In Accordance, you can open a commentary (or any other reference-based tool) in a pane within your Bible search tab, or in a separate zone. So what are the strengths and weaknesses of each approach?

To open a commentary as a pane, select it from the Reference Tool pop-up menu on the right side of the Search window.

The primary advantage of opening your commentary as a pane is that it will appear alongside your Bible text and scroll in sync with it. All you need to do is select the commentary you want and Accordance does the rest. You never have to worry about manually tying or syncing the two.

Opening a commentary in a pane is like creating a study Bible where the commentary follows along with the text. The primary means of accessing the commentary becomes the text itself: you navigate to the desired passage and the commentary follows along. Yet what if you want to focus more intently on the commentary itself: to search it, to use its table of contents, etc.? It is then that you'll want to open your commentary in a separate zone.

By opening your commentary in a separate zone, you have access to the search entry box at the top of the window, as well as the Browser pane and other features. The only downside of opening a commentary this way is that it will not automatically scroll in sync with your Bible text as it would in a pane.

You can, however, make it sync with your Bible text by tying the scrolling of the two windows. To do this, simply go to the Set submenu of the Window menu and choose the name of the resource you want to Tie with the current resource. For example, if your commentary zone is active and you have another zone with the HCSBS as the main Bible text, you would go to the menu and choose Tie to “HCSBS.” From that point on, your commentary will scroll in sync with the HCSB, just as if you had opened it as a pane in the HCSB window.

In my next post, I'll show you how you can open a commentary in a separate zone and have it tied to your Bible text automatically. Until then, let me remind you that the introductory sale on NICNT ends today. Buy it today and you save a hundred dollars off the regular price, so don't miss out.

Not long ago, a seminary student explained why he prefers to buy individual volumes of a multi-volume commentary rather than the entire set. He said that when he is studying or teaching through a book of the Bible, he would prefer to buy the best commentaries he can find on that particular book. Then when he moves on to another book, he'll buy commentary volumes on that book. For those who prefer to purchase commentaries that way, we have a number of large commentary sets which can be purchased in individual volumes or small groups of volumes. These include Pillar, NIGTC, NAC, NICNT, and more.

While buying individual volumes initially costs less than buying an entire set, purchasing a commentary piece by piece will ultimately cost you more. By taking advantage of sale prices and our payment plan, you can get the most bang for your buck while also spreading the purchase out into manageable payments.

In addition to the financial advantages of buying complete sets rather than individual volumes, complete commentaries offer the additional advantages of greater scope and simplicity. If you display your commentary in a pane alongside your text, a complete set will always give you information about whatever passage you happen to be viewing. You also have the simplicity of dealing with a single module. You simply display NICNT, for example, and it stays in sync with whatever passage you navigate to.

If, on the other hand, you purchased individual volumes of NICNT, when you navigate to a different passage, you'll have to switch your commentary pane to a different NICNT module. That is, of course, if you even own the relevant volume.

Beyond the advantages in price, scope, and simplicity, complete commentary sets also have the advantage of containing hidden gems you might not otherwise discover. I'll give you an example of that in tomorrow's post.

With all due respect to Neil Sedaka, breaking up isn't really that hard to do, and sometimes it can be a good thing. No, I'm not talking about the tragic end of an Accordance for iPad initiated church romance, but the breaking up of a large commentary set into individual volumes. That's just what we've done with the recently released New International Commentary on the New Testament (NICNT). Now you can purchase and download individual volumes instead of having to buy the entire set at once. Obviously, you'll pay more if you buy the series piecemeal, but those of you who only want certain volumes now have the freedom to buy the ones you need without having to spring for those you don't. We'll even give you an extra 10% off if you buy three or more volumes at one time. Go here to purchase individual volumes of NICNT (or other commentaries), and here to purchase the entire set.

Also, don't forget that our Back-to-School sale ends tomorrow. If you've been wanting to buy or upgrade an Accordance package, now is the best time to save some serious coin.

I'm pleased to announce that the New International Commentary on the New Testament (NICNT) is now available for Accordance. This highly acclaimed and immensely popular commentary series consists of 18 volumes covering all the books of the New Testament except for 2 Peter and Jude. The series seeks "to provide earnest students of the New Testament with an exposition that is thorough and abreast of modern scholarship and at the same time loyal to the Scriptures as the infallible Word of God."

NICNT is so popular precisely because it provides exposition which takes technical questions into account, but which avoids getting bogged down in technical details. More technical aspects, such as grammatical, textual, and historical problems, are dealt with in footnotes, special notes, and appendixes—enabling the main text of the commentary to remain highly readable and accessible.

One unusual aspect of this series is that it is continually being updated, with older volumes sometimes being revised or replaced with newer volumes more conversant with contemporary scholarship. We're very pleased to be able to include a second module (NICNT 2) containing the two newest NICNT volumes: a new commentary on the Gospel of John by J. Ramsey Michaels, and one on the letter of James by Scot McKnight. These can be compared side-by-side with the older commentaries on these books by Leon Morris and James B. Adamson.

The Accordance edition of this series has been painstakingly developed to take full advantage of the software's capabilities. Intelligent search fields, instant abbreviations, thousands of links to other Accordance resources, and more enable you to access these commentaries like never before.

These twenty volumes of NICNT (including the two new volumes) retail for more than $1000 in print, but we're offering them for just $599. Better still, from now through the end of September we're offering them at the introductory sale price of $499. Click here to order.