I have always wanted to setup Accordance so that I can jump straight to BDAG if I am in the GNT but jump to LSJ if I’m in the Septuagint. It just dawned on me this evening that the live click feature makes this possible. You can triple-click to jump to one lexicon, or you can use the live click feature to jump to another.
I explained it below with text and pictures, and I embedded a short video, too. This would of course work for Hebrew if you wanted to go to HALOT for Biblical Hebrew but DCH for the Dead Sea Scrolls.
If you are new to live click you will want to make sure the preferences for live click are set to “Sort by library (entry).” You can find out more about live click here.
Lexicon 1 — Preferences, Amplify
Open your Accordance preferences, go to the Amplify section, and set your primary Greek lexicon. For me, that’s BDAG. This is the lexicon you will jump to if you triple-click.
Lexicon 2 — Library Order
Now, whichever other lexicon you would like to be able to jump to can be placed at the top of the Greek lexicon section of your library. For me, that’s LSJ. This is the lexicon you will jump to if you single click using the live click feature.
That’s all there is to it. I don’t know why I didn’t realize this earlier. Make sure live click is active. Single-click to go to LSJ and triple-click to go to BDAG.
Accordance is the only software that has Hanhart’s 2 Chronicles Göttingen edition. V&R published the print edition in 2014, and Accordance released their electronic edition in 2018.
In this post, I want to demonstrate a few of my favorite ways to use this resource on MacOS, iOS, and iPadOS. This will give you a better idea of what it looks like to work with an electronic edition of Göttingen on each platform.
MacOS
On the Mac, I use the Göttingen volumes more for reference than reading. I find it helpful to save each Göttingen volume in its own workspace and then jump to that workspace when I want to reference it. This setup allows me to reference a Göttingen volume without the need to open the text module, open the apparatus module, and then adjust the size and position of each.
The following video shows you how to setup and save a workspace for the 2 Chronicles module:
Saving a workspace for 2 Chronicles Göttingen LXX
After you have a workspace setup for the Göttingen volume, you can then jump to it easily by two-finger clicking on a verse reference and selecting the workspace name from the context menu. Check it out:
Jumping to the 2 Chronicles Göttingen LXX workspace
Before looking at the module on the iPad and iPhone, I want to show you another way I reference the Göttingen volumes on MacOS. You can set up the Göttingen volumes in a workspace alongside other ancient witnesses and jump to that workspace when you want to quickly look for other readings. I named my workspace OT Texts. In this video, here’s what I do:
I jump from 2 Chronicles 1:1 in the the Hebrew Bible
to my OT Texts workspace
to the 2 Chronicles Göttingen volume
and back to the Hebrew Bible where I started.
HB > OT Texts > Göttingen > back to HB
iPadOS
In this section, I just want to share some screenshots of what the 2 Chronicles volume looks like on iPad OS. There will be another post that continues my “Ways of Reading” series, and in that post I’ll talk about reading Göttingen 2 Chronicles on the iPad and using a print lexicon.
Göttingen text with apparatus:
12.9” iPad Pro 2018
Gottingen text with NETS as diglot:
12.9” iPad Pro 2018
Now, let’s take a look at what it looks like to actually jump to a few lexicons while reading the text on an iPad. In this video, here’s what I do:
I start with the 2 Chronicles Göttingen text,
open the instant details by long pressing on χιλίαρχος,
jump to BDAG,
switch to LSJ,
switch to LEH,
and go back to the Göttingen text.
12.9” iPad Pro 2018
iOS
Last but not least, just a couple screenshots on the iPhone.
Göttingen text only:
iPhone 11 Pro Max
Göttingen text with apparatus:
iPhone 11 Pro Max
Göttingen text with instant details:
iPhone 11 Pro Max
Conclusion
The laptop/desktop software allows you to reference the Göttingen volumes in unique ways. You can quickly jump to the Göttingen volume with the apparatus already open and positioned correctly. You can also setup and jump to a workspace that allows you to see the Göttingen volume alongside other ancient witnesses. The iPad and iPhone versions allow you to more comfortably read the text and reference your Göttingen volumes on the go.
I hope this post gives you a better idea of how you can use the electronic edition of the Göttingen Septuagint in Accordance.
Academic bloggers and tweeters show up for International Septuagint Day like no other day. Today, my timeline has been filled with tweets about the Septuagint, and I love it. I wanted to add to the chorus by clearing up some confusion regarding electronic editions of the Göttingen LXX in Logos and Accordance.
