Handling of the Popular Patristics Series in Logos

MJ. Smith · 2025-06-18T22:16:35+00:00

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I own volume 2 of this series: On the Christian Sacraments (Popular Patristics Series) | Logos Bible Software

I have on order volume 2 of this series: Sermons from the Life of St John Chrysostom (Popular Patristics Series) | Logos Bible Software

I see no distinction between the original volume and its replacement. As one who can be compulsive regarding complete series for reading plans, I find this problematic.

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HJ. van der Wal

Shalom MJ,

I am not sure what you mean. One volume is by Cyril of Jerusalem and the other is by John Chrysostom. Am I missing anything? Or are you referring to volume 57 (i.e. the replacement volume of Cyril of Jerusalem)?

Edit: I think I understand what you mean now. I agree that it would be helpful if the new volume 2 would be distinguished from the old volume 2.

Rick Mansfield (Logos)

@MJ. Smith SVSPress did a really odd thing to the Popular Patristics series when they began revising translations. For example, they discontinued the translation of St. Cyril's Lectures on the Christian Sacraments, which was volume 2, and replaced it with a new translation, which is now vol. 57! Then years later, because there were gaps in the numbered series, they began filling them in with new entries in the series. So now, vol. 2 is Sermons from the Life of St. John Chrysostom. I've talked with them about this and they said they decided to fill in the old numbers because when customers ordered entire sets, they thought they were missing volumes. Not a really great solution in hindsight.

And this is one of a rare series I own both in Logos and in print. So here on my shelf, you'll see both versions of volume 2 side by side.

The Wikipedia page for the series indicates which volumes are "New." I'll see if we can't add "new volume" or something similar to the title.

Rick Mansfield (Logos)

@MJ. Smith after having said the above, I looked at how we have the series listed both on the webpages for the individual titles and series collections, and I see that we don't mention the volume numbers. We don't do that in the Library listing in the software either. So, for the Logos editions, it's probably not that big of a deal that some titles have replaced other volume numbers since we don't list them anyway. If anything, we need to check to make certain we have replaced older translations with newer ones.

If you need a list for your "compulsive reading plan" mentioned above (and I can relate!), the Wikipedia page for the series might be a good source of truth.

I've never taken the time to do it, but I believe an even better reading plan would be to come up with a list that has the writings in chronological order 🤔

MJ. Smith

I've never taken the time to do it, but I believe an even better reading plan would be to come up with a list that has the writings in chronological order 🤔

Actually, I'm aiming for a reading list in order of the frequency of reference weighted by the difficulty of the reading. But volume numbers are very useful for tracking what books have been added to my data and included in the reading plan(s).