1) Why Logos and 2) Why Logos over Accordance

Well, your query can be a little dangerous, since it's easy to be wrong about software capabilities. Often what doesn't seem to be available can be achieved in other ways. But for me, Logos was the only 'game in town' for a hebrew interlinear that included morph-tags on displayed lines. Most use a mouse-over or alternatively paralleling two separate resources or text blocks. I wanted to be able to see whole sections of morph-tags at a time, with or without the hebrew. And to date, I still think Logos is the only one. Plus, since I purchased, the expansion to syntax and now high-definition schemes is even more useful.

Hi there

I am not an Accordance user and have not tried it, so can't and won't comment on it. Focusing on Logos 4 for Mac, I would say that definitely first of all one would have to consider the total platform, a major part of which is the breadth and depth of resources (books) available, now and in the future. Given that a purchaser is buying into a (obviously necessarily) commercially restrictive license (i.e. Logos are not going to allow their resources to be opened in Accordance, and vice versa) people have to be comfortable that they are 'buying into' a long term viable platform. I think it would be fair to say that Logos has a mainstream evangelical position in terms of book titles (no problems from me on that) but they also provide for broader audiences. Plus I think they have some innovative programs to help to get as many titles into electronic form as quickly as possible, including releasing titles based on specific interests of existing customers.

One example, I got the 'Catena Aurea' by Thomas Aquinas (http://www.logos.com/products/prepub/details/5216) 8 volumes through the Logos 'Pre-Pub' program for $14! (I got in very early). So I not only get a difficult to obtain title for a great price, but I get it in electronic format indexed and searchable ready to be able to add depth to studying the gospels.

In terms of the software, for Logos 4 they took the (brave) step to get versions on the two major platforms, Mac & Windows, so that people could, potentially, maximise their investment in the platform (books) by being able to use either OS, and keeping the software user interface fairly consistent. They traditionally have developed for Windows, and they had to make some choices to get a 'native' Mac application built on top of the book 'engine' but they have done it, and it is shipping and it will only improve over time. The team have worked hard to get Logos 4 for Mac released, and now they have achieved that milestone I am sure they will be continuing to polish it.

My use is not as an original languages expert, my interest is in being able to dig into and understand the message in each of the books of the Bible as if each was being written directly to me in colloquial language (as they were to original audiences). Does (the new version of) Logos 4 help me achieve that goal? Well obviously given that the information is in the books, the question then is how well does Logos 4 allow a user to a) get at them = UI design and features, without b) getting in the way = functionality and performance. For me I think the interface does a pretty good job - you can follow a train of thought and 'dig into' information (for example any Bible passage right click on a word) and get educated and then find gems leading you into new directions. I just wish I had more time to dig for treasures.

Performance wise, yep you won't run it on your '486 [:)], but on most reasonably new Macs it runs fine (and again it will continue to improve as they fine tune it). I have a (not-new) Mac Pro and it runs fine. I also have a much less powered MacBook 13" I take to Bible study (no-one complains about having a fully indexed 600 book library available!) and it runs acceptably on that. Sure, if anyone does an Exegetical Guide on a whole chapter of the Bible then it is going to grind away, but that obviously is not a practical thing to do if one understands what the software has to do to do exegesis on hundreds of words at once.

In summary - would anyone regret the investment in Logos 4 for Mac? I don't think so.

I have (and use) both Accordance and Logos (Running it on Mac now, although I've also run it on Windows).  They are both fine platforms and whichever one that is chosen, it will enhance biblical studies immeasurably.  If I had to choose one over the other I would choose Logos mainly because Logos has many more resources available and is generally (but not always) cheaper.  In addition, Logos is coming out with some really unique resources that aren't available anywhere else (even in print).  I'm thinking particularly of the work Steve Runge has done on the High Definition New Testament and the Lexham Discourse Greek New Testament, and the High Definition commentaries starting to come out.  These are unavailable anywhere else and (I think) invaluable for biblical study.  Accordance wins with it's notes system over Logos.  Logos wins with cataloguing research data with it's "Clippings" function.  The biblical people, places, things reports in Logos 4 are unique and invaluable as well.    Going back to Logos 3, the automated reports (which have been enhanced in L4) are a brilliant approach allowing someone with almost zero understanding of the software to get deeply into research knowing only that they have to type a reference or word into the box on the home page.  For someone starting out that is an incredible advantage of Logos.   Finally, while both companies have excellent software forums, because Logos has such a huge user base one can post a question on the forum any time day or night and get an answer usually in a matter of minutes.  This has been very helpful to me, multiple times.  Again, they are both fantastic products and no matter which one someone chooses they will be stunned at the power unleashed in biblical studies.

Cameron Watters said:

It's also fair to point out that while a "one or the other" choice may be made for some, more than a few people use both products.