Volumes
You have two options for electronic Göttingen LXX editions: Logos and Accordance. I’ve owned it on both platforms for several years, but until tonight I did not realize the nature of differences between the packages. I knew Logos started out far ahead in the number of volumes they offered, but Accordance has consistently released more and more Göttingen volumes the past few years. Here’s where we stand.
Logos has 5 volumes that Accordance doesn’t have:
Judith
Tobit
3 Maccabees
Wisdom of Solomon
Susanna, Daniel, and Bel et Draco
Accordance has 1 volume that Logos doesn’t have:
2 Chronicles
Here is a full list of the volumes included in each package:
Jeremiah, Baruch, Lamentations, Epistle of Jeremiah
Jeremiah, Baruch, Lamentations, Epistle of Jeremiah
Ezekiel
Ezekiel
Susanna, Daniel, Bel et Draco
Even though Accordance has fewer volumes than Logos, Accordance has continued to develop and release Göttingen modules, whereas I don’t think Logos has added to their offerings since their initial release. This pattern suggests that in the coming years Accordance will catch up and surpass Logos in the number of volumes offered.
Both Accordance and Logos include morphological tagging, but each platform has a way that it one-ups the other.
If a Göttingen volume has two apparatuses —one for the transmission history of the Old Greek and one for tracking differences in other Greek translations besides the Old Greek—Logos splits apparatus 1 and apparatus 2 into different modules. This makes seeing the text and the content of each apparatus far easier than including both apparatuses in one module. Accordance does this for all its modules except the Pentateuch volumes. For whatever reason, in Accordance the two apparatuses for the Pentateuch volumes are together in one electronic module. There is so much info in apparatus 1 that it makes it hard to see the actual text of a passage and scroll down far enough in the apparatus module to see the apparatus 2 information. You scroll down to the apparatus 2 information, but because the apparatus and text modules are linked, now your text module has jumped a verse or two ahead. This is a bummer because the Göttingen Pentateuch volumes are the ones I reference most frequently. I wish the developers would split the Pentateuch volumes into separate text modules and split apparatuses 1 and 2 like they do for the rest of the series.
Accordance however includes one very significant feature of the print volumes that Logos does not have: the Kopfleiste. This is a header that that appears on each page of the print volumes and tells you exactly which witnesses include the text that appears on that page. Without it, finding this information in the introductions is possible but very difficult.
Quality
Finally, the issue of quality control. It isn’t as simple as you might think. Older editions of the Göttingen volumes do not have digital files. These volumes have to be converted in some way to make digital resources. The Göttingen volumes make this very difficult to do well because of the insanely dense apparatus and the numerous uncommon sigla used.
So which platform pulls this off the best? It’s hard to say. At one point, Abram noted that the Logos editions seemed to be more accurate. I think this was based mostly on a close reading of the Isaiah volume. When I reviewed the Job volume for Accordance, I found many typos in the apparates and introduction. The Accordance developers, however, were all over this and fixed all the typos very quickly. When I read 2 Maccabees in the Logos Göttingen edition, I found many typos in the parsing. These have been fixed, as well.
While this category of comparison is significant, it is really hard to say which platform is more accurate.
Conclusion
I’m sure there are still typos in the electronic editions on both platforms, but to me the most useful Göttingen LXX is the one that I have with me when I want and need it. For this reason and many more, I prefer electronic editions over the print volumes. If I were still doing academic research in this field on a regular basis, I would certainly check a print edition before stepping up to the mic at SBL. For the purposes of reading and everyday study, the electronic editions are amazing. And no matter what time of the year it is or what sale is happening, the electronic editions are so, so much cheaper than the print volumes.
Here on LXX Day 2020, cheers to you, Logos and Accordance. Thank you both for years of fun reading and research. I hope to see both of you develop electronic editions of every Göttingen that has been and will be published. Prioritize these, please.
I don’t know how I missed this. Today, I discovered that in the Accordance iOS app you can copy a link to a particular place in a resource, paste that link in your notes, and make your notes, in whatever app you use, hyperlinked to Accordance. I love it.
For those of you that might be interested in how this can be useful in note taking, I tweeted a screen recording.
During Christmas break, I had a chance to actually work with Accordance 13 on the Mac and the new(ish) iOS app. I really appreciate the aesthetic shine both apps have now. Dark mode is gorgeous on the Mac, but the appearance of both apps has significantly improved over the past year (not to mention the substantial functionality improvements with live click on the Mac and the keyboard shortcuts on iOS). It is stability, however, is what shifted my reading and reference workflows back to being Accordance-primary.
