Bible Software on the Mac

I've not to date dedicated an article to what bible software I use and recommend, I suppose mostly since I doubt any Macintosh Biblioblog reader doesn't already know. Accordance has been the lifeblood of my bible study for quite some time. It has through the years maintained an innovative and incredibly powerful feature set and searching capability unparalled by anything available on any platform to date. The pairing with the Macintosh OS has of course been an added treat, but I hope y'all know that Accordance runs quite well on a PC with a simple emulation solution.

My mention of this was prompted by my thoughts on recent announcements regarding PC companies deciding to enter the Mac market. I was pleased to hear that Quickverse was introducing a Mac version of bible software. It gives creedence to the platform, and competition enhances tools in general. But ever since hearing that Logos has chimed in with a "me too" announcement regarding Mac software, my enthusiasm became more mixed with a sense of bother that I've yet to be able to articulate for myself. I've been trying to understand my reaction over the last couple days... I think I'll sleep on it one more night. In the meantime, I sure am enjoying hearing your comments.

Also, in the meantime, if for some bizzare reason you are unfamiliar with Accordance, have a look at their flash demos to get a feel for the thing.

Finding punctuation in bible text using BBEdit

I've recieved quite a few requests regarding how I used a text editor to create a concordance based upon find patterns in a text. The query:

How do I search for a punctuation mark, since my bible software cannot yet do this?

Here's an example that uses the best Mac text editor, hands down. (Watch the VIM and emacs guys shudder.) BBEdit 8.x is more than you can imagine if you've never seen it, but it is not cheap. I don't think their freeware version, the new TextWrangler, can do this. The process becomes easier and quicker when you write a script to do most of it, but even if you don't have BBEdit, a walk-through might prove helpful.

For this example, I've saved the NRSV New Testament as a text file, in a format where each paragraph is its own verse. Open up the file in BBEdit, then choose menu Search/Find... and then click the Multiple file drawer. If your file is not open, it won't be listed to put a check mark by it. You can instead choose the "Other..." button to navigate to the text file. Then, enter your search criteria (in this case, ?) and find all. Here's the results window:

Click into the top concordance-like pane, and do a Select All. Copy that. Open a new document, and paste the text. This is your working results.
Notice it has duplicate verse paragraphs, for it lists each verse the number of times that it contains your search criteria. Mat. 5:47 is listed twice because it contains two ?'s. You can eliminate this with a script in the script menu/Duplicate Removal/Kill Dups Reporting Removals. The result reduces from 991 (the number of times "?" occures in the NRSV NT) paragraphs to 831 (the number of verses that contain at least one "?").
Then, if it takes you two presses of a right arrow key to move through the body of the text, there are extra control characters in there. You can see them by enabling "Show Invisibles". Get rid of them by selecting "Zap Gremlins..." from the Text menu.

Finally, to remove the file path and line # info, Do a quick Find/Replace. Open the Find panel again, check the "Use Grep" check box, make sure the Replace field is empty, and enter this GREP search pattern in the Find Field: /Volumes/Archives/Texts/NRSV NT.txt:[0-9]+: (Note that you should replace the file path "/Volumes/Archives/Texts/NRSV NT.txt" with whatever path is showing up in your document, and that there should be two spaces at the end of that search critera.)

That's it; you've got it. Here is the full list of verses with the text included.
And finally, finally. If you only want verse references, do another GREP pattern Find/Replace, finding ([0-9]) [^0-9]+\r and replacing with \1;
Dare I post the results here in the blog? Oh, why not:

