UPDATE: In playing with this report more I have discovered something. Since these searches are looking for all morphological forms within the pericope, if a word has more than one possible form the word is counted twice. This means that the number of occurrences listed may be slightly exaggerated. This is a rare situation but you do need to be aware of it.

You don’t own your books, you only own a license.

TRUE – While it is true that you don’t “own” your electronic books, but simply a license to use those books, this is not unusual. As a matter of fact, you don’t “own” a single piece of software installed on your computer. You don’t even own the operating system that makes it work – you own an “end user license.” You know that really long, legalese bunch of text, that appears on the screen that you have to click something like “I Agree” to get past when installing software? That is called an EULA – End User License Agreement. If you read it, and you probably didn’t, you would see all of the details of the “license” you bought. You cannot install it on other machines, you cannot make copies, you cannot alter the code, etc… You see you own a license, not the software itself.

Now it could be argued, that $120 piece of software like Microsoft Office is not the same as spending thousands of dollars on electronic books. But it is not different than most professional fields. I worked as a Graphic Designer for years. It was not unusual to spend $1500 or more on a software package (namely Adobe Create Suite) in order to have the professional level tools needed for the job. Guess what you get for your $1500? A license to use it. You don’t own a thing.

I consider Logos Bible Software a professional level tool. I have no problem not “owning” my books. I don’t own anything else on my computer either.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Logos has gone to great lengths to build additional information into the books they license. This information allows these books to be interconnected in ways that paper sources could never dream of. These electronic resources know whether you are looking at an English word or Greek word and they know what other books provide information about English words and which offer information about Greek words. Maps become interactive, searches become multi-dimensional. Logos has made the books “smarter” and they deserve to profit by that. It makes them innovative – not evil.

Also, Logos doesn’t sell their software or upgrades to their software. You can upgrade your core software for free. That’s right – FREE – zip, zilch. nada! (Try calling Microsoft when Office 11 is released in a few months and tell them you want it free because you already bought Office 10. Just make sure you hold the phone away from your ear as they laugh hysterically in your general direction). If Logos adds a new feature or function – your software is updated automatically – no charge. Most companies wouldn’t dream of doing this. So what are they charging for? Check out this post for clarification on upgrades and crossgrades.

Download Logos 4 for Windows here - Download Logos 4 for MAC here

There is no guarantee that you will be able to access your books 10 years from now.

TRUE – Welcome to the computer age. Obsolescence is part of the deal. If a company goes out of business there is no guarantee that you will be able to run their software 10 years from now. I don’t think this surprises anyone. That is why software companies are constantly upgrading their software (and charging you for the upgrade I might add). There is no guarantee that your COMPUTER will be running 10 years from now! As a matter of fact, I would almost guarantee that it won’t be! Does that mean that we should go back to typewriters because they lasted longer? I don’t think so.

Just because we “might not” have access to these electronic resources 10 years from now doesn’t mean we should settle for their analog counterparts. The functionality gains are WAY too high to go that route. Personally, even with the problems and expenses we have with computers and software – I don’t want to go back you typewriters and White-Out!

This argument does mean however, that we need to look at the track records of the companies we do business with. While it is no guarantee that they will stay in business (Am I the only one that owns a Saturn?) it should be an indicator. Don’t buy software from fly-by night companies. I certainly wouldn’t consider Logos a fly-by night company. They have been around a long time and seem very stable.

You can sell your old analog books, but you can’t sell your electronic books.

FALSE – You can sell them – or more accurately, you can transfer your license to someone else. There is a $20 flat-fee per transfer. You can transfer as many licenses in one transaction as you want for that $20 fee. Here is the policy as stated on their website. I have called Logos and confirmed that this policy is accurate:

“Licenses for shippable products on CD-ROM or DVD-ROM, which come with a Serial Number, can be transferred from one person to another. (See the EULA for more information.) Unlocks can only be transferred as part of a full license transfer. There will be a processing fee charged on all transfers which is subject to change without notice. As of 6/17/09 the fee is equal to $20.00 per transfer. Either party involved with the transfer can pay the fee. We require the transfer request in writing (email is accepted) from the person to whom the software is currently registered.”

That being said, there are limits to what you can transfer. You cannot break up a bundle or base package that you received a discount on. Some may squawk about this, but I think it is more than reasonable. Here is the way I understand this policy. If I bought a March Madness bundle for $300 that contains books (excuse me licenses) worth $700 individually, I cannot break that bundle up and sell the component parts to someone else. I can sell the bundle to someone if I decide I don’t want it. This prevents individuals from buying a bundle at a deep discount and then profiting by selling the individual components at full price and expecting Logos to do the work of transferring all of those licenses to someone else.

