Biblical Studies Archives – Page 2 of 3

Moberly, “The Bible in a Disenchanted Age”

Reading time: 2 minutes

Due out from Baker Academic in January 2018 is R. W. L. Moberly’s The Bible in a Disenchanted Age: The Enduring Possibility of Christian Faith. According to the book’s blub,

In our increasingly disenchanted age, can we still regard the Bible as God’s Word? Why should we consider the Bible trustworthy and dare to believe what it says? In this creative, accessible, and provocative book, leading Old Testament theologian R. W. L. Moberly sets forth his case for regarding the Bible as unlike any other book (and the Bible’s Deity as unlike any other deity) by exploring the differences between the Bible and other ancient writings. He explains how and why it makes sense to turn to the Bible with the expectation of finding ultimate truth in it, offering a robust apology for faith in the God of the Bible that’s fully engaged with critical scholarship and compatible with modern knowledge.

For additional information or to pre-order, see Baker Academic, Amazon, or other book sellers.

How Can You Get SBL BibLit on iOS?

Reading time: 2 minutes

One of the less-than-ideal features of using an iOS device for editing or producing documents in Biblical Studies has been the difficulty of getting standard biblical language fonts (e.g., SBL BibLit) to work on the device. There are now, however, at least a couple solutions:

Chris Heard has discussed how AnyFont can resolve the issue successfully and allow users to install SBL BibLit (or other fonts) onto iOS devices and use them within standard productivity tools (e.g., Pages, Word, Keynote, PowerPoint). In the App Store, AnyFont goes for $1.99.
On the freemium side of things, Fonteer will also do the same thing. Fonteer’s free version allows users to install up to 3 fonts. So, if you anticipate only using this number or fewer, the free version will do the job. Fonteer premium (also $1.99 via in-app purchase) allows unlimited fonts to be installed. Below is an example of Fonteer working with a draft excerpt from my essay in Explorations in Interdisciplinary Reading.

Example of Fonteer working with SBL BibLit

Logos 7 Basic for free

Reading time: < 1 minutesChoosing a platform for Biblical Studies software can be tricky, inasmuch as trying things out for yourself is probably the best mechanism for finding what will work for you. But, obviously, you want to do that trying out before you commit to one of the options. This process is now a bit simpler with Logos 7 Basic, which is available for free.

HT: Tyler Smith. For available trial versions of other Biblical Studies software, including Logos, see Trial versions of Biblical Studies software.

Biblical (Digital) Humanities

Reading time: < 1 minutesBiblicalhumanities.org is

a community of computer scientists, Bible scholars, and digital humanists collaborating to create open digital resources for biblical studies. Our emphasis is on open resources for biblical languages, such as morphologically tagged texts, treebanks, and lexicons. We hope that these resources will be used widely for teaching, research, and resources used to read and study the Bible.

The initiative sponsors the B-Greek and B-Hebrew forums, but I had missed the memo that these were connected to the larger Biblicalhumanities.org entity. The website provides a selective but helpful dashboard of current resources.

For a couple additional resource lists see “Online Research” and the Christian Institute for Digital Humanities.

HT: AWOL

Searching Highlights in Logos

Reading time: < 1 minutesOn the Logos Talk blog, Mark Ward has a helpful post about the syntax of searching for particular highlighting styles in Logos Bible Software. In addition to the specific example given of how to search for a given highlighting style, the search to find any highlighting style would be

{Highlight *}

For the balance of Mark’s reflections, see his original post.

Trial versions of Biblical Studies software

Reading time: < 1 minutes

Software that supports biblical and theological scholarship can be pricey, and shifting from one platform to another or working with multiple ones can be even more so. In that context, “try before you buy” is a helpful principle, and Mark Hoffman has helpfully collected links to trial versions for several of the major options. Subsequent discussion on that post has noted a couple more besides.