Last week, I was busy exhibiting Accordance at the Gospel Coalition's National Conference here in Orlando. During a few of the sessions, I stepped away from the booth to listen to the speakers. One of these was a panel discussion entitled "Did Jesus Preach the Gospel?" In it Don Carson, Kevin DeYoung, Tim Keller, and John Piper discussed the distinction some interpreters make between the "gospel" that Paul preached and Jesus' own emphasis on the coming of the "kingdom."

It was a lively, interesting, and collegial discussion. The speakers all agreed that the Pauline epistles use the word "gospel" more frequently than the Gospels themselves, and that the Gospels use the word "kingdom" more frequently than Paul. But they disagreed with the notion that we misread the Gospels by reading them through a Pauline lens, along with the related notion that we ought instead to read Paul through the interpretive lens of Jesus' message about the coming of the kingdom. They argued that the difference in vocabulary between the Gospels and Paul does not indicate two conflicting messages, and that any attempt to give one priority over the other represented the formation of a canon within a canon. In fact, Carson pointed out that the language of "kingdom" is likewise infrequent in the Gospel of John, so this line of reasoning leads to the Synoptic Gospels becoming a "canon within a canon within a canon." He then pointed out that the belief that Matthew and Luke were dependent on Mark ends up leading to Mark becoming the "canon within a canon within a canon within a canon!"

All this made me curious about the data on which they were basing these observations, and of course, Accordance makes gathering that data a breeze. So when the session was over I returned to our booth and searched the Greek New Testament for βασιλεια <OR> ευαγγελιον. I then chose Analysis Graph from the Stats and Graphs icon of the Search tab.

The Analysis Graph shows the frequency of occurrence of various criteria across your search range. By choosing Lex (for lexical form) from the pop-up menu at the top right, I can compare the use of βασιλεια (kingdom) and ευαγγελιον (gospel) throughout the New Testament.

Looking at this graph, we see that "kingdom" is indeed far less frequent in John than in the other gospels. Yet we also see that while "kingdom" appears frequently in Luke, it is relatively infrequent in the other Lukan book of Acts.

Another interesting thing to note is how much more frequent "kingdom" is in Matthew and Luke than in Mark. It would appear from this that rather than Mark, it is the hypothetical source known as Q, which allegedly contained the sayings of Jesus common to Matthew and Luke, which would comprise the "canon within a canon within a canon within a canon" which Carson mentioned.

With respect to "gospel," it certainly does receive more attention in the Pauline corpus than anywhere else, and is almost completely absent from the General Epistles and the writings of John (for whom "kingdom" isn't a major emphasis either). Interestingly, of all the Evangelists, Mark is the one who places the greatest emphasis on "gospel." Matthew, on the other hand, is interesting because almost all of his uses of the term refer to "the gospel of the kingdom."

I will leave it to the scholars to draw meaningful conclusions from all these observations, and of course, this search might need to be supplemented with searches for other related terms. Still, I hope you can see how analytic tools like this can make it easy to spot phenomena in the Bible worth exploring.

What about you? Can you spot any interesting aspects of the above graph which I've failed to mention?

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm teaching my family Greek using Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek grammar. We're now at the point where they're learning to parse first and second declension nouns, and Mounce suggests that we do so by naming the case first, followed by the number, and then the gender. That is different from the default order in Accordance. If you hover over a noun and look at the Instant Details, you'll see the parsing listed by gender, then number, then case.

In order to avoid the confusion that might be caused by these different parsing orders, I decided to have Accordance follow Mounce's suggested order. It will require a bit of adjustment on my part, since I'm used to Accordance's default order, but I figure that's better than making my wife and kids switch between two slightly different methods of parsing.

Thankfully, customizing the parsing in Accordance is easy. Just open the Preferences and choose Arrange Tags in the list of settings. You'll see a list of tags for Greek and for Hebrew.

