We are excited to announce that we just released the 28th Edition of the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament. The Nestle-Aland is the leading critical edition of the Greek New Testament used by scholars and seminary students all over the world. The 28th edition makes significant changes to the apparatus and uses the Editio Critica Maior as its basis for the Catholic letters (James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1-3 John, and Jude), so these letters will have textual differences from the NA27.

Here are some details from the publisher on the changes they've made in this latest edition.

• Newly discovered Papyri listed
• Distinction between consistently cited witnesses of the first and second order abandoned
• Apparatus notes systematically checked
• Imprecise notes abandoned
• Previously concatenated notes now cited separately
• Inserted Latin texts reduced and translated
• References thoroughly revised
• New reconstruction of the Catholic Letters
• Defining the Consistently Cited Witnesses for the Catholic Letters

Learn more about revisions to the whole edition.

Learn more about revisions to the Catholic Letters.

Accordance Edition

We have also put significant work into the Accordance edition in order to make it easier to use, navigate, and search. Check out the First Look video below to see how the NA28 looks in Accordance.

There are several purchasing options available for the NA28 depending on which version of the text you want and what you currently own.

	NA28-T with Apparatus This is the full version of the NA28 that includes the apparatus. Full Price: $109.99 Buy Now Upgrade from NA27-T: $69.99 Buy Now Upgrade from GNT-T: $69.99 Buy Now Upgrade from GNT28-T: $59.99 Buy Now
	GNT28-T This is the standalone text of the NA28 that does not include the apparatus or sigla marks. This text succeeds the GNT-T, which is the standalone text of the NA27. Full Price: $59.99 Buy Now Upgrade from GNT-T: $9.99 Buy Now

Last week, I was busy exhibiting Accordance at the Gospel Coalition's National Conference here in Orlando. During a few of the sessions, I stepped away from the booth to listen to the speakers. One of these was a panel discussion entitled "Did Jesus Preach the Gospel?" In it Don Carson, Kevin DeYoung, Tim Keller, and John Piper discussed the distinction some interpreters make between the "gospel" that Paul preached and Jesus' own emphasis on the coming of the "kingdom."

It was a lively, interesting, and collegial discussion. The speakers all agreed that the Pauline epistles use the word "gospel" more frequently than the Gospels themselves, and that the Gospels use the word "kingdom" more frequently than Paul. But they disagreed with the notion that we misread the Gospels by reading them through a Pauline lens, along with the related notion that we ought instead to read Paul through the interpretive lens of Jesus' message about the coming of the kingdom. They argued that the difference in vocabulary between the Gospels and Paul does not indicate two conflicting messages, and that any attempt to give one priority over the other represented the formation of a canon within a canon. In fact, Carson pointed out that the language of "kingdom" is likewise infrequent in the Gospel of John, so this line of reasoning leads to the Synoptic Gospels becoming a "canon within a canon within a canon." He then pointed out that the belief that Matthew and Luke were dependent on Mark ends up leading to Mark becoming the "canon within a canon within a canon within a canon!"

All this made me curious about the data on which they were basing these observations, and of course, Accordance makes gathering that data a breeze. So when the session was over I returned to our booth and searched the Greek New Testament for βασιλεια <OR> ευαγγελιον. I then chose Analysis Graph from the Stats and Graphs icon of the Search tab.

The Analysis Graph shows the frequency of occurrence of various criteria across your search range. By choosing Lex (for lexical form) from the pop-up menu at the top right, I can compare the use of βασιλεια (kingdom) and ευαγγελιον (gospel) throughout the New Testament.

Looking at this graph, we see that "kingdom" is indeed far less frequent in John than in the other gospels. Yet we also see that while "kingdom" appears frequently in Luke, it is relatively infrequent in the other Lukan book of Acts.

Another interesting thing to note is how much more frequent "kingdom" is in Matthew and Luke than in Mark. It would appear from this that rather than Mark, it is the hypothetical source known as Q, which allegedly contained the sayings of Jesus common to Matthew and Luke, which would comprise the "canon within a canon within a canon within a canon" which Carson mentioned.

