Original Languages, translation work, and teaching

[davis]

Could someone please help me better understand what makes Accordance so great? I have already invested a lot of money in Logos, mostly collecting original language tools and more exegetical commentaries. I have access through Logos to tagged Greek and Hebrew texts, including the LXX, plus all the commentaries, lexicon, dictionaries, etc. I keep hearing that Accordance is more "robust, stable, etc" but really don't know what it can do that Logos cannot do. I am hoping to be a missionary translator or exegetical consultant for translators and also want to train nationals to do translation. I am interested to know whether I should also have Accordance in addition to Logos, and if so why. At this point, I really don't know enough about what Logos can or cannot do and I know nothing about Accordance except watching a few introductory videos online. On Logos: I know I can search the lemmas and search the exact morphological form of a word or phrase and I can limit that search to certain places in my digital library (e.g. all books, OT, NT, collections of journals, etc). Could someone walk me through why I should have both Accordance and Logos? Because I'm interested in teaching, that is another aspect which you may care to comment on, "using Accordance for teaching," in addition to original language use. Thank you in advance to all who reply and help me think through this. I would especially appreciate comments from those who have both Logos and Accordance. Your ministry is appreciated and Lord willing will no doubt serve others through me. Thank you.

[Anon]

There is a great deal to engage here. I hope that both newcomers and long time users add to what I have to offer. You adumbrate above a common premise I hear when the two apps—Logos and Accordance—are spoken of in a concatenated sentence, namely, "they both do the same thing, so why should I have both." Well, not only is this mistaken, it also overlooks a value we place on nearly every other application we use—reliability and speed. There is an overlap, for sure, between the two applications. But this is because we are working with a set text or texts, and thus desire to learn of these texts—in their language, content, so on. However, the sophistication that Accordance offers its users, without bogging them down in mundane details or obtuse search syntax, is par excellence. Moreover, the degree to which Accordance is reliable and able to return results, even on the most complex of searches, is worthy of emulation. These, in my mind, are qualitative reasons why Accordance and Logos don't do the same thing. I also will dare to say you will not find in Logos' products the same scholarly effort and erudition as in Accordance's modules. I think Dr. Repshinski's recent review (it was posted on the website several days ago) makes allusions to this very fact.

 

I would recommend that you sit down with a version 9 of Accordance and Logos. Run every possible search you can think of in both apps. The ideal situation would be to find an Accordance User and have them give you a tour, so to speak, of the power.

 

ps. I have several posts on my blog regarding Accordance; should you desire to peruse it, follow the below link.

[mythrenegade]

If you love Logos then I wouldn't worry about it.

 

On the other hand, when I was taking original language classes in seminary, I was surprised to find that the students around me who were all running logos were always asking me for information from the texts because I could get to it instantly with Accordance and they couldn't figure out how to do it in Logos.

 

Anecdotal? Sure. But my experience has been that nothing beats Accordance for usability and quality of tools.

 

Joel

[A. Smith]

I would echo all of the above. For me, the difference is in quality. I see Logos as a great digital library program. It has tons of (mostly useless) titles. However, accordance has a much higher quality product. All tagged GNTs are not equal. This is the advantage of accordance. If you want to spend time with real research, you've got to do it with accordance. Logos will do some of it, but half-heartfelt and at half the speed. Just my 0.02.

[davis]

I appreciate all the comments so far. For the record, I don't "love" Logos, nor am I buying the "useless" titles. I have been purposeful to only buy exegetical tools, original language tools, etc. If I did get Accordance I can't see spending the money to buy the same books on Accordance, in terms of dictionaries, commentaries, etc. But I am interested to learn more about the power that keeps being mentioned for grammar searches in the Greek and Hebrew Bible. This is what I'm most interested in and trying to learn about (as well as the teaching tools, whatever those are?). Any ideas on how to learn and compare specifically what I can do with Accordance? Anybody live around Raleigh that would let me sit down and see what can be done? Do any Accordance Rep's ever go to the seminaries and make presentations? What you mean "not all tagged GNTs are equal"? and half heartfelt? and with respect to speed, do you have Logos 4? To be clear, I'm not defending Logos, like I said, I barely know what it can do as I've not spent any money on training seminars. I just want to find out what Accordance can do that Logos can't so I can make a wise decision with stewarding God's money. Thanks guys for all the input.

[davis]

There is a great deal to engage here. I hope that both newcomers and long time users add to what I have to offer. You adumbrate above a common premise I hear when the two apps

[jpkang]

Dr. Repschinksi's review, among many others, can be found on the Reviews page.

 

My two cents' worth, having used Accordance since 1997, and having dabbled in BibleWorks and Logos on occasion:

 

Having tried to use Logos for some of my doctoral research in ancient Hebrew, I gave up because I found many, many typos as well as other seemingly inexplicable errors; I found building grammatical searches painfully laborious when compared to Accordance; and yes, it was quite slow (version 3; but the few times I used version 4 on the Mac were underwhelming).