To rearrange the order in which any given tag is listed, just drag it up or down the list. I want case to appear before gender and number, so I'll drag it up in the list above gender. I also want gender to appear after number, so I'll make that change as well. Since the gender, number, and case of participles is handled separately, I'll rearrange those tags as well. When I'm finished, my new tag order looks like this:

Now I just need to click OK to save my changes, and the new parsing order will be used in the Instant Details.

As I've mentioned in a previous post, I've been teaching my family Greek using Accordance and an Apple TV. We're now learning noun case endings and beginning all those initially bewildering processes like parsing words, identifying their lexical forms, etc. As an illustration, I decided to show how Accordance makes all that stuff easy.

I began by hovering my mouse over a word in the Greek New Testament to show how its lexical form and parsing is automatically displayed in the instant details box. I then triple-clicked a word to show how Accordance automatically searches a default lexicon for the lexical form of the word rather than for the particular inflected form I happened to triple-click.

They were, of course, amazed at these very basic Accordance features, and they seemed for a moment to have a deeper appreciation for what I do for a living. Then my plan backfired. When they saw how easy it was to have Accordance do all these things they are working hard to learn, one of the kids voiced what they all must have been thinking: "So we really don't need to learn this stuff!"

I laughed and explained that they had hit on one of the great dangers of using Accordance: it can give us the false assurance that we know Greek better than we do. I went on to explain that the value of learning Greek is that it enables us to use tools like Accordance more responsibly. I think they bought it.

Then again, it's probably good that I didn't tell them about the Mounce Greek Study System, a bundle of video lectures and Accordance resources designed to teach you how to use more robust language tools without having to take full-blown Greek language courses. If they knew that option was available, I might lose half my students!

My wife and I homeschool four of our five children. (At four, Jo Jo hasn't begun formal schooling yet, although he seems to be learning more than all the rest of us combined.) To satisfy the older kids' high school language requirement, I've been teaching the whole family Greek using Bill Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek. Since I have the textbook on Accordance, I've been viewing it on my laptop and projecting it to our Apple TV using Airplay Mirroring.

My basic set up is a workspace with two zones. One contains Mounce's grammar and the other contains the Greek New Testament. I spend most of my time just showing the grammar, and I make it full screen by choosing Enter Reading Mode from the Gear menu of the Tool tab. Since I want them all to be able to read along with me, I crank the font size up quite a bit using the text size buttons.

Occasionally, I find I want to explain something by typing a little Greek myself. So I've created a user tool named "Greek Class" which I basically just use as a kind of scratch pad. When I want to type some Greek, I display that user tool and then choose Edit User Tool from the Selection menu. In the user tool edit window, I choose the Helena font and a large font size (30 point) and just begin typing what I need. Because Accordance automatically handles the correct placement of accents and final forms, it's relatively easy to show them anything I want to.

For example, when trying to explain that sigma takes a different form at the end of a word, I began typing the word ἀπόστολος. When I typed ἀπός, I pointed out that Accordance inserted the final sigma because it was currently the last letter of the word, but that as soon as I typed another letter, Accordance changed the final sigma to a medial sigma. Seeing that dynamic on the screen helped to solidify in their minds the difference between the two forms.

Several days later, we worked through an exercise in which we were supposed to divide various Greek words into syllables. I typed each of those words ahead of time, and then after we discussed where each word should be divided, I simply inserted a vertical bar (|) into each word to show the syllable divisions. Doing it this way was quick and easy, and it visually reinforced the point of the lesson.

Now we're beginning to learn some vocabulary, and Bill Mounce's included audio pronunciations of each word are proving helpful. I'm not sure why, but somehow hearing Dr. Mounce pronounce the words seems more authoritative to my family than when I do it!

At the end of each lesson, I switch to the Greek New Testament where we've been memorizing the beginning of the Gospel of John. We've got verses 1 and 2 down pretty well now, and we started on verse 3 today. As we recite, I show the verses on the screen and try to drag my cursor over each word as we read it.

Each word is highlighted as I hover over it so it's a bit like one of those follow-the-bouncing-ball sing-along videos for children. Reading and reciting a real Greek passage is helping to solidify their understanding of the Greek alphabet and Greek pronunciation. I've also used this passage to introduce them to the concept of noun case endings, to explain accents and breathing marks, etc. This way, they're getting exposed to the language inductively as well as deductively.

While Jo Jo is generally playing during these lessons, even he is picking up a few things. He can recite John 1:1-2 as well as any of us, and just the other day, I asked him to turn on the φῶς. His only question was which "light" I wanted him to turn on!

In yesterday's post, I wrote that if you know how to search for εἰς, you're well on your way to being a searching "ace." It was an admittedly nerdy pun, since the Greek word εἰς is pronounced like the English word "ace." I'm feeling a little less nerdy today, however, since someone made the even nerdier observation that my pun only works for the artificial Erasmian pronunciation scheme as opposed to other systems!

Whether or not my joke works in your preferred system of Greek pronunciation, my point is that searching for εἰς offers a great opportunity to learn some important aspects of searching in the original languages. As I pointed out yesterday, a search for epsilon-iota-sigma actually finds both εἰς and εἷς, two words which are spelled the same but have a different breathing mark. Yet even when we included a smooth breathing mark to search specifically for εἰς, our search still gave us both εἰς and εἷς. That's because Accordance actually ignores breathing marks, accents, vowel points, and even upper or lowercase for purposes of searching.

But what if you don't want those things to be ignored? What if you really want to be able to find εἰς without also finding εἷς?

Here's the secret: whenever you want Accordance to pay attention to breathing marks, accents, vowel points, and case, simply enter an equals sign (=) before the word you're searching for, like this:

Notice that with the equals sign before εἰς, the number of hits drops from 2112 to 1767. Likewise, the Analysis shows that εἰς is the only lexical form that was found, and εἷς has been excluded.

So to become an ace at original language searching, remember the lesson of εἰς: use the equals sign to make Accordance pay attention to breathing marks, accents, vowel points, and case.

In my next post, we'll try to search for εἷς, and I'll give you a few more ace searching tips.

Εἰς in the title of this post is a Greek preposition which is pronounced like the English word ACE. It's an admittedly nerdy joke, but searching for εἰς helps to illustrate several important aspects of original language searching in Accordance. In other words, if you know how to search for εἰς, you're well on your way to being a searching "ace."

So if you have a tagged Greek New Testament text, open it up, select Words from the Words/Verses token, and type the letters "e, i, s." When you're finished, hit return to perform the search. Your search tab should then look like this:

Notice that we didn't have to enter the smooth breathing mark or any accents for this search to work. All we needed to do was enter the letters.

So far things have been pretty simple, but there's more to this search than meets the eye. To see what I'm talking about, click the Stats and Graphs icon (the one that looks like a bar chart just to the right of the number of hits) and choose Analysis.

An analysis window will open listing all the words that were found by our search:

Note that this search for words spelled epsilon-iota-sigma actually found two words: εἰς (with a smooth breathing mark and pronounced like 'ace') and εἷς (with a rough breathing mark and pronounced like 'hace'). These are two very different Greek words which, with the exception of the breathing mark, are spelled exactly the same way. Because we didn't enter the breathing mark, Accordance found both.

But what if we only want to find εἰς without also finding εἷς? Well, let's try just including the breathing mark in our search entry to distinguish the one from the other. The easiest way to do this is to copy εἰς from the Analysis window (the second word listed) and then paste that into the entry box of our Search tab. When you do that, you get the following result:

Do you see the difference? That's right, there isn't one. Even though we included the breathing mark in this second search, Accordance still found both of these homographs (a fancy term for words which are written the same way).