With respect to "gospel," it certainly does receive more attention in the Pauline corpus than anywhere else, and is almost completely absent from the General Epistles and the writings of John (for whom "kingdom" isn't a major emphasis either). Interestingly, of all the Evangelists, Mark is the one who places the greatest emphasis on "gospel." Matthew, on the other hand, is interesting because almost all of his uses of the term refer to "the gospel of the kingdom."

I will leave it to the scholars to draw meaningful conclusions from all these observations, and of course, this search might need to be supplemented with searches for other related terms. Still, I hope you can see how analytic tools like this can make it easy to spot phenomena in the Bible worth exploring.

What about you? Can you spot any interesting aspects of the above graph which I've failed to mention?

I remember diligently studying Greek paradigms one day in seminary when I asked my professor, “Is this how we’re going to be studying Greek after we graduate?” He just laughed and said, “Nah, you’ll be using Bible software.”

How true.

In reflecting on his words, I’ve also noticed an interesting trend now that I’ve been out of seminary for a few years. Many of my friends and colleagues who bought Bible software in seminary are still using it to access the original languages today as pastors and ministry leaders. Granted, they may not be masterful scholars, but they are engaging the original languages on some level. In contrast, most of my friends who forwent Bible software in seminary haven’t touched their hardbound Nestle-Aland 27 or BHS since graduating. I’m not saying this is a hard and fast rule, but I’ve noticed the trend among my own peers.

This begs the question...why do the Greek and Hebrew retention rates seem to be higher among those who use Bible software? There may be several factors, but I have a strong suspicion that most of it boils down to convenience. There is a direct correlation between motivation and convenience, so while highly motivated individuals will tolerate inconvenience, less motivated individuals will require greater convenience to accomplish the same task. This brings us to the crux of the problem: while it’s not something we want to admit to our Greek professors, most of us experience a decline in motivation to study the original languages once we graduate. That’s not to say we have zero motivation, but it does mean that most of us need something more convenient than reviewing paradigm charts, otherwise we won’t bother.

I suspect this is why my friends who use Bible software continue to stay in the original languages. Programs like Accordance make studying the original languages convenient, and sometimes all but automatic. For example, it only takes a few seconds to add a parallel Greek or Hebrew text to any Accordance workspace. Even if you ignore the Greek and Hebrew panes 99% of the time, you can always leave them up, just in case. When the scholarly urge does strike, you can get a definition, parsing information, and cross-highlighting just by hovering over a Greek or Hebrew word.

Of course, there are plenty of advanced features in Accordance that take more time to learn and master, but if your primary goal is to stay connected to the original languages, it really doesn’t take much. It’s actually kind of ridiculous how convenient this all is when you consider what similar endeavors required just a few decades ago.

I’m curious to know what you think. Have you noticed the same trend among your friends and colleagues who did/didn’t invest in Bible software? Has Accordance helped you stay connected to Greek and Hebrew after graduating seminary or Bible college? Post your thoughts in the comments.

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm teaching my family Greek using Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek grammar. We're now at the point where they're learning to parse first and second declension nouns, and Mounce suggests that we do so by naming the case first, followed by the number, and then the gender. That is different from the default order in Accordance. If you hover over a noun and look at the Instant Details, you'll see the parsing listed by gender, then number, then case.

In order to avoid the confusion that might be caused by these different parsing orders, I decided to have Accordance follow Mounce's suggested order. It will require a bit of adjustment on my part, since I'm used to Accordance's default order, but I figure that's better than making my wife and kids switch between two slightly different methods of parsing.

Thankfully, customizing the parsing in Accordance is easy. Just open the Preferences and choose Arrange Tags in the list of settings. You'll see a list of tags for Greek and for Hebrew.

To rearrange the order in which any given tag is listed, just drag it up or down the list. I want case to appear before gender and number, so I'll drag it up in the list above gender. I also want gender to appear after number, so I'll make that change as well. Since the gender, number, and case of participles is handled separately, I'll rearrange those tags as well. When I'm finished, my new tag order looks like this:

Now I just need to click OK to save my changes, and the new parsing order will be used in the Instant Details.

As I've mentioned in a previous post, I've been teaching my family Greek using Accordance and an Apple TV. We're now learning noun case endings and beginning all those initially bewildering processes like parsing words, identifying their lexical forms, etc. As an illustration, I decided to show how Accordance makes all that stuff easy.

I began by hovering my mouse over a word in the Greek New Testament to show how its lexical form and parsing is automatically displayed in the instant details box. I then triple-clicked a word to show how Accordance automatically searches a default lexicon for the lexical form of the word rather than for the particular inflected form I happened to triple-click.

They were, of course, amazed at these very basic Accordance features, and they seemed for a moment to have a deeper appreciation for what I do for a living. Then my plan backfired. When they saw how easy it was to have Accordance do all these things they are working hard to learn, one of the kids voiced what they all must have been thinking: "So we really don't need to learn this stuff!"

I laughed and explained that they had hit on one of the great dangers of using Accordance: it can give us the false assurance that we know Greek better than we do. I went on to explain that the value of learning Greek is that it enables us to use tools like Accordance more responsibly. I think they bought it.

Then again, it's probably good that I didn't tell them about the Mounce Greek Study System, a bundle of video lectures and Accordance resources designed to teach you how to use more robust language tools without having to take full-blown Greek language courses. If they knew that option was available, I might lose half my students!

My wife and I homeschool four of our five children. (At four, Jo Jo hasn't begun formal schooling yet, although he seems to be learning more than all the rest of us combined.) To satisfy the older kids' high school language requirement, I've been teaching the whole family Greek using Bill Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek. Since I have the textbook on Accordance, I've been viewing it on my laptop and projecting it to our Apple TV using Airplay Mirroring.

My basic set up is a workspace with two zones. One contains Mounce's grammar and the other contains the Greek New Testament. I spend most of my time just showing the grammar, and I make it full screen by choosing Enter Reading Mode from the Gear menu of the Tool tab. Since I want them all to be able to read along with me, I crank the font size up quite a bit using the text size buttons.

Occasionally, I find I want to explain something by typing a little Greek myself. So I've created a user tool named "Greek Class" which I basically just use as a kind of scratch pad. When I want to type some Greek, I display that user tool and then choose Edit User Tool from the Selection menu. In the user tool edit window, I choose the Helena font and a large font size (30 point) and just begin typing what I need. Because Accordance automatically handles the correct placement of accents and final forms, it's relatively easy to show them anything I want to.

For example, when trying to explain that sigma takes a different form at the end of a word, I began typing the word ἀπόστολος. When I typed ἀπός, I pointed out that Accordance inserted the final sigma because it was currently the last letter of the word, but that as soon as I typed another letter, Accordance changed the final sigma to a medial sigma. Seeing that dynamic on the screen helped to solidify in their minds the difference between the two forms.

Several days later, we worked through an exercise in which we were supposed to divide various Greek words into syllables. I typed each of those words ahead of time, and then after we discussed where each word should be divided, I simply inserted a vertical bar (|) into each word to show the syllable divisions. Doing it this way was quick and easy, and it visually reinforced the point of the lesson.

Now we're beginning to learn some vocabulary, and Bill Mounce's included audio pronunciations of each word are proving helpful. I'm not sure why, but somehow hearing Dr. Mounce pronounce the words seems more authoritative to my family than when I do it!

At the end of each lesson, I switch to the Greek New Testament where we've been memorizing the beginning of the Gospel of John. We've got verses 1 and 2 down pretty well now, and we started on verse 3 today. As we recite, I show the verses on the screen and try to drag my cursor over each word as we read it.

Each word is highlighted as I hover over it so it's a bit like one of those follow-the-bouncing-ball sing-along videos for children. Reading and reciting a real Greek passage is helping to solidify their understanding of the Greek alphabet and Greek pronunciation. I've also used this passage to introduce them to the concept of noun case endings, to explain accents and breathing marks, etc. This way, they're getting exposed to the language inductively as well as deductively.

While Jo Jo is generally playing during these lessons, even he is picking up a few things. He can recite John 1:1-2 as well as any of us, and just the other day, I asked him to turn on the φῶς. His only question was which "light" I wanted him to turn on!

In yesterday's post, I wrote that if you know how to search for εἰς, you're well on your way to being a searching "ace." It was an admittedly nerdy pun, since the Greek word εἰς is pronounced like the English word "ace." I'm feeling a little less nerdy today, however, since someone made the even nerdier observation that my pun only works for the artificial Erasmian pronunciation scheme as opposed to other systems!

Whether or not my joke works in your preferred system of Greek pronunciation, my point is that searching for εἰς offers a great opportunity to learn some important aspects of searching in the original languages. As I pointed out yesterday, a search for epsilon-iota-sigma actually finds both εἰς and εἷς, two words which are spelled the same but have a different breathing mark. Yet even when we included a smooth breathing mark to search specifically for εἰς, our search still gave us both εἰς and εἷς. That's because Accordance actually ignores breathing marks, accents, vowel points, and even upper or lowercase for purposes of searching.

But what if you don't want those things to be ignored? What if you really want to be able to find εἰς without also finding εἷς?

Here's the secret: whenever you want Accordance to pay attention to breathing marks, accents, vowel points, and case, simply enter an equals sign (=) before the word you're searching for, like this:

Notice that with the equals sign before εἰς, the number of hits drops from 2112 to 1767. Likewise, the Analysis shows that εἰς is the only lexical form that was found, and εἷς has been excluded.

So to become an ace at original language searching, remember the lesson of εἰς: use the equals sign to make Accordance pay attention to breathing marks, accents, vowel points, and case.

In my next post, we'll try to search for εἷς, and I'll give you a few more ace searching tips.

Εἰς in the title of this post is a Greek preposition which is pronounced like the English word ACE. It's an admittedly nerdy joke, but searching for εἰς helps to illustrate several important aspects of original language searching in Accordance. In other words, if you know how to search for εἰς, you're well on your way to being a searching "ace."

So if you have a tagged Greek New Testament text, open it up, select Words from the Words/Verses token, and type the letters "e, i, s." When you're finished, hit return to perform the search. Your search tab should then look like this:

Notice that we didn't have to enter the smooth breathing mark or any accents for this search to work. All we needed to do was enter the letters.

So far things have been pretty simple, but there's more to this search than meets the eye. To see what I'm talking about, click the Stats and Graphs icon (the one that looks like a bar chart just to the right of the number of hits) and choose Analysis.

An analysis window will open listing all the words that were found by our search:

Note that this search for words spelled epsilon-iota-sigma actually found two words: εἰς (with a smooth breathing mark and pronounced like 'ace') and εἷς (with a rough breathing mark and pronounced like 'hace'). These are two very different Greek words which, with the exception of the breathing mark, are spelled exactly the same way. Because we didn't enter the breathing mark, Accordance found both.

But what if we only want to find εἰς without also finding εἷς? Well, let's try just including the breathing mark in our search entry to distinguish the one from the other. The easiest way to do this is to copy εἰς from the Analysis window (the second word listed) and then paste that into the entry box of our Search tab. When you do that, you get the following result:

Do you see the difference? That's right, there isn't one. Even though we included the breathing mark in this second search, Accordance still found both of these homographs (a fancy term for words which are written the same way).

So here's the first thing you have to understand about Accordance original language searches: even if you enter a breathing mark, an accent, or a vowel point in Hebrew, Accordance totally ignores them. It's the same way with capital letters and apostrophes in English. Accordance ignores those details to give you the words that match the letters you entered.

Why would we ignore things like breathing marks, accents, vowel points, and case? Primarily because we don't want to require you to get that level of detail right in order to perform a successful search. A new student of Greek would be lost if a search failed because he or she entered a grave accent rather than an acute. Heck, even an expert in the languages might get annoyed if they had to show that level of care in entering a search argument. So Accordance simply ignores all those details unless you specifically tell it to take them into consideration. In tomorrow's post, I'll show you how to do just that. That way you'll know how to distinguish εἰς from εἷς, and be well on your way to becoming an Accordance searching 'ace.'

Quick! Name the "Love chapter" in the New Testament.