IMPORTANT NOTE: In defense of this argument, I have found that during the first couple of weeks, during the launch of Logos 4, they put a moratorium on the transfer of licenses. This was due to the volume of upgrades and new purchases being made at the time. It may be that during this moratorium period some staff at Logos did not communicate clearly with customers. Now I have said myself that Logos did not handle the release of Logos 4 well. They did not communicate clearly and so some criticism related to these issues is warranted. But we should now communicate accurately the policy that is in place – not some mis-information from the past.

BOTTOM LINE: For a $20 fee, your licenses can be transferred to another individual. Either the seller or the buyer can pay the fee. YOU CAN SELL YOUR BOOKS.

Logos doesn’t give you full credit for the books you have bought and wants to charge you twice.

FALSE – My personal experience is that Logos has always been reasonable about trying to give me credit for licenses I have bought. That being said – it hasn’t always been 100 percent equitable, and honestly, I can’t expect it to be and the rest of the world works the very same way.

I just bought a Beatle’s box set of 5 CDs for $40. These retail individually for $15 each, I saved almost 50 percent. But, I already bought two of these individual CDs and spent $30. Do I call the record company and tell them they are obligated to give me the other 3 CDs in the set for $10? Of course not! Why would I expect them to? I have to decide if the other 3 CDs in the set are worth the price of the entire set – in this case $45. I may still be interested since that is a $5 savings, but I might decide that added CDs aren’t worth it to me. That’s my choice. I shouldn’t slam the record company as being evil (hear Darth Vader music playing in the background) or not caring about its customers by offering the new box set and not giving me full credit for my past purchases. (BTW – The same case can be made for my Lord of the Rings boxed set, purchasing MS Word and then wanting to buy the entire MS Office suite of any other combined or bundled offer.)

How does this play out with Logos? A couple of years ago I bought the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Revised Edition shortly after it was made available. The full retail price of this resource is $150.00. Today, this resource is one of the components of the Gold Library Upgrade for Logos 4 which is being offered for $171.00. This upgrade contains over 64 new electronic books of which The Oxford Dictionary is just one. Should I expect Logos to now give me these 63 additional resources for $21? Basically, I consider that I am paying $171.00 for these additional resources. Certainly, I need to ask myself if these additional resources are worth $171.00. If they aren’t then I won’t spend the money. If they are, I am still getting a good deal.

On top of that, MY experience is that Logos has always tried, whenever possible, to help give me credit for what I have purchased in the past. There have been a couple of “boxed set” situations where I had to decide if the offer was worth it, but in almost every case I found that it was.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Since I purchased my Oxford Dictionary for full price as an individual license, I could sell it to someone and recoup my costs. Just like I might try to sell Rubber Soul and my White Album on eBay or Craigslist.

Logos is NOT Darth Vader!

Logos, like any other company on the planet is out to make money. Noble intentions aside as far as helping us study the Bible better, they need to make profits in order to stay in business and continue innovating. Have I always agreed with the way the company has done things? Not even close! Have they always been the best communicators? No. But that makes them human – not evil. It also doesn’t give them credit for the amazing tools their products now provide.

These arguments unfortunately distract people from the HUGE benefits…

Sadly, what these arguments don’t discuss is what these new electronic resources do that their analog counterparts couldn’t dream of doing! The benefits of this technology are incredible and that is what we should be spending our time talking about. The truth is that these integrated, interactive resources can help you do things that you CANNOT do with their paper versions. To compare them with paper versions is not an apple to apple comparison. In my next post, I will outline a number of the benefits that make this technology and these electronic resources well worth the investment.

Import Notes and Highlighting from Version 3 – This is a feature that previous users have been shouting for since Logos 4 was released. Up until now there was no way to move all of your note file information from version 3 to version 4. Now you can not only import your Notes, but also any highlighting in your books with be imported to version 4 as well. A new post on the Logos blog today discusses this feature.

Prayer Lists – This is another Version 3 feature that has made it to Logos 4. Track the things you want to pray about and see them in the Home Page ribbon each day.

Custom Highlighter Styles – Create your own set of highlighter styles. This is another Version 3 feature that has been added. While Logos 4 shipped with the standard highlighter groups, you couldn’t create your own. Now you can.

Parallel Resource Groups – This is another feature that the Logos community has been requesting since the new version launched. Now you can create groups of parallel resources like Bible, commentaries, dictionaries and lexicons and have them in a pulldown menu in your resource panels.

Custom Settings for the Information Window – A Settings button has been added to the Information window allowing you to control what information is presented and from what resources. This makes this window much more useful in my opinion.