So here's the first thing you have to understand about Accordance original language searches: even if you enter a breathing mark, an accent, or a vowel point in Hebrew, Accordance totally ignores them. It's the same way with capital letters and apostrophes in English. Accordance ignores those details to give you the words that match the letters you entered.

Why would we ignore things like breathing marks, accents, vowel points, and case? Primarily because we don't want to require you to get that level of detail right in order to perform a successful search. A new student of Greek would be lost if a search failed because he or she entered a grave accent rather than an acute. Heck, even an expert in the languages might get annoyed if they had to show that level of care in entering a search argument. So Accordance simply ignores all those details unless you specifically tell it to take them into consideration. In tomorrow's post, I'll show you how to do just that. That way you'll know how to distinguish εἰς from εἷς, and be well on your way to becoming an Accordance searching 'ace.'

Quick! Name the "Love chapter" in the New Testament.

That label is usually applied to 1 Corinthians 13, but another chapter looks to be far more deserving of it. To see what I mean, try searching by the root αγαπη in a tagged Greek New Testament. Simply type a plus sign (to indicate a root search) followed by αγαπη, then hit Return.

Searching by root will automatically include every lexical form derived from this root, including the verb ἀγαπάω ("to love"), the noun ἀγάπη ("love"), and the adjective ἀγαπητός ("beloved"). That's a more comprehensive search than looking for just one of these lexical forms.

Having done this search, we can easily get a breakdown of where these words appear most often by selecting Table Bar Chart from the Graphs and Stats menu.

By default, the Table Bar Chart graphs the average number of hits per book, but you can customize the appearance of this graph by using the keyboard shortcut command-T to open the Set Graph Display dialog. In this dialog, check the boxes for Sort by count and Show chapter detail. I also chose the options to show the count to the right of each bar and to use a black background.

When you're finished, click OK. Your graph should now look like this.

From this we can see that when looking at the average number of hits (that is, the number of hits per 1000 words), 1 Corinthians 13 comes in a distant second to 1 John 4.

If we change the pop-up menu in the bottom right corner of the graph window to show the Total Hits, we see 1 Corinthians 13 shift even further down into a three-way tie for fourth!

From this it would appear that 1 John 4 is the real love chapter in the New Testament.

When I was a sophomore in college, I remember going through a Bible study workbook called Men of Faith. One of the most memorable lessons from this workbook was a chapter on the Apostle Peter. This lesson focused on the exchange between Peter and the resurrected Jesus in John 21. In this chapter, Peter has just denied Jesus three times—after fervently promising that he would stand by Jesus to the bitter end. Now, Jesus gives Peter three chances to reaffirm his love by asking the question “Do you love me?” Each time, Peter responds by saying, “I love you.”

Straightforward enough, right? However, at this point, the author pointed out something that fascinated to me. While most English translations only use one word for “love” here, Jesus actually asks his question using a different Greek word for “love” (agape) than Peter uses in his response (phileo the first two times, agape the third time). Now this is where it gets exegetically tricky. The author argues that agape is a stronger word for love that refers to a committed love and phileo is a weaker form of love that merely implies a friendly love. If true, this would dramatically change the dynamic that is taking place between Jesus and Peter, in which Jesus would be asking “Peter, are you committed to me?” and Peter deflects the question by saying, “Yes Lord, I’m your friend.” However, many scholars say this exegetical comparison of agape and phileo is at best an oversimplification, and at worst completely inaccurate. In fact, my Greek professor in seminary argued there is almost no difference whatsoever between agape and phileo.* Regardless of who is right, the fact remains that without looking at the Greek in this passage, we would never even know to ask the question.

For many of you, this example from John 21 is not breaking news. However, for a college guy who read my English Bible like it dropped out of heaven on a magical golden pillow, this was groundbreaking. It was as if the scales had fallen from my eyes and I suddenly realized for the first time that my English Bible was, in fact, a translation. That is the day I decided that I wanted to learn Biblical Greek.

After three years in seminary, I can tell you that this example from John 21 is only the tip of the iceberg. Being able to do Greek word studies and understand the relationships between Greek words has been invaluable to my study of the New Testament. I owe much of this to Dr. William Mounce, whose textbook, Basics of Biblical Greek, served as my guide through three quarters of seminary Greek. I am not alone—Basics of Biblical Greek has helped over 200,000 students learn Biblical Greek in colleges and seminaries all over the world.

This is why we are so excited to bring you the Mounce Greek Study System: Learn Biblical Greek with Accordance. This amazing set includes over 9 hours of easy-to-follow video lessons from Dr. Mounce, including Accordance screencasts for each lesson. The set also includes the Mounce Reverse-Interlinear New Testament with enhanced phrase tagging and Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words. Dr. Mounce has added the first video lesson to his website for free viewing, so you can start your first lesson in Biblical Greek today!

Lesson One Lecture: Why Learn a Little Greek

Lesson One Screencast: Why Learn a Little Greek

Buy the Mounce Greek Study System

*One devastated student responded by throwing his hands in the air and saying, “But they have to be different, I preached on this!”

It's been a while since our last installment of The Pastor's Study, but I'm grateful for some other pastors who have chosen to contribute to this series. This new installment comes from Levi Durfey, Pastor-Teacher of the First Baptist Church of Baker, Montana.

How I Use Accordance in My Sermon Preparation

Preparation

While I use Accordance’s user notes feature for short notes and quotes, I use iWork Pages for the writing of my sermon notes. This is partly because I like writing in one tool instead of using two and transferring from one to another, and partly because Accordance notes do not support Mac Services (Which I depend on for a very good clipboard utility named PTH Pasteboard and Joe Weak’s Accordance services for copying and pasting verses from Accordance into documents).

So one of the first things I do is create a new Pages document. (If needed, I create a separate document for each chapter of the Bible.) This document is 5.75 inches wide so that it fits nicely beside Accordance. I then paste in the sermon text in English and Greek (using the Accordance services that Joe Weaks made). I use the parsing function in Accordance and print out the parsing for the passage for easy reference.

I also copy the English and Greek texts to another document, which I call my “Observation Worksheet.” There I double-space the text and print it. At the beginning of my study, and continuing throughout the study, I use this sheet to jot down little bits of information, draw connecting lines, mark key words, etc. I find that my mental juices flow more easily at times with good old-fashioned pen and paper.

Cross-Word-Dictionary and the C.I.A.

I work through the text systematically, verse by verse. First, I read the whole passage aloud or silently and jot any new insights onto my Observation Worksheet (I do this after each verse).

Then I precede through the verse systematically, using the phrase, “Cross-Word-Dictionary and the C.I.A.” as my guide. As insights come to me, I write them down in my notes. Here’s my Accordance and Pages layout:

1. CROSS-references: One of my favorite Accordance features is how you can hover your mouse over a list of cross-references. When you do, it turns to a magnifying glass. Then you can click and select some or all the references. When you release the click, all those references open in a separate window. From there you can easily read through all the references without hovering over each one and reading it in the Instant Details box.

In terms of my study, doing cross-references first helps me see the wider Biblical picture first, before I get into the details of the verse. For my sermons, I usually pick only a few: ones that the congregation knows or should know or ones that would make a good Biblical illustration.

2. WORD studies: This step actually includes several parts. I work through the Greek, using the parsing sheet that I printed earlier. I look for any grammatical insights and connections.

Then I may look up some of the words in a lexicon. For in-depth study, I have a separate “Greek Lexicons” workspace with all my main lexicons opened in separate tabs. All I have to do is select the word, click on the “Favorites” icon and select the “Greek Lexicons” and it opens my lexicons to the appropriate word.

