Chart on Latin texts available in BibleWorks and other software

Another plug for a helpful post by Mark Hoffman. Earlier I posted a link for downloading a couple of versions of the Latin Vulgate and I mentioned that I am no expert in the Vulgate. Well I stand by my word on that, but in case you are interested in different versions of the Vulgate, Mark compiled a table which shows some of the Latin text versions and what Bible software programs have them.

Link: Accordance8, BibleWorks7, Logos3, VulSearch4: Latin Bible Texts Available

New Versions - Vulgata Clementina and Glossa Ordinaria Migne (UPDATE 8/30)

UPDATED FILES BELOW (8/30)

These versions were actually available a couple of years ago, but I missed the boat on properly recognizing them. Here's some info on them:

This zip file contains two different versions that will need to be compiled. First is the Vulgata Clementina of 1598 (VUC) and the other is the Biblia Vulgata Clementina 1598 with end notes "Ordinary Glossa" (GLO).

The text originates from The Clementine Vulgate project. This is what they have to say about it:

After the Council of Trent, which declared in 1546 that the Vulgate alone was to be held as "authentic in public readings, discourses, and disputes, and that nobody might dare or presume to reject it on any pretence" (Sess. IV, De editione et usu sacrorum librorum), the Holy See undertook the task of producing a corrected, standard text of the Vulgate for the use of the universal Church. In 1590, an edition was duly produced in Rome by a commission of scholars, revised further by Sixtus V, and finally approved by him. After his death a further revision was carried out under the Jesuit Franciscus Toletus, and finally the work was printed in 1598 during the pontificate of Clement VIII, whose name has been attached to it since 1641. The Clementine text was the offical version of the Vulgate until 1979.

As a non-expert in this field, I'll leave it open for anyone to add more comment on the significance of either of these texts.

DOWNLOAD! -- Re-download updated files (8/30). The VMF (Verse mapping) files were updated for both databases. These files need to be placed in the subfolder called "databases" of BibleWorks 7.

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Addendum: As a commenter on Mark Hoffman's blog noted, the Clementine Vulgate project group seems a little bit questionable from a religious-political perspective. While the texts here are still apparently public domain, the nature of the source may or may not disinterest you in using them. I bind no one's conscience on the matter, but I know some are more sensitive on these issues.

New Version: Nova Vulgata!

Just released for download for BibleWorks 7 users, the Nova Vulgata, which is the official Latin version of the Roman Catholic Church. This new version will have the version ID "NOV." Already BibleWorks has the Clementine Vulgate (version ID VUL and VUO which is the same as the VUL except for the fact that it does not include the Apocrypha, has been remapped to match the King James Version with respect to verse numbers and its Psalms are from the Hebrew based work of Jerome, rather than the LXX-based work).

So if you count that all up, that would make three different Latin versions of the Vulgate in some way shape or form. If you want to know more about some of the differences between the Clementine Vulgate and the Nova Vulgata you could always start with a simple place like Wikipedia which identifies a few differences between them.......



.....Or you can be brave and see if you spot any yourself by turning on BibleWorks version comparison mode:

1. Go to Tools: Text Comparison Settings
   
2. Add VUL VUO NOV.
   
3. Pick an appropriate highlighting setting and click Enable
   
4. Click Apply and then Close.
   
5. In the command line type "nov" and then type "d c" (clears all other versions except display version).
6. Click in the Browse Window (the part which has the text of the Bible) and type "B" (for browse mode) on your keyboard.

All highlighted portions are words that are different as compared to the VUL and VUO versions. If you want to see what the other versions have, you can simply type "d vul" or "d vuo" or "d vul vuo" in the command line. Just don't forget to toggle back out of the BROWSE mode (either click in the Browse Window and type "B" or click on the pair of shoes footprint just above the text in the Browse Window.

Oxford Sale via Amazon

This one deserves another shout-out. Mark yourself down for two copies of each for Christmas!

The best sale I have ever seen is now on at Amazon for either the Oxford Latin Dictionary $111, or the Great Scott edition of the LSJM Greek lexicon $88!!!

http://www.amazon.com/b/?ie=UTF8&node=13390931


If you haven't bought real editions of either of these yet, I'm not sure you'll ever find better prices for new copies.

Jerome's Latin Psalter based on the Hebrew

Mark G. Vitalis Hoffman (MGVH) has uploaded Jerome's Latin Psalter, based on the the Hebrew text (VPH). For more information about the file, take a look at his post on the BibleWorks forum, and his blog.

From Mark's description in the files:

The Vulgate: Liber Psalmorum Iuxta Hebraicum = Jerome's Psalter based on the Hebrew

Jerome's translation of the Psalter based on the Hebrew. Ca. 398-405CE. For more information, cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_Psalters

Text derived from: http://www.musall.de/vulgata/index.html (also available here: http://bouwebrouwer.nl/vulgata/)

Text in the public domain. (Cf. http://bouwebrouwer.nl/vulgata/vulgata.html)

To install, download the file and unzip its contents into your /BibleWorks/databases/ directory.

DOWNLOAD!

New Module - An Elementary Latin Dictionary, Charlton Lewis

A few blog entries ago I hinted that there would be some new fun tools for Latinists in BibleWorks. Well here is the first, a real treat for Latinists/Classicists: the release of a high class Latin lexicon for use in BibleWorks!

This lexicon is built as HTML module which means that it can be used as a stand-alone, outside of BibleWorks. Initially, it loads a little slowly because it is such a large database, but once you begin using it, it navigates very quickly and is quite responsive. In some ways it can be quicker to use this lexicon than the paper kind!

In BibleWorks, you can load the file via the Resources menu, and within that under Latin Resources.

While BibleWorks currently does not yet have lemmatized Latin databases and I have also not yet released any lemmatized Latin databases (although hopefully someday...), the current functionality of the lexicon is a bit limited. However, if you stick around for a few more blog posts, I'll show you how, with the availability of a lemmatized Latin database, the functionality of this lexicon will be virtually seamless!

(once again, thank Pasquale (who is now my favorite Italian, my regrets to the Pope, but he's not really Italian anyway and as a Lutheran, my papal respect can only go so far anyway....) for his amazing work which makes resources like this freely available to others.)


DOWNLOAD! 13MB

User-database: Horace's Works (Latin x2 and English)

Well it's been a quiet time lately, but both of your hosts have successfully completed major portions of their Master's degree programs. In addition to that, I have been very busy attempting to put together some major projects for BibleWorks users. Trust me, you'll love 'em!

But meanwhile, I was able to complete a first edition of Horace's works in two Latin versions and one English translation! The difficulty with finding English translations for poetical works is that line breaks never agree with the Latin line breaks which makes it impossible to line up texts without lots of work. But then again it takes a lot of work to translate the Latin into English in the same number of lines and still maintain a good poetic feel to the text.

In any event, Horace is a great poet who lived during the time of the great transition from Caesar of the name Julius to Caesar of the name Augustus. If you need some more basic material you can start at Google or perhaps Wikipedia.

DOWNLOAD Latin, Latin version 2, English!

Look for some more hints on how to use Latin in BibleWorks in the coming days!

Real Books for Sale!

Speaking of not having access to the materials you need....

Oxford UP is having its twice a year (I believe) sale where you can get a great deal on real books. You will not find better prices for new books than what they offer here. (and if you can find better prices, someone needs to tell me!!)

The big Liddell-Scott-Jones is on sale for $80 (sic)

and the equally large Oxford Latin Dictionary is also on sale for $135.

In other words, those are both really great deals. Buy now, pay later.*


* Although I am not advising abusing your credit cards or buying a lexicon for yourself while letting your significant other go without some other necessity like an iPod just because you had to have an expensive lexicon. That's just silly.

Using Latin in BibleWorks

As promised, I thought I'd say a bit more about using Latin in BibleWorks. Right now it has its limitations, the biggest thing being that there is presently no Latin dictionary in BibleWorks. The reason for this is the lack of an e-text for any of the existing Latin dictionaries out there. BibleWorks could theoretically pay a lot of money to digitize a text themselves, but it's probably not the best use of their means and so for now anyway, one has to accept the fact that BibleWorks is still limited in this area. (For what it's worth, if you are aware of an e-text of any good Latin dictionaries, email the BibleWorks staff and maybe that will help get it included in a future update of BibleWorks)

However, it's not completely useless. In BibleWorks 7, the use of the External Link Manager greatly enhances the shortcomings within BibleWorks proper by being able to call up resources outside BibleWorks. Don't ask me how the External Link Manager works because I wouldn't be able to tell you, but let me show you how you can use it to help you slog through some Latin prose.

There are two ways to edit the External Links Manager. I will walk you through both ways.

