Logos Bible Software Series X

This software represents the latest development in the venerable Logos Bible Software Series X software line. Building on the high-end Scholar’s Edition, Silver Edition raises the bar high in terms of both excellence and inclusiveness of powerful academic resources for both pastors and biblical scholars.

Logos reports that the Silver Edition includes approximately $8,000 worth of print-equivalent content, and integrates completely with the almost four thousand other titles now available, with many more offerings being announced on an almost-daily basis.

The Scholar’s Library Silver Edition (as does the Scholar’s Library itself) now fully integrates all thirteen of the add-in modules—many of which were formerly separate products (such as the Biblical Languages Supplement and the Original Languages Supplement). The Biblical Languages Supplement includes a number of helpful features for working with the original languages, including “Visual Filters” that mark up a resource automatically (including the Morphological Filter which provides markups for Greek and Hebrew morphological coding).

The Silver Edition adds only one English Bible, the kjv Word Study Bible (Zodhiates) and its associated Complete Word Study Bible Dictionary, and four volumes of Zodhiates’s Sermon Starters.

However, the real value in the Silver Edition lies elsewhere, namely, in the inclusion of quality technical resources for students of Scripture. The edition includes Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia with the Groves-Wheeler Westminster 4.0 Hebrew Morphology (again, as does the Scholar’s Library QB)—itself a powerful inducement to upgrade to gain the corrections from previous versions as well as the new features (e.g. cantillation and accent marks, annotation of the differing electronic editions of BHS, the textual annotation from the Westminster Morphology Database, and the inclusion of Ketiv/Qere readings). Gesenius’s Hebrew Grammar as well as the Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures complete the Hebrew-related offerings.

Of particular benefit to students of the Greek New Testament is the inclusion of the Newberry Interlinear Literal Translation of the Greek New Testament as well as Friberg’s Analytical Greek New Testament and the USB 4th edition Greek New Testament with Morphology. Also included are the Analytical Lexicon of the Greek New Testament (by Friberg), the Concise Greek-English Dictionary of the New Testament, and A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint (by Lust, Eynikel, and Hauspie). Trench’s Synonyms of the New Testament, Nunn’s The Elements of New Testament Greek, and his A Short Syntax of New Testament Greek join the existing original language reference tools. The Swanson New Testament Greek Morphologies for both the UBS 4th edition and the Westcott-Hort edition round out the Greek New Testament tools. Other versions of biblical texts included are the Latin Vulgate, as well as several Syriac texts (Curetonianus, Sinaiticus, and the Peshitta) and the Analytical Lexicon of the Syriac New Testament.

The Silver Edition includes the older but still useful multi-volume Keil and Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament. Thirty-one volumes of the scholarly New American Commentary (all that were available at the time of production) are included, as are the more popular-level Daily Study Series of the Old Testament and William Barclay’s Daily Study Series of the New Testament. Several classic Greek Commentaries are included (e.g., Lightfoot’s commentaries on Colossians, Philemon, and Philippians). Rounding out the collection are the Early Church Fathers (thirty-seven volumes) and Ancient Egyptian Literature (three volumes by Lichtheim).

The Word Study Guide (keyed to Strong’s numbers) and the Exegetical Guide (keyed to the original languages) are still the starting points for serious and detailed study of the Scriptures. The sentence diagramming feature offers a helpful perspective to analyze a passage visually. The Graphical Queries feature facilitates complex grammatical (and other types of) searches. But this feature, while powerful in and of itself, has not quite attained the fully developed ease of searching in Oak Tree Software’s Accordance or BibleWorks 6.0.

While the recommended system requirements are rather moderate (128MB RAM and 700 MHz Pentium III) and will deliver basic performance, most users will notice dramatically improved performance from a faster processor, at least 512 MB of memory, and enough hard disk space to fully install all the resources from CD or DVD.

In short, the Logos Bible Software Scholar’s Library Silver Edition is a large theological library, research assistant, and advanced study tool combined in one comprehensive package. It is an essential upgrade to the professional’s library, and one that any serious student of the Scriptures should carefully consider—and look no further.