Accordance offers tremendous advantages over other Bible programs—speed, flexibility, powerful features and valuable resources found nowhere else. Yet sometimes, in focusing on those big advantages, we lose sight of the many smaller advantages we all tend to take for granted. Recently, a reviewer was evaluating Accordance and pointed out an advantage that hadn't really occurred to us: the ability to drag and drop text and images.

As this reviewer was working with Accordance, he arranged his screen so that Accordance was side-by-side with the word processor he uses to compose his sermons. When he wanted to copy text out of Accordance, he simply selected it, then dragged it and dropped it onto his word processor. It's the kind of functionality Mac users don't even think about, so to us it seemed like no big deal. Yet surprisingly, this simple action is simply not possible with some other Mac Bible programs.

This reviewer didn't mention images, but you can also drag image thumbnails from an Accordance tool window to copy the full-size image into another program. For example, if you're putting together a bulletin in Pages or a slide show in Keynote, you can drag the thumbnail from Accordance onto an image placeholder in the other program.

Doing so will copy the image to that placeholder, keeping any borders or custom formatting which were applied to that placeholder.

Again, this simple functionality makes getting images out of Accordance incredibly easy, and apparently, it's not something to be taken for granted!

This week I've been blogging about how searching for the asterisk symbol in a Bible window will either display all verses or search for every word. But what about in a Tool window?

You don't search Accordance tools by words and verses, but by the various fields of content each tool contains (Titles, Content, Scripture, etc.). Entering an asterisk in the search entry box, regardless of which field is selected, will always display the entire contents of the tool. This is analogous to the asterisk in a Bible window when Verses is selected.

There may be times, however, when you actually want to search for every word in a particular search field. If the asterisk by itself always displays the entire text without actually searching for every word, how would you search for every word in a field? An easy way to do it is to search for a question mark followed by an asterisk, like this: ?*. The question mark is a wildcard symbol which represents any single character, and the asterisk is a wildcard symbol which represents any combination of characters. Entering the two together in a tool window makes it clear that you want to find and highlight every word in the currently selected field.

Why would you want to highlight every word in a given field? Here's one useful example. Let's say you've taken advantage of our current dictionary sale (which ends next week) to pick up the Zondervan Encyclopedia of the Bible. One of the selling points of this five-volume reference is its many high-quality photographs and illustrations. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to search for all those images so you can quickly scroll through them, just to get an idea of the kinds of illustrations you now have access to?

To do this, open the ZEB and select Captions in the field pop-up menu. Now enter ?* and hit return. Accordance will search for every word in the captions field, effectively finding every image. You can then use the Mark buttons to jump from image to image.

Now, here's the cool trick. Select Paragraphs from the Show pop-up menu to see only those paragraphs of the ZEB which contain a search hit. This effectively hides everything but the images and their captions, enabling you to scroll through the entire tool to see the kinds of images it contains. Set the image size to Large (by choosing Set Tool Display from the Display menu), and you'll get a result which looks like this:

Try doing that with the print edition!

Last month, I linked to a post by Rick Mansfield entitled Balaam in the Flesh. In that post, Rick showed how he used Accordance to find an image that would illustrate the story of Balaam for a Bible study he teaches.

Rick recently followed up that post with a video demonstrating how he uses Accordance, other Bible software, and (as a last resort) Google to find those kinds of visual aids and incorporate them into his Keynote presentations. Be sure to check it out.

Do you find yourself producing more visuals than usual during Advent? Is your church producing slide presentations, bulletins, flyers advertising a Christmas program, and the like? Are you sending out Christmas cards and letters? Do you ever find yourself looking for unique Christmas images to include in all these documents and presentations?

You can do a Google image search and find some nice images, but it can be a lot of work separating the wheat from the chaff. When you do manage to find the perfect image, it is often too small and low-resolution to be usable.

For that reason, I have long relied on Accordance resources like Bible Art for high-quality Christmas images. If you were to look back at my family Christmas letters over the past several years, you would see them adorned with quite a few images from that one module. Last year we added the Christmas Classics module with some additional Christmas images. And of course, an image search of your entire Accordance library can turn up additional images in unexpected places.

One relatively new resource which I plan to mine for images in upcoming years is Historic Views of the Holy Land: The American Colony and Eric Matson Collection. This massive collection of photographs from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries offers views of Israel that you just don't see today, and many of those photographs actually reenact biblical scenes. For example, a simple search for Bethlehem turned up the following images reminiscent of the shepherds:

…and the magi:

…and the birth of Jesus:

How cool are those? There are many more images which illustrate the Christmas story, and countless others which illustrate other biblical narratives. It's really an incredible resource.

If you're looking for unique and high-quality images to adorn your various projects this Advent, you'll find Bible Art, Christmas Classics, and especially the Historic Views of the Holy Land collection extremely helpful.