 

I don't know who supervises the content development at other companies, but I know the provenance of most of the Accordance modules I rely on every week, and I know that as far as original language texts and tools go, they are by and large created and maintained by specialists.

[AdamR]

This might not make sense at first, but I appreciate the fact that Accordance doesn't have everything I want in digital form.

 

For example, if I had Logos, I would probably add the Black's New Testament Commentary (BNTC) series to my library. Accordance doesn't offer this commentary series (yet). While this seems like a problem, I find it a good problem to have. Why? Because I find myself spending more time in Accordance actually reading and studying the text instead of jumping straight into a commentary. The same goes for Bible dictionaries. I use HarperCollins and New Interpreter's, both of which Accordance doesn't offer. (To be fair, neither does Logos yet.) Again, while I find that frustrating sometimes, I find myself staying with the text longer if for no other reason than I am sometimes too lazy to get up and go grab the resource I need! When I do finally get up and get the dictionary or commentary I need, I find that I'm far more familiar with the text than I might have been otherwise. It's not just a new habit I've developed; I've actually noticed myself spending more time with the text than I used to because I am using Accordance as the starting point for my study.

 

Would it be nice to have the New Interpreter's Bible, the New Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, BNTC, the Old Testament and New Testament Library series, etc. in Accordance? Of course. But I actually find it helpful not having those resources available right away. That's my experience at least.

 

Now, if I were traveling overseas and was unable to cart a shelf full of books with me, then I'd buy Logos in a heartbeat and add the stuff I want that they have that Accordance doesn't without thinking twice.

[mbcvida]

I have and use both Accordance and Logos, both the Windows and Mac versions. Both programs do the same basic things - searching, reading, etc... Both have the basic standard language tools and texts -- Logos of course has a greater digital library than does Accordance -- The reasons I have chosen Accordance as my primary tool and Logos as a secondary tool comes down to two basic reasons - speed and simplicity. The speed with which Accordance does searches, both simple and complex, far surpasses that of the Logos programs. Constructing a complex morphological or syntactical search is both easier and quicker in Accordance -- and much more intuitive - without having to learn arcane commands and abbreviations. Now don't get me wrong. Logos is both a powerful and excellent Bible study program. It's strength over Accordance is primarily in the huge base of digital titles available. Until recently, it was preferred because they made available syntax databases, which I used quite a bit in the Windows version. The Mac version has too many glitches at this point to be usable for these searches. I still turn to it when I need to consult the full Liddell and Scott, or the complete TDNT. However I no longer invest much more in Logos titles as most of the ones that interest me are now available in Accordance. The search capabilities of both Logos and Accordance are similar, especially now that Accordance is producing its own syntactical databases. However, the search and construct interface in Accordance is so much simpler and intuitive, that it is a delight to use and quite easy to learn. A few years ago they had a software "shootout" where competing programs were asked to perform identical tasks. I think that is the best way to compare two programs, side by side. But in order to do this, you need people who are skilled in their particular software program. I have seen a number of comparisons made between Accordance and Logos which were inaccurate because the one doing the comparison really wasn't that familiar with the Logos program and could not get it to do things that it really could do. But as one who uses both somewhat regularly, for my purposes (exegetical sermons, both Hebrew and Greek tools), I use Accordance about 90% of the time and turn to my Logos program about 10% of the time.

[davis]

Dick,

 

This is good stuff man. Thanks for your help on this. So let me ask this. B/c I'm so invested in Logos already, what would you suggest I need with Accordance to just use the simple, intuitive, and speedy searches in the language resources. In other words, since I already have all my lexicons and commentaries in Logos, what is the minimal I could spend on Accordance to just benefit from searching the Greek and Hebrew Bible, including the LXX? Would you advocate I just completely try to sell my Logos entirely and start over with Accordance? Or keep my Logos stuff and use a super small version of Accordance, like just having the GNT, BHS (do they have BHQ yet?), and LXX? It seems crazy to me to have 2 different programs but I'm willing if I can learn and if Logos can't do what Accordance can. Again, I'm not interested in all the "useless" books that people say Logos has. I'm interested in the biblical language resources, and I've invested a lot of money in them already b/c I plan to go overseas and thus have a portable library. Thanks again for the help.

[Helen Brown]

Davis:

 

Thank you for considering Accordance. You didn't ask for official input, but I'll offer it anyway.

 

We will be glad to do a personal demonstration via a screenshare session at your convenience. Just send me a message with your contact information. You can also download the free trial version. It only has three chapters of the tagged texts, but it will give you a feel for the way Accordance works.

