Ecclesiastes

For July 2018, Logos Bible Software is offering one of their Mobile Courses as their “Free Book of the Month.”  Craig Evans, The Reliability of New Testament Manuscripts (Mobile Ed: NT308). If you have not used a Logos Mobile Course, this is your chance to sample a good one.For $9.99 you can add Mark Strauss, “Introducing Bible Translations” and for $19.99, you can add the three hour course by Craig Keener, “Critical Issues in the Synoptic Gospels.”

The courses are set up like college classes. There is a syllabus with course description, course outcomes and a final exam. The outcomes for The Reliability of New Testament Manuscripts are:

Upon successful completion you should be able to:

• Detail the number of pre-Gutenberg NT manuscripts we have and describe their quality
• Explain how the NT manuscript record compares to that of other ancient works
• Describe practices of ancient scribes and scholars that contributed to the longevity and quality of NT manuscripts
• Describe the preservation of the NT in ancient translations and commentaries
• Discuss how the various forms of historical attestation demonstrate the reliability of the NT text

This free Mobile Course is considered a “one hour course” based on the content (about an hour of video content). This course has eleven segments. A segment will have a short video lecture from Evans as well as a transcript of that lecture. Following the transcript there are several links to “Suggested Reading” and other resources Logos offers. These are not bibliographies, but links to books you your Logos Library such as the Lexham Bible Dictionary. Naturally Logos would be glad to sell you these books if you do not already own them! One advantage reading the transcript is key terms are linked to definitions and Scripture references are tagged. Floating over P87 in a transcript, for example, will open a small window giving the basic info on the papyri drawn from Philip Wesley Comfort and David P. Barrett, The Text of the Earliest New Testament Greek Manuscripts (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 2001).

Occasionally a lecture segment is a ScreenCast video demonstrating how to use Logos. For example, “Exploring Ancient Manuscripts and Resources” coaches the user on how to download and use the Perseus collection and the Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri. “Accessing and Navigating the Textual Apparatus” demonstrates how users who own the UBS fourth edition in Logos can examine the textual apparatus. These are not narrated by Evans but are useful tutorials for using the potential of the Logos system (as well as advertisements for upgrading Logos to include more features and resources). This is a feature of all Logos Mobile courses and Logos intends to update courses to include additional resource “in the future for no extra charge.”

This month the Logos giveaway is a four-course bundle: Text of the Bible Bundle. In addition to Evans, the bundle includes Mark L. Strauss, Introducing Bible Translations (also available for $9.99 this month), Michael S. Heiser, How We Got the Old Testament and How We Got the New Testament (also by Heiser). This is another eleven hours of video content, so enter early and often to win this bundle. They are also running a 40% off sale on some huge Mobile Ed packages during July.

Be sure to get these resources before the end of July 2018 when the offer expires.

Logos Bible Software is offering Roland Murphy’s Word Biblical Commentary on Ecclesiastes (1992) for free during the month of June, and you can add John Durham’s Exodus commentary (1087) for $1.99 and G. R. Beasley Murray’s John (Second Edition, 1999) for $9.99. This means for a mere $12 you can add three major commentaries to you Logos library (well over $100 if purchased at Amazon, although much less for the savvy shopper who knows how to navigate a used bookstore).

Murphy was the George Washington Ivey Professor of Biblical Studies at Duke University for many years and was  co-editor of both the Jerome Biblical Commentary and the (New) Jerome Biblical Commentary. His Ecclesiastes commentary is excellent and will be a fine addition to a Logos library.

The Word Biblical Commentary series are serious exegetical commentaries. Each unit begins with a short bibliography including monographs and peer-reviewed journals (including German and French sources). These are often a great place for students to start a research project, although they are only complete up to the publication of the volume. The authors focus on the original languages and deal with technical details of translation and technical variations via footnotes on a new translation of each section.  Following the translation is a section entitled Form/Structure/Setting. In some of the the earlier commentaries this section included something like source or form criticism, but usually the literary structure of the Hebrew or Greek is in view. Following this section is the commentary proper, proceeding verse by verse with attention to the original text (which is included without transliteration). Each unit concludes with a brief section entitled explanation, although the content of this unit varies from volume to volume.

