ΕΝ ΕΦΕΣΩ

I love the new feature in Logos 4 called, “Clippings,” which basically makes it possible to gather content from a variety of books in the same place. As a result, I’ve developed in one location a variety of discussions of the Greek Verb.

Here’s what it looks like:

By clicking on the spot I’ve highlighted, you create a new clipping:

Ignoring the very poorly written quality of my annotation (it’s hard to write with a mouse), you can see what it’s possible to add emphasis with bold, italics, or underlining in your clippings after you’ve created a new Clippings File.

But more importantly is the fact that you can then add notes and comments to the clipping itself:

I’ve gone through about a dozen grammars like this so far. Some are better than others. Swetnam on Aspect is pretty good. My biggest concern is that his highly unusual use of terminology is only going to confuse students in the long run who continue their Greek studies. And for that reason, I wouldn’t recommend his particular discussion. Anyway, that’s beside the point. We’re talking about a software feature, not a grammatical category that’s only caused confusion over the past 20 decades.

Other cool features of “Clippings” include the ability to instantly get bibliographic info. If you click here:

The Clipping “flips around” and you see this:

And you can choose whatever style you want – though sometimes there are still issues to fix, but either way, the information is still there for your citation already.

Also, text formatting is easily available for both your notes as well as the clipping itself:

And these follow the typical shortcuts: ctrl-b for Bold, ctrl-i for italics, etc.

Finally, it’s possible to create multiple collections of clippings depending on what you’re working on.

And then name it whatever you want:

New Clippings Documents are also available via the File Menu:

So cool and so helpful for collecting and annotating your information.

Eerdmans just published:

Translating the New Testament: Text, Translation, Theology
Series: McMaster New Testament Studies
Stanley E. Porter (editor), Mark J. Boda (editor)

And I’m seriously considering requesting a review copy — though Eerdmans seems to be much more picky about who it sends review copies to. But I’ll probably give it a try.

At this point though, I’ll taking a rather standoff-ish stance regarding the book.It’s a book on translation. Right?

So why aren’t there any professional translators in the list of contributors.

Barbara Aland
Mark J. Boda
Philip Comfort
Alain Gignac
Edith M. Humphrey
Luke Timothy Johnson
Richard N. Longenecker
Matthew Brook O’Donnell
Stanley E. Porter
Maurice A. Robinson
Elsa Tamez
Francis Watson
Khiok-Khng (K. K.) Yeo

We’ve got theologians, text critics, NT scholars, OT scholars, but not translators. There is not a single scholar on this list whose central academic specialty is translation. Why couldn’t Mildred Larson have contributed? Ernst-August Gutt? Katherine Barnwell? John Callow? Peter Silzer? Ronald Sim? Peter Unseth? Ernst Wendland? Catherine Rountree?

Yeah, you get the idea.

Today is a day that I have been waiting for quite some time:

LOGOS 4

Over the past few months, Logos has been kind enough to allow me to participate in the private beta testing of their (formerly) forthcoming version of their library system.

And let me tell you, it has been exciting.

The new version changes just about everything. And it’s for the good.

• The new interface is clean and simple.
• Window management has been completely revolutionized.
• Library management is less time consuming & more feature rich.
• New language tools have been developed & old ones have been redesigned.
• New resources & new library collections have been released with new content — including several resources that make me less interested in investing in another piece of software (e.g. my own collection now has Swete’s The Old Testament in Greek According to the Septuagint including the apparatus).

Interface & Window Management:

The basic interface now consists of three basic icons & three drop down menus in the top left corner:

“Home”, “Library”, & “Search” – all of which are rather self-explanatory. And “File” consists have various syntax searches, notes, visual filters, clippings, etc. that you might create as you go along. Under “Guides” we have the ever reliable passage guide, exegetical guide, & word study guide. All of which have received a nice face lift;

Organizing Windows has improved in some incredible ways. For one, it’s now possible to simple drag windows around and they resize to a highlighted area:

But probably the most exciting thing is the fact that now windows can be separated from the central program window:

Which then results in:

This definitely makes Logos 4 much easier to work with when using multiple programs at the same time compared to Logos 3 – or using multiple monitors (which I would love to have, but don’t).

Finally, had you set up your windows in a certain way a week ago that you want to go back to? Didn’t save it? Can’t remember exactly what it was? Well, Layouts has changed all of that:

There’s a reason though. Anyway, it is now possible go back and pick out a particular layout that you had used a few days before, rename it, and save it as your own. Currently, I have four such layouts. Why two Layouts with virtually the same name? Well, it’s a long story.

