Not long ago, we announced the release of the UBS Translators' Handbook Series on the New Testament. Now Dr. J has devoted an entire podcast to showing the usefulness of this unique commentary series. In this podcast, he examines several important passages and shows how the UBS Handbooks help to clarify their meaning in terms anyone can understand. Watch it, and not only will you learn more about this new Accordance resource, you'll also learn more about the Bible!

I admit it. I'm spoiled. As an Accordance developer, I have every original language Bible and English Bible we offer—which is a lot. There are about four or five of them that I regularly open and use, but it's really nice to be able to access any of the others whenever I need them.

If I ever find myself in a new setting where someone is reading from the Bible, I can usually figure out which translation they're reading from and use that. I can also compare it with the translations I use the most. If they're using a translation which we have tagged with Strong's numbers, I can hover over words (on my Mac) or long-press them (on my iPhone) to see the original Greek or Hebrew words they translate. And if the Bible they use happens to be one we don't have tagged with Strong's numbers, I simply open a parallel pane containing another Bible which has them. Like I said: spoiled.

Although this happens less frequently, I'm also spoiled when it comes to Greek and Hebrew discussions. With my tagged Greek and Hebrew Bible texts I can easily follow any discussion, no matter how much it might get into the parsing or meaning of each word. Again, I need only hover on the Mac or long-press on the iPhone. On the admittedly rare occasion that I'm party to a text-critical discussion about the reading this or that manuscript contains, I am just as likely to be able to pull up the very manuscript under discussion—complete with grammatical tagging! Heck, I can even use the new dynamic interlinear to create an interlinear view of various Greek manuscripts on the fly. Once again: spoiled.

If you would like to be just as spoiled as I am, February is your best chance to expand your library of Strong's-tagged English Bibles and grammatically-tagged Greek and Hebrew Bibles. With our current sale prices on these items, you can generally pick up three of these texts for what you would normally pay for two. Then you can be the spoiled person who says, "Sinaiticus you say? Let me just make sure!" ;-)

Some other members of the team and myself are currently in Minneapolis demonstrating Accordance at the Desiring God Pastor's Conference. Since the exhibit hall is basically deserted during the main teaching sessions, I slipped out last night and listened to the first speaker. Early in his message, he made an oft-repeated observation about the book of Ephesians: namely, that it is clearly divided into two parts. The speaker asserted that in the first three chapters, Paul uses verbs in the indicative mood—that is, verbs that make a statement or convey information. In the last three chapters, Paul switches to imperative verbs. Thus, he moves from theology to application, from instruction to exhortation.

It's certainly an interesting point, but is it accurate? Is the book of Ephesians really so clearly divided between indicatives and imperatives? I'm glad you asked! Because it is just these kinds of patterns that Accordance is perfectly designed to reveal.

If you have a tagged Greek New Testament such as the GNT-T or the new NA27-T, click the Words button, then hit the tab key to select the contents of the search entry box. Now go to the Search menu and choose Verb… from the Enter Tag submenu. In the dialog box that opens, select indicative from the Mood pop-up menu, then hold down the shift key and choose imperative. (Holding the shift key enables you to select multiple items within the same category.) When you're finished, click OK to dismiss the dialog and return to the Search tab. You'll notice that Accordance will insert the proper search syntax for you.

Before we run this search, let's limit it to the book of Ephesians by selecting Define Range… from the range pop-up menu at the top of the Search tab (the pop-up that usually reads [All text]). In the dialog box that appears, click the New button, then set both the Range Name and the Range Definition to "Ephesians." When you click Update and close the dialog, your new Ephesians range will be selected in the Range pop-up. (Of course, if you've previously defined an Ephesians range, you only need to select it from the pop-up menu without having to go through the Define Ranges dialog.)

When you hit Return to perform this search, Accordance finds every indicative and imperative in the book of Ephesians. Now we just need to analyze the distribution of these two forms throughout the book. To do that, click the Graphs and Stats menu to the left of the Compare checkbox and choose Analysis Graph.

The Analysis Graph lets you choose the criteria you want to have graphed from the pop-up menu at the bottom right. Choose Mood from this pop-up to see a comparison of indicatives and imperatives.

The Analysis Graph graphs the frequency of occurrence in a particular sample size. The default sample size is hits per 1000 words, which is perfect for a large range like the entire New Testament, but too large for a small range like the book of Ephesians. To see more detail, we'll need to customize the graph to use a smaller sample size. While we're at it, we'll also customize the look of the graph to make it a little slicker.

To customize the look of anything in Accordance, you can always use the keyboard shortcut command-T. With the Analysis Graph selected, use command-T to open the Set Analysis Display dialog. In that dialog, change the Words per hit to 100, select Areas rather than Bars, Overlay rather than Stack, and check the Use black background.

When you click OK, your Analysis Graph should now look like this:

From this we can see that it's true that imperatives don't really begin until the latter half of Ephesians. However, it's not as if indicatives drop out completely. In fact, the highest concentration of indicatives comes right in the middle of the imperative section, and at that point the imperatives drop off dramatically. What point is that in the text? It's the instructions to husbands and wives at the end of Ephesians 5. You would think this section would include lots of imperatives, but there are really only two, followed by a long discussion of the relationship between Christ and the church.

The graphs and statistical breakdowns Accordance provides are designed to enable you to see patterns like this in all their complexity, including the parts which run counter to the general trend.

What other interesting observations can you make from looking at this graph?

We are happy to announce that our ongoing partnership with the German Bible Society (GBS) brings a new selection of the world's finest scholarly Bibles and original language texts to Accordance. The first round of these releases was announced just two weeks ago with the first installment of the BHQ, then last week with the long-awaited Nestle-Aland (27th ed.) tagged Greek text with sigla, and the critical apparatus. These are just the first of several new releases planned in the coming weeks.

In addition to the NA27, we will also offer the UBS Greek New Testament (4th ed.) with tagging and critical apparatus. On the Old Testament side we will have the BHS tagged text with sigla and apparatus, the apparatus for Rahlf's Septuagint, and the apparatus for the entire Vulgate.

We will also have the Gospel of Thomas, Coptic and Greek text with English and German translation, and commentary, and the revised Barclay Newman Greek-English dictionary (typically included in the back of the UBS Greek text).

For those with a passion to study the original texts of the Bible, these are sure to be must-have resources for your Accordance library. In order to see the full breakdown on these new titles and their pricing, check out our news announcement, and stay tuned to the blog for future posts on the availability of these new titles with more 'first look' videos.

Exactly one month ago, a user posted a request on our forums for several minute typography enhancements. He wanted (1) some finer steps in choosing a font size, (2) support for ligatures, and (3) better hiding of superscripts in the text. In spite of his admission that he may be the "only OCD-type Accordance user who is bothered by these minutia," he's getting all of these typography enhancements in Accordance 9.5.3, a free update which is available now.

In addition to answering this user's typography concerns, this latest update offers some other nice enhancements—most of which are the direct result of user feedback. When a text pane is selected, you can now press the space bar to page down (or shift-spacebar to page up), just as you can in popular web browsers.

If you discover a typo or other problem in a module, you can now select the problem text and choose Report a Correction from the Help menu. The selected text and location will automatically be copied into an email with a place to add your comments on the nature of the error.

Syntax elements which are not tagged to specific words, such as the NULL tag, are now represented in search results by a graphical marker rather than by highlighting an adjacent word. You can also use the LINK command with two different key numbered Bibles of different languages, such as the ESVS and GNT-TRS.

There are other enhancements and bug fixes as well, so be sure to download this latest update today.

As the name suggests, the Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ) represents the fifth in a series of texts of the Hebrew Bible that started in 1906. The fourth edition, Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS) was finished in 1977 and has remained the standard Hebrew text for scholarly research since then. The BHS followed a single manuscript, the Leningrad Codex, but introduced a new apparatus and reproduction of the Masorah. The BHQ follows suit, improving upon the text (still based on the Leningrad Codex) and addresses similar but, in many cases, more exhaustive material. In addition, the Commentary on the critical apparatus brings an extremely valuable angle to the text and decisions that lay behind its reproduction in the edition.

The Accordance edition follows in-line with this century-long tradition in promoting academic inquiry into the text of the Hebrew Bible, but in a new and exciting fashion. We discussed at length how best to weave together the various components of the BHQ in a fashion that, in the end, creates an intuitive and powerful combination not easily attained in the print edition.

This first installment includes three fascicles: Deuteronomy, Megilloth (Ruth, Canticles [Song of Songs], Qoheleth [Ecclesiastes], Lamentations, Esther), and Ezra & Nehemiah, with two more planned in the immediate future: Twelve Prophets, and Proverbs — which will be offered as a free upgrade to all who purchase it now for $149.99. Future installments will be available over time and priced accordingly.