Because some key resources (GE/BrillDAG, Croy’s Greek grammar, Oxford Latin Dictionary, Whitaker’s Words, Collins Latin Dictionary) are in Logos and not Accordance, for the past few months I had been primarily — almost exclusively — using Logos. During holiday travels, however, I took only my iPad for reading. After a few days, the Logos iOS app proved to be too buggy for regular, sustained reading. The primary problem was that the text in resources would randomly jump up half a paragraph or more when I went to scroll. I pointed this out at the end of my Logos 8 review, and it hasn’t been fixed.
This and other stability issues led me to open the Accordance app. During the last few days of traveling, I spent several hours reading in the Accordance iOS app, and it was rock solid. I’m just discovering some of the delightful, newer polishes and improvements. The developers deserve some serious thanksgiving. I want to quote here something I said in a my iOS App Store review:
Accordance is a classy company that focuses on quality work and has done so for 25 years. I trust Accordance, and I prefer to invest my personal library budget in their books over print or other digital platforms.
One thing I’ve learned over the years is that there isn’t just one way of reading. I read with print books, with Logos, with Accordance, with open source online tools, and various other combinations of print and digital media. I’ll continue to use them all.
Today, however, I just wanted to say thanks to the Accordance folks. Y’all rock.
Accordance iOS app on an iPad in split view with Ulysses on the right for note taking
Lately, I’ve enjoyed the balance of using a reader’s text and a bigger lexicon. I say “balance” because this combination allows you to move quickly when you want to move quickly, and for me that is what I want most of the time. The reader’s text facilitates this wonderfully. When I want to step into the bigger picture and explore the broader meaning of a word, when I want more than a basic gloss or a meaning in this context, the big lexicons are what I want. Lexicons that are devoted to the particular corpus you are reading will often even satisfy the desire to check your understanding of a particular phrase in a particular verse because they provide translations of so many occurrences. So in addition to giving you a more complete picture on the use of a word across time or across the literature you are reading, the big lexicons frequently eliminate the need to consult your favorite translation, as well.
Details by Corpus
For the New Testament, I’ve really enjoyed the Tyndale House reader’s edition this year (leather/hardback). I’ll do full post on it this summer, but what I enjoy about it is everything from the font, to the paragraph layout, to the textual choices (cf. 2 Corithians 5:3, ἐνδυσάμενοι), and more. The lexicons of choice have been either BDAG, Montanari’s GE, or LSJ. Depending on the scenario, I’ll use print or digital versions of the lexicons.
For the Septuagint, the new reader’s edition is splendid (flexisoft). I’ve been in Leviticus and enjoying reference to LSJ, Montanari, and occassionally Muraoka or LEH.
For Anabasis, Steadman’s reader has been great. He only has books 1 and 4, but all I’ve needed this year is book 1. Eventually, I will have to turn to the Loeb, which is fine, but a reader is always preferable. It’s usually a digital LSJ that I turn to when I want more. Montanari would be great, but when I finally get around to Xenophon during the week I’m rarely in my office and I never have time to flip pages and read leisurely.
Hebrew has been on the back burner, but with a friend I’m making another pass through Genesis in the BHS reader’s edition (flexisoft). I normally turn to digital versions of HALOT or CDCH, but when I’m home I go to my print copy of Holladay (because of Michel Gilbert’s experience shared here and here).
Conclusion
Usually when you want to turn from a reader’s text and explore a bigger lexical work, it is more enjoyable to use a print lexicon if the situation allows. This weekend it’s been the reader’s GNT, BDAG in print, and Apple’s Arcade Fire Essentials playlist. Saturday mornings are made for this sort of reading experience.
There are so many ways to read in the original languages. Don’t latch onto one way and make that the only way you can feel satisfied in doing it. Just do it.
There is nothing exactly like Discovering the Septuagint: A Guided Reader (DLXX). This resources is aptly titled because it isn’t just a “reader’s edition.” It is a guide to reading the Septuagint. Reader’s editions of the Bible typically provide only vocabulary and parsing helps. Working through DLXX is like sitting down and reading with someone that has experience. As you read together, a whole host of topics are covered. The majority of the conversation focuses on what you need most, vocab and parsing helps, but there are also comments that speak to the underlying Hebrew, comments about the similar uses of words or phrases in other LXX passages, comments related to syntax, suggestions for translation, and more. Despite the fact that Hendrickson published a full, two-volume Septuagint Reader’s Edition this month, the variety of comments offered in DLXX makes it a unique, helpful resource for students who have only a little experience reading Greek.
