We've had so many new module releases and program updates lately that I'm struggling to keep up with them all. Last week we released David Clines' Concise Dictionary of Classical Hebrew. Most Hebrew lexicons confine themselves to the vocabulary of the Hebrew Bible. The eight-volume Dictionary of Classical Hebrew is the first Hebrew lexicon to include all the words found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Hebrew inscriptions, Ben Sira, and other ancient Hebrew texts. The unabridged Dictionary of Classical Hebrew is still in the process of being published, but we're pleased to be able to offer the one-volume abridgment of this ground-breaking work as an Accordance module.

The Concise Dictionary of Classical Hebrew contains all the words in the larger lexicon, including more than 3000 words not found in most standard Hebrew lexicons. If you're working with the Dead Sea Scrolls, Ben Sira, or the Hebrew Inscriptions, the Concise Dictionary of Classical Hebrew will be an indispensible resource.

We're pleased to announce that the Tyndale Commentaries on the Old and New Testaments are now available for Accordance. Containing the equivalent of 49 print volumes of commentary on every book of the Bible, the Tyndale Commentaries were written by such notable evangelical scholars as Derek Kidner, Leon Morris, Bruce Waltke, F. F. Bruce, Wayne Grudem, John Stott, and N.T. Wright. The aim of the series is to help explain the meaning of the text and address major questions of interpretation without getting bogged down in technical minutiae.

In print, the entire 49 volume set would cost nearly $800, but the list price for the Accordance edition is just $260. Better still, we're offering an introductory price of just $208. That amounts to just over four dollars per volume!

You can learn more about this excellent commentary here. When you're ready to order, go here.

Accordance 8.4.4, a free update for users of Accordance 8, is now available for download. As with all such updates, 8.4.4 fixes a number of obscure bugs you likely didn't know existed, and includes several useful enhancements. These include:

• improved dictionary lookup when you hold down the command key and hover over a word to see its definition in the instant details box
• holding the shift key while triple-clicking a word in a key numbered text will now look up the English word in an English Tool rather than looking up the Key number in a Greek or Hebrew Strong's Dictionary
• The tying of tabs in a workspace is now preserved when you save the individual workspace (previously tying was only preserved when you saved an entire session)

Ever run across a New Testament textual variant and wonder how in the world you're supposed to evaluate or understand it? You might have run across a footnote in your English Bible which indicates that "some manuscripts" have a different reading. Or you could be reading a commentary that suddenly launches into a discussion of a possible "homoeoteleuton" or perhaps a "harmonization" with a parallel passage. If you're not a specialist, how are you to understand these kinds of discussions and how do they make a difference in your exegesis of a passage?

Of all the English translations of the Bible, the NET Bible's notes are without a doubt the best at delving into text-critical issues in language a non-specialist can understand. If you want more detailed explanations, Metzger's Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament is excellent, but it really assumes that you also have the Nestle-Aland Critical Apparatus and know how to read it. That's why we're very pleased to be able to offer an Accordance edition of Philip Comfort's New Testament Text and Translation Commentary. While technical and thorough enough to satisfy the needs of scholars and students, Comfort's work is written to be understood by the English reader who wants to grasp how text critical issues affect Bible translation and interpretation.

You can find out more about this excellent resource and the advantages of the Accordance edition by reading this article by Rick Bennett. You can purchase and download Comfort's Textual Commentary here.

When I was in college, I took three semesters of Russian. My first two semesters were taught by a Russian woman who had immigrated to the United States. It was great to learn from a native speaker and hear the language spoken without any non-native accent, but there were also things this native speaker had a hard time conveying. Russian has a vowel sound which is very difficult for non-native speakers to pronounce. When we would try to pronounce it, she would correct our poor pronunciation by saying it the way it is supposed to sound. To her, it was patently obvious that we were mispronouncing that vowel. After all, she'd been pronouncing it perfectly since her infancy. She just couldn't seem to grasp the fact that we couldn't actually hear the difference between what she was saying and what we were trying to repeat.