Search While Typing – This feature now functions very much like Bible Speed Search did in Version 3. As you type in the search box result begin displaying immediately. While this is impressive, I don’t see that it really changes much. Searching is so fast in Logos 4 the need to search as you type is really minimized.

Convert Search Results to Visual Filter - Visual Filters in Logos 4 rocks! They are so much more powerful than in Version 3. Previously, when you did a search the search results were highlighted in the text as long as you left the Search window open. As soon as you closed the Search window, the highlighting vanished. This new feature allows you to convert the Search results into a Visual Filter that can be saved and turned off and on at will. This may seem minor, but it is a real improvement. I am planning a screencast video on Visual Filters this week – stay tuned.

These are just a few of the new features released in the Logos 4.0b update. Many of the improvements are small and tend more to help with form and function, but they are small enough that they may go unnoticed. Your software should update itself (unless you have turned auto-updating off for some reason). If you have received your update yet and don’t want to wait you can type Update Now in the Command Box on the Home Page to check for the new version. INDEXING ALERT  - Because some of the new features involve mew searches it Logos does need to reindex parts of your library. This can take a long time (mine took almost 6 hours) so be warned.

There is a good video by Logos user Mark Barnes available demonstrating a number of the new features here:

New features in Logos 4.0b from Mark Barnes on Vimeo.

MAC Version – Logos 4.0b is a Windows version update. The MAC version is currently still in Alpha testing and is at Alpha 15 last time I checked. It is making good progress but still has a long way to go until a full version release. Hang in there MAC users – it is in the works.

The free app comes with access to 31 books:

1. Morning and Evening
2. Necessity of Prayer
3. Pilgrim’s Progress
4. Power Through Prayer
5. Selected Sermons of George Whitefield
6. Sermons on Several Occassions
7. St. Paul the Traveller and Roman Citizen
8. Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
9. Commentary Critical & Explanatory on Whole Bible (JFB)
10. Diving For Pearls in God’s Treasure Chest
11. Easton’s Bible Dictionary
12. Imitation of Christ
13. In His Steps
14. Training of the Twelve
15. Why Four Gospels?
16. Systematic Theology (Strong)
17. New Nave’s Topical Bible
18. Strong’s Concise Dictionary of the Words of the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Testament
19. An Introduction to Ecclesiastical Latin
20. Dictionary of the Vulgate New Testament
21. Holbein’s Bible Woodcuts
22. The Summarized Bible: Complete Summary of the Old Testament
23. The Summarized Bible: Complete Summary of the New Testament
24. Traveling in the Holy Land through the Stereoscope
25. The New Testament in Greek (Westcott and Hort)
26. KJV Cambridge Paragraph English-Greek Reverse Interlinear
27. KJV Cambridge Paragraph English-Hebrew Reverse Interlinear
28. Glossary of Morpho-Syntactic Database Terminology
29. Lexham English Bible / New Testament
30. LEB English-Greek Reverse Interlinear
31. LEB English-Hebrew Reverse Interlinear

Check out the video below to get a sense of what it can do:

This really should be on your iPhone or iPod if you like to study the Bible.

Here is an example of how it works:

One of my favorite passages of Scripture is found in James 1:21-25. The illustration James uses of God’s word as a mirror that we must look into is a powerful reminder that we must fix what we see. Being doers of the word echos the teachings of Jesus in Matthew 7:24-27. The wise man is the one who hears and acts. We must hear God’s word and act on it.

You can use short Bible names as well – Rom 6:1-11; 1Cor 3:16; and 1Pet 3:21

You can see the links above. I have specified the NAS95 version for the links. Understand that all I had to do is type the book name and verse. RefTagger did the rest.

Installation in Blogger blogs is fairly straightforward. You can find Blogger instructions here.

Installation in WordPress is very easy, BUT only works with self-hosted WordPress blogs. In other words, if you have a free www.wordpress.com blog – it won’t support the plugin (sorry if I got your hopes up). If you have a self-hosted WordPress blog you can find installation instructions here.

Check out RefTagger. It will make your Bible passages pop – literally

New Home Page
The new Home Page makes getting started easier. It looks much like an electronic newspaper with snippets of articles from books in your library. This helps you connect to information in your resources that you might not even know is available in your library.

New Passage and Exegetical Guides
The new Passage Guide is more robust and visually appealing. You can connect to information faster and more in depth with the click of the mouse. These guides provide your own electronic “librarian” to let you deeply study a passage like never before. In an instant, dozens of resources are open and ready for you to explore simply by typing in the passage you want to study.

