Thanks for the Exegetical Summaries updates this year! (and a further suggestion)

This seems like a reasonable request. I'll put an update into motion.

Mike Tourangeau said:

I see that some of the Exegetical Summaries link directly to commentaries, but some do not. I did a search in the forums but did not find any specific info on this. Has Faithlife committed to updating the entire series to link directly to commentaries? 

Yes. That is the plan. They're not being updated as fast as I'd hoped but they've all been approved and are at various stages of progress.

Milkman said:

So will this upgrade be fully functional? If not FL needs to let the purchaser be aware of it. I can't imagine they would release a product knowing the past issues with this product. I don't think they will, but if it's not fully functional, FL NEEDS TO let the buyer be appraised about them.

I'm planning to buy the second volume of John, but not before these issues are resolved.

mm.

Exegetical Summaries have always been functional. They've never been not released according to our baseline standards for commentaries. Due to customer feedback we have created processes for this particular series that make the tagging for this series go beyond our normal processes for how a commentary might be tagged.

The volume you linked was produced according to our new, enhanced standards.

Bruce Dunning said:

Kyle G. Anderson said:

Due to customer feedback we have created processes for this particular series that make the tagging for this series go beyond our normal processes for how a commentary might be tagged.

Kyle, this is much appreciated. To help me understand, could you summarize how the tagging is different and goes beyond the normal process?

Absolutely!

Here's what happened and how we responded.

• Exegetical Summaries was produced many, many years ago. When comparing other translations, the commentary used abbreviations for Bible translations and commentary series. Rather than use a normal abbreviation tag (e.g. when you hover over the abbreviation "NIV" the popup would read New International Version) which is completely standard for all our books--if there is an abbreviation page in the front of the book those abbreviations get tagged as abbreviations--we did something different. We made the abbreviations links (e.g. if there was an NIV abbreviation for John 3:16 we would link you to John 3:16 of the NIV).
• Some of the books we produced in the early 2000's were sort of the wild west in terms of standardization. When we do full updates of resources we bring them up to our current standards. This is normally a very good thing but it went wrong here.
• About a year ago I put the series in for an update, this was to add further linking and to feed a feature set. Unfortunately by updating it to our current standards it broke a feature people really, really liked: the abbreviations were no longer links, they were just abbreviation popups!
• This was an understandable frustration. The update felt like a regression. So we began the process of changing the abbreviations back to links.
• I also updated our production processes so that the Exegetical Summaries series becomes its own special thing that will always deviate from our Standard Operating Procedure of how we tag abbreviations.
• Since this happened I think we've produced or are in the process of producing two or three new volumes. These have been produced according to the new standards for Exegetical Summaries (the standards people like!).

I hope that clears things up.

Bobby Terhune said:

Kyle,

Was linking to BAG going to change to linking to BADG?

We get asked this from time to time in other contexts and I'll try answer this two ways: one that is how we handle it generally and the other in regards to Exegetical Summaries.

1. General: We won't change a citation. i.e. if a resource references a particular work we're not going to update the resource so it points to a different work even if their related. BAG and BADG are particularly tricky in this regard since they don't have a one-to-one paged relationship (i.e. page 60 isn't the same in either). Thus, if a resource references BAG we'll tag it that way. This is great for the lucky ones that have it but not great for the rest. We've heard the request to make it available for sale and its something that we would like to have happen but hasn't been able to happen yet.
2. Exegetical Summaries: What I said generally applies here as well but I want to add one piece of additional information. When I mentioned earlier that we changed links to abbreviations and are in the process of changing them back to links this was true if there was a verifiable target. Back to my original example of the an abbreviation for NIV on John 3:16: we're able to link to John 3:16 because we have a known destination (NIV) and a known target (John 3:16) which a viable anchor point (a milestone for John 3:16). This is true for commentaries as well. An abbreviation of WBC used on John 3:16 tells us the resource (WBC Commentary on John) and a known target with a viable anchor point (John 3:16). An abbreviation like BAG tells us a known destination (BAG) but doesn't provide us a known target with a viable anchor point. Thus these were abbreviations, remained abbreviations, and will continue to be abbreviations.

Hope that helps!

Alain Maashe said:

Bobby Terhune said:

     Kyle,

I just grabbed at random this section from 1 thes. 1:1

LEXICON—a. χάρις (LN 88.66): ‘grace’ [BAGD, Hn, HNTC, ICC, LN, Lns, WBC; all versions], ‘favor’ [BAGD], ‘kindness’ [LN].
      b.     εἰρήνη (LN 22.42; 25.248): ‘peace’ [Hn, HNTC, ICC, LN, Lns, WBC; all versions].

Since you are enhancing the tagging on this resource above and beyond your normal tagging standards, can a case be made to link the BAGD & LN links to "words" actually take us to that word is the appropriate resource? it would greatly enhance the usefulness of this series.

+1

This isn't anything we have planned at the moment. Currently it would need to be an intensive mostly manual endeavor. It would be technology we'd need to develop in order to scale.

Michael S. said:

Tom Reynolds said:

Great to hear. This series is the best single series you offer.

This series does for textual analysis what the Lexham Bible Guides do for hermeneutical analysis.

https://www.logos.com/product/27493/lexham-bible-guides-pauls-letters-collection 

Thank you for the kind words Tom and Michael. I shared your comments with the creators of the Exegetical Summaries series this morning and they were both thankful and encouraged.

And also thank you for the kind words about Lexham Bible Guides! We like them too!