Where to find the Classics (Greek)

In case you haven't been able to tell by some of the blogging, I do a lot of work in Greek and so I thought it'd be a good idea to throw down some of the main resource centers that I turn to when I'm trying to find it online in Greek.

Perseus Digital Library.
Pros:

• Contains numerous Greek and Latin authors and translations.
• Also contains a few reference works which are more than handy.
• Click on a word and find its parsing info and get lexical information!
• Pretty slick user-interface once you get used to it.
• Hosts a number of "newer" translations and original text documents.
• Public domain texts now have posted XML versions for use under Creative Commons license.

Cons:

• Some of the texts are unpredictable. There may be typos or broken links to lexica.
• I have found it very difficult to get in touch with a person behind the database when I wanted to email corrections.
• The site seems to go in random cycles where links work quickly, but then later are very slow.
• Difficult if not impossible to search Greek texts for any kind of strings or grammatical features.

Bibliotheca Augustana.
Pros:

• Constantly adding more texts to the site.
• Contains unique texts from a variety of souorces.
• Brief bibliographic and Vita information usually given about authors.

Cons:

• The site is in Latin and can be cumbersome to navigate.
• It is unclear to me whether the texts on this site are able to be copied and used elsewhere or whether they are illegally posted.

Sacred Texts: Classics.
Pros:

• Seems to be adding new texts.
• Contains a few works with Greek/Latin and English side-by-side
• Hosts a few other general classics reference works

Cons:

• Material is all public domain and therefore a little dated.
• Mostly English, only a few original language materials

Library of Ancient Texts Online.
Pros:

• Good organization helps user find e-sources to Greek authors.
• Contains links both to original language source and translations.
• Only site of this kind?

Cons:

• It appears that it is not updated any more.
• Many of the links are simply back to Perseus

The Little Sailing.
Pros:

• Adding more texts a few times a year
• Only source for the entirety of Greek version of Plutarch's Parallel Lives?
• Texts appear fairly accurate, though sometimes merely copies of Perseus' text

Cons:

• Not enough information is given regarding the provenance of the e-texts. So it is unclear whether they are actually in public domain (many of them seem to be violations of copyright laws).
• Texts are quick and easy to download in Word format. This might be more beneficial than Perseus' XML format.

Internet Classics Archive.
Pros:

• A wealth of public domain translations of Greek authors

Cons:

• A dead site that somehow still works.
• Translations are public domain and quite old.

This is only a few of the many sources out there I'm sure. If you have some that you know that are valuable, let me know. These are the ones I frequent most often.

User Database: Demosthenes Speeches in Greek

Thought I'd post something completely different in the Greek world today. Not epic, not poetry, not even myth. Today's new addition to the user-database land is Demosthenes' Speeches. Unfortunately not all of the works of Demosthenes are in public domain, so this edition only contains Speeches 1-40, but that is a good chunk of Demosthenes' work and includes some classic words.

Enjoy!

User Database: Apollonius Rhodius

Another entry in the Epic Greek text category: Apollonius Rhodius' Greek text of his Argonautica is available!

This is a wonderful piece in Greek, but rather difficult translating work. I may have time to put together an English translation help in the future, but for now a lexicon is your best hope!

Module Update - The Great Isaiah Scroll Index

I've posted a new zip file that contains corrections to the Great Isaiah Scroll Index (see previous blog post). Unzip the contents into your BibleWorks 7/databases folder. Download the file here.

User Database: Herodotus in English

Earlier this year I compiled Herodotus' Histories in Greek for BibleWorks. Now this invaluable resource is even more invaluable with an English translation to help you out just in case you're still working on the Greek.

The translation is that of A.D. Godley from 1920. It is in the public domain.

This database includes all 9 Books of Herodotus' great work on the History of the Persian Wars. Anyone interested in learning more about Herodotus or this particular work should definitely check out the website Herodotus on the Web. This project was largely completed thanks to the effort of other users of BibleWorks, but Michael Hanel still gets the glory for encouraging the work and making it happen. (that's sarcasm ;) ) BibleWorks staff is not responsible for the content or the use of this database. So if you have any problems with the database, contact me, not BibleWorks support. While the text has not been proofed completely, it appeared to be a fairly clean text. If you find any glaring problems please email me (address available in the readme.txt file) and I will try to get out a better edition.

