Verbum Capstone upgrade not just for Catholics

As most long-term Logos users know, buying books in bundles usually equates to the best value for your dollar. The base packages afford a sizable library for a small price per volume. We have also seen great deals on periodic sales such as the 2010 books for a buck a piece, the Master Bundle XL, the new Logos 5 upgrades and such.

I want to share with you the value of the Verbum upgrade packages. I received an email about Verbum upgrades. Normally I would just discard such an email as I am not Catholic. However, on a whim, I followed the link out of curiosity. I was surprised to see the content of Verbum Capstone. I can not read Latin and have little interest in Vatican documents but found quite a bit of interesting content among the historical, reference materials, and language resources. My upgrade price was impressively affordable. I gained over 100 resources for less than a dollar each.

I recommend everyone at least check out what you would gain with an upgrade. I'm happy I did. Geeked

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Dan Francis

Verbum has a lot to offer… I am Anglican.. It is an ideal package for any Lutheran, Anglican, Episcopalian, a fair fit for Orthodox people as well, lots of the books are works that are valued in protestant traditions too.

-Dan

David Wilson

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/482384#Comment_482384

There are some huge internal barriers that some protestant and evangelicals have erected to considering anything with the hint of a catholic label.

Once we can get beyond the false ideas that Christianity originated in North American in the late 1700s or that it originated somewhere in Europe in the late middle ages, and beyond the barrier that only knows of Crucifixion as a cruel and unusual punishment invented only for Jesus, then we can learn we have a lot in common and a lot to learn from the earlier church that grew in and around Rome and with which we share quite a few centuries of common history.

I have always found it fascinating that a small non-violent religious group from the Middle East grew under such persecution from a band of 12 disciples of our Jesus to an effective take over of the mightiest empire the world had ever seen, including such details that Jesus was the reason that the excessively cruel and all too common use of Crucifixion was abolished. The Verbum packages contain a lot of material of common interest and the cost of a sideways upgrade from an existing mainline Logos package can be surprisingly small given you get significant credit for already owning a substantial set of Logos resources. As with all packages, some of the discount acknowledges that some of the resources in the package are likely of no interest to you.

It would also be of great (perhaps even greater) interest to have parallel material from the development of the Church outside the Roman Empire, in the rest of the Middle East (before Islam) including the Mar Thoma Syriac Church in India and the Coptic church in the parts of Egypt and Africa beyond the reach of Rome. They would help to build a more complete picture of the Church to complement the Verbum packages from the Western Roman Empire and a hoped for complementary set of packages covering the Church that emerged from the Eastern Roman Empire (that might one day be built if Logos can gather enough of an Orthodox following). A major obstacle of course is that most of such material is not (yet) available in English. Nevertheless, Logos has shown some recent initiatives in assessing the interest in getting works translated into English that have never previously been accessible to the wider audience. And there are quite large collections on the broader Church languishing in the depths of the bottom end of a "Progress" sort of the Community Pricing offerings. It may take a while to grow this segment of the market enough to get such works into production.

But we need to remember that although the majority of Churches in North and South America, Europe, Australia et cetera grew through a route that can be traced back through Rome (which makes the Verbum packages more valuable than only for catholics), there are millions of christians in the world who are members of (the most persecuted) churches that also have interesting and valuable histories and things to teach us, that were not founded or grown through the western empire of Rome.

Milford Charles Murray

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/482408#Comment_482408

There are some huge internal barriers that some protestant and evangelicals have erected to considering anything with the hint of a catholic label.

Once we can get beyond the false ideas that Christianity originated in North American in the late 1700s or that it originated somewhere in Europe in the late middle ages, and beyond the barrier that only knows of Crucifixion as a cruel and unusual punishment invented only for Jesus, then we can learn we have a lot in common and a lot to learn from the earlier church that grew in and around Rome and with which we share quite a few centuries of common history.

I have always found it fascinating that a small non-violent religious group from the Middle East grew under such persecution from a band of 12 disciples of our Jesus to an effective take over of the mightiest empire the world had ever seen, including such details that Jesus was the reason that the excessively cruel and all too common use of Crucifixion was abolished. The Verbum packages contain a lot of material of common interest and the cost of a sideways upgrade from an existing mainline Logos package can be surprisingly small given you get significant credit for already owning a substantial set of Logos resources. As with all packages, some of the discount acknowledges that some of the resources in the package are likely of no interest to you.

It would also be of great (perhaps even greater) interest to have parallel material from the development of the Church outside the Roman Empire, in the rest of the Middle East (before Islam) including the Mar Thoma Syriac Church in India and the Coptic church in the parts of Egypt and Africa beyond the reach of Rome. They would help to build a more complete picture of the Church to complement the Verbum packages from the Western Roman Empire and a hoped for complementary set of packages covering the Church that emerged from the Eastern Roman Empire (that might one day be built if Logos can gather enough of an Orthodox following). A major obstacle of course is that most of such material is not (yet) available in English. Nevertheless, Logos has shown some recent initiatives in assessing the interest in getting works translated into English that have never previously been accessible to the wider audience. And there are quite large collections on the broader Church languishing in the depths of the bottom end of a "Progress" sort of the Community Pricing offerings. It may take a while to grow this segment of the market enough to get such works into production.

But we need to remember that although the majority of Churches in North and South America, Europe, Australia et cetera grew through a route that can be traced back through Rome (which makes the Verbum packages more valuable than only for catholics), there are millions of christians in the world who are members of (the most persecuted) churches that also have interesting and valuable histories and things to teach us, that were not founded or grown through the western empire of Rome.

Peace, David! I think this is the second time today that I'm responding to one of your posts with a "very well done indeed!" comment! *smile* I truly appreciate your thoughts and your thoughtfulness! Thank you for enriching our lives with you thinking and your sharing......