The Library

With Version 4, we can now both tag and rate the books in our libraries. Note that haven’t spent too much time ranking books –- Swanson’s dictionary is gets two stars. That’s not because it’s bad, just that it’s not what I would want. It’s a great dictionary for a quick gloss, but I’m very, very rarely interested in a quick gloss. Just want to put a plug in here for the slow, detail reading of lexical entries of full-fledged lexicons like BDAG, LSJ, GELS, & L&N. It gets two stars instead of one because it’s still far superior than Strongs.

Ah, but now we come to the interesting stuff in the library: new resources. Now what follows, as I understand it minimally requires the Original Languages Library, though you will need to go look at Logos’ website to double check on that. And you may have noticed it in a screen shot above:

We finally have something to compete with (and absolutely crush!) Opentext.org’s database. These are the same trees that Andi Wu & Randall Tan discussed at International SBL this past year, as well as at BibleTech:2009 (where there’s also a PDF & mp3 available for download).

It’s doesn’t do everything. But it’s a massive leap in the right direction. For one, unlike Opentext.org, Cascadia actually recognizes that there are more than four types of constituents (Predicate, Subject, Complement, & Adjunct). Unfortunately, the treatment of discontinuous phrases is just about the same and needs work. But Cascadia brings a lot to the table:

• Actual Phrase Structure
• More Clause Types – the inclusion of “Verb Elided Clause” as a clause type is incredibly important – especially for Paul.
• Recognition that, semantically speaking, copulas (e.g. εἰμί) are not predicates.

Here’s what it looks like in action:

Now I’ve only been able to search using this new database for about a month now, but I definitely like what I have seen, generally speaking. More than anything, I’ve appreciated being able to do the same search using both Cascadia and Opentext.org together and compare the search results.

For example, ditransitive clauses have had my curiosity off and on for some time now, so I constructed this search in Cascadia using the new and improved Syntax Search Dialog (It’s similar to the old one, but now you can drag and drop, which makes it easier to use and is so cool):

And essentially the same search in Opentext.org:

The results were rather interesting. Opentext received more hits:

The first two in Matthew aren’t ditransitive in Cascadia because they both use copulas. Thus, it is the initial adjective that receives the Predicate Function rather than the verb. An adjective cannot be an Object if it is the semantic predicate of the clause.

Acts 2:39 is not ditransitive in Cascadia because Opentext.org has incorrectly annotated ἂν as a Complement, which it very much is not. And Acts 25:27 has the rather semantically empty, δοκέω, and thus the semantic predicate of the clause is ἄλογον.

Finally, 2 Corinthians 9:1 is not ditransitive in Cascadia, again, because the verb of the clause is a copula.

So why did I go through all of this?

Well, for one, we finally have a second voice beside Opentext.org that provides an extremely beneficial balance & check for determining what the syntax of the text actually is. Of the five differences in this search, four of the were the result of Opentext.org’s simplicity (which, granted, at times is a good thing). But this search also revealed a tagging mistake in Opentext as well. Doing quality research is always going to be dependent upon the quality of the data we use. And now we have a significantly easier way to confirming what is the accurate syntactic annotation.

There is more to do in Greek syntax, of course, but I’ll leave that for another time. I’m planning on putting in another proposal to BibleTech:2010 on this very topic.

I’ll leave you with this: the preface from the Cascadia graphs, just to give you an idea of where they came from:

The Cascadia Syntax Graphs of the New Testament is derived from a new dynamic treebank project developed by the Asia Bible Society. The Greek Syntactic Treebank Project is built on the basis of a computer-readable Greek grammar, with the syntactic trees (graphs) directly generated by a parser. Manual checking and corrections are stored as data in a knowledge base to guide the parser. The syntax trees (graphs) are dynamically generated from the latest version of the grammar and knowledge base, which enables continual organic improvement and growth as the grammar and knowledge base are maintained and updated.

We humbly present this preliminary version of the syntax graphs to users of Logos version 4 and look forward to improving and expanding it in the future.

Randall Tan
Andi Wu
November, 2009

Andi Wu and Randall K. Tan, Cascadia Syntax Graphs of the New Testament (Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009).

There is much, much more to say, but I hope I’ve at least given you something to whet your appetite for the time being. Logos 4 is good enough that It’ll be replacing Logos 3 for me. Most definitely.

By the way, did I mention that as of version 4, my entire library is now indexed (which times some time, but is definitely worth it) and I can search my 2000 books in mere seconds for anything?

The Mac version of Logos 4 is in Alpha testing as we speak and will be have complete parity with the Windows version. That’s right, Mac users, you haven’t been ignored.

And did I mention at all Logos 4 for iPhone & iPod Touch is part of the deal?

Be sure to head over to LOGOS 4 to get the whole scoop and learn about new notes, clippings, handouts, editable passage, exegetical, & word study guides (or you can now create your own!). There’s so much that I could have shared, but I wanted to focus on the things that matter to me. So go, check it out: LOGOS 4.

