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Has Logos Bible Software made the competition obsolete?

That’s what Michael Heiser (Academic Editor, Logos Bible Software) claims on his blog, as he reflects on the Bible Software Shootout at SBL. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the shootout and instead went to the session on “Rhetorical Approaches to Apocalyptic Discourse” presided over by Greg Carey.

Heiser, rather dramatically (apocalyptically?), asserts: “Logos has made the competition obsolete. The status quo is now passé.” He lists four ways that Logos does this: (1) Syntax; (2) Books; (3) Display of Morphological and Syntax Database Search Results (new with 4.0); (4) Cross-Platform Capability, Including the I-Phone (new with 4.0). Rubén Gómez at Bible Software Review gives a wise moderating response to Heiser’s somewhat charged statements. Danny provides a helpful “water cooler” collection of responses to Heiser’s post and the shoot out generally.

As for me, I will say that what makes a difference for me with Logos is point number two (books) and, now, point number four (Cross-Platform Capability). I’ve tried doing syntactical things and it just didn’t feel intuitive. I even went through the tutorial videos and tried to get a handle on it. Part of the issue is that I don’t generally do much involved work with syntax in my research, so a powerful syntax search doesn’t help me much.

Now, I am a fan of Logos Bible Software. I even sport their logo on the side of my blog here. They have a reputation of being too conservative and not academic enough–I have heard this stated informally by lots of folks. This reputation is outdated. I do think their main customer base falls into the “conservative evangelical pastor (or active layperson)” category. But for serious academics who think most of the resources on Logos are a bunch of junk, there are still quite a lot of amazing resources. Most recently, for example, they’ve put the Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library on prepublication (e.g., Meier’s Marginal Jew series, Raymond Brown’s big books, Charlesworth’s Pseudepigrapha). And they have many of the major critical commentary series that are used by the guild (Hermeneia, Anchor, WBC, NIGTC, NICOT/NICNT, etc.).

It’s resources like these that, for me, make a big difference with Logos. In addition to standard fare Bible searching, Logos is a digital library. For most books, I don’t see much point in having a digital copy except for the occasional search (but Google Books and Amazon Search Inside are doing that just fine most of the time). Some books, however, may be important for your own research (like Meier if you’re doing historical Jesus) and would be worth having your own electronic copy. I have purchased a few available Anabaptist resources. But for commentaries . . . who reads a commentary from cover to cover? All of the ways that commentaries can be integrated and synced into Logos resources make it highly valuable to have these in the same program that you do your everyday Bible software tasks. The same goes for dictionaries and commentary-like or dictionary-like books (e.g., Nickelsburg’s Jewish Literature Between the Bible and the Mishnah).

I don’t yet have an iPod Touch, but it’s on my wish list, especially now that my entire Logos library can be synced with it in Logos 4. Once I get an iPod Touch and upgrade to Logos 4, that will be one of my most favorite benefits of Logos software. [Update: Look at comments from Chris and Danny below.]

All that said, I don’t think we should really be arguing too fervently over who is better. Rick Mansfield apparently had up a post that caused some heated response in the comments, which he took down. Reflecting on the experience, Rick notes in the comments of Danny’s post:

I’m going to continue to use both Accordance and Logos, but I’m not going to be the “Anti Logos Guy” anymore. There’s been bad behavior on both sides, but today’s a new day, and for my part anyway, I can choose not to participate in the debate any longer.

How bizarre that there has been “bad behavior” regarding one’s favorite Bible software program. I like all three of the major software packages (Logos, BibleWorks, and Accordance), but right now Logos meets my own needs better than the others. And that’s pretty much the bottom line.

So, no, Logos has not made the competition “obsolete” in my view, even though I like it better than the others.

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5 Comments by Patrick George McCullough  /  November 28, 2009  /  Posted in: accordance, bibleworks, logos bible software
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  • http://higgaion.heardworld.com Christopher Heard

    For those of us who work on a Macintosh, Logos is not even close to making the competition obsolete. Never mind that some of us have 15+ years’ worth of monetary investment in Accordance modules, the shipping Mac version of Logos has already been abandoned by Logos in favor of an entirely new application that uses the Windows code base and is currently considered an “alpha pre-release.” Given how long it took Logos to ship Logos for Mac v1, I don’t expect Logos for Mac v4 (or however they will number it) to dethrone Accordance on the Macintosh platform anytime soon. Also, I can use all of my Accordance modules and Bible Reader (for iPhone) modules without an Internet connection—that’s not true for the Logos iPhone application (I don’t have direct personal experience with the desktop version of Logos 4). I like Mike, and if I were buying into Bible research software for the first time for use on the Windows platform, I would probably consider Logos the odds-on favorite (although other Pepperdine faculty have negotiated group licenses with BibleWorks, so the choice might be made for me on the PC). But the Mac version of Accordance is still quite preferable to the Mac version of Logos, in my view.

  • http://www.deinde.org Danny Zacharias

    Chris made the point I wanted to make about the iPhone version. I think the Logos iPhone app is a great thing- but you are not going to be syncing your library to your iPhone. You will be syncing your library to a cloud, and your iPhone will be able to use and access anything in your cloud. If you can’t connect to the cloud (internet connection) then you got nothing. :-)

  • http://clayboy.co.uk/2009/12/biblical-studies-carnival-xlviii/ clayboy » Biblical Studies Carnival XLVIII

    [...] A different kind of session was a competetive software shootout, covered here by Rick Mansfield. Michael Heiser pronounced his beloved Logos the winner, and a row ensued. Rick Mansfield has subsequently taken down his feisty and fighting response. (I’ve re-read it, and can’t see why, apart from his first question which seems to be down to a confusion / mistake in the conference programme.) You can read another account on Deinde with a whole lot of further links. Pat McCullough also chimes in. [...]

  • http://www.echoofeden.com slaveofone

    I agree that cross-platform compatibility is a major issue. If you can’t use software on your computer, what good is it? Unfortunately, it appears that Logos isn’t willing to hire the people it needs to become cross-platform capable, let alone platform independent. Unless you run the particular operating system of Logos’ choice, you will be unable to use their software. I spoke with them at SBL a few years back about this, pleading with them to make their software run on Linux/Unix and that was basically their response. If I want to use their software, I’m going to have to buy a new computer and/or install a different operating system (Windows). NO THANKS.

    This is not only backwards in terms of a business model (the company tells their customers how to meet their demands instead of meeting the customers’ computing needs), but it’s simply ridiculous. We are fast moving into an era where software that is hopelessly tied to a particular system will either become obsolete or will lose customer base to others who are more willing to be cross-platform and platform independent and I think Logos will eventually find this out the hard way.

  • http://patmccullough.com/ Patrick George McCullough

    Well, I think they recognize the importance of cross-platform use and are working on it. They have something for Mac, even if it’s not ideal. And they’ve got something for the iPhone/iPod Touch even if it’s not ideal. So, they’re moving in that direction.

    I don’t know that I share your feelings regarding the demise of Windows. Just numbers-wise, how many people have Windows versus how many people have Linux? I can understand the frustration you have if you’re unwilling to use the big bad evil Windows, but the company is working on serving its customers in different ways, like producing more resources. I wouldn’t demonize them over that.