Vocab Module: Homer's Iliad and Odyssey

The latest files are up which now include a vocabulary module that hits every word in the Iliad and Odyssey!

You can use this vocab module to provide Word Tips in BW which means easy reading in Greek. Obviously the glosses provided here (which are almost entirely based on the endless work of John Jackson) are no substitution for Liddell-Scott entries, but they sure make for smooth reading if you're already comfortable with the Greek language. And if you're not, you can use this module to start learning Vocabulary by frequency, book, or one work (i.e. The Iliad) of Homer vs. the other!

New Module - Index to the Great Isaiah Scroll

So, I've finally had a chance to try my hand at making a custom BibleWorks module. For my first try, I've put together an index to the Great Isaiah Scroll. This very basic index merely links a user to the proper page of 1QIsaiah^a, as it is hosted on Fred P. Miller's Great Isaiah Scroll Directory.

I'm really psyched about this feature. I'm hoping to compile some more research helps very soon, and I know that Ewan MacLeod has his sights on some great projects!

Check it out. To install, simply unzip the file and copy everything to your BibleWorks/Databases directory. When you are in a verse in Isaiah, a link to the index will appear in the Resource Summary of the Analysis Window. You can also access the index by going to the Resources menu and looking under the Text Criticism category for "Darlack, 1QIsaiahA Index."

Update to the files with corrections posted 24 July 2006. Click link above.

Ad fontes, ad fontes, ad fontes

In college when I began Greek I pretty much fell in love with it. From very early on I decided I wanted to read classical Greek texts in addition to the Biblical Greek text I knew I'd be studying. My first interaction with Greek outside of the NT was Herodotus. I learned very quickly while reading how much I relied on my previous knowledge of the English translation of the NT when I got stuck in Greek. It's real easy to fake it in Greek class when you're reading a passage and you can't remember the Greek, so you just "NIV it." [that would be an instance of making a verb from a noun] But when you get to a text with which you are not familiar, that is no longer an option. Sometimes you look at your translation and wonder how in the world anyone made sense of that sentence, only to look to an English translation and find out that your verb was really a dative noun, your genitive noun was really the subject of the verb and that all of those little words called "particles" can really change the meaning of a sentence.

Since then I've been involved with Classics in addition to my studies at Seminary in Theology. So a few years ago when I realized I could use classical Greek texts in BibleWorks, my mouth was watering. This was going to be exciting! Little did I know how much work it would actually take to figure out how to get the job done. But soon I learned about converting fonts from Unicode to CCAT format. I learned how to use macros in Word to make other conversions possible. I learned how to make sure I used only works in the public domain so that I could share the results of my labors with other BibleWorks users.

Fast forward a good chunk of time and you'll see how much work has been done. Basically all of Plato's Works are available within BW, so is Herodotus and Xenophon. Not only is Homer's Odyssey and Iliad available, they also are morphologically parsed! In other words, BibleWorks is not only a Biblical resource, it is turning into a great place for students interested in ALL Greek texts. BibleWorks comes already loaded with the Intermediate Liddell-Scott Lexicon and shortly they will be releasing a new module: the complete Liddell-Scott with all of the updates to it published within the correct entries. Oh these are good times indeed to be a classicist and Biblical scholar! No other program or website (to my knowledge) has as much Greek available for the cost of the program (the NT, LXX, Philo, Josephus, Apostolic Fathers are all included in the base program (this includes Greek text, parsing, and English translations)) and has bonus user resources available above and beyond the Biblical texts. In my mind this even blows away Perseus, a site which has a great wealth of material, but that material cannot be searched, analyzed and used in the way that BibleWorks can search, analyze and use those same texts. This is good news, not only to Bible scholars, but to aspiring classicists as well! :)

Vocab Module: "The First Hebrew Primer", Third Edition

A new vocab module was provided by BW user Adelphos. Here are his words about this module set:

This vocabulary file may be filtered by chapter according to the book. I have altered a few defintions, but, like the book, I have kept the defintions short and simple, as this facilitates learning. Also, you will find that this vocabulary set differs from most of the other Hebrew books out there in that this book contains words that are generally not found in the other books in their early presenation of vocabulary words. Thus, this book does not duplicate other vocabulary files.

Custom Modules

BibleWorks 7 has a short Help chapter (number 47) on how to create more e-books/resources (User Modules) via HTML Help. Now since BibleWorks 7 has been out, I have not really been aware of users distributing any of these kind of self-made resources....until now. :)

Long-time BibleWorks user Ewan MacLeod started us rolling by offering a few files created by himself. They are the following:

The Bible Companion - Is a daily readings Bible planner.

The Birmingham Amended Statement of Faith - a confession of the Christadelphian church

Demo Version of Ginsburg's Massorah - There is currently a post in the BibleWorks forum that is hoping to gather steam to get volunteers to make this a resource in BibleWorks. This file is merely a small glimpse of what the Massorah when completed would look like.

When you download these files you will want to unzip or move the HTML Help file, the .chd file and the .sdx file into your BibleWorks 7/databases/ directory. Then when you restart BW7, these will automatically be loaded into your program.

Hello, It's me, Jim.

Well it looks like Michael has done all the talking here so far. I guess it's about time that I introduce myself.

My name is Jim Darlack. I'm a student at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where I also serve as the reference librarian. I'm also active in my local church, where I've served as an elder and as a Sunday school teacher. So, I get to use BibleWorks as a student, as a teacher and as an instructor - helping Gordon-Conwell students get to know the program. In addition to tinkering with the program to prepare for lessons, etc. I've also been interested in crunching public domain texts found on the web and making them into BibleWorks databases/resources. Michael Hanel has been doing this quite a bit as well, and we both saw a need to have a place where we could easily collaborate on posting files for others to download. It dawned on me that we should start a BibleWorks blog. This enables Michael to post files to my webdomain through Blogger. It's primitive, but it works. A blog also provides a vehicle for communicating with other BibleWorks users. The BibleWorks forums are fantastic, but sometimes its very hard to follow a particular thread with so many posts, etc. This blog will allow us to showcase different features, tutorials, etc., and will also allow us to post new databases and updates relatively easily.

A few notes about the blog:

• The more I tinker with putting together web pages and blogging, I have begun to realize all of the work that goes into not only coding a program, but also making the user interface pleasing to the eyes. I would have never thought that the high contrast of white letters on a black background would be hard on some folks, but it is. So, I've tweaked the code. (It's really just another blogger template modified for the BibleWorks blog.) Let us know if you have a hard time with this as well. I may figure out a way for users to toggle the "look" of the website according to their own tastes and needs, but that will have to come when I have time.
• On the "files page" there are multiple links labeled with a "BW Help" button (). These links are actually direct links to the BibleWorks help files. To use these links, you must use Microsoft Internet Explorer and have BibleWorks 7.0 installed on your computer. (I know that this is a pain, I'm an avid user of Firefox, myself, but them's the breaks. Firefox won't allow the ActiveX stuff to run from a web page).
• Comments to this blog are moderated, so when you post a comment it won't display until someone approves it. I may change this in the future, but it hopefully will cut down on spam comments.
• What's up with the "oldinthenew.org" domain? Well, that's the domain that I bought a few years ago, and I don't feel like shelling out the dough or the trouble to migrate to a different domain, so any blogs or pages that I maintain will be linked to oldinthenew.org. When my thesis is done, I hope to set up a resource page dedicated to studying the New Testament's use of the Old.
  

And now for some shameless self promotion. In addition to playing with the BibleWorks blog, I'm also running "James the Just" - a blog dedicated to the study of the Epistle of James and the historical "James the Just." I've also posted my files for PalmBible+ users on another blog, titled "PalmSunday."

Maintenance

RSS Feeds are available for this blog (see the sidebar). Sorry if you have been trying and were getting an XML error (at least I was). I think I have this all fixed.

Also for the hard-of-seeing out there. Jim and I will get a better font/background color system out shortly. Thanks for your feedback and patience.

The Hebrew Massorah

This is a note especially for those Hebrew guys out there:

I know many of the Hebrew specialists out there have been feeling down that there are not as many Hebrew resources as they would like. Well if that's you, this might be something you can help out with. Part of the way users can help each other out is through creating user add-on modules. I have been spending hundreds of hours the past few years producing Greek-related user modules because that's my primary interest. Others have done work which preceded my own and they helped create the first Apostolic Fathers module (in Greek and translation) before any other Bible program had even touched this.

In the past many of these projects have been headed by one or two people, but there are some projects out there that require many more hands to make them possible. This is the project I am introducing now.

Is there any support for a creation of Ginsburg's Massorah into a BibleWorks module? This would be a project that would take as many volunteers as possible in order to divide the workload (which would be rather impossible for one person). There are online PDF versions of the Ginsburg Massorah. The project would be to turn the PDFs into text files which would then be compiled into an user add-on module. If it were done in this form, all the information contained in the Massorah would be provided via the Resource Summary like any of the other Grammars or Lexicons (meaning verse references would work, etc.). This would be a massive project, but with a group of volunteers, it would be possible.

Right now I am looking for feedback. Are there any of you Hebrew students out there who would be interested in making this happen? If there's not enough interest, it won't get done. Leave a note on the forums and let's see if we can't make this happen.

User-values: Bible software is not a replacement for books.

I have never personally witnessed a book-burning, but as I read about it, I can imagine it being a very tense time. I remember we had to read Fahrenheit 451 in high school and that really opened my eyes to seeing a literary generation turn into an illiterate generation. Before there were books, there were stories. People told the stories. People embodied the stories. In the Classical world we have the example of the mysterious bard, Homer. In the Biblical world there is the witness of a flawed, yet profound public speaker named Moses through Deuteronomy. Books have not always been around, so I assume it would be arrogant to presume that they always will be.

One of the best parts of being in the Seminary is living on the same campus as a multi-million dollar library. People who are thirsty for knowledge can come and check out the latest volume in a series or dig deep into the shelves to pull out a 17th century classic. The point is, libraries are wonderful places that contain a great treasury of resources mostly in the form of books and, in my opinion, books are irreplacable. If I could trade my own petite library for one DVD and $5000 to pay for my grief, I would never do it (mostly because $5000 wouldn't allow me to buy back all of those books at a later date :) ). On the other hand, if I could trade in my e-books for their physical counterparts, I would gladly comply! (Most of the reason why I bought e-books was not because I wanted the e-book, but because I couldn't pass up the deal, knowing I would never be able to afford the whole set of say Luther's Works for the same price.)

A couple of years ago I worked in a book publishing company. No, that makes it sound glamorous. Actually, I worked in a book publishing factory. The place where packets of pages were printed from metal imprints, where the packets were fit together and bound into book format and occasionally where finished books were put into boxes one-by-one with address stickers belonging to U.S. Supreme Court Justices. For a post-college guy, it was a decent job. It paid more than many other jobs I was considering. For a bibliophile, it was an awesome job because I got to be part of the process of making books.

Knowing how all that stuff happens, I'm not about to cut out all of those book factories. Not really for economical reasons, but because in spite of all that hard labor, I still really like books. I don't think they're an invention which has seen it's peak. I own probably around 200 "e-books" or books that are in electronic form and run via Bible software of one kind or another. This is a rather small number compared to some. I know that there are easily tens of thousands of e-books out there. The thing is, I've just never caught on to them. I know there are advantages to e-books (and I will post about this later), but here are just a few of the disadvantages I've found so far.

1. The first and most obvious issue has to be that the e-books themselves come with a ticking timebomb. There are no guarantees that the book will always work or be accessible in the future. What if the company that supports it runs out of business? What if they upgrade their core architecture and it no longer supports that format? What if they come out with version 2.0 of the book you already own, which contains the same text, but more functionality? I have never yet have a REAL book go bad on me, but despite assurances some from Bible companies, I have never been able to erase my fears in this regard.

2. Quality of the e-books is lacking. After purchasing a few e-books, I have to say I have been less than thrilled with the quality of the books I received. Typos are rather frequent, which destroys one of the advantages for which I bought the stupid e-books: search capability. If I'm looking for the word "cloud" and the search pulls up nothing because it contains the word "cloucl" (note: there is a difference), the e-book advantage has been erased. (On a side note: I have always been impressed with how BW has been committed to correcting typos and errors as they are reported. Maybe more of you have reported typos that you have not seen get corrected, but when I report them I have seen them get corrected.) I do not intend on putting all the blame on Bible software companies here. Here I must admit that part of the problem may be business practices in the publishing world. Unless I'm a complete dope I believe all publishing companies have electronic editions of all their texts. They need them in order to produce their master guides for printing presses. The way many e-books are published is not that the Bible software companies are given those electronic editions, but that Bible software companies have to scan hard copies of these books by hand (or have someone else do it) and then they use software to translate a picture of the page into edit-able text. I know from a business stand-point this is a sticky widget, but my point is, I wish publishing companies were more willing to work with Bible software companies to share work and information so this work did not have to be reduplicated. (And incidentally, if I'm wrong on how this whole process works, someone needs to explain to me why I've never seen a real book have as many typos as frequently as some of my e-books.)

3. Utility, utility, utility. I have never EVER read a substantial (more than 50 pages) e-book online. I find it impossible to read a computer screen like a book for hours upon hours. If it's not hard on the eyes, it's hard on the back or some other thing. I have purchased some e-books I thought would be helpful and useful only to find that one year has passed and I've only used that resource once or twice. (There are exceptions to this rule, but I have found this to be the general truth: ) If I have a physical book, it gets used. I read books. I sit at the lazy-boy for hours and digest them. I mark up the pages with underlines and notes. Later on I remember that on the lower left portion of a page there was that one part that I wanted to go back and read again. The point is this, no matter how many advantages people say that e-books have, the proof is in the pudding, and the pudding is sitting next to me on a coffee table as I read REAL books. Maybe I'm just an old coot, but despite the best efforts of companies to try to replicate the reading process, I have found that no company can ever reduplicate the ease of paging through a book, of writing a note on a page by hand, of making a piece of literature your very own as you make your own memories through that antequated process of reading.

4. (And here I'm being somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but there is truth to this statement:) Personal pride and honor (of course you can also argue that perhaps it's good to minimize books to eliminate this sin...). As a bibliophile, how often have I lusted after vast personal libraries of friends, pastors or professors. I live in a world where I determine at least part of my worth (even if no one else does) based on how large my personal library is and based on what kinds of books that library contains. The more languages, the better. Loeb books are a dime a dozen, so that's maybe a tenth of a point; but the Oxford Classical Text with Greek only and a Latin introduction-- that's worth at least two. Yet who is intimidated by an empty bookshelf and a laptop sitting on a desk? Sure you might have 5,000,000 books on said laptop, but let's face it I could too if I downloaded them all from sources like Project Gutenberg. No, the point is whose library is bigger. And I mean real books. :)

So am I the only one? Are there still other advantages of real books that I missed?

Blogging: Community and Collaboration

While the Bible software business is by no means a new market niche, it has definitely exploded in the last 5 years. When I was first in college (all of 4 years ago!), hardly anyone I knew had Bible sofware. I first bought BibleWorks 5 my sophomore year of college as I was beginning my studies in Greek and Hebrew. Now I don't think you can find a single person at seminary who doesn't own at least one Bible software program. If you can, they'll be able to tell you which one they'd like to buy if they only had the money. As I tried to say in the last post, this blog is not for people who want to trash one Bible program at another's expense. I would rather that Bible software companies collaborate on some of these projects than compete against one another. Furthermore, I wish users of said programs could do the same!!