Notes:

• All screenshots are illustrative. Resources shown may not be included in Logos 4 base packages – i.e. you need at least the Original Languages Library for either Opentext.org or Cascadia.
• Upgrade discounts are available for existing customers.

Other Reviews thus far:

Ricoblog,

Reuben Gomez

Steve Runge’s got a bit too.

Joe Miller

Thomas Black

Adam Couturier

Robert Pavich

Ken Morris

Chris Roberts

Amazon has updated the price for Fanning’s monograph in the past few days.

The price is now $135 . . . and then Amazon is charging a $57 sourcing fee. And that brings it back up to the price Amazon had been previously charging for it. Basically (I’m guessing), it appears that Amazon has copies of the book that they had already purchased at the higher price and don’t want to loose money on the books now that the price is changed. Makes sense, though I doubt many of us would be willing to order it until the sourcing fee is removed. Thus far, I haven’t seen any other price “changes” on other sites.

Is the price drop an initial frustration for booksellers who paid a higher price for their inventory from Oxford?

There will be a book review coming either tomorrow or Monday. Pay attention!

On my last post, Carl made an insightful comment — one that  I’ve had myself, though not as well put — about this collection from Logos:

Biblical Languages: Reference Grammars and Introductions (19 Vols.)

He wrote,

Frankly, that’s an absurdly large collection; I can see putting it in a package with other reference works that are really Classical: Allen & Greenough, the Homeric grammar, and the like. But very few specialists are going to want that whole bundle.

There are some great books in the collection, but he’s right. It’s way too diverse. It would be far better if it were broken up into a couple less expensive collections.

Part of me wonders if the reason for putting all these books together is so that otherwise, they would never get enough orders for the less Biblical studies related books, e.g. the Syriac, Latin, & perhaps the Homeric Grammar…

I have a feeling that is the case, though even still, I may very well still suggest breaking this collection up.

Many of you saw my post and post a few days ago: Poll: What is the Demand for Fanning?

I haven’t actually e-mail the poll results to Oxford University Press, but I did receive this e-mail from OUP today:

Dear Customer,

I am pleased to inform you that after evaluation from our editorial department,
the publication Verbal Aspect in New Testament Greek by Buist M. Fanning
is in the process of being lowered. The cost will now be $135.00.

So, thus far, it is not being made into a paperback, but the price is being significantly lowered. $135 is still rather high, but this is definitely a step in the right direction.

Recently two bloggers wrote reviews of Leland Ryken’s new book on translation: Understanding English Bible Translation (which I cannot link to for purchase with a good conscience).

One of them is written by Tim Challies, a self-employed web-designer with a degree in history from McMaster University, whose also done some interesting writing on culture & the church.

The other is written by Joel M. Hoffman, who has “a PhD in theoretical linguistics and has taught Bible in religious settings and translation theory at Brandeis University and at HUC-JIR in New York City”

Very different views of the same book.

Challies writes:

In Understanding English Bible Translation Ryken argues persuasively that there is much to gain in depending upon an essentially literal translation of Scripture and he argues equally well that there is potential for great loss if we turn instead to dynamic equivalents or other less-stringent translations.

Though not quite an academic book, neither was it particularly easy reading. Still, it did a good of presenting arguments for what Ryken calls an “essentially literal” approach to translating the Bible. <– That referred to Ryken’s first book; my mistake.

And Hoffman writes:

Unfortunately, Ryken’s work is marred by a disdain for scholarship, rhetoric disguised as argument, and a lack of attention to the very biblical text he claims to be investigating.

I’ll let you read the rest…

(HT: Bryan Lilly – I don’t actually read Challies’ blog…)

Oxford University Press is apprehensive about publishing a paperback version of Fanning’s monograph Verbal Aspect in New Testament Greek [Oxford Theological Monographs] because it was so expensive to produce initially and the demand hasn’t appeared to be very high.

Now I know that there are a number of other readers of my blog who are interested in Fanning’s book and I know that many of you have also expressed your regret about it’s price.

But I would appreciate it if you would be willing to vote in a poll saying whether you would be interested in purchasing Fanning’s book if it provided as a lower priced paperback edition rather than a $240 hardcover (paperback prints of Oxford Theological Monographs appear to be retail priced between $45 & $60), which is still somewhat high, but definitely, definitely more accessible for the average Joe – and I’m sure this is a book that the average Joe would love to have!

And please, if you voted, “YES” and mean it,  spread the word about this poll! I would like to get a significant number of votes & send the results to Oxford if possible. But I would need a good number of voters before I did that.

Since I mentioned Greek prepositions in the last post, I just thought I’d also point all of you to a new book on prepositions being published by Oxford this coming winter/spring: