You don’t see a lot of posts here because neither Jim nor I is paid enough to be constantly at work on this material, but lucky for you Jim still continues to pay for the web hosting. Lucky for you that also means even if we’re not always adding new material, the old stuff is still here and quite functional. But that brings me to two questions that are constantly being asked.

1. People have said when they try to open zip files they are corrupted. I have no logical explanation for why this is. The files are not corrupted, they are quite functional. There are only two solutions I have to this problem. Either try re-downloading the files or else use a different program to unzip them. Windows has a built in zipping function now, but sometimes that doesn’t work. You can try downloading 7-zip or Winzip and see if you can work it out that way. Beyond that there’s not much I can do to help. The files work fine for us, so we can’t troubleshoot a problem we don’t have.

2. People have problems using the modules because when they open they appear as though they do not work. These files need to be unblocked usually in order to use them. Instructions for doing this are clearly stated at the top of the modules page.

I’ve added links to two New Testament textual criticism modules that have previously been available on LaParola’s website. They are entitled New Testament Manuscript Variant Readings and an alt. version with variants sorted by text type and they are both compiled by  Pasquale Amicarelli.

Finally, I also added a link to a timeline of the publication of English Bibles made by Mark Hoffman. This file can be saved in the BibleWorks 8\timeline\ folder and must be opened in BibleWorks Timeline. You can read more about it here.

Spawned by the quarter-break at classes, I decided to busy myself by putting together a module that I thought would be appreciated by a lot of people out there at this time of year, a compendium of Martin Luther’s Church Postil. This particular set is quite old and is found on numerous sites online, but the site from which I drew upon is here.

As is written there, “The following sermons of Martin Luther are taken from The Sermons of Martin Luther, published by Baker Book House (Grand Rapids, MI), 1983. This 8 volume set was itself a reprint of John Nicholas Lenker translation of Luther’s Church Postil. Lenker’s edition originally appeared in 1905 - as “The Precious and Sacred Writings of Martin Luther,” volumes 1-14, published by Lutherans in all Lands. These sermons were scanned and edited by The Dr. Richard Bucher and are in the public domain.”

This collection includes 117 of Luther’s Sermons from the Church Year. It is a great treasure of Luther’s thought and may be especially helpful to pastors as they work through the lectionary.

This is a quick release. I’m looking into tagging the text so that Bible verses show pop ups but that will be the task for many other days.

DOWNLOAD! - unzip to \databases\ subdirectory of BibleWorks and will show up upon re-start of BibleWorks under menu item “Resources: Lutheran Resources: Luther, Martin - Church Postil”

A call for help to other BibleWorks users:

On our modules page, Mark Hoffman asks,

I’m using a Win machine, but I have students with Macs running BW8 under emulation. When they can’t get the modules to work, I’m clueless.
Can someone please give some Mac-specific step-by-step directions for adding modules? Thanks.

I also run BibleWorks on a Windows machine, so I can’t provide much guidance, but does anyone else who runs BibleWorks via Mac emulators have any experience with this issue?

Questions of clarification to Mark: (A) Do any modules work (including the base ones in BibleWorks) or is this just the ones students download here that don’t work? (B) What combination of Windows version and emulator are the students using?

Answers:

1. Ben is using Windows XP in Parallels (and has used versions 3-5). He says he does nothing different than one would normally do on a Windows computer and everything works fine.

As a Lutheran, I’m not personally a big adherent to John Calvin or his theology, but that doesn’t mean I don’t find some value in his works. More importantly, I realize that a much larger portion of the blogging community and BibleWorks users is strongly influenced by John Calvin’s work. In the midst of numerous blog posts about his works, I just wanted to remind people that there are currently two free BibleWorks user modules which contain the text of John Calvin’s works, namely the Institutes and his Commentaries on the Bible. Celebrate John Calvin’s birthday the right way by enjoying the free gift of his works! With special thanks to Willem Swanepoel for making this resource available. Note, this isn’t a new resource, it’s been available here for quite a while, but I thought this day would be an appropriate one to remind users.

DOWNLOAD! Commentaries on the Bible

DOWNLOAD! Institutes

This year I am teaching intermediate Latin courses and so I’ve had a lot more reason to try to develop more Latin resources for my own use, but I also like to share with others.

Charles Bennett’s little grammar has been around for oh about a hundred years, and it has withstood the test of time. Revised editions of it still are being printed and sell for around $25-30. This isn’t a perfect grammar, but it is a pretty good one and the price is right.

Note this resource is not immediately meant to supplement BibleWorks base package. While it can be used to help you with your Latin while reading the Vulgate, I am using it more toward an eye of its utility in regard to Latin texts I have developed. So this may not be a resource for everyone, but to those interested in keeping up your Latin, I’m trying to make BibleWorks better able to fit that purpose.

P.S. ~ if you’re patient enough, I may release more Latin grammars. If you’re really nice, I may release a version of Cicero’s works (minus this epistles probably) along with English translation. If these types of releases are of interest to you, please post a comment or two. If I actually believe I’m changing the world, I might work faster than I normally do But for now I’m happy enough believing that I’m doing this just for me.

DOWNLOAD ~ Unzip into your \databases\ subfolder. The resouce will be found under “Resources: Latin Grammars” upon restarting BibleWorks.

