Biblical Theology: Past, Present, and Future (I)
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 55, No. 2 – Spring 2013
Managing Editor: Terry L. Wilder
Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2012.
With the release of Logos 5, Logos Bible Software has offered the latest in their digital-library-based program. The software offers a plethora of tools which collate information from the user’s library database with just a few clicks. Whether a user needs sermon ideas, basic exegetical information, or a thorough word study, Logos offers tools for each of these and much more. Logos 5 makes a wealth of information accessible in seconds, though the sheer amount of material can occasionally make the search for relevant information laborious.
The Logos interface primarily functions as a customizable desktop of open books. The format of the digital books on Logos is easy to read and easy to navigate. Though some digital formats can be awkward to read and difficult to browse, Logos makes reading easy with an overall aesthetically pleasing design with easily-legible fonts and straightforward navigation. For example, each open book includes an expandable sidebar for contents as well as searchability both within volumes and among the entire library. The search function for the entire library allows the user to access quickly all of the material in the library on a certain topic (including journals like Themelios and even collections like Perseus). References within a volume to other volumes within the library are even linked for quick access. Moreover, users who need to document their research can toggle page numbers on and off and access footnotes simply by hovering the cursor over the superscripted number. Logos also includes a bibliography document creator which will automatically format according to a variety of major style guides (including SBL, Chicago, and Turabian). The bibliography can then be printed, exported, or even opened in Microsoft Word. A user’s digital library can be expanded by upgrading to higher base packages or by purchasing from Logos’ enormous selection of individual titles and special bundles. The base packages, however, include a significant number of out-of-date and seemingly nugatory works which sometimes can make it difficult to find just the right book when searching for a resource. Bundles can also frustrate, since they often will include either several volumes already owned or unneeded alongside a few especially useful ones.
Logos can make working with Greek and Hebrew extraordinarily streamlined. Browsing the NA28 or the BHS is easy on the eyes, and the user can quickly obtain morphological information by hovering over individual words with the cursor (lexical information is also available here for Greek, but not for Hebrew). Keeping the Exegetical Guide tool open in an adjacent window gives the user easy access to grammatical and syntactical points relevant to the passage, further lexical data, and an at-a-glance translation. Perhaps the greatest feature is the ease of performing word searches from a text. Right clicking on a word opens a user-friendly, yet elaborate window of options for word searches based on lemma or morphology, or a variety of other possibilities, like opening to the selected word in a certain lexicon or simply opening the Bible Word Study tool. This latter tool displays basic lexical resources on the chosen lemma, a chart depicting how the lemma is translated in various editions, and links to some basic textual searches of the lemma in, say, the New Testament or Apostolic Fathers. Starting a word study from scratch, however, can be a challenge since Logos does not have built-in Hebrew and Greek keyboards, and its transliteration search can be a bit cumbersome at first. Searching for Greek or Hebrew words, thus, is easiest if the user has a base text in mind from which to start. On the other hand, when searching in Greek or Hebrew, Logos clearly displays the codes needed for basic searches and it guides the user through even long, complicated morphological searches.
An additional nice feature, the sentence diagramming tool, enables users to create text-flow or line diagrams with a simple, customizable interface. For example, it is easy to move lines of text around for a text-flow diagram without dealing with the troubles of tabs and spacing that can arise in a word processor. As a major drawback, though, these files can only be exported as XPS documents.
Logos 5 is generally user friendly, but sometimes the sheer amount of information overwhelms. The number of tools available means that there are several different utilities where the user can find desired information, though some of these utilities are better than others. For example, it is easier to ascertain a good list of commentaries on 1 John by simply searching the library rather than by utilizing the commentary list in the Passage Guide. Or, employing the Bible Word Study tool can be an ineffectual first step if a user simply wants to see how a word is used in a certain corpus. Sometimes the simplest information, like Biblical cross-references, seems difficult to find. The Explorer tool shows cross-references, but it also shows much additional material of mixed value. As an example, the Explorer tool lists a plethora of cross-references for Hebrews 2:4, but nothing for 2:6, which is an Old Testament quotation; information on the OT quotation can be found, however, in the Passage Guide under “Parallel Passages” amidst a long list of other data. A user might wish to see the specific cross-references listed in, say, the NASB or the NA28, but these are not available. Thus, Logos 5 can feel like a shotgun approach to information retrieval. Numerous media can provide a given set of data but not all of the media are of equal value.
Ultimately, Logos provides a phenomenal tool for interacting with a virtual library. The display reads easily and the program enables swift movement among and within resources. However, finding the right information and sifting through the extraneous can prove tiring if the user chooses the pre-designed guides and tools. So, for the user interested primarily in exegesis, Logos can sometimes get in the way of the helpful information, and other software may prove more straightforward. But for the user primarily interested in a digital library, Logos proves indispensable.