In my third semester, I had an American teacher who had learned Russian as a second language. When she tried to correct our pronunciation of that vowel, she would offer little tips and point us to English words which approximated that sound. I'm sure we still didn't sound authentically Russian, but at least we didn't feel like we were completely in the dark. As good as my first Russian teacher was, sometimes you can learn more from a fellow student who has already mastered what you're now trying to grasp.

The same goes for software. I've taught many Accordance Training Seminars over the years, and like a native speaker, I can give attendees an inside look into why we made a particular design choice or what motivated us to create a certain feature. On the other hand, we have other trainers who are not employees, but power users who became so proficient we asked them to lead seminars. While these trainers can't give you my insider's perspective, they can give you the perspective of the fellow user who may have had to learn something the hard way. As people who have been there, these trainers really connect well with those attending their seminars.

It's for this reason that I'm very excited to announce our first ever Accordance Users' Conference, to be held in Dallas on September 24-25. In some ways, this will be like an Accordance training seminar on steroids: two days instead of one, more hands-on learning opportunities, and more focused on specific applications and uses. Yet this is not just another training opportunity led by Accordance staff. On the contrary, this is your opportunity to learn from and interact with other Accordance users like yourself. Imagine being able to attend a workshop on sermon preparation by another Accordance-using pastor. Imagine learning how to speed up your workflow from an expert at automating repetitive tasks. Imagine hearing papers from other scholars who are using Accordance to further their research. (The conference's keynote speaker will be Dr. Martin Abegg, one of the world's leading Dead Sea Scrolls scholars and the driving force behind all of Accordance's various Qumran modules.) Yes, a few sessions will be led by myself and other members of the Accordance team, but we want you, our users, to take this conference and make it your own. That way, those attending can learn from you as well as from us.

If this sounds as cool to you as it does to me, there are a couple of ways you can get involved. First, if you'd like to lead a session, send us your proposal for a paper or workshop by April 30. The official announcement for the Users' Conference contains a list of possible topics, but we're eager to hear what else you all come up with.

If you're not quite ready to lead a session, but you're eager to experience an incredible learning environment, you can register to attend the conference. Those who pre-register by August 31 will save 30% off the cost to register at the door, and students can take advantage of extremely generous discounts.

We're very excited about this, and are counting on you to help us make this first annual conference a success. Like a weekend of immersive language study, the Accordance Users Conference promises to be the best place to become fluent in the use of this incredibly powerful Bible study tool.

P.S.: A friend just wrote to tease me about my use of "first annual." He argued that it's bad grammar since the conference isn't really "annual" until the second year. I wrote back and argued that it's good eschatology: I'm simply living in the tension between the "already" and the "not yet." Of course, like all prophetic utterances, there is an element which is conditional on the response of those who hear the message. My prophecy that the users conference will be "annual" can only be fulfilled if enough of you participate and attend. So sign up today! (After all, I understand the consequences are dire for false prophets!)

P.P.S.: Apparently others have begun debating the above point of grammar, and since they all have or soon will have advanced degrees, it would seem I had better concede the point. Besides, my employers aren't sure they want me promising that we'll do this every year. So to avoid making promises and to satisfy the grammar geeks, I have now emended "first annual" to "inaugural." It sounds fancier anyway! :-)

Last night, I took my family to the local mall. My wife's stated goal was the children's clothing store, which meant that we had to pass by Bath & Body Works. As we passed through the perfumed atmosphere outside the entrance to the store, my sons and I continued our march toward the stated goal, only to realize that my wife and daughters were no longer with us. They had followed the siren smells into the girly-lotion store.

Since my sons and I had no interest in Bath & Body Works, it was decided that we would proceed with the baby to the children's play area and wait for the perfumed spell to break.

