BibleWorks forum member, Andrew Steinmann has just posted a valuable set of BW user notes that provides a ‘key’ to the two reference systems used to cite the works of Josephus. He writes:

The BibleWorks Josephus modules use the Loeb Classical Library reference system for Josephus. However, you may at time run across references to Josephus using the reference system in Whiston’s English translation. I have attached a zip folder containing notes files for Josephus that coordinate these two reference systems for easy cross referencing. Simply unzip the files to your bibleworks8\notes directory.

**Note that these files will over write any chapter-level notes you may have written for Josephus.

Download (25kb)

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”

The last version of the Vulgate released here was the Sistine Vulgate of 1590. The version released now by Pasquale Amicarelli is the revised version of that text which is known as the Clementine Vulgate of 1592.

If you want to compare these two particular Vulgate texts to each other in BibleWorks you can run verse comparison (Tools: Viewing the Text: Text Comparison Settings).

In addition to the text of the Clementine Vulgate of 1592, this version also has end notes which mark places where the text was revised/corrected in subsequent editions of the Clementine Vulgate. These verses are marked with a superscript “tc” at the end of them (e.g. Gen 19:6).

If you downloaded this file earlier than 12/12/09, you may want to download this latest version because a few small changes were made to the files to better show where textual critical notes occurred.

DOWNLOAD! (unzip files directly into \databases\ subdirectory of BibleWorks and the version VC1 will appear on start-up of BibleWorks)

Scott Jones has provided a free synopsis file which matches up OT quotations which are found in the the Book of Hebrews. This file was available a number of weeks ago on the BibleWorks forums, but I also wanted to acknowledge it here.

DOWNLOAD! - The unzipped file should be placed in the \init\ subdirectory of BibleWorks and can be accessed in BibleWorks via the Synopsis Tool.

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.

I noticed that there is a nice wiki on BibleWorks 8 available via Luther Seminary. Although it’s possible to learn all of these tips from reading the help within BibleWorks, sometimes it’s helpful to see it explained in a different format or in a different way.

So check out the BibleWorks wiki.

(Luther Seminary is an ELCA affiliated Seminary in Minnesota. It belongs to the same denomination as the Gettysburg Seminary, where Mark Hoffman teaches. From my knowledge of Mark’s teaching and by glancing at Mary Hinkle Shore’s syllabi (who appears to also be the one who is responsible for the wiki), it looks like both seminaries teach using Clayton Croy’s textbook and stress the use of Bible software tools like BibleWorks for learning/using Greek. Why is this important? It’s not really, I just found it interesting to know how Greek is being taught in some of the seminaries.)

Whether or not you think BibleWorks is the best Bible software program out there (and I happen to think it is), you cannot deny that for what you get, BibleWorks prices are the lowest — so low, they’re almost anti-competitive. You can spend $300 in other Bible programs but you will either (1) get fewer resources or (2) get more resources (known as filler), but fewer of the elite ones.

So what’s the only way you can get more value for the dollar in the Bible software world than you can from BibleWorks? A BibleWorks sale! Frankly this is a rare occurrence because BibleWorks doesn’t inflate prices. Other companies offer sales, BibleWorks offers crazy low prices every day.

But to prove even me wrong, there is a limited time sale currently going from BibleWorks. Here are the details:

Do you have any friends who might be interested in obtaining BibleWorks? If so, could you please help us out and forward this special offer to them?

For the next ten days we’re offering a special sale for new customers. If they purchase BibleWorks 8 and at least one module through our webstore using the coupon code TENFRIEND, we’ll take $30 off their purchase.

If you can think of someone who might want to know about this sale, we’d appreciate it if you would pass on the news!

Note- this sale began Nov 3, so that means you have just over a week to get your act together for this great deal!

The latest in a long string of releases which have been focused on the Latin Vulgate is now at the virtual presses. With much thanks to Pasquale Amicarelli, you can now add the Sistine Vulgate to BibleWorks.

The Sistine Vulgate was first published in 1590 as a response to the Council of Trent’s commission to standardize the vulgate text which hitherto had become quite a mess. This was all happening at the same* time as Luther and Tyndale among others were making valiant efforts to put the Bible into the actual language of the people (whether it be German, English, etc.) rather than a language which was no longer the language common folk had knowledge of.

The Sistine Vulgate was further revised to the Clementine Vulgate, which was revised a couple of times, but remained the standard Bible in the Roman Catholic Church until Vatican II. In other words, this translation plays an important role not only in Reformation history, but also in studies of the theology of the Roman Catholic Church as a whole.

DOWNLOAD! (unzip files directly into \databases\ subdirectory of BibleWorks and the version VUS will appear on start-up of BibleWorks)

* “same” meaning, of course, same general time, as in, you know, within a hundred or so years

Scott Jones (of lamblion.net; “Adelphos” in the BW forums) has posted a significant update to his previously released Verse List Organizer (VLO).

Deemed the “BOSS” (Bible Organizer Study Suite), this new tool allows a user to manage both verse and word lists generated with the BibleWorks Verse List Manager (VLM) and Word List Manager (WLM).

I have not had a chance to use it myself, but it looks promising.

Check out the forum post for more information about downloading and installation.