Matt. 2:2; Matt. 3:7; Matt. 3:14; Matt. 5:13; Matt. 5:46; Matt. 5:47; Matt. 6:25; Matt. 6:26; Matt. 6:27; Matt. 6:28; Matt. 6:30; Matt. 6:31; Matt. 7:3; Matt. 7:4; Matt. 7:9; Matt. 7:10; Matt. 7:16; Matt. 7:22; Matt. 8:26; Matt. 8:27; Matt. 8:29; Matt. 9:4; Matt. 9:5; Matt. 9:11; Matt. 9:14; Matt. 9:15; Matt. 9:28; Matt. 10:29; Matt. 11:3; Matt. 11:7; Matt. 11:8; Matt. 11:9; Matt. 11:16; Matt. 12:3; Matt. 12:5; Matt. 12:10; Matt. 12:11; Matt. 12:23; Matt. 12:26; Matt. 12:27; Matt. 12:29; Matt. 12:34; Matt. 12:48; Matt. 13:10; Matt. 13:27; Matt. 13:28; Matt. 13:51; Matt. 13:54; Matt. 13:55; Matt. 13:56; Matt. 14:31; Matt. 15:2; Matt. 15:3; Matt. 15:12; Matt. 15:16; Matt. 15:17; Matt. 15:33; Matt. 15:34; Matt. 16:8; Matt. 16:9; Matt. 16:10; Matt. 16:11; Matt. 16:13; Matt. 16:15; Matt. 16:26; Matt. 17:10; Matt. 17:17; Matt. 17:19; Matt. 17:24; Matt. 17:25; Matt. 18:1; Matt. 18:12; Matt. 18:21; Matt. 18:33; Matt. 19:3; Matt. 19:5; Matt. 19:7; Matt. 19:16; Matt. 19:17; Matt. 19:18; Matt. 19:20; Matt. 19:25; Matt. 19:27; Matt. 20:6; Matt. 20:13; Matt. 20:15; Matt. 20:21; Matt. 20:22; Matt. 20:32; Matt. 21:10; Matt. 21:16; Matt. 21:20; Matt. 21:23; Matt. 21:25; Matt. 21:28; Matt. 21:31; Matt. 21:40; Matt. 22:12; Matt. 22:17; Matt. 22:18; Matt. 22:20; Matt. 22:28; Matt. 22:32; Matt. 22:36; Matt. 22:42; Matt. 22:45; Matt. 23:17; Matt. 23:19; Matt. 23:33; Matt. 24:2; Matt. 24:3; Matt. 24:45; Matt. 25:26; Matt. 25:37; Matt. 25:38; Matt. 25:39; Matt. 25:44; Matt. 26:8; Matt. 26:10; Matt. 26:15; Matt. 26:17; Matt. 26:22; Matt. 26:25; Matt. 26:40; Matt. 26:45; Matt. 26:53; Matt. 26:54; Matt. 26:55; Matt. 26:62; Matt. 26:65; Matt. 26:66; Matt. 26:68; Matt. 27:4; Matt. 27:11; Matt. 27:13; Matt. 27:17; Matt. 27:21; Matt. 27:22; Matt. 27:23; Matt. 27:46; Mark 1:24; Mark 1:27; Mark 2:7; Mark 2:8; Mark 2:9; Mark 2:16; Mark 2:18; Mark 2:19; Mark 2:24; Mark 2:25; Mark 3:4; Mark 3:23; Mark 3:33; Mark 4:13; Mark 4:21; Mark 4:30; Mark 4:38; Mark 4:40; Mark 4:41; Mark 5:7; Mark 5:9; Mark 5:30; Mark 5:31; Mark 5:35; Mark 5:39; Mark 6:2; Mark 6:3; Mark 6:24; Mark 6:37; Mark 6:38; Mark 7:5; Mark 7:18; Mark 7:19; Mark 8:4; Mark 8:5; Mark 8:12; Mark 8:17; Mark 8:18; Mark 8:19; Mark 8:20; Mark 8:21; Mark 8:23; Mark 8:27; Mark 8:29; Mark 8:36; Mark 8:37; Mark 9:11; Mark 9:12; Mark 9:16; Mark 9:19; Mark 9:21; Mark 9:28; Mark 