Of course, men are not immune to getting sidetracked in the mall. As we headed to the play area, I noticed a kiosk for language-learning software I have long considered buying. I walked over to look at the boxes, and when the salesman asked if he could give me a demo, I thought, "What the heck, I'll be on the receiving end of a software demo for a change." Besides, I really did want to see how the software worked.

As my hapless teenage sons milled about trying to keep the baby happy, the salesman gave me an intelligent and informative demo. He obviously knew the product well, and explained that he had been a user before he joined the company. At the end of the demo he asked for the sale, but when I explained that I wasn't ready to purchase just yet he told me of an upcoming sale and other purchase options—yet all in a way that did not come across as high pressure.

I left impressed with the salesman and with the company, and decided to email the company to give positive feedback about the salesman. Unfortunately, when I later visited the company's website, my positive sales experience was not reinforced.

The website was slick and well-designed, except for the fact that I could find no way to give my positive feedback. When I clicked the "Contact Us" link, I got a series of options for various kinds of users: homeschoolers, educational institutions, businesses, etc. None of those seemed quite appropriate, but I clicked one to see if I could get a company email address. I could not. Instead I was taken to some web-based ticketing system designed to receive sales questions or tech support requests, but little else. Here I was trying to give positive feedback and I was now wasting time trying to figure out how to do it! In the end, I left the website in frustration and found the company's twitter account. I expressed my frustration there, and am interested to see what kind of response I get.

The point of this story is twofold. First, always take a route through the mall which avoids the scented entrance to Bath & Body Works! Second, always make yourself as accessible as possible to your users.

My experience with this company's website left me feeling as if they had put up barriers to my communicating with them. It was the same feeling I get when I call a company and get a long frustrating list of menu options. At Accordance Bible Software, we do our best to be as accessible to our users as possible. If you visit our website, you'll find our toll-free number and contact link at the top of every page. There's now even a Live Chat option which lets you IM us during business hours. When you click the Contact link you get our various phone numbers, mailing address, a simple choice of three email addresses, and a web form for sending us a message. Beyond that, we have user forums that are monitored by most of the staff, and a presence on Facebook and Twitter. I can't promise that an email or phone message has never slipped through the cracks, but we do our best to make it difficult not to be able to get in touch with us.

In the time it has taken me to write this post, the company in question contacted me by Twitter, thanking me for wanting to give positive feedback and asking how they could help. They then asked me whom I was trying to contact. While I am impressed with the fast response, I'm afraid it still misses the point. I don't know whom I'm trying to contact. That's something they should be telling me.

At this point, the ball is back in my court and I'm tempted simply to drop it and hit the showers. When you contact Accordance, we'll do everything we can to spare you that feeling. Instead, we'll take the ball and pass it to the person who can run with it and make a customer service slam dunk.

By the way, I'm chuckling at my use of a basketball metaphor for customer service, since one of our customer service all-stars is the shortest person in the company. She makes me look tall, and that's saying something!

This morning I read the last chapter of 2 Peter, and I was struck by the fact that the author repeatedly addresses his readers as "Dear friends" (HCSB). Curious about which Greek word is being translated here, I opened a pane containing the ESVS (English Standard Version with Strong's numbers) and could see right away that it is αγαπητος, "beloved."

This got me wondering if the various authors of New Testament epistles addressed their readers differently. Since Greek has a special case for words of address—the vocative—I simply switched my search text to the Greek New Testament and searched for all vocatives.

Normally when searching for a grammatical characteristic like this, I would go to the Enter Grammatical Tag submenu of the Search menu, select a part of speech, and then constrain that part of speech by selecting tag details in the dialog box that opens. In this case, though, I'm interested in finding the vocative case no matter what the part of speech. I don't want to have to specify vocative nouns, then vocative pronouns, then vocative adjectives, and so on; I just want to find all vocatives. To do that, I'll choose the ANY Tag at the bottom of the Enter Grammatical Tag submenu of the Search menu. This inserts the ANY Tag into my search argument, and all I have to do is type the word "vocative." (Abbreviations are also accepted, as long as you enter enough of the word to make it clear what you want.)

