December 12, 2012 - — A biblical scholar who knows how to write "for everyone"? It may sound too good to be true, but N. T. "Tom" Wright manages to pull it off in the New Testament for Everyone commentary series. An accomplished and widely respected New Testament scholar, Wright combines scholarly insight with an unassuming and approachable writing style. The commentary on each passage begins with a short anecdote or illustration that anyone can relate to, and while Wright briefly addresses some of the more technical details of the passage, he manages to help ...

December 11, 2012 - Darin Allen — Every year, I get the same email. Darin, It’s time to send us your Christmas wish list. We never know what to get you, and if you don’t tell us what you want, all you are getting is socks. Love, Mom This is always an empty threat, as my family has never only given me socks. Still, as I grow older, I find it harder and harder to think of gift ideas that I genuinely want or will use on a regular basis. But I remember one Christmas, three years ago, right after I bought Accordance, and all I wanted for Christmas was Accordance ...

December 07, 2012 - David Lang — Last week, I showed you how I organize all the Text modules in my Accordance Library. Today we'll look at how I organize my English Tools. This is, of course, simply the way I organize my modules. You may find my system worthy of emulation, or you may decide it isn't for you. Whichever is true, I hope this series will get you thinking about how best to organize your own Accordance library. Remember that you can open your Library in Accordance 10 simply by clicking the Library icon on the Toolbar. To filter your library so that it only shows ...

December 04, 2012 - David Lang — This past Sunday, I taught my Sunday School class about the prophecy of Immanuel in Isaiah 7:14 and how Matthew applied that prophecy to the birth of Jesus in Matthew 1:22–23. That's not as easy as it sounds if you're trying to deal responsibly with Isaiah 7:14 in its original context. All too often, Christians have read Isaiah 7 like this: "Uh, ok … Isaiah is talking to some guy named Ahaz … umm, something about Aram and Ephraim and Rezin and some son of Remaliah … hmmm, when do we get to the part about Jesus?" When they finally ...

November 30, 2012 - David Lang — At the recent training seminar in Chicago, one of the attendees asked me to share my system of Library organization. I didn't have an easy way to do it on the spot, but I did promise to get that to him "somehow." On the assumption that others may find this helpful, "somehow" will be a series of blog posts on each major module category. You may find my system worthy of emulation, or you may decide it isn't for you. Whichever is true, I hope this series will get you thinking about how best to organize your own Accordance library. First, let's ...

November 28, 2012 - Darin Allen — The 2012 annual meetings for the Evangelical Theological Society and the Society of Biblical Literature wrapped up last week and the Accordance team was glad to be a part of the action. These shows are always a great time to meet a wide variety of biblical scholars, and to show everyone the latest Accordance developments. Windows Update Many people were especially interested to see our working demo of Accordance 10 on Windows. It was my first time seeing the Windows version in action as well, and I was impressed by the progress I saw....

November 26, 2012 - David Lang — Remember diagramming sentences in school? If you're under forty, you might not, but I have vivid memories of diagramming sentences in high school English. At the time it seemed like a pointless exercise, but years later, I came to see its usefulness, especially when it comes to exegeting complex Greek sentences. The Reed-Kellogg system of diagramming is among the oldest and best known. It emphasizes the logical relationships among words and phrases in a sentence, enabling you to see through the peripheral information to the key points being ...

November 13, 2012 - David Lang — It's that time of year again! This week the Accordance team will be converging on the cities of Milwaukee and Chicago for the annual meetings of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) and Society of Biblical Literature (SBL). While I'll be missing ETS for the first time in many years, I'll head to Chicago later this week to teach an Accordance training seminar and to help out at SBL. If you'll be at those conferences or in those cities, there are several opportunities to meet Accordance staff and to learn from Accordance experts. Here's a ...

November 01, 2012 - David Lang — Are you among those rejoicing over Calvinism's recent surge in popularity? Or do you wish its (in)famous TULIP would wither once and for all? Are you among those still trying to decide what all the fuss is about? Calvinists and Arminians have been arguing over key points of theology for several hundred years now, and the conversation has all too often been marked by hostility, suspicion, uncharitable caricatures of the opposing view, even accusations of heresy. Wouldn't it be nice if you could listen to competent authorities from each ...

October 30, 2012 - — In honor of Reformation Day, we are pleased to announce the release of Michael Horton's The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way. This excellent systematic theology provides Christians with a holistic understanding of Christian doctrine. Price: $49.99 Buy Now! Here are some notable features of this work as outlined by the publisher: A brief synopsis of biblical passages that inform a particular doctrine. Surveys of past and current theologies with contemporary emphasis on exegetical, philosophical, ...

