Archives

March 10, 2010 - David Lang — 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 ...

March 09, 2010 - David Lang — 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 ...

March 08, 2010 - David Lang — 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, ...

March 05, 2010 - David Lang — 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 ...

March 04, 2010 - David Lang — 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 ...

March 03, 2010 - David Lang — 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" ...

February 24, 2010 - David Lang — 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 ...

February 23, 2010 - David Lang — 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 ...

February 22, 2010 - David Lang — As I mentioned in a previous post, I've written a book entitled Macs in the Ministry which is now available. I'm blogging about the book at macsinministrybook.com, so if you're interested in learning what this book is all about, you can find out more there. In this post, I want to underscore how indispensable Accordance was to me in the writing of the book. Obviously, Accordance was the place I turned to find passages of Scripture to cite. One of the aspects of the book I'm proudest of is the fact that it's more than just a straight ...

February 19, 2010 - David Lang — A week from today at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, we'll be offering a free all-day Accordance training seminar. Both Dr. J and myself will take turns doing the training, and while one is teaching the other will be available to help anyone who is having a hard time keeping up. If you're in the Orlando area, be sure to register now. Not in Central Florida? We've got other seminars coming up in Kentucky, California, Illinois, Missouri, Atlanta, and Massachusetts! Dr. J and I won't be at all those locations, but they'll be lead by ...

February 18, 2010 - David Lang — The Accordance Bible Atlas is not a series of static maps, but a completely interactive atlas which delivers the information you need in whatever form you require. If you look for a place name, it appears highlighted on the map regardless of whether that place name is included in any of the layers you currently have displayed. It's simple, quick, and just works. Many other programs simply offer their users a series of static maps to choose from. What do I mean by static maps? I mean that they are essentially images of pre-drawn maps. They ...

February 17, 2010 - David Lang — As I mentioned last week, my family and I have been reading through 1 Peter in our family devotions. Last night we ran across 1 Peter 3:10-12, which the HCSB prints in bold type. The HCSB uses that style to indicate a quotation from the Old Testament, but how can you find out which Old Testament passage is being quoted? One way to find the source of a quotation is to open a parallel pane containing the notes for your translation. Many translations indicate the source of a quotation in footnotes, so by displaying the Notes in parallel with ...

February 15, 2010 - David Lang — Most Accordance users begin with one of two major collections of Bibles and books. The Library Collection offers an extensive library of English Bible study materials, while the Scholar's Collection offers original language Bible texts and study aids focused on original language study. By dividing our product line in this way, we enable English Bible students to purchase the material they want without having to pay for original language texts they'll never use, and we enable scholars and pastors to purchase original language material without ...

February 12, 2010 - David Lang — As I've mentioned many times on this blog, my family's devotions have centered around the chronological reading plan in the Daily Readings module. It's supposed to take a year, but I think we've been working on it for going on four years now! Anyway, we're now in 1 Peter so we may just finish before the start of year five. In our devotions, my wife and kids will take turns reading portions of the passage, and then I'll read through it again offering commentary, explaining the historical background, ripping off tidbits I've heard from various ...

February 11, 2010 - David Lang — We began exhibiting Accordance Bible Software at MacWorld Expo in New York way back in the summer of 1998. We've been to every expo since then both in New York and San Francisco. The only expos we missed were the two summer shows held in Boston after Apple announced it would not participate in a Boston Expo. Our decision not to exhibit at those shows proved to be the right one. Without Apple, the summer Expo died out quickly, leaving only the winter Expo in San Francisco. Last year, Apple announced that it would no longer participate in the ...

February 10, 2010 - David Lang — Several years ago, we released Neusner's 22-volume English translation of the Babylonian Talmud as a reference tool which could be viewed in parallel with the tagged Hebrew Mishna. Since that time we've heard a chorus of requests to have the Hebrew text of the Babylonian Talmud itself. We're pleased to announce that the Babylonian Talmud in Hebrew is now available on our new Rabbinics CD-ROM. The Talmud Bavli (T-Bav-F) currently includes 16 of the 21 tractates, and will be updated at no additional charge as more tractates become available....

February 09, 2010 - David Lang — In general, I think OS X is a huge improvement over the classic Mac OS. That said, every long-time Mac user knows that not everything in OS X has been an improvement. For example, OS X has some incredibly cool typographic capabilities, yet it still cannot italicize text in a font which does not have an italic version. The classic Mac OS would use the italic version of a font if it existed, but if there was no italic version, it would simply use an algorithm to slant the text. You can see this if you open an Accordance text or tool with italic ...

February 08, 2010 - David Lang — When you open a new resource in Accordance, it typically opens as a tab in your workspace. Workspace tabs are a great way to keep all your resources neatly organized, but the one drawback to them is that the frontmost tab obscures all the tabs behind it. What if you want to see the new resource alongside your main passage of study? Thankfully, Accordance doesn't lock you in to one way of working. If you want to detach a tab from a workspace so that you can view that resource in a separate window, simply choose Detach Tab from the Tabs ...

February 05, 2010 - David Lang — In an interesting bit of synchronicity, while I've been blogging about combining and customizing Atlas layers, a user asked the following question on our user forums: I would like to map all the places mentioned in the book of Acts. How do I do so? You can only highlight one place at a time. Any ideas? By mentioning the ability to highlight one site at a time, this user showed that he already knows how to find sites on the map. Let's say, for example, that you're reading in Acts 17 and you want to map all the places mentioned in the first ...

February 04, 2010 - David Lang — In yesterday's post, I showed you how you can hold the shift key down to select more than one map layer of the same type. By shift-selecting the Tribes of Israel and Middle Eastern Nations region layers, we were able to see which modern nations currently contain the territories allotted to the twelve tribes of Israel. Once you've created a useful combination of layers, you can convert them into a layer "set." Sets are combinations of individual layers, and you already have a few pre-installed for you. Modern Nations and Roman Provinces ...