Notice, by the way, that I don't have to remember some arcane set of codes in order to enter grammatical tags. I just enter the name of the tag or some reasonable abbreviation thereof.

Once I entered my search, I hit return to perform the search and got every vocative in the New Testament. I then clicked the Details button to get a bird's-eye-view of what was found.

The Details Workspace lets you break down your search results in a variety of ways. I was specifically interested in the Analysis Graph, which plots multiple criteria across the entire search range. Here's the Analysis Graph for all the vocatives in the New Testament, broken down by lexical form.

My search found more than seven lexical forms, but the Analysis Graph shows only the top seven, since anything more than that gets too confusing to be useful. The top two sections of the graph show the distribution of κυριος ("Lord") and αδελφος ("brother"). Notice how "Lord" predominates in the gospels and Acts, while "brothers" is concentrated in Acts and the epistles. The same pattern holds true for other words as well. "Father" (light blue) and "teacher" (pink) occur frequently in the gospels, while "beloved" (light green) is used throughout the epistles. "Man" or "men" (yellow) as a form of address is used almost exclusively in the book of Acts, presumably because that book contains numerous sermons to the men of various cities.

The one section of this graph which is not particularly interesting is the third from the top (dark green), which plots the occurrence of the definite article. Since we searched for ANY vocative, we got all the vocative articles as well, and that's now taking space on our graph that could be used by a more significant word.

To exclude articles from my search, I can go back to the tab in which I performed this search and specify that I want ANY vocative which is not an article. Here's how to do that:

The at symbol (@) basically joins two search criteria together to specify that both must apply to any word which is found. The minus sign indicates negation. So this search excludes all of the vocative articles.

By clicking the Details button again, I see that the definite article has been excluded and υιος ("son") has now become the seventh item on the graph. Interestingly, "son" as a form of address is, as we might expect, concentrated in the gospels. Yet notice that it only appears in the synoptic gospels and not in the gospel of John. Figuring out why that is might make for an interesting study in and of itself.

So far, we've seen a pretty clear distinction between the vocatives used in the narrative portions of the New Testament and those used in the epistles. But my original question had to do with the use of vocatives in the epistles. To narrow my focus to the epistles, I can go back to my search, open the more options section, and select a particular range to search. The pop-up menu that reads "[All Text]" lets you define ranges of books, chapters, and verses that you can then select whenever you like. If you don't already have a range for the epistles, select Define Range from the bottom of the pop-up menu. In the dialog box which appears, enter "Epistles" for the Range name and "Romans-Jude" for the Range Definition. When you click OK to dismiss the dialog box, your new Epistles range will now appear in the pop-up menu. Simply hit return to update the search, then click the Details button to see the new Analysis Graph. Here I've customized the appearance of the Graph so that the various forms of address can all be seen together.

We see a number of interesting patterns here. First, Paul and James strongly favor αδελφος ("brothers," in red) as their primary form of address, while the epistles of Peter, John, and Jude all favor αγαπητος ("beloved," in blue) over "brothers." John is also partial to τεκνιον ("little children," in dark green).

Within the epistles attributed to Paul, we see other interesting patterns. As we might expect, the epistles to Timothy use the personal address τεκνον ("child," in pink), along with one instance of ανθρωπος ("man," in yellow). It is also interesting to see those places where Paul's use of "brothers" as a form of address drops off. One such place is the first part of Romans, which is heavily theological and propositional. When Paul gets more personal and applicational in the latter part of the book, he addresses his readers as "brothers" far more frequently. Paul's use of "brothers" as a form of address is also sparse throughout most of 2 Corinthians, and completely absent from Ephesians and Colossians. It would be interesting to examine why that might be.

Through some simple grammatical searches and the use of the Analysis Graph, it took me no more than a couple of minutes to explore how the various New Testament epistle writers address their readers. Doing so gives an interesting window into how each author interacted with his audience.