Okay, so this one isn’t fully polished, but I did want to do something big for the release of BibleWorks 8 and since I don’t have anything else close enough to being ready, this will have to suffice. (**Note this file will work in BW7 as well).

A few years ago I released a Book of Concord HTML module for BibleWorks, which was based on public domain text available. Well since that time, more material has been made available making an update quite necessary. To give you an idea of how major of an update this is, the old zip file was approx. 1.3 MB, the new one is 3.8 MB big. So what’s new?

1. German text of the entire Book of Concord
2. An alternate English translation of the Augsburg Confession
3. Materials considered “source and context” text, things like the 95 Theses, Heidelberg Disputation, the Saxon Visitation articles, etc.
4. Text from Bente’s Historical Introductions to the Lutheran Confessions and more.

I expect there to be a few bad links here or there of the new material, since I did this in haste, so let me know. Also, I expect sometime in the future (though when God only knows) to add BW refs to the additional material as well, but I don’t see this in the immediate future. Nevertheless, I assumed that people might receive benefit of the text the way it is, so I decided to release it. Enjoy!

DOWNLOAD ~ Unzip files to the subfolder “databases” in BibleWorks. If you have previously downloaded the Book of Concord Module, these files will overwrite your old ones.

Richard Sugg has ‘modulized’ Mark Strauss’s paper read at ETS: “Improving the ESV:  Why the English Standard Version (ESV) Should not become the Standard English Version” (PDF version).

The Unofficial BibleWorks Blog neither endorses nor decries any particular Bible translation (including the ESV). So, please do not take the posting of this module as an endorsement of Dr. Strauss’s views (or these comments as indicating disapproval). The posting of this module is an endorsement of what can be done with BibleWorks as far as user-created modules go. In this paper in particular, Dr. Strauss lists various places where he takes issue with the ESV’s rendering of the Greek/Hebrew. Now Strauss’s comments can be “linked” to the biblical text via BibleWorks’ Resource Summary List. You can also click a link in this CHM version of the paper and be taken directly to the verse in the Browse Window (where you can compare the ESV with other versions - including the TNIV in version 8).

For more on Strauss’s paper see his blog post at Koinonia as well as Bill Mounce’s response. See also Strauss’s paper as posted on the Better Bibles Blog (and the comments thereon).

Thanks, Richard, for putting this together.

DOWNLOAD

Interesting fact of the day. There was not one Church council held at Orange, there were two. Up until the other day, I didn’t know there were any. But here’s a little bit about the Council held there in 529:

The Council of Orange was an outgrowth of the controversy between Augustine and Pelagius. This controversy had to do with degree to which a human being is responsible for his or her own salvation, and the role of the grace of God in bringing about salvation. The Pelagians held that human beings are born in a state of innocence, i.e., that there is no such thing as a sinful nature or original sin.

As a result of this view, they held that a state of sinless perfection was achievable in this life. The Council of Orange dealt with the Semi-Pelagian doctrine that the human race, though fallen and possessed of a sinful nature, is still “good” enough to able to lay hold of the grace of God through an act of unredeemed human will. The Council held to Augustine’s view and repudiated Pelagius. The following canons greatly influenced the Reformed doctrine of Total Depravity.

Or if you want to read the canons of this council, now you can download a module with them in BibleWorks, thanks to richardsugg.

DOWNLOAD! ~ Unzip the files in the subfolder of BibleWorks 7 called “databases”

I would be remiss if I neglected to mention that since the last major updating there has been not one, two, or even three new Hebrew grammar modules made available by Pasquale. Quite frankly I didn’t even know that so many existed. All of these are out of print and copyright editions (so they are rather old), but nevertheless, they still might be useful to specialists in the field or else to those who simply like to see how others explain certain grammatical features. They are all modules of images of each page of the real book (so searching and copying and pasting is not really an option with them), which may downgrade their value. But then again, you’re not going to be paying anything for them, so why are you complaining?

FUN USER CHALLENGE HERE:
However, to increase their value, Pasquale has added a special feature to these files. Can you tell me what it is and how it is helpful? If anyone can figure it out, they will get the spotlight in the next blog post.

So here are the goods: (follow along with the series on the BibleWorks forums)

• Introductory Hebrew grammar : Hebrew syntax by Andrew Bruce Davidson - Pasquale Amicarelli
• Hebrew Grammar by Alexander Meyrowitz - Pasquale Amicarelli
• Manual of Hebrew grammar by Josephus David Wijnkoop - Pasquale Amicarelli
• A grammar of the Hebrew language by Himan Hurwitz - Pasquale Amicarelli

Another module by Pasquale, this work includes Die Schriften des Neuen Testaments by Hermann Freiherr von Soden, images of the pages of the real book arranged in order of the New Testament.

• The electronic edition of von Soden’s Die Schriften des Neuen Testaments pages 102-289 used by permission of Clint Yale
• Table 1 - it came from L.Vaganay - An introduction to New Testament textual criticism - pag 156 - Cambridge University Press 1991
• Von Soden images used by permission of www.csntm.org - Center For The Study Of New Testament Manuscripts

It can be used in tandem with the Tischendorf Critical Appartatus that is already in BibleWorks 7.

DOWNLOAD! 170 MB file!