Where Everybody's Crazy

So here's another Accordance tip. I got the wonderful Theological Dictionary of the New Testament this morning and started to play about with it. I selected the second word of Matthew 1:1, and was surprised to see this:

Come on, it's the second word of the New Testament. You've got to find that! Well, the trick is this: if the module you're looking things up in is the default Greek/Hebrew dictionary (usually Strong's) then the word is looked up by key number. This means that the word is searched by its uninflected (dictionary) form. Search for "γενεσεως", and it internally looks for "word number 1078", and you get the entry for "γενεσις". Perfect. But if the module you're using is not the default Greek dictionary, it looks the word up by the exact form, so you end up looking for "γενεσεως" in TDNT, and unsurprisingly it's not there.

The utility of this feature is questionable, but anyway, there's a way around it. When you select the module to search in - let's say the TDNT again - you need to hold down the option key. This searches for the uninflected form, which is what you want - the TDNT article for "γενεσις". In which there is a real theological gem, of which see the next post.

As I mentioned earlier, my survey of computer Bible software turned up Accordance as the least bad option. Well, I want to revise that opinion. It's actually really good!

I picked up the Library 7 Standard package, which has a great range of modules with it. It's admittedly mainly older stuff, but there's a variety: neat things like the Bible Art dictionary which I wouldn't have considered, but will probably come in useful.

The first thing I should mention is the customer support. The staff have been really helpful at answering my questions pre- and post-sales, and they also hang around on the (very active) forums answering my banal enquiries. They also offer generous missionary discounts!

But the really nice thing is how flexible it's turned out to be. I've been approaching the software in the way I approach any software: "Well, if I wrote it, it would do this as well!" Except I've found that either it already does this, or it'll do this soon. I haven't been able to find anything (yet) that I've wanted to do but couldn't, which is possibly the nicest thing I could say about any piece of software.

For instance this morning I wanted to search for all the Greek words that have been translated as "word" in English, and their frequency distribution. Well, you just do a search for "word" in any English text which has been tagged up, click on "Details", and there you go:

Want to know how that breaks down for each book of the NT? No problem, just click another button in the details box:

Look at that, John never uses rhema.

Nice, isn't it? More Accordance tips as I discover them!