First, through the menu system. Select Resources: Edit External Links. That will pop up a window like thus:
It's been a while since I've played around with this, so I can't remember if BW7 comes loaded with the option to use Perseus to lookup morphology for Latin. At this point it doesn't really much matter since Perseus' website has been down for over 10 days and doesn't appear to be making a quick recovery. So let's add a different method which will give both morphology and lexicon options. Click New and fill in the blanks so that your screen looks like the following:

You can't see the full entry in the box marked webpage, so note carefully that it must read the following: http://lysy2.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/words.exe?<dummy>

The second way to edit the External Links is to open the text file called ShellExec which is found in the directory C:\Program Files\BibleWorks 7\init\ and add the following entry (use the next consecutive number for the External Link #):

//
// External Link #28
//
[Latin lookup in WORDS]
Operation = Open
Directory = NULL
File = http://lysy2.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/words.exe?<dummy>
Parameters = NULL
MenuLocation = Browse Window Latin
TextType = Latin Text
MapToVersion = NULL
Lookup = Form
MenuText = Latin lookup in WORDS
Enabled = 1

Then save the ShellExec file and when you restart BibleWorks, this option will become available when you right click on a Latin word in a Latin database. Like so:

And once you select that, it will load the website in your default Internet browser (note: an Internet connection *IS* required in order to make this work).

Ta-da! And that is just another example of BibleWorks' ability to improvise so that while it may still not have all the resources someone might ever want, it can still make a few adjustments to help you out. For more on the External Link Manager, go visit the Official BibleWorks forums!

User-database: Suetonius (English and Latin)

It's taken a long time, but I finally put together a database of Suetonius' influential piece called the Lives of the Twelve Caesars. It doesn't much matter if you believe it's historical, fiction or a little of both, it is very fascinating reading for the bits and pieces of life that Suetonius decides to pass on to his readers. At times perhaps a little dry, but at other times very much like the soap opera culture of today. Maybe you won't catch all of his innuendo in the somewhat humane English translation, but it's there in the Latin. Trust me.

This is a very complex piece mostly because I chose to use a very complex (yet most excellent) source for the database, namely Bill Thayer's wonderful website Lacus Curtius.

Thus it's only fair to include a few notes before you get too far into the text itself in BibleWorks.

Here are a number of issues to be aware of:

1. Both the Latin and the English contain Greek characters (something BibleWorks is not yet well suited for). All of the Greek I have transposed into the BGreek Transliteration style (see this website for an explanation.)
2. Both the Latin and the English contain markings for notes. The note files themselves are included as Word documents. Perhaps in the future I will find a way to make them more functional within BibleWorks, but for now this will have to suffice. If you want the real deal with the notes experience, you should really use the website which carries this edition which I borrowed. Bill Thayer has spent who knows how many hours making this work very well annotated according to its initial publication with a few of his personal notes added. Once you have this database loaded into BibleWorks, if you click in the Browse Window area and press the letter "N" that will toggle Translator Notes on and off. This will show or hide the annotations which alert you to whether there are notes on a given portion of the text or not. In order to test this feature out go to S01 9:3 (Divus Julius). If you have clicked on the Browse Window and type N you should see a toggle on and off of a superscripted 2 after the word Ambranos. That is how the Translator notes work. If you want to find out what the actual note read, you will have to look it up in the accompanying Word file, or else you could visit the Bill Thayer website above.
3. In a few places in the text there are raised dots "•" These indicate notes/hyperlinks that were present on Bill's web page. If this interests you, go to his web page to find out what the note is.
4. Source. As I said, you will not find a better edition of Suetonius' Live of the Caesars than Bill Thayer's. This edition is drawn from his work. Thayer based his edition on the Loeb Classical Library public domain Suetonius book. The Latin text is that of Maximilian Ihm in the Teubner edition of 1907, with cosmetic changes as printed in the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1913-1914. The English translation is by J. C. Rolfe, printed in the same edition. Both text and translation are in the public domain. Once again, huge props to Bill Thayer and his work found at his website.
   

DOWNLOAD Latin version!
DOWNLOAD English translation!

Tomorrow I will comment a little more about using Latin in BibleWorks.

User-database: Julius Caesar

Fresh off the computer hard-drive. This one is aimed more for the classicists out there, but still a good read for anyone.

Now you can download Julius Caesar's writings on the Gallic and Civil War as well as an English translation to help you out.

P.S. Sorry things are so quiet lately. Both of your blogging hosts are finishing up large hurdles in their Master's degree programs and we are quite busy with those responsibilities.