9:33; Mark 9:50; Mark 10:2; Mark 10:3; Mark 10:17; Mark 10:18; Mark 10:26; Mark 10:36; Mark 10:38; Mark 10:51; Mark 11:3; Mark 11:5; Mark 11:28; Mark 11:30; Mark 11:31; Mark 11:32; Mark 12:9; Mark 12:14; Mark 12:15; Mark 12:16; Mark 12:23; Mark 12:24; Mark 12:26; Mark 12:28; Mark 12:35; Mark 12:37; Mark 13:2; Mark 13:4; Mark 14:4; Mark 14:6; Mark 14:12; Mark 14:14; Mark 14:19; Mark 14:37; Mark 14:41; Mark 14:48; Mark 14:60; Mark 14:61; Mark 14:63; Mark 14:64; Mark 15:2; Mark 15:4; Mark 15:9; Mark 15:12; Mark 15:14; Mark 15:34; Mark 16:3; Luke 1:18; Luke 1:34; Luke 1:43; Luke 1:66; Luke 2:48; Luke 2:49; Luke 3:7; Luke 3:10; Luke 3:12; Luke 3:14; Luke 4:22; Luke 4:34; Luke 4:36; Luke 5:21; Luke 5:22; Luke 5:23; Luke 5:30; Luke 5:34; Luke 6:2; Luke 6:3; Luke 6:4; Luke 6:9; Luke 6:32; Luke 6:33; Luke 6:34; Luke 6:39; Luke 6:41; Luke 6:42; Luke 6:46; Luke 7:19; Luke 7:20; Luke 7:24; Luke 7:25; Luke 7:26; Luke 7:31; Luke 7:42; Luke 7:44; Luke 7:49; Luke 8:25; Luke 8:28; Luke 8:30; Luke 8:45; Luke 9:9; Luke 9:18; Luke 9:20; Luke 9:25; Luke 9:41; Luke 9:54; Luke 10:25; Luke 10:26; Luke 10:29; Luke 10:36; Luke 10:40; Luke 11:11; Luke 11:12; Luke 11:18; Luke 11:19; Luke 11:40; Luke 12:6; Luke 12:14; Luke 12:17; Luke 12:20; Luke 12:25; Luke 12:26; Luke 12:41; Luke 12:42; Luke 12:51; Luke 12:56; Luke 12:57; Luke 13:2; Luke 13:4; Luke 13:7; Luke 13:15; Luke 13:16; Luke 13:18; Luke 13:20; Luke 13:23; Luke 14:3; Luke 14:5; Luke 14:28; Luke 14:31; Luke 14:34; Luke 15:4; Luke 15:8; Luke 16:2; Luke 16:3; Luke 16:5; Luke 16:7; Luke 16:11; Luke 16:12; Luke 17:7; Luke 17:8; Luke 17:9; Luke 17:17; Luke 17:18; Luke 17:37; Luke 18:7; Luke 18:8; Luke 18:18; Luke 18:19; Luke 18:26; Luke 18:41; Luke 19:22; Luke 19:23; Luke 19:31; Luke 19:33; Luke 20:2; Luke 20:4; Luke 20:5; Luke 20:13; Luke 20:15; Luke 20:22; Luke 20:24; Luke 20:33; Luke 20:41; Luke 20:44; Luke 21:7; Luke 22:9; Luke 22:11; Luke 22:27; Luke 22:35; Luke 22:46; Luke 22:48; Luke 22:49; Luke 22:52; Luke 22:64; Luke 22:70; Luke 22:71; Luke 23:3; Luke 23:22; Luke 23:31; Luke 23:39; Luke 23:40; Luke 24:5; Luke 24:17; Luke 24:18; Luke 24:19; Luke 24:26; Luke 24:32; Luke 24:38; Luke 24:41; John 1:19; John 1:21; John 1:22; John 1:25; John 1:38; John 1:46; John 1:48; John 1:50; John 2:4; John 2:18; John 2:20; John 3:4; John 3:9; John 3:10; John 3:12; John 4:9; John 