The Exegetical Guide connects you to Greek and Hebrew resources and information without the need to be a Greek scholar. This guide breaks your passage down into its component words and then links you to resources that allow you to study each of those words in depth.

Greek and Hebrew for English Readers
Reverse interlinears are built directly into many English Bibles, allowing you to see the Greek or Hebrew behind your text. Highlight a portion of the text in one interlinear, and Logos 4 will highlight the corresponding text in your other open Bibles.

Better Maps and Graphics
Topographical, interactive maps make the biblical world come alive. Each map includes global coordinates linked to Google Maps. Thousands of other images from your library provide you with additional perspectives on the place you’re exploring.

Connect to more information about Bible people, places and things
One of my favorite features in Logos 3 was Biblical people. Type a name or a passage that contains a persons name, and you are presented with that person’s interactive family tree. This is great when exploring the Old Testament to see the connections and relationships between people. Well Logos 4 has raised the bard by improving this feature and adding a similar function for Bible Places, and Biblical Things.

These tools help you visualize 3D maps and diagrams of your information and add depth to your studies like never before.

There are literally dozens of changes that have been made to this software. I have always been a fan of Logos, but Logos 4 certainly raises the bar. Check out this new version. Whether you are upgrading from version 3 or looking for a tool to help you go deeper in your Bible study faster – Logos 4 is a great tool for the job! Check out the intro video on their website for more information.

I have been using the final beta version for a couple of months now and I must say that it certainly runs very fast on my Macbook Pro. There were still some features missing in the beta that I am hopeful they have added to the final version, but we will see. While I am sure, as a 1.0 product, that there will be some growing pains and some features that we may have to wait for, I am excited at the possibility of being free from the Windows environment.

As always with Logos, they have been faithful to their promise to make a cross grade as painless financially as possible. Those of us with heavy investments in very large libraries on the Windows side can purchase a cross-grade MAC engine for $59 and all of our electronic books will work with it. Unlike many companies (Adobe, Microsoft, and others) that force you to purchase full versions when you switch platforms, Logos has made this simple, easy, and affordable.

I will try to give a full review once my copy arrives and I have time to work with it thoroughly.

Check it out here http://www.logos.com/mac

But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy.
Jamess 3:17 (NASB).

In this verse the words for “reasonable” and the word for “unwavering” are uniquely occurring words. They appear no where else in the New Testament. Studying these words can bring a great deal of additional meaning to the section being studied. The Holy Spirit chose these words specifically because of their unique ability to say what needed to be said. We should take the time to look more closely at these words to discover why they are so appropriate for the section being studied.

So how do you find these words?

Englishman’s Concordance
Obviously you can find these “uniquely occurring words” using a hardback paper concordance, but that can be very time consuming. In Logos Bible Software you can run an Englishman’s Concordance report on a suspected word and it will show you every verse that uses the word. To run and Englishman’s Concordance report you must use the New American Standard (NASB), the King James Version (KJV), or one of the two new reverse interlinear versions, the English Standard Reverse Interlinear (ESV) or the New Revised Standard Reverse Interlinear (NRSV). Simply right mouse click on a word in the text and select Englishman’s Concordance from the pulldown menu that appears.

The drawback to this approach is that you may miss some uniquely occurring words because you did not look them up in Englishman’s. Which words do you check and which words do you skip?

Exegetical Guide
The Exegetical Guide provides a way to find ALL of the uniquely occurring words in a pericope at once. For example, when I ran this report (with setting that I will explain next) I found 11 more uniquely occurring words in James 3 in addition to the two I had already identified in James 3:17.

To set up the Exegetical Guide to find these words:

1. Open the Exegetical Guide and click Properties in the upper right corner of the window.
2. Deselect everything in the list (This report will take a long time to run and you need to strip any information that you don’t need out of the report to make it manageable)
3. Look at the Word by Word section of this report properties.
4. Be sure to deselect Show Verse Text (If you don’t turn this off it will list every word in the pericope. If your pericope in and entire book, it will really slow things down.)
5. Set “Filter Out Words Whose Lemmas Occur More Than…” to 1
6. Choose which parts of speech you are interested in searching for
7. Select any Root Word Analysis options that you would like. I leave all of these selected.
8. Run the report

PLEASE NOTE: This report may take some time depending on the speed or your computer and the size of the pericope you have chosen. You will also have to choose “MORE” at the bottom of the report to see all of the entries. You may have to click “MORE” a number of times to see them all.

This approach will help you identify these words and you may be surprised at the depth they can bring to your studies. Look at these words closely to discover why the Holy Spirit chose that exact word for that exact purpose. It can be very exciting.

Happy word hunting….