Disclaimer: I don’t work for Logos, and this is not an official product announcement from Logos Bible Software nor even something in the works from Logos Bible Software. This is purely a figment of my imagination, albeit one I’d love to see Logos make happen.
Up through Logos 3, Logos has been a personal research assistant allowing users to take their Bible study to entirely new levels by simply entering a passage and clicking Go!.
In Logos 4, Logos brought the personal research assistant everywhere we go: on our desktop, on our phone, on our tablet, etc.
In Logos 5, Logos went a step farther bringing in a personal research team of Bible Scholars to labor over the Word and bring us connections in the Word of God that can only be done through human research, not mere computer algorithms.
Now I think it’s time for Logos to take Bible Study to an entirely new level.
Wouldn’t it be great if not only you could have your own personal research assistant with you everywhere you go, but wouldn’t it be even greater if you could have a personal Bible scholar with you everywhere you go. You could ask this Bible scholar anything, from simple weights and measures calculations to deep theological questions, and get answers to all your Biblical questions right at your fingertips from your own personal Logos Library.
That’s the idea behind Scholar. Scholar would be the world’s first personal digital Bible scholar that goes with you wherever you go.
Short description, It’s like Siri for Bible Software.
Now for the long description…
We all have Biblical questions from simple things such as “How many miles are in a day’s journey?” or “How many times in my preferred Bible is the term ‘faith’ mentioned?” or deeper questions like “How many times is the Greek word for ‘love’ mentioned in the New Testament?” or “How far is it from Jerusalem to Damascus?” or theological questions like “When is Jesus coming back?” or questions like “What evidences are there that God exists?” or “Is there evidence for Creation?”
Scholar would answer all of these questions, but do so by not merely acting as a glorified search engine on the web. Scholar would mine users personal Logos libraries for rich Biblical content, then display the content in a manner that’s presentable and understandable to the average end user. Most typical Christians may have no idea what Theology, Eschatology, Apologetics, Premillenialism, Posttribulationism, etc., mean, but Scholar would present the rich material in such a way that typical average Christian end users could ask Scholar their toughest Biblical questions and get answers to those questions from their own personal Logos libraries, connecting them to this rich and vast information like never before.
Here’s how it’d work. A Logos user would ask Scholar a Bible question. This could be done in one of two ways: typing in the question (aka how one does on Wolfram Alpha) or using their voice (aka Siri). Logos could license the voice recognition technologies from Dragon to make this happen. Most end users would probably use voice recognition.
This would then connect the Logos user to Scholar running in the cloud (Scholar would probably need to be run in the cloud right now in order to scale everywhere). Scholar would take text from either what the end user typed into Scholar or the text transcription from Dragon voice recognition and pass it into the search engine. This could possibly be done with IBM’s DeepQA (aka WATSON, which now runs in the cloud) or a similar alternative.
From there, the QA engine powering Scholar would determine which type of search is being performed and pass off the search to the proper databases to search. For simple stuff such as weights/measures, etc., it would push the search off into a customized version of Mathematica (the same engine that powers Wolfram Alpha) running in the Logos cloud that would be geared toward Biblical weights/measures. It’d perform the calculation and push the results back down to Logos users quickly.
For slightly more complex searches requiring hits (such as searching one’s preferred Bible for all instances of “faith” or searching one’s entire library for all instances of the topic “cross”), Scholar would run Bible searches in the Logos cloud, present the results back to users inline within Scholar, with links taking them to the books or the actual searches inside Logos. Scholar could perform all the searches we do today (basic, Bible, morph, syntax, etc.).
For deeper questions (Theological questions, etc.), Scholar would perform the complex searches on one’s own personal Logos Library in the Logos cloud, pull top articles from the books, display the content of them inline inside Scholar, as well as link to additional material related to the question (books, Logos datasets, personal user files, etc.), and link to additional books in the Logos and Vyrso bookstore that touch on the question, as well as link to thousands of online articles from selected Christian Websites chosen by Logos. Scholar could also use text to speech using AT&T Natural Voices to read off content to users.
Here’s how it’d work. For example, if I asked Scholar a question like “When is Jesus coming back?”, such a question opens up quite a bit of a Theological debate. In order for Scholar to remain “unbiased”, Scholar would search through a range of Theology books, etc. in one’s personal Logos Library, and present articles comparing/contrasting the various Millenial and Tribulational views, presenting the text of those articles in line and in a clear, understandable format to end users. Users would then be able to mine the articles for themselves, study them in light with what the Word of God says, and walk away with a solid Theological answer based on their research. Scholar would be able to get users into these complex resources, reading and studying the content from themselves in line with the Word of God, and walking away knowing where they stand with what they believe the Word of God says. This is crucial to getting typical average Christians to get a better handle on Theological issues instead of merely believing what their church or pastor or favorite televangelist believes. They get into the Word and discover what God’s Word is saying by studying it for themselves.
At the end of each question, Scholar would present a list of more articles to resources inside the user’s personal Logos Library they could visit for more information, as well as additional books they currently don’t own but cover the question they’re asking. These would link to the Logos and Vyrso bookstores and allow them to purchase the books, if so desired.
Below all of that would be links to thousands of online articles from selected Christian websites that Logos has personally chosen that would display quality material and answers to Biblical questions. Websites such as InTouch.org, LWF.org, various Academic sites, etc., all contain a wealth of quality articles that answer Biblical questions. Scholar would tie all of this together under one roof and make searching all of this quality Christian content a breeze.
Scholar could be used for a wide range of searches, including:
1. Biblical Weights/Measures Calculations
2. Simple and Complex Bible Searches
3. Answers to deep Theological and Biblical Questions
4. Answers to counseling situations
5. Answers to evangelism situations, Apologetics, etc.
6. Answers to deep Theological debates, presenting the information in an understandable format
7. And much more
And wouldn’t it be great if I were witnessing to someone and asked Scholar “How does one come to a saving relationship in Jesus Christ” and have Scholar present the text of the Plan of Salvation at my fingertips, allowing me to walk someone through the Gospel message of Salvation.
Scholar would go everywhere Logos Bible Software goes. It could start on the mobile front (as this would be the ideal opportunity for it), then work its way into the desktop homepage next to the Go box. Scholar would become a new way to take searching to an entirely new level by asking Logos your toughest Biblical questions.
So that’s Scholar. It would be one’s personal Bible Scholar, everywhere they go. Only a company such as Logos Bible Software could present such an amazing research tool. I’d love to see it happen!
One last thing: If Logos decides to go for this and wishes to "reward" me for the suggestion, feel free to pay me in books. :-)