4:11; John 4:12; John 4:27; John 4:29; John 4:33; John 4:35; John 5:6; John 5:12; John 5:44; John 5:47; John 6:5; John 6:9; John 6:25; John 6:28; John 6:30; John 6:42; John 6:52; John 6:60; John 6:61; John 6:62; John 6:67; John 6:68; John 6:70; John 7:11; John 7:15; John 7:19; John 7:20; John 7:23; John 7:25; John 7:26; John 7:31; John 7:35; John 7:36; John 7:41; John 7:42; John 7:45; John 7:47; John 7:48; John 7:51; John 7:52; John 8:5; John 8:10; John 8:19; John 8:22; John 8:25; John 8:33; John 8:43; John 8:46; John 8:48; John 8:53; John 8:57; John 9:2; John 9:8; John 9:10; John 9:12; John 9:16; John 9:17; John 9:19; John 9:26; John 9:27; John 9:34; John 9:35; John 9:36; John 9:40; John 10:20; John 10:21; John 10:24; John 10:32; John 10:34; John 10:36; John 11:8; John 11:9; John 11:26; John 11:34; John 11:37; John 11:40; John 11:47; John 11:56; John 12:5; John 12:27; John 12:34; John 13:6; John 13:12; John 13:25; John 13:36; John 13:37; John 13:38; John 14:2; John 14:5; John 14:9; John 14:10; John 14:22; John 16:5; John 16:17; John 16:18; John 16:19; John 16:31; John 18:4; John 18:7; John 18:11; John 18:17; John 18:21; John 18:22; John 18:23; John 18:25; John 18:26; John 18:29; John 18:33; John 18:34; John 18:35; John 18:37; John 18:38; John 18:39; John 19:9; John 19:10; John 19:15; John 20:13; John 20:15; John 20:29; John 21:5; John 21:12; John 21:15; John 21:16; John 21:17; John 21:20; John 21:21; John 21:22; John 21:23; Acts 1:6; Acts 1:11; Acts 2:7; Acts 2:8; Acts 2:12; Acts 2:37; Acts 3:12; Acts 4:7; Acts 4:16; Acts 5:3; Acts 5:4; Acts 5:9; Acts 7:1; Acts 7:26; Acts 7:27; Acts 7:28; Acts 7:35; Acts 7:50; Acts 7:52; Acts 8:30; Acts 8:31; Acts 8:34; Acts 8:36; Acts 9:4; Acts 9:5; Acts 9:21; Acts 10:4; Acts 10:21; Acts 10:29; Acts 10:47; Acts 11:3; Acts 11:17; Acts 13:10; Acts 13:25; Acts 14:15; Acts 15:10; Acts 16:30; Acts 16:37; Acts 17:18; Acts 17:19; Acts 19:2; Acts 19:3; Acts 19:15; Acts 19:35; Acts 21:13; Acts 21:22; Acts 21:37; Acts 21:38; Acts 22:7; Acts 22:8; Acts 22:10; Acts 22:16; Acts 22:25; Acts 22:26; Acts 22:27; Acts 23:3; Acts 23:4; Acts 23:9; Acts 23:19; Acts 25:9; Acts 26:8; Acts 26:14; Acts 26:15; Acts 26:27; Acts 26:28; Rom. 2:3; Rom. 2:4; Rom. 2:21; Rom. 2:22; Rom. 2:23; Rom. 2:26; Rom. 3:1; Rom. 3:3; Rom. 3:5; Rom. 3:6; Rom. 3:7; Rom. 3:8; Rom. 3:9; Rom. 3:27; Rom. 