In order to get a first-hand feel for this exciting resource, check out the following screencast.

Remember the old commercial for Life cereal? Two boys are sitting at the breakfast table discussing this new cereal their mom says is "good for them." Not sure what to make of that, they go back and forth urging each other to be the first to try it. Then they hit on a brilliant way forward. They'll give it to Mikey, their finicky little brother, and see if he likes it. When Mikey enthusiastically digs in, the two older boys want some too.

At the recent annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, I was talking with another member of the Accordance team when Christian Brady, a professor, long-time Accordance user, and author of the popular Targuman blog, came up to us and asked who would be the best person to interview for his new Sacred Techs podcast. My colleague and I looked at each other about like those two boys in the Life commercial: neither of us wanted the pressure of an impromptu interview, so we cast about for a suitable Mikey. Then it hit us: Darin! He's our new Director of Marketing—let's get him to do it.

Darin was just finishing a demo when we called him over, introduced him to Dr. Brady, and told him that Dr. Brady wanted to interview him. I don't think we managed to tell Darin that this was for a podcast, so I'm not sure he realized that he was about to be recorded live.

In spite of getting put on the spot like that, Darin handled the interview like a pro. I just got done listening to it, and the guy is downright smooth! You can listen to the Sacred Techs podcast, which also includes an interview with the guys from Olive Tree Bible Software, here. Be sure to check it out, and if you think Darin did well in a pinch, be sure to let him know in the comments on this post.

For several years now, I've been using the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB) as my primary translation. At the risk of offering an overly simplistic evaluation, I find it offers good, readable English while still preserving much of the wording and structure of the underlying Greek and Hebrew.

Another thing I like about the HCSB is that, in addition to footnotes and cross-references, it includes relatively inconspicuous bullets in front of terms which are likely to need a little explanation. In the print editions, you can look up these bulleted terms in an alphabetized listing of "Bullet Notes," but in Accordance, these bullets are automatically linked to the included HCSB Bullets module. Hover over one of these "magic bullets," and you'll see a brief explanation of the accompanying term in the Instant Details box.

For example, in yesterday's post I wrote about reading Psalm 83 with my family. The superscription of that psalm says that it is a psalm of Asaph, and the name Asaph is bulleted. By hovering over the bullet, I get a quick reminder that Asaph was appointed by David "to oversee the music used in worship at the Temple" and that eleven other psalms are attributed to him.

Other bulleted terms in Psalm 83 include "Selah," "Yahweh," and "Most High." In each case, the bullet notes are clear, concise, and extremely helpful.

Now, if you prefer another translation, you can always look up terms like these by triple-clicking them, or by selecting them and choosing a resource to consult in the Resource palette, or by right-clicking and choosing a resource from the contextual menu. Any of these methods will look up the selected word in the chosen resource. Still, it's nice that the HCSB anticipates the terms you're most likely to look up, and the "magic bullets" give you more info without even having to click.

The HCSB (and other English Bibles) are currently on sale for just $19.99, and a version of the HCSB tagged with Strong's numbers can be purchased for just $39.99.

By the way, the HCSB was actually developed with the help of Accordance. To find out more about the contribution Accordance made to this translation, open the HCSB Notes module and search the English Content field for "Accordance."

My family has been reading through the Psalms together for the past few months, and the other day we read Psalm 83. Reading like a Who's Who of hostility, this psalm lists "Edom and the Ishmaelites", "Moab and the Hagrites," "Gebal, Ammon, and Amalek," "Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre", and "Even Assyria" in the space of a few verses.

In an attempt to give my family a sense of who these various enemies of Israel were, I opened the Accordance Bible Atlas and overlaid the Divided Kingdoms region layer. I clicked the plus icon to magnify that zone so that it filled my entire workspace, and then had one of my children read the list of enemies again. As she read each name, I pointed out its location on the map, so that my family could clearly see that Israel was surrounded by all these nations. I summarized by saying, "You see, it's not that the psalmist is paranoid; they really were all out to get Israel!"

Showing all of these ancient nations naturally raised the question of where these places are today, so I merely switched the region layer pop-up from "Divided Kingdoms" to "Modern Nations" to show that Edom, Moab, and Ammon are now part of modern Jordan, ancient Philistia is now part of modern Israel, and ancient Tyre is in modern Lebanon.

This kind of geographical orientation was incredibly easy to do, and it helped make our discussion of the psalm much more engaging. If you're not using the Atlas as an impromptu teaching tool, you definitely should be!