 

You are welcome to start with a basic Accordance package including the tagged texts you most need, and then add other lexicons etc. as you want to. We think that as you use Accordance you will want more and more of your resources to be integrated with the texts. We don't penalize you for starting small and building. On the other hand, you can ask the sales staff about a switcher discount and crossgrades which would make it easier to complete the switch at once, should you decide to go that route.

[jpkang]

This is good stuff man. Thanks for your help on this. So let me ask this. B/c I'm so invested in Logos already, what would you suggest I need with Accordance to just use the simple, intuitive, and speedy searches in the language resources. In other words, since I already have all my lexicons and commentaries in Logos, what is the minimal I could spend on Accordance to just benefit from searching the Greek and Hebrew Bible, including the LXX? Would you advocate I just completely try to sell my Logos entirely and start over with Accordance? Or keep my Logos stuff and use a super small version of Accordance, like just having the GNT, BHS (do they have BHQ yet?), and LXX? It seems crazy to me to have 2 different programs but I'm willing if I can learn and if Logos can't do what Accordance can. Again, I'm not interested in all the "useless" books that people say Logos has. I'm interested in the biblical language resources, and I've invested a lot of money in them already b/c I plan to go overseas and thus have a portable library. Thanks again for the help.

 

I'm not going to answer your question directly but I do want to point out that if you compare Accordance's lexicons, dictionaries, and commentaries (e.g., HALOT, BDB, BDAG, Anchor, Hermeneia, etc.) to the same works on other platforms you will find that the extensive field markup that OakTree adds allows far more precise searching in Accordance. For example, you are not limited in HALOT to searching on Hebrew/Aramaic, Greek, English, and Scripture; you search the English Gloss field to look up semantically related lexemes, or Bibliography to find citations, and you can search simultaneously on multiple fields for even more precise searching.

[mbcvida]

Dick,

 

This is good stuff man. Thanks for your help on this. So let me ask this. B/c I'm so invested in Logos already, what would you suggest I need with Accordance to just use the simple, intuitive, and speedy searches in the language resources. In other words, since I already have all my lexicons and commentaries in Logos, what is the minimal I could spend on Accordance to just benefit from searching the Greek and Hebrew Bible, including the LXX? Would you advocate I just completely try to sell my Logos entirely and start over with Accordance? Or keep my Logos stuff and use a super small version of Accordance, like just having the GNT, BHS (do they have BHQ yet?), and LXX? It seems crazy to me to have 2 different programs but I'm willing if I can learn and if Logos can't do what Accordance can. Again, I'm not interested in all the "useless" books that people say Logos has. I'm interested in the biblical language resources, and I've invested a lot of money in them already b/c I plan to go overseas and thus have a portable library. Thanks again for the help.

 

If your interest is Biblical language resources, you can't do better than Accordance. A lot of people like, use, and are committed to the Logos platform. I would suggest selling your Logos resources and then putting that money into a robust Accordance package. I think there would be a pretty good market for the Logos program, but you need to first check with their policies for switching ownership of modules.

[davis]

Davis:

 

Thank you for considering Accordance. You didn't ask for official input, but I'll offer it anyway.

 

We will be glad to do a personal demonstration via a screenshare session at your convenience. Just send me a message with your contact information. You can also download the free trial version. It only has three chapters of the tagged texts, but it will give you a feel for the way Accordance works.

 

You are welcome to start with a basic Accordance package including the tagged texts you most need, and then add other lexicons etc. as you want to. We think that as you use Accordance you will want more and more of your resources to be integrated with the texts. We don't penalize you for starting small and building. On the other hand, you can ask the sales staff about a switcher discount and crossgrades which would make it easier to complete the switch at once, should you decide to go that route.

 

Helen, Thanks for the input. Actually I do want official input too, so thanks. I had emailed someone who works for you and they turned me to the forum to ask users, so I do appreciate every angle of info I can get. Does Accordance offer student discounts?

[Helen Brown]

Yes, there are discounts for students, faculty, and those in ministry.

[mikes]

Yes, there are discounts for students, faculty, and those in ministry.

If I'm not mistaken, there are also cross-grade options for some of those resources you likely have in Logos, but it certainly isn't going to be a 100% coverage by any stretch of the imagination.

 

Definitely take up Helen on the screen sharing demo! There's a reason she's "Mithril"

[Lorinda H. M. Hoover]

To piggy-back on JP's post about searching, here's one small example about what is wonderful about Accordance.

 

If I triple-click on a Greek or Hebrew word in a text I'm working with, Accordance automatically searches my preferred Greek or Hebrew lexicon for that word and displays the entry in a neighboring pane. This search takes into account the specific verse I'm working one, and, if that verse is referred to in the text of the entry, Accordance will highlight that verse reference in red in the entry. This makes it very easy to see which sub-definition the lexicon editors felt fit the word in the context of the verse I'm working with. I've attached a screenshot example.

 

I've never used Logos, so I don't know if it has a comparable feature, but I've really appreciated this feature in Accordance.

 

Lorinda