3:29; Rom. 3:31; Rom. 4:1; Rom. 4:3; Rom. 4:9; Rom. 4:10; Rom. 6:1; Rom. 6:2; Rom. 6:3; Rom. 6:15; Rom. 6:16; Rom. 6:21; Rom. 7:1; Rom. 7:7; Rom. 7:13; Rom. 7:24; Rom. 8:24; Rom. 8:31; Rom. 8:32; Rom. 8:33; Rom. 8:34; Rom. 8:35; Rom. 9:14; Rom. 9:19; Rom. 9:20; Rom. 9:21; Rom. 9:24; Rom. 9:30; Rom. 9:32; Rom. 10:6; Rom. 10:7; Rom. 10:8; Rom. 10:14; Rom. 10:15; Rom. 10:16; Rom. 10:18; Rom. 10:19; Rom. 11:1; Rom. 11:2; Rom. 11:4; Rom. 11:7; Rom. 11:11; Rom. 11:34; Rom. 13:3; Rom. 14:4; Rom. 14:10; 1Cor. 1:13; 1Cor. 1:20; 1Cor. 2:11; 1Cor. 3:3; 1Cor. 3:4; 1Cor. 3:5; 1Cor. 3:16; 1Cor. 4:7; 1Cor. 4:21; 1Cor. 5:2; 1Cor. 5:6; 1Cor. 5:12; 1Cor. 6:1; 1Cor. 6:2; 1Cor. 6:3; 1Cor. 6:4; 1Cor. 6:6; 1Cor. 6:7; 1Cor. 6:9; 1Cor. 6:15; 1Cor. 6:16; 1Cor. 6:19; 1Cor. 7:18; 1Cor. 7:21; 1Cor. 7:27; 1Cor. 8:10; 1Cor. 9:1; 1Cor. 9:4; 1Cor. 9:5; 1Cor. 9:6; 1Cor. 9:7; 1Cor. 9:8; 1Cor. 9:9; 1Cor. 9:10; 1Cor. 9:11; 1Cor. 9:12; 1Cor. 9:13; 1Cor. 9:18; 1Cor. 9:24; 1Cor. 10:16; 1Cor. 10:18; 1Cor. 10:19; 1Cor. 10:22; 1Cor. 10:29; 1Cor. 10:30; 1Cor. 11:13; 1Cor. 11:15; 1Cor. 11:22; 1Cor. 12:17; 1Cor. 12:19; 1Cor. 12:29; 1Cor. 12:30; 1Cor. 14:6; 1Cor. 14:7; 1Cor. 14:8; 1Cor. 14:9; 1Cor. 14:15; 1Cor. 14:16; 1Cor. 14:23; 1Cor. 14:26; 1Cor. 14:36; 1Cor. 15:12; 1Cor. 15:29; 1Cor. 15:30; 1Cor. 15:32; 1Cor. 15:35; 1Cor. 15:55; 2Cor. 1:17; 2Cor. 2:2; 2Cor. 2:16; 2Cor. 3:1; 2Cor. 3:8; 2Cor. 6:14; 2Cor. 6:15; 2Cor. 6:16; 2Cor. 11:7; 2Cor. 11:11; 2Cor. 11:22; 2Cor. 11:23; 2Cor. 11:29; 2Cor. 12:13; 2Cor. 12:15; 2Cor. 12:17; 2Cor. 12:18; 2Cor. 12:19; 2Cor. 13:5; Gal. 1:10; Gal. 2:14; Gal. 2:17; Gal. 3:1; Gal. 3:2; Gal. 3:3; Gal. 3:4; Gal. 3:5; Gal. 3:19; Gal. 3:21; Gal. 4:9; Gal. 4:15; Gal. 4:16; Gal. 4:21; Gal. 4:30; Gal. 5:7; Gal. 5:11; Eph. 4:9; Phil. 1:18; Col. 2:20; Col. 2:21; 1Th. 2:19; 1Th. 3:9; 2Th. 2:5; 1Tim. 3:5; Heb. 1:14; Heb. 2:3; Heb. 3:16; Heb. 3:17; Heb. 3:18; Heb. 7:11; Heb. 10:2; Heb. 10:29; Heb. 11:32; Heb. 12:7; Heb. 12:9; James 2:1; James 2:4; James 2:5; James 2:6; James 2:7; James 2:14; James 2:16; James 2:20; James 2:21; James 2:25; James 3:11; James 3:12; James 3:13; James 4:1; James 4:4; James 4:5; James 4:12; James 4:14; James 5:13; James 5:14; 1Pet. 2:20; 1Pet. 3:13; 1Pet. 4:17; 2Pet. 3:4; 2Pet. 3:12; 1John 2:22; 1John 3:12; 1John 3:17; 1John 5:5; Rev. 5:2; Rev. 6:10; Rev. 6:17; Rev. 7:13; Rev. 13:4; Rev. 17:7