Josh

My upgrade price was impressively affordable.

My personal upgrade price was far from affordable. However, my library is far from being as impressive as yours. I'm guessing you had many of the more expensive titles in Capstone already.

KJ Niblett

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/482465#Comment_482465

You are right, included in this are such things that the logos base packages don't include such as;

A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (4 vols.) by John P. Meier

Mike Pettit

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/482500#Comment_482500

Its well worth checking, I got the Capstone package for $17.

Josh

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/482505#Comment_482505

Its well worth checking, I got the Capstone package for $17.

What?! How is this possible....you must have owned like ALMOST EVERYTHING in the package already. I would consider my current Logos library quite large compared to most users and my offer was over $1,200 dollars still. What's interesting is that this is AFTER a $1,000 dollar discount!

Mike Pettit

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/482582#Comment_482582

Its well worth checking, I got the Capstone package for $17.

What?! How is this possible....you must have owned like ALMOST EVERYTHING in the package already. I would consider my current Logos library quite large compared to most users and my offer was over $1,200 dollars still. What's interesting is that this is AFTER a $1,000 dollar discount!

I owned quite a lot having picked up many previous pre-pubs and community pricing items as well as having the Portfolio base package, in particular never overlook the excellent library builder:

http://www.logos.com/product/20503/catholic-library-builder

But I still picked up some valuable stuff, such as the Hans Urs von Balthasar Collection.

David Wilson

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/482600#Comment_482600

Still a price tag as low as $17 is incredibly low: mine was a massive $28

Probably needed a few more collections than you did Mike. But the Balthasar collection alone was well worth the upgrade and I would never have been able to justify that as a stand alone purchase.... also the Catholic Reference collection, Canon Law collection, Dogmatic Theology, Lives of the Saints, Popular account of the Ancient Egyptians and several Catholic commentaries, papal encyclicals etc. Overall many many things that I would never have picked up as individual collections but at the price offered during the introductions last November useful enough to have access to how the many Catholics I come into contact with regularly percieve things.

So while the package includes many items that are very much "Rome" specific it is nevertheless often the least expensive way to "catch up" and acquire many of the collections and individual volumes which are of more general interest to non-catholics and which are not available in other major packages (or at least were not at that time, but there are new packages and combinations of collections being listed and marketed all the time, so there might be a future way to "catch up" and take a good bite out of a "wish list". )

To me, if I valued the Balthasar collection (reg price $450) at $1.75 per book (instead of the regular price $28+), the rest were free.

fgh

Three tips:

1) Verbum Basic includes the Early Church Fathers. For those who have a lower Logos base package and want the ECF, Basic will probably be the cheapest way to buy them.

2) Capstone includes a surprising amount of the best Jewish resources. Just about everything they've got from The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition and Josephus and the Pseudepigrapha in Greek, to the JPS Commentaries, the Encyclopaedia of Judaism, Legends of the Jews, and Jewish Law. (The only major things missing that I can think of are HALOT and the Talmud.) For those who want to add a good Jewish library without going all the way up to Portfolio, Capstone is at least worth looking at.

And there's lots of other expensive stuff that normally only come with Diamond or Portfolio as well: Liddell & Scott, The Second Temple Period Collection, the PBI OT and NT Collections, the JSNTS on Paul, the Gnostic & Apocryphal Studies Collection, much of the Anchor Yale Reference Library...

3) All Verbum packages are currently 15% off. Coupon code at How to use Verbum for Apologetics (pt. 3).

Its well worth checking, I got the Capstone package for $17.

That's the lowest I've seen this far.

picked up some valuable stuff, such as the Hans Urs von Balthasar Collection.

von Balthasar for $17?? That's amazing!

I have to say I'm a bit bugged that time and again it turns out that Protestants missing the Catholic resources are quoted a much better price than 'Catholics' missing more general resources, even when the number of missing resources, and the value of them, seem roughly equal. And I mean much better prices: 10-20 times better. I can assure you the website didn't offer me $17. Or even $170. And I had Platinum plus virtually everything Catholic. (OK, I negotiated a special deal, so I can't personally complain (though I still probably lost close to a $1,000 compared to if I hadn't bought any Catholic prepubs in the year before, but gotten them through the package instead), but it doesn't seem quite right that 'Catholics' have to pay much more for a Catholic package than Protestants do.)

NB.Mick

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/482692#Comment_482692

Seems you are right again. As a "Logos-Catholic" (owning no protestant base package beyond MC, but Verbum Master and lots of additional resources, bringing me to well over 5000 resources and a total investment that let Portfolio owners get pale), even with the 15% discount Capstone would be EUR 570 (near $700) to me but yield only a very llimited amount of resources - among them the Usr von Balthasar collection, BDAG & LSJ. The latter two would be intriguing (sp?) but $700? No way.

tom

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/482582#Comment_482582

I would consider my current Logos library quite large compared to most users and my offer was over $1,200 dollars

I do not believe that I have a large library (OL package from L3 and added the resources that I wanted when they were on pre-pub/community), and my upgrade price was still over $850.00.

Josh

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/482707#Comment_482707

I would consider my current Logos library quite large compared to most users and my offer was over $1,200 dollars

I do not believe that I have a large library (OL package from L3 and added the resources that I wanted when they were on pre-pub/community), and my upgrade price was still over $850.00.

You're right. The size of one's library really doesn't matter in this case. It depends on what you have in your library. I do own a good chunk of what's being offered in this bundle, but there is a lot I don't. In a sense, I already own everything that I'd probably use in this bundle anyway. However, if you qualify to upgrade for less than 100 bucks, I'd go for it! It would be nice to have those extra resources to search through.