What’s Included
Every portion of the print book is included in the Accordance edition of DLXX. As the picture above shows, the table of contents pane, which can be shown or hidden, allows you to easily navigate to all the front and end matter and each passage in between.
DLXX includes readings from Genesis, Exodus, Ruth, Additions to LXX Esther, Psalms, Jonah, Malachi, and Isaiah. When someone picks up a Septuagint — whether Rahlfs’ edition or the massive two-volume reader’s edition — it’s common to ask, “Where should I start?” DLXX is helpful at this point. Karen Jobes explains,
The texts were selected to give readers a taste of different genres, an experience of distinctive Septuagintal elements, and a sampling of texts later used by writers of the New Testament. It is intended to aid students who have had at least three semesters of koine Greek begin to read the Greek Jewish Scriptures as found in the Rahlfs-Hanhart critical edition of the Septuagint.
The Septuagint is huge and its contents are so varied and vast. I appreciate that DLXX allows readers to experience some of this variety.
Regarding the Notes
I’ve only had a little time to spend with DLXX so far, but I can say that I do indeed think the notes will help students move from the New Testament to the Septuagint. I learned to navigate the Septuagint during years of PhD seminars, but I was not so fortunate with classical Greek. For classical, the work of Geoffrey Steadman has served as my “guided reader.” Up to this point there has been nothing like Steadman for biblical studies. I think DLXX takes a step towards meeting this need.
Each section starts with an introduction to the book and a bibliography for further reading. At the end of each passage, the NETS translation is included for reference.
In the section on Exodus 20:1–21, Carmen Imes has formatted the text so that the reader can easily see how the ten commandments passage in Exodus differs from the Deuteronomy account.
The textual notes below are based on the Exodus version, but differences in Deuteronomy are included in brackets. If the text in brackets replaces text appearing in Exodus, the replaced text is underlined. If a word or words from Exodus are lacking in Deuteronomy, the brackets enclose a dash [-] and the missing text is underlined. Other material in brackets is unique to Deuteronomy. The verses that precede and follow the Deuteronomy Decalogue have not been included here. The simultaneous presentation of both versions of the Ten Words should allow easier comparison.
One could say that this sort of formatting clutters the text and is distracting, but that would be to judge the work as though it were intended to be a pure reader’s edition. DLXX is not a pure reader’s edition, and so I think this feature is really nice.
I also appreciate how the editors comment on how certain LXX passages are used in the New Testament. Here is a screenshot of a chart that appears at the end of the Psalm 21 passage. I long-held on one of the hyperlinked NT passages to have the NT passage popup.
Regarding the Electronic Version
Because the notes for each verse are listed directly underneath the individual verses, the Accordance electronic edition is most easily read on a bigger screen. Here are screen shots of the same passage on a 15” laptop, a 10.5” tablet, and a 6.5” phone:
Ps 21:1 in DLXX on a 15” laptop
Ps 21:1 in DLXX on a 10.5” tablet
Ps 21:1 in DLXX on a 6.5” phone
As you can see, some scrolling up and down would be required to see all the notes for Psalm 21:1, but I think this is a better option than having users click on a little footnote reference to see each note.
One fantastic feature of the electronic edition is being able to click on the verse reference and pull up the passage in the new text browser.
This allows you to quickly see the verse you are studying in whatever editions and translation you have in your library.
Accordance always does a great job with their electronic editions. Quality is always the first priority. You don’t have to worry about buying DLXX in Accordance and finding that it is a quick scan, typo-ridden, sub-par version of the print copy.
I do, however, wish the individual verses were morphologically tagged. Since the Septuagint text is from Rahlfs and Accordance has a fantastic tagged Rahlfs text, I hope morphological tagging will be added to each verse in a future update. Having the text tagged, even if Accordance had to charge a little extra, would greatly increase the value and usefulness of the electronic edition.
Conclusion
The editors state in the introduction that this book is intended for those who have had three semesters of New Testament Greek. After three semesters of fast-paced seminary Greek, most students are still struggling with the basics of Koine grammar. They still need help with parsing and recognizing the principal parts of common words; they have no experience with the oddities of the Septuagint. For this audience, DLXX is a fantastic personal guide. It’s also ideal for anyone who has started down that path and turned back because of the strange sights and sounds found in Rahlfs’ big blue abyss.