CiteULike for web-based bibliography creation

There has been some discussion in Biblioblogdom by AKMA, Stephen Carlson, and Mark Goodacre regarding the availability of online journal articles. On the Macintosh Bibilioblog, we've had some previous discussion regarding bibliographical software, so all this prompted me to make everyone aware of a web-based bibliographic record solution that is geared towards creating a list of online articles that you want to reference.

CiteULike is a "free online service to organize your academic papers." You can think of it as a web-based version of Endnote or Bookends, but where it really shines is in allowing you to create entries based upon online journal articles or books that you are currently viewing in your web browser. The auto-cite functionality is of limited use to us, since the list of compatible journal sites is rather small (It includes searching services such as JSOT and Amazon). Still, consider the easy capture from Amazon:

1. Find a book on Amazon
2. Click the CiteULike bookmark bar button
3. A bibliographic reference to the book is automatically added to your bibliography

You can give citations tags or categories, and organize them as such. But consider this, you can see what other articles and their references have been posted by any other users using the same tag. In theory at least, that has tremendous appeal.
Finally, you can always export your CiteULike bibs to BibTex/Endnote format.

It won't be everyone's cup of tea, but depending on your work activities, it just might be worth a look.

Southwest SBL Meeting

Well, the Big 12 conference basketball tournament is this weekend, and you know what that means... That's right; it means that it is also the regional SBL meeting of the Southwest Commission on Religious Studies this weekend (March 11-13, 2005). Why those two always correspond is beyond me. I have actually made some of both when the tourney is in Dallas as well.

I think I'm most looking forward to the book display and discounts. Following that, I'm interested in the NT session: "The Memory of Jesus in the Early Church". Daryl Schmidt, with whom I did Septuagint studies, is presenting and Michael White (of my college alma mater The University of Texas) is responding. I suppose I should be looking forward to Amy-Jill Levine in the joint session: "Making Jesus an Anti-Semite: the 'Old Testament,' Historical Criticism, and Liberation Theology;" I'll try and get siked for it.
I'd really like to hear the general Gospels section that Jeffrey Peterson is presiding over, and especially James Kennedy's Presidential Address: "By what Murky Light? Some Thoughts on Poetics and Hermeneutics." But, alas, I did not arrange a pulpit replacement at my church for Sunday morning.

If any fellow bibliogloggers or e-lister types will be there, let me know. I'll try and keep an eye out to meet and greet. Perhaps we could do lunch on Saturday.

The Habit of Reading

Our constant state is "so many books, so little time". AKMA has one of his delightful "random thoughts" on this lament on the way back from the library.

...since I no longer have time to read, I go through the motions by taking books out, and then returning them a week or so later, as though I’d read them...This will not do — no longer. I’m about to head upstairs, where I will read a chapter or two... before I go to sleep, no matter what. I will learn to read again; I will not give in to attention entropy.

For me, it's about the habit. I need to maintain a habit of reading at certain times and occassions. Very often, when I need a catalyst for getting back into reading, I read something with no immediate practical value--part or all of a novel or something else. (Robert Jordan is currently filling the role). Invariably, this translates in my behavioral pattern as "reading produces more reading." Just my 2¢. Here's where the personal organizer (iCal and the like) sure can help establish a pattern. You can premeditate periods of the morning, day and evening when you normally can slip in a bit of reading. Then add that into your scheduler. A pop-up such as:
can go a long way. Update: Mark Goodacre added this contemporary version of the illusion of reading which really hit home for me:

Or now, one can even save a journal article onto one's hard drive, the environmentally friendly way not to read an article.

If I had a dime for everytime... The problem is, the article services I use download .pdf file with names such as "A0334_d.pdf", so the result is I now have dozens upon dozens of .pdf files on my computer that I have no idea what they're about. I think a real solution to this is

1. Always take the extra second to save items in an appropriate folder, and
2. Set your web browser to always prompt you to rename and manually place downloading .pdf files.

Bookends 8 offers over 50 changes

The bibliographic software Bookends has release version 8, whose changes include a new interface, new views, smart-autoupdating searches, and enhanced interfacing with some internet resources such as Library of Congress. In the last discussion of Bookends, Ken raised the question whether the smaller number of custom fields available in Bookends (compared to Endnote) can really handle SBL/JBL, JSOT, Biblica, VT/NT, CBQ, etc. formats. I'd still like to have some confirmation on this myself. (I guess now we'll find out if Sonny Software reads this blog. :)