The other day a user on our forums expressed a desire for a good map showing the distribution of nations described in Genesis 10. The Accordance Bible Atlas does not have a region layer showing what is commonly called the "Table of Nations" or "Family of Nations," so he had two options: (1) create a user layer of the Atlas showing that information, or (2) find an appropriate map image in one of his Accordance tools. Since creating a user layer can involve a fair amount of work, I suggested that he just use Accordance 9's new and improved Search All window to search his library for images of the Table of Nations. To catch either "Table of Nations" or "Family of Nations," I proposed this search: (table, family) of nations. By searching the Captions of All Tools, this search found a map of the Table of Nations in several resources, including ZIBBCOT and The Sacred Bridge.

In those rare instances when our interactive Bible Atlas doesn't include a map you need, don't forget to search your library for appropriate images.

At the Annual Meeting of the SBL we unveiled several new releases, but the one I am most excited about is the New Testament Manuscripts Image Collection. This is not only because I am somewhat of a self-professed Greek-geek, but also because I was able to see this project through from conception to completion. Most of the projects our team works on consist of electronic text conversions of existing print publications. In this case we were creating a totally new product.

We used the Scripture ranges provided to us (with some modification), created e-texts for the facsimile introductions, and then interleaved the high-resolution images taken by the CSNTM. The end result is the first of its kind: a fully indexed, locally stored collection of high-resolution images of four facsimiles (including one pseudo-facsimile), and one original manuscript of the Greek New Testament. In what follows, I'll walk you through what is included in this collection, along with an example of the type of research that this enables, both for the novice and expert text-critics.

The following manuscripts are included in the collection:

• Codex Sinaiticus 01, 4^th century (GNT-SI Images): 1911 facsimile edition by Kirsopp and Helen Lake, containing the complete New Testament plus the Shepherd of Hermas and Epistle of Barnabas (images not included in this collection) with introduction to the manuscript.
• Codex Alexandrinus A02, 5^th century (GNT-Alex Images): 1879 facsimile edition by E. Maunde Thompson, containing the New Testament (starting at Matt 25.6) and the Clementine epistles (images not included in this collection) with introduction to the manuscript.
• Codex Vaticanus B03, 4^th century (GNT-Vat Images): 1868 pseudo-facsimile edition by Caroli Barnabitae and Ioseph Basiliani, containing the New Testament. This edition was typeset by hand, and does not contain images of the actual manuscript.
• Codex Washingtonensis W032, 4-5^th century (GNT-Was Images): 1912 facsimile edition by Harry Sanders, containing the four Gospels, with introduction to the manuscript.
• Codex 2882, 10^th century (GNT-2882 Images): Original images of the Gospel of Luke, written in a minuscule hand, with a brief introduction to the manuscript and an additional collation of readings against the Majority Text.

Now, consider the following example from Romans 5.1 as an example of the type of research possible. (Click on these thumbnails to see the full-size image.)

The major variation unit in this verse is one of my favorites to show, because it involves a clash between extrinsic and intrinsic probability. On the one hand, the manuscript support for ἔχωμεν (let us have) is superior, but on the other it is far more likely that the Apostle meant ἔχομεν (we have). But, let's say you want to see the manuscript data for yourself:

In the first shot you can see the text of Codex Sinaiticus in parallel with the images. Clicking on an image thumbnail displays it in a Zone - a new feature of version 9. Tip: to zoom in on a portion of an image (in any tool or map in Accordance), draw a box around the area and double-click within it. For those who can read Greek, note that the original hand of Sinaiticus wrote ἔχωμεν (let us have), but the corrector placed an omicron just above the omega.

In the second shot you see the same text and image, but this time with two additional resources opened - The CNTTS Apparatus in parallel, and Comfort's NTTTC in a Zone tied to the text. Both of these resources list in detail the manuscript support for each reading, noting the reading of original hand (*) and the corrector (1). Tip: in Sinaiticus, to view a full-color photograph of the manuscript at the British Library's website, simply click on the manuscript heading (Quire 82 folio 2 verso) and your browser will open to it (Firefox works best).

So, how does this variation appear in the different English versions? As you can see in the NTTTC, every English version except for the NEB adopts ἔχομεν (we have), placing the other reading in the margin.

Finally, in the last shot you see this same verse in Alexandrinus and Vaticanus. Since the other two manuscripts only contain the Gospels (Washingtonensus) or just Luke (2882) they can't help out here. But, below is a short slideshow (Flash) from them to give you can idea of the quality of the images they contain.

Whether you're a seasoned text-critic or just starting to learn, the NT MSS Images Collection will make a perfect addition to your Accordance library. For more info on the CSNTM and their latest expeditions, check out their website: CSNTM.org.