Getting from elementary grammar to the point where you can comfortably read the Greek New Testament — that’s the goal, but how to get there is not always clear to students. The most important resolution one can make is to regularly pick up a text and read. There is no substitute for regular reading, but there are some tools specifically designed to assist your regular reading.
Colossians and Philemon (1991 Eerdmans, 2010 B&H) – Murray J. Harris
James (2013) – Chris A. Vlachos
1 Peter (2014) – Greg W. Forbes
The first time I read through the GNT I found Zerwick’s grammatical analysis very helpful, and these volumes are a more expansive, multivolume treatment of the same issues.
Exegetical Issues
What sort of questions do these commentaries answer? The primary purpose is to answer the questions raised by close reading and exegesis. Take a look at 1 Peter 1:18:
As you look at 1 Peter 1:18, you might recognize εἰδότες as adverbial but wonder about the exact adverbial nuance. You expect it is causal, but before you say this to your class or write it in your exegetical paper or preach it from the pulpit you want to hear what someone else thinks. Forbes’ EGGNT volume speaks directly to this question. In the screen shot below you can see EGGNT in parallel with the Tyndale House Greek New Testament:
In the section of the commentary I highlighted, you will also notice that page numbers are included, which makes it easy to cite EGGNT in papers and notes. I’ll discuss another grammatical issue related to participles in the “extensive linking” section below, but let’s take a look at a broader issue the series tackles.
You might have heard that the first two words of Matthew are taken in several different ways by interpreters. What exactly does γένεσις (genesis) mean here? Quarles’ EGGNT volume discusses the range of meanings for βίβλος and γένεσις within scripture and outside scripture, and he then explains the meaning he finds most probable with the passage itself.
Not every interpretive issue is directly related to the Greek language, but this one is and Quarles does an appropriately thorough job speaking to the issue. Of course, you could could write an entire article on this issue or even a dissertation, but in a resource like this you want an overview of the issue and an informed opinion explained. That’s exactly what you get.
Extensive linking to other Greek Resources
I was really happy to see how thoroughly Accordance has added hyperlinks to other resources. In Quarles’ discussion of βίβλος you can see below that both the LSJ reference and the BDAG reference are linked (I’ve highlighted them to clearly point them out):
The linking is not limited to lexicons. The usual suspects are linked — scripture references, extra-biblical texts offered by Accordance, abbreviations — and especially noteworthy are the hyperlinked grammar sections.
If you turn to EGGNT for help with grammar and you want to research the issue further, you’ll be really happy to see that Accordance has tagged every reference to grammars like BDF, Robertson, and Wallace’s syntax.
Other Features
The features listed above are the ones I think are most important, but here are a few more features included in EGGNT.
Parsing
In the last picture above, as Quarles discusses Matthew 1:18 you will notice that each Greek word mentioned is parsed. Since you are accessing the text in Accordance this feature might seem redundant, but it is sometimes helpful to have another opinion in addition to the tagged Greek texts in Accordance.
Word/Phrase Function
You can also see that just within the one paragraph pictured above there are references to a participle functioning temporally, a dative serving as an indirect object, the function of a prepositional phrase, a note on the absence of a definite article, and reference is made to the way certain constructions function in classical Greek. So the series covers bigger picture grammatical concerns like the function of participle clauses, the minutia of parsing, and the way in which individual words and phrases function within clauses.
Intro Issues, Structure, Further Study
While introductory issues are not the focus of the series, each volume does discuss issues like authorship, setting, date, and structure. In the Matthew volume, Quarles closes the volume’s introduction with a list of recommended commentaries, but at the end of each passage there are also references to resources for further study of the particular passage just discussed. The last section of each passage has a homiletical outline, noting the general movement of each passage and how one might begin thinking about moving from text to sermon.
Conclusion
These commentaries are not designed to be advanced discussions of Greek grammar for specialists. They are for students. The goal is to fill in what is lacking when trying to move from elementary grammar to regular reading, teaching, and preaching. They serve this purpose well, and Accordance has done a great job tagging and linking these resources, making them much more useful and helpful to have digitally than in print. These are not the sort of book you are going to read from cover to cover. They are best purchased as digital resources you can access wherever and whenever your questions arise. I think Accordance is the best platform for such purchases.
If you have previously purchased these resources with another software, checkout Accordance’s crossgrade program. If you agree to keep the copy you purchased in another software, you can get the Accordance edition for $49.75.