I don't know what happens in board-rooms or living rooms (for the smaller ones :) ) of companies, but I do know what happens in my world. In my world, I'm trying to find ways to study God's Word and the Greek language [I'm also an aspiring Classicist]. I know one company doesn't always have the resources or the desire to be all things to all people. Companies focus on the center of the market (or in some cases on their specific niche, if that niche is a faithful one). Sometimes you'll find that your needs and wants are not what the market in general wants. The way I see it, you have a couple of options: 1. You can cry and whine, either hoping to convince the company that your needs are worth the investment or else hoping to create a mobile user-group who feels as you do and thus change the market. (Ok, so maybe that's a little blunt :) if so, read "You can speak up...") or 2. If something is so valuable to you, go out and seek it, do it yourself.

Now granted, very few of us out there are sophisticated computer programmers, so there aren't too many things users can do, but by working together I think users can do a lot of things. This website hosts a vast amount of things users have done already on their own. Actually the most surprising thing is how much stuff there is out there considering how few the number of actual contributors are. What I think this shows is that normal folks (if that could be used to describe someone like myself) are able to make a number of significant contributions to the digital world that add, amplify and support programs like BibleWorks, Logos and Accordance. This blog is primarily aimed at BibleWorks users, but users of any and all Bible software programs are invited to be a part of the community as well. Believe it or not, heaven will probably not be divided into groups depending on what Bible software program you use. But here on earth if Bible software is your thing, collaboration, community and sharing just might be a new and better way to go.

Blogging: Different Abilities, One Goal

If you dabble in Bible software at all there is no way you have not heard of programs by Logos or Accordance. The reason I mention these two specifically is that both companies operate their own official blogs. As I stated in the last entry, this blog is fundamentally different from those blogs because this one is run not by employees of BibleWorks, but by regular users of this software, just like you (except maybe we do spend a lot more time using it than you might, but that's for your benefit :) ).

I want to make it clear from the outset that this blog and website is NOT meant to bash those two companies (or any other ones for that matter). Not only is this un-Christian, it's just plain mean. I understand these are all companies and in theory they do compete against one another, but you know what? I'm not an economist and I'm not about to pit one company against another. What kind of an example does that set for the secular companies if not even Bible programs can act in Christian ways. [Sidenote: For the record, I am conservative Christian pastor-in-training so I'm sorry if my theological biases come out in ways that offend. Again, that's not the point and I hope you can read through those when you encounter them.]

With that said though, you must realize that of Bible software programs my primary program is BibleWorks 7. I have already made my investment in this company through this product and so when you may hear mention of Logos, Accordance or any other Bible software program out there and explain the benefits and advantages of BibleWorks it is done in this mentality: I've paid my money, I'm not about to plunk down more to buy another program that costs a lot and largely reduplicates another program I use. Instead, if you tell me you can do X or Y in the program you use, I want to know if I can do those same things in my program. Sometimes I might be able to do those things better (in my opinion). Sometimes I might not be able to do them as well. Sometimes programs will not even be comparable because they are structured differently. The point then is not to trash one company against another, but to learn how to use my Bible software (BibleWorks 7 in this case) to the fullest of its abilities.

Blogging: User-developed, user-run

Greetings! Welcome to what I hope can be a new resource for you in your study of God's Word, especially if you use Bible software programs and, in this case, BibleWorks specifically. Before we get too far into this, I thought I'd set the stage for what things you can expect from this blog.


First, you must know that this site is not an official BibleWorks blog. This is a blog directed primarily by myself, Michael Hanel, and Jim Darlack, avid users of Bible software who have spent many, many hours working with BibleWorks and other Bible programs out there, but we felt we had something to offer to BibleWorks users. Both of us have been users of BibleWorks for a number of years and both of us have helped make more user-developed freebie extras available to other BibleWorks users. While both of us frequent the official BibleWorks user forums, I kind of pushed to have an off-site place to help distribute and organize these user-developed files. Many of the files (primarily classical Greek-oriented) that I have developed need time to be proofed, fix typos, etc. Having a space like this makes it easier for me to make my corrections and updates without making a mess of BibleWorks forums and trying to figure out where I can store the file or how people can download it. So a major reason for the existence of this website is for the development and distribution of these user-developed files. Therefore, all you'll ever need to do is look to the sidebar on the right side of this blog and you'll instantly be transported to the main-hub for these free upgrades.