The Word Biblical Commentary series was originally published by Word Books (Waco, Texas) in 1983. The first few volumes are all still very valuable: Trent Butler on Joshua; Ralph Klein on 1 Samuel; Leslie Allen on Psalms; Gerald F. Hawthorne on Philippians; Richard J. Bauckham (2 Peter & Jude. The series was purchased by Thomas Nelson, but after HarperCollins acquired both Thomas Nelson and Zondervan, the series was moved to Zondervan. The series is nearly complete, with Steven J. Walton’s Acts commentary and Andrew D. Clarke on 1 Corinthians still listed as “forthcoming.”

As typically happens with an aging commentary series, Zondervan is revising or replacing some earlier volumes. Ralph Martin’s Second Corinthians commentary was revised by a few of his students by adding a few additional sections (conveniently marked with gray pages; see my review here); Trent Butler completely revised his Joshua commentary, adding a second volume with extremely detailed geographical notes on the second half of Joshua. You can read my review here, originally published in Journal for the Evangelical Study of the Old Testament 5.1 (2016).

One serious advantage to the Logos format of this commentary is that all the Logos features are available. This includes searching English, Hebrew and Greek words, fuzzy searches, etc. By right-clicking a Hebrew word, the user can open their Hebrew lexicon of choice, right-clicking an English word opens up many options, including searching the user’s entire library, or limiting that search to a preferred Bible dictionary. A used can hover over abbreviations and a popup will identify the source, if it is a resource in the Logos library then it is clickable. References to other parts of the commentary are hyperlinks (so, “see notes” will go right to the section to which the author refers. All scripture reference are links as well, so the user can hover over the link and read the verse, to click to go to the preferred translation. Perhaps the most useful tool is how Logos cites sources. If the used copies a chuck of text and pastes it into a word processor, Logos will create a footnote citing the source in the user’s preferred format. I usually paste as plain text then edit the citation myself so it conforms to the format I prefer. What is important here is these digital books have real page numbers so they can be cited as if you have the real book in your desk. To me, this is a critically important feature. Nothing is more frustrating than students trying to cite a Kindle book in a research paper (in fact, just don’t try, find a real copy of the book and cite it properly).

As with most Logos resources, all resources are available on any Logos platform. I usually work with Logos on my desktop computer, but I can also read the books using my iPad and the Logos Bible App. All notes and highlights are synced with the user’s Faithlife account so I can read, make a few notes on a book, then pick up those notes on my desktop when I return to the office and incorporate them into whatever document I am working on at the time. If the user downloads the book to their device, footnotes appear at the bottom of the page (like a real book). Unfortunately, Logos removed the real page numbers from the iOS app, this is a major step backward (although I hear the page numbers will be restored in the future).

Logos usually does a giveaway with these free and almost free books, so this month they are giving away the Zondervan Theology Collection (7 volumes, $155.99 value).

Be sure to get these books before the end of June 2018 when the offer expires.

Logos Bible Software is offering a volume of the Believers Church Bible Commentary for free in August 2016. During this month you can add Ecclesiastes by Douglas B. Miller to your Logos library for free, and for $1.99 you can add Thomas R. Yoder Neufeld’s commentary on Ephesians (2002) in the same series.

According to Herald Press website, the Believers Church Bible Commentary  is a “cooperative project of Brethren in Christ Church, Brethren Church, Church of the Brethren, Mennonite Brethren Church, and Mennonite Church.”

Each volume illuminates the Scriptures; provides historical and cultural background; shares necessary theological, sociological, and ethical meanings; and, in general, makes “the rough places plain.” Critical issues are not avoided, but neither are they moved into the foreground as debates among scholars. The series aids in the interpretive process, but it does not attempt to supersede the authority of the Word and Spirit as discerned in the gathered church.

Douglas Miller is the Old Testament editor for the series and professor at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas. He has published many articles on Ecclesiastes as well as a monograph, Symbol and Rhetoric in Ecclesiastes: The Place of hebel in Qohelet’s Work (Atlanta: SBL, 2002). Thomas R. Yoder Neufeld is Professor Emeritus at  Conrad Grebel University and wrote Killing Enmity: Violence and the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Mich: Baker Academic, 2011).

Both of these books are excellent additions to your Logos library, so make sure to add them to your library before the end of the month.

As always Logos is giving away a set of 26 volumes of the Believers Church Bible Commentary,  a $432.99 value. Enter early and often.

You can also get Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude as the Verbum Free book of the Month and Merton’s The Ascent to Truth: A Study of St. John of the Cross for 99 cents. Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment is still the Noet Free book of the Month