I have always been fascinated by the parallelism which characterizes Hebrew poetry. I remember taking a seminary course in which I learned about the various kinds of Hebrew parallelism and realized that it is far more than just saying the same thing twice. Last night, my oldest daughter helped reawaken that fascination.

As we were about to conclude our family devotions, Bethany asked if she could read a passage from Proverbs that she had discovered earlier that day. It was Proverbs 6:16-19, which lists "Six things the LORD hates" and "seven" that are "detestable to Him." After listening to her read the passage, my eye drifted down to verse 20, and I seized the opportunity to remind the kids of the need to "keep your father's command" and not to "reject your mother's teaching." (Hey, we parents need all the support we can muster!)

After the kids went to bed, I started looking at verse 20 and the verses immediately following, and was struck by the different ways the author employed poetic parallelism to make his point. I therefore decided to examine the passage more closely using Accordance.

The first thing I did was to begin highlighting parallel words and phrases using different highlight styles. So in verse 20, I highlighted "keep" and "don't reject" with one color, "your father's" and "your mother's" with another, and "command" and "teaching" with a third. I then did the same for the following verses.

Once I had identified which words and phrases were parallel, I decided to record my observations in my user notes. I opened a parallel pane with my Study Notes, then selected verse 20 and used the keyboard shortcut command-U to add a note on that verse. The edit window opened right above my notes panes enabling me to record my observations while still being able to look at the text.

I decided to record the type of parallelism being used in each verse, which led me to dust off an old seminary textbook (How to Read the Psalms by Tremper Longman III). Once I'd boned up on the major categories, I was able to observe the "antithetical parallelism" in verse 20. "Antithetical" does not mean that the author is trying to make two contrasting points, but that he is making the same point through the use of antonyms ("father's" and "mother's") or by stating something both positively ("keep") and negatively ("don't reject").

In general I think that exegetes can rely too heavily on categories and labels, but in this case, I found that trying to determine the kind of parallelism prompted me to ask questions of the text I might not otherwise have thought to ask. For example, I began to wonder if there was an implied contrast or antithesis between the "father's command" and the "mother's teaching." In English the former sounds more authoritative and directive while the latter sounds more instructional, so I wondered if some kind of gender role distinction might be in view here.

That led me to examine the Hebrew words for "command" and "instruction." Had I been using an English Bible with Key numbers, I could simply have triple-clicked each word to learn more about the Hebrew word it translates. In this case, I was not using a key numbered Bible, so I opened the Hebrew text in a third parallel pane and used the Instant Details box to find the words in question. I immediately saw that the word for teaching in this verse is torah, which is often translated as "law." Triple-clicking the word took me to HALOT where I could confirm that this word is not used for "teaching" in the sense of intellectual knowledge, but for instruction on how to live. In other words, "teaching" in this verse means something like "rules to live by" and so is closely synonymous with "commands." I therefore concluded that this verse was not implying any distinction between the commands given by the father and the teaching given by the mother. Rather than "antithetical parallelism," I classified this parallelism as "synonymous."

By working my way through the text like this, I began to make all kinds of interesting observations. For example, verses 22 and 23 each contain three parallel phrases, and together they seem to form a chiasm. That is, the first phrase of verse 22 is related to the last phrase of verse 23, while the four phrases in the middle all use similar imagery. Before I knew it, I had recorded quite a bit of commentary on this passage and felt I had a deeper understanding of its meaning. The next time you're studying a passage of Hebrew poetry, don't just focus on "getting to the point"; take the time to appreciate the artistry with which that point is made.

As I mentioned in a previous post, my family has been reading through 1 Peter recently. During our family devotions, I'll teach from my laptop while my wife and kids all follow along with their print Bibles. They'll each take turns reading portions of the passage, and then I'll read through it again offering commentary and explanation. I rarely prepare ahead of time, and so I sometimes find myself scrambling for answers. That was the case the other day when we read 1 Peter 3:18-22:

For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit, through whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built.