That label is usually applied to 1 Corinthians 13, but another chapter looks to be far more deserving of it. To see what I mean, try searching by the root αγαπη in a tagged Greek New Testament. Simply type a plus sign (to indicate a root search) followed by αγαπη, then hit Return.

Searching by root will automatically include every lexical form derived from this root, including the verb ἀγαπάω ("to love"), the noun ἀγάπη ("love"), and the adjective ἀγαπητός ("beloved"). That's a more comprehensive search than looking for just one of these lexical forms.

Having done this search, we can easily get a breakdown of where these words appear most often by selecting Table Bar Chart from the Graphs and Stats menu.

By default, the Table Bar Chart graphs the average number of hits per book, but you can customize the appearance of this graph by using the keyboard shortcut command-T to open the Set Graph Display dialog. In this dialog, check the boxes for Sort by count and Show chapter detail. I also chose the options to show the count to the right of each bar and to use a black background.

When you're finished, click OK. Your graph should now look like this.

From this we can see that when looking at the average number of hits (that is, the number of hits per 1000 words), 1 Corinthians 13 comes in a distant second to 1 John 4.

If we change the pop-up menu in the bottom right corner of the graph window to show the Total Hits, we see 1 Corinthians 13 shift even further down into a three-way tie for fourth!

From this it would appear that 1 John 4 is the real love chapter in the New Testament.

When I was a sophomore in college, I remember going through a Bible study workbook called Men of Faith. One of the most memorable lessons from this workbook was a chapter on the Apostle Peter. This lesson focused on the exchange between Peter and the resurrected Jesus in John 21. In this chapter, Peter has just denied Jesus three times—after fervently promising that he would stand by Jesus to the bitter end. Now, Jesus gives Peter three chances to reaffirm his love by asking the question “Do you love me?” Each time, Peter responds by saying, “I love you.”

Straightforward enough, right? However, at this point, the author pointed out something that fascinated to me. While most English translations only use one word for “love” here, Jesus actually asks his question using a different Greek word for “love” (agape) than Peter uses in his response (phileo the first two times, agape the third time). Now this is where it gets exegetically tricky. The author argues that agape is a stronger word for love that refers to a committed love and phileo is a weaker form of love that merely implies a friendly love. If true, this would dramatically change the dynamic that is taking place between Jesus and Peter, in which Jesus would be asking “Peter, are you committed to me?” and Peter deflects the question by saying, “Yes Lord, I’m your friend.” However, many scholars say this exegetical comparison of agape and phileo is at best an oversimplification, and at worst completely inaccurate. In fact, my Greek professor in seminary argued there is almost no difference whatsoever between agape and phileo.* Regardless of who is right, the fact remains that without looking at the Greek in this passage, we would never even know to ask the question.

For many of you, this example from John 21 is not breaking news. However, for a college guy who read my English Bible like it dropped out of heaven on a magical golden pillow, this was groundbreaking. It was as if the scales had fallen from my eyes and I suddenly realized for the first time that my English Bible was, in fact, a translation. That is the day I decided that I wanted to learn Biblical Greek.

After three years in seminary, I can tell you that this example from John 21 is only the tip of the iceberg. Being able to do Greek word studies and understand the relationships between Greek words has been invaluable to my study of the New Testament. I owe much of this to Dr. William Mounce, whose textbook, Basics of Biblical Greek, served as my guide through three quarters of seminary Greek. I am not alone—Basics of Biblical Greek has helped over 200,000 students learn Biblical Greek in colleges and seminaries all over the world.

This is why we are so excited to bring you the Mounce Greek Study System: Learn Biblical Greek with Accordance. This amazing set includes over 9 hours of easy-to-follow video lessons from Dr. Mounce, including Accordance screencasts for each lesson. The set also includes the Mounce Reverse-Interlinear New Testament with enhanced phrase tagging and Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words. Dr. Mounce has added the first video lesson to his website for free viewing, so you can start your first lesson in Biblical Greek today!

Lesson One Lecture: Why Learn a Little Greek

Lesson One Screencast: Why Learn a Little Greek

Buy the Mounce Greek Study System

*One devastated student responded by throwing his hands in the air and saying, “But they have to be different, I preached on this!”