I often do a word search on the word to see how it is used elsewhere (right click on the word and select “Search For”). I have a tab named “Greek Search” set on recycle so it is used for every Greek search I make. Accordance allows me to open a parallel English text alongside the search results in Greek, so it isn’t a hassle to quickly scan my search results.

This is also the step where I compare translations (for which I have a separate tab in Accordance) to see what other translators did with the word definitions and grammar in the verse.

3. Bible DICTIONARY: Is there an obvious topic or a cultural question? I try to make my first stop a Bible dictionary rather than a commentary. I have the IVP Dictionaries in Accordance as well as the Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible. I’ve put these into a group called “Dictionaries,” so all I have to do is click the search icon on the Resource Toolbar to search all my dictionaries. It's nice that I don't have to wade through the whole article of each search hit in each dictionary, as the Search All window will just show the relevant parts of the articles where a hit was found.

Next I move on to the C.I.A.

4. Commentaries: I have separate tabs for the commentaries in Accordance. I don’t want to see them too early in my study, so I don’t keep them visible. I try not to just copy and paste. I read, and then try to put whatever interested me (or answered a question) into my own words.

5. Illustrate: It’s miserable to get done with your sermon study and then have to find illustrations. If the week was too busy, you end up skipping them. So I try to illustrate as I go. I am not trying to find a neat story to entertain people, I want to illustrate the points and principles that I am finding in the text.

6. Apply: What are the implications for us? Again, I don’t want to be left on Saturday trying to figure out applications, so I make it a point to try and find them as I go through the text.

After I work through a verse, I go back to my Observation Worksheet and read the text again to keep sight of the forest and start the process over with the next verse.

Concluding Steps

Another step, after I’ve worked through the passage completely and if I have the time, is to use FoxTrot Personal Search to search my past sermons and other articles and sermons that I’ve collected.

I will Search [All Tools] in Accordance. I love how I can search for a range, like Romans 9:19-24, and Accordance will pick up single references like 9:20 and 9:21, or even phrases like “verse twenty-two.”

As a final step, I refine the notes and shape them into sermon form. I copy information that I don’t need to the end of the document. I usually put Pages into full-screen mode for this, as I like being able to focus on just the sermon.

One inspirational quote that I keep before me is this (I’ve lost the reference):

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones was a gifted expositor who saw preaching not as “preaching a sermon for each service, but simply [as] continuing where he was in the ongoing exposition of a book of the Bible.”

That’s what I want to do. Accordance, because of its speed, its tool set, and its ability to help me focus on the Bible, is an integral part of my own ongoing exposition of the Bible.

I have a confession to make. When I was taking Greek in seminary, I didn't always come to class fully prepared. I know, it's hard to believe—especially in light of how consistent I've been with the blog this week—but I'm afraid it's all too true. There were times when I came to class without my translation assignments completed, and I would sit through class just hoping I wouldn't be called on to read my translation or parse something. I'm sure none of you reading this can relate.

On my desktop at home, I had Accordance and could get quick parsing help via the Instant Details, but laptops were prohibitively expensive back then, and even if I had one, my professor probably would have frowned on my using it in class. Then I found a poor man's solution to getting help in class: the Parse button on the Resource palette.

The Parse button gives you the parsing information displayed in the Instant Details for every word you select. So on those days when I didn't get my assignments done, I would select every word in the assigned passage, click the Parse button, and print the contents of the Parsing window.

Once I discovered this Accordance equivalent of Cliff's Notes, Greek class became much less stressful:

"Mr. Lang, would you please parse ἐκάλεσεν?"

 

"Sure thing! It's the third person singular aorist active indicative of καλέω."

Oh how self-assured and confident I appeared from that day forward!

The other day someone asked a question on our forums that reminded me of the insanely great power of the Parsing window. Far more than a crib sheet for unprepared students, the Parsing window can be customized in a variety of ways. I'll show you some of those in the next couple of posts.

Of course, any professors reading this should know that I do not condone this sort of behavior among your students! ;-)