As my daughter was reading this passage aloud, I started scrambling to find a good explanation for what this passage means. I had studied it enough in the past to have a rough idea of the different interpretations of this passage, but I really wasn't prepared enough to give a good explanation that would make sense to children ranging from fourteen to eight years of age (the one year old was blissfully unconcerned with the proper interpretation).

The first place I turned was to two resources devoted to explaining difficult passages without going into too much technical detail: Zondervan's Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties and IVP's Hard Sayings of the Bible. Both of these are Reference Tools, which means they are organized in verse reference order like a commentary. Since Reference Tools can be displayed in parallel panes with the text of the Bible, I simply opened up panes containing those two resources.

Both resources gave fairly lengthy explanations of the passage, but I was able to skim to the most relevant parts and read those to my family. Even that was a little much, so I then had to summarize what those resources were saying.

The danger of a passage like this is that it can get you picking theological and interpretive nits so that you miss the author's larger point. My goal was therefore to give as simple and clear an explanation as possible without getting bogged down. Put another way, my goal was to "gloss over" the more difficult theological questions. The resources I chose gave me the quick interpretive help I needed. I might also have turned to a good study Bible (such as the NIV or ESV Study Bibles).

Afterward, I felt the need to get a clearer understanding of this passage and its various interpretations. That's when I turned to my commentaries and a systematic theology for a fuller treatment. Those resources would have been overkill in the context of our family devotion, but they helped me gain a better understanding now that I really had time to consider all the interpretive questions. Hopefully, the next time we read 1 Peter 3:18-22, I won't need to scramble to find a good explanation. But if I do, I know which resources to consult for quick help.

When I started as OakTree Software's sole employee, the company was run completely out of a home office, and I worked at my own home using my own computer. As we added new staff members, the ability to work at home was both a practical necessity and a major perk.

Once we began hiring our own sales staff and selling directly (before that all sales had been handled by another distributor), we decided that we would need a dedicated office for sales. Since the office we got was bigger than the sales staff needed at that time, the rest of us were asked if we would like to work from the new office. I remember being at a meeting where the question was raised, and we all sort of looked at each other. Frankly, none of us wanted that office space. We all had been spoiled by years of working at home.

Today I had one of those moments where all the advantages of working from home were once again made apparent. While I was waiting to have a video iChat with a staff member who is currently overseas, I helped one of our module developers in Atlanta with some issues via email. I also had a brief conversation via iChat with another one of our developers who lives in Texas. If we were bound to a centralized office mentality, we would have lost these two incredibly talented developers when they moved out of state. Instead, they carry on their work without missing a beat.

While I was interacting with people around the world, my one-year old son who has just begun walking was wobbling and stumbling his way across the room with the help of his big sister. I would look up from my laptop now and then to smile at how cute they were, and then go back to what I was doing. Suddenly I heard a great cry of disgust from my daughter: "Ugh! Jo Jo just took my hand and used it to wipe his runny nose!" I died laughing as she ran from the room to wash her hand and Jo Jo sat there looking pleased with himself. After I finally regained my composure, I thought to myself how much I would miss if I had to go somewhere else to do my work.

I hesitate to share these stories because I know some of you would love to be able to work from home but can't. Others of you wouldn't want to work from home even if you could. Working from home is certainly not without its drawbacks and challenges. But for most of the development staff here at OakTree, available office space has historically been a bit like a game of hot potato: "Here you take it!" "I don't want it! You take it!"

All humorous anecdotes aside, the fact that most of us gladly work from home means that the vast majority of OakTree's revenues go directly toward ongoing development and customer service. Because we're not having to pay huge rents, mortgages, or utility bills, we're able to make the money you spend go farther and accomplish more with it.

So who wants an office?

"I don't want it! You take it!"