspaces for Different Tasks
Does the Church need another commentary on Romans?
Time will tell. But Richard N. Longenecker’s Romans volume in the NIGTC series is about to be released.
Today Eerdmans announced a sneak peek PDF with Table of Contents and Preface, which you can find here.
I like Longenecker’s turn of phrase when he says Romans “has been, in very large measure, the heartland of Christian thought, life, and proclamation.”
He also notes:
Indeed, 2 Pet 3:16 bears eloquent testimony to the church’s mingled attitudes of (1) deep respect for Paul’s letters generally (and Romans in particular), yet also (2) real difficulties in trying to understand them, and (3) a realization of possibilities for serious misinterpretation, when it says of Paul’s letters that they “contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.” In fact, despite all its appearances of being straightforward and clear, no other NT writing presents greater difficulties with respect to “style,” “stance,” and “audience” (to recall Erasmus’s three categories of difficulty) than does Romans.
On the one hand, the burgeoning field of Septuagint studies still has few enough publications that any new work is potentially significant. On the other hand, there still seems to be an acute need for works that bridge the gap between New Testament Greek readers and LXX specialists.
Resources like †Rod Decker’s Koine Greek Reader (which pays decent attention to the Septuagint) or even the old Conybeare and Stock (which has some LXX portions with explanatory footnotes) are few and far between.
I’ve been asking Kregel for probably three years now whether they’d consider publishing a dedicated Septuagint reader. Little did I know one was already in the works.
It releases this fall. Karen Jobes is its author. Here’s some copy from Kregel that describes the book:
Interest in the Septuagint today is strong and continues to grow. But a guidebook to the text, similar to readers and handbooks that exist for students of the Greek New Testament, has been lacking. Discovering the Septuagint: A Guided Reader fills that need. Created by an expert on the Septuagint, this groundbreaking resource draws on the editor’s experience as an educator to help upper-level college, seminary, and graduate students cultivate skill in reading the Greek Old Testament.
This reader presents, in canonical order, ten Greek texts from the Göttingen Septuaginta Vetus Testamentum Graecum and the Rahlfs-Hanhart Septuaginta critical edition. It explains the syntax, grammar, and vocabulary of more than 700 verses from select Old Testament texts representing a variety of genres, including the Psalms, the Prophets, and more.
The texts included in this volume were chosen to fit into a 15-week semester, reading about 50 verses a week. The texts selected 1) Are examples of distinctive Septuagint syntax or word usage and/or 2) Exemplify the amplification of certain theological themes or motifs by the Septuagint translators within their Jewish Hellenistic culture and/or 3) Are used significantly by New Testament writers.
More specifically:
Each study includes:
Introduction—briefly discussing the particular Greek text and its key features.
English translation—using the New English Translation of the Septuagint.
Text notes—providing verse/phrase–level explanations of the Greek syntax and grammar.
Use in the New Testament.
Select bibliography.
Parses more difficult verbal forms, gives alternate ways of reading the text, and discusses significant critical issues of the text.
Calls attention to vocabulary and syntax unique to the Septuagint.
References standard Septuagint grammars, lexicons, and other resources.
No cover art yet, but the book is a-coming. You’ll hear more here later.
Two observations that didn’t fit into that review, with one that did:
Campbell’s writing is good. Compelling, clear, cogent, coherent, etc.
He has a further reading section after each chapter, and his footnotes point to even more related literature that I already want to check out.
I didn’t expect there to be as many practical, exegetical examples as there were, but this made me more engaged with the book, and helped me see more explicitly how its contents could better inform my sermon preparation.
I really appreciated Constantine R. Campbell’s Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek. Yes, I read it cover to cover. And no, it was not even for a book review or class! Just for fun. I don’t know enough to wade intelligently into the minutiae of the verbal aspect debate, but I do know that Campbell presented his view succinctly and clearly in that work. I felt like I had a good, basic grasp on aspect after working through that book.
Now Advances in the Study of Greek releases this month. It surveys the thoughts, studies, and work of many Greek scholars. It’s got a chapter on aspect, but covers much more territory than just that.
Advances in the Study of Greek offers an introduction to issues of interest in the current world of Greek scholarship. Those within Greek scholarship will welcome this book as a tool that puts students, pastors, professors, and commentators firmly in touch with what is going on in Greek studies. Those outside Greek scholarship will warmly receive Advances in the Study of Greek as a resource to get themselves up to speed in Greek studies. Free of technical linguistic jargon, the scholarship contained within is highly accessible to outsiders.
Advances in the Study of Greek provides an accessible introduction for students, pastors, professors, and commentators to understand the current issues of interest in this period of paradigm shift.
I’m looking forward to reading it and writing the review, which will be published in an upcoming issue of Bible Study Magazine. Check out the book here.
Words on the Word 