October 26, 2012 - Darin Allen — Accordance is great for those who want to do Bible word studies in Greek and Hebrew. One of the fastest ways to learn more about a word is simply to triple-click on it. This will open your default lexicon to an entry on that word. It’s fast and easy! If you’d like a different lexicon to come up when you triple-click on a word, you can change this in the Library. Just follow these simple steps: 1) Open the Library from the toolbar. 2) Click on the Greek Tools disclosure triangle to see these resources. 3) Click and drag your ...

October 25, 2012 - David Lang — In yesterday's post, I showed how I searched for the Hebrew word meaning "cast image" and then wanted to separate the verses referring to cast images of animals from the ones referring to cast images of deities. I did this by "marking" all the animal verses and then adding those marked verses to a Reference List. At that point, I just selected all the verses I had collected and used the Copy As Reference command to get a list of those verse references. In this post, I want to show you an easy way to get a list of all the other verses—the ...

October 24, 2012 - David Lang — The other day I did a search for the Hebrew word meaning "cast image" (מסכה). As I began looking through the results, I saw that some of these references had to do with the cast metal idols of pagan deities, while others referred to the cast images of animals, such as the golden calf. I decided to incorporate this observation into a writing project like this: The Bible refers to cast images of deities (list of verses) and of animals (list of verses). As you can see, I wanted to flesh out this simple sentence with two lists of verse ...

October 23, 2012 - David Lang — Voting in a democratic society is an inestimable privilege, but at times it can seem like an overwhelming burden. Every election season, I must decide where I stand on a wide variety of issues I know woefully little about. Suddenly I find myself wishing I were an expert in economics, ethics, environmental science, international diplomacy, and a host of other subjects just so I can render an intelligent decision! As with other decisions in life, I try to make my voting decisions in accordance with my religious principles. Yet with almost ...

October 20, 2012 - Helen Brown — We have just released the New Testament volumes (9 to 13) of the completely revised Expositor's Bible Commentary. Those who pre-ordered it can now download it through Easy Install. We are already preparing the Old Testament volumes, and these will be added as a free upgrade to the EBC-R in a few weeks. With 60% new content and 30 new contributors, the EBC Revised is sure to become a best-seller like its predecessor, the Classic Expositor's Bible Commentary. Check out the details of the new series and the video presentation from ...

October 17, 2012 - David Lang — The other day someone posted an interesting question on our user forums: How would I find in which version of the Bible is "endurance" used in Hebrews 12:1? In this age of multiple translations, this kind of question is becoming increasingly common. We may have heard a well-known verse in one translation growing up. Then we may attend a congregation which uses a different version of the Bible. We might also learn a worship song that sets that verse to music using yet another translation. The end result of all this is that we become unsure ...

October 16, 2012 - David Lang — I've written before about how varied my use of Accordance tends to be. I use it for my own research projects, to do quality control checks of modules which are nearing release, to help with the occasional tech support question, in family devotions, in teaching a Sunday School class, and more. This usually means that I have dozens of tabs open at any given time, and it's rare for all of them to be focused on the same task. Since I've been using Accordance 10, I've noticed an interesting shift in my workflow. Where previously I would use a ...

October 11, 2012 - David Lang — The other day I was researching idolatry, so naturally I started with an English Bible search for "idol." After just a few minutes of scanning the results in a Bible with Strong's numbers, I realized that there are quite a few Hebrew words translated "idol," as well as a number of other related words, such as "image," "household gods," etc. I wanted a quick way to find all the passages which spoke about idols, but how could I be sure I was searching for every relevant word? At some point, I looked up the word "Idol" in Anchor Bible ...

October 10, 2012 - David Lang — Yesterday I showed you the basics of how recycling works. When a tab's contents are set to recycle, that tab will be updated whenever you perform an appropriate amplify or hypertext action. As we saw yesterday, when you triple-click a Greek word to look it up in BDAG, the BDAG tab is set to recycle and therefore updates with every new word you triple-click. This is much cleaner than opening a new BDAG tab for each of those words. In today's post, I want to explain why Accordance will sometimes open a new tab even when it seems like an ...

October 09, 2012 - David Lang — The recently released 10.0.4 update contained a number of bug fixes and enhancements, but perhaps the most obvious is the new improved Recycle icon. Now that you're more likely to notice it, I thought it might be helpful to give you a brief primer on recycling in Accordance. Let's start with a new search tab containing an English Bible and the tagged Greek New Testament (GNT-T) in parallel. You'll see the Recycle icon to the right of the search box, and it should be gray. This indicates that recycling is currently turned off for this ...