I use both as each has its own strengths.  If I could only own one, now that Logos 4 is native to Mac, Logos would have the slight edge simply because I can get resources I need on the Logos platform that I can't on the Accordance.  This of course, displays one of my priorities.  For others, their priorities might be different.

When I purchased the first version of Logos for Mac, I had looked at Accordance too (for some time). In the end what influenced my decision was the sheer number of resources for Logos. I also looked carefully at how often new resources were added over time. Logos was constantly working on adding new resources, with many new titles being added each day. The concept of Pre-Pub offers was also extremely tempting and I know I've benefitted from some of these offers over time.There's also more activity on the forums here as someone else has already mentioned. I personally have liked the way the development for mac has progressed (giving us access to various releases at each stage), and it's meant that with each release, I've been learning more about each feature as it gets added into the program.

I personally have not had that many difficulties with the alpha releases, and I've been using them for sermon preparation for some time. The forums have been a great education as well on how to use the product, and also a good source of entertainment sometimes :-) It's made the development of the product feel more like a community with many of the mac developers frequently answering questions or in other cases dropping us hints over what the next new features are going to be in the new releases.

Personally I think Logos is great, and the ability of me being able to access my resources on my mac laptop, on a windows machine, and my iPhone for no extra charge is a bonus.

Patrick,

I was using beta, and I am aware of the disclaimer that informed me of its pre-release status. However, in that same disclaimer and elsewhere on the website it said that a majority of Mac users could barely tell the difference functionally between Mac and PC. This leads into your next point about the crashing. I was never able to actually use the program because it would crash before it ever loaded anything. The program would shoot my RAM usage up to 3.7 and then crash. This progresses to the third point that my library most definitely had already been indexed.

Thus, though I understand that I bought it as a pre-release, it was not made clear to me that this product would not work unless I spent hours sending logs and getting updates and hoping that it wouldn't crash. For the sake of my sanity, it was better for me to purchase Accordance. I haven't run into a glitch yet.

Derek

I love Accordance... I also love Logos 4.... Each has it's own charm and use. I like how Logos opens automatically all related commentaries for passage (though it sometimes misses items), Logos has a wonderful selection of resources many more than there are in Accordance, but  despite what people say Logos is not always cheaper in fact sometimes it is much cheaper, take Nelson's Word biblical commentary LOGOS 700, ACCORDANCE 400 (logos has one additional book JOB volume 2). Also accordance has some items not available in logos, I love the poetic Revised English Bible. I wouldn't want to be without either, I find original language study far easier in Accordance, as well as much faster switch in parallel resources. Also general Bible reading in accordance is nicer for me with the exception that footnotes are a separate module.  so you can see them in a small window as you scroll which is super nice for something like NET bible, or the NAB, but in general the pop up notes in Logos are nicer.   Logos devotionals are nice in that they pop open to the proper day when you open them up automatically.  And I could go on (also i saw someone state iphone ipad were a reason to go logos, but logos is  going to have a lot of catch up to do soon there, accordances app will actually allow you to install any of you owned files to your phone, because Logos uses a cloud setup, they have to get permission from the publishers, most all the items I want to use on Logos are not iphone compatible because of the silly cloud model, even downloading items to phone for airplane mode, leaves you unable to access footnotes).  

If you can only buy one examine both carefully, get the one which one will work best for you. I am slightly more partial to Accordance, but I would advise anyone to consider purchasing BOTH, are good and the life application bible notes  are reason enough to own accordance.

Although I use to say the two Daily study bible series were reason enough to own Logos, but those two series are some of the non cloudable and no longer purchasable items. Also my Jerome biblical commentary and Oxford Bible Commentary are the same way. 

-Dan

PS: Logos is working on bring back the Barclay to Logos although this will be the latest rendition, NRSV replacing his lovely translation and the text being updated and gender neutralized. Personally I prefer people for men and humankind vs mankind, etc, but I do feel the loss of Barclay's translation lessons the series, and there is no word on bring back the OT series.

TJ,

Looking forward to your post. Glad I can now officially reply as a user and not as a marketing employee [:)]

Three main things come to mind on why I chose (prior, during, and after being an employee) Logos over Accordance.

1. Library - Both programs are, in essence, about accessing information in a library. Logos simply has a bigger selection. The odd of finding the book you want in Logos is greater than it is in Accordance. That's a big point for those wanting to do Biblical studies. A big library is important.
2. Learning Curve - Out of the box, Logos is (in my experience) far easier to use. Before I bought Logos in seminary, I downloaded and tired the accordance demo. Nothing made sense. Search results didn't return in an easy to navigate manner and I had no idea what all the icons did. Granted, with time and reading support docs and training videos, I could have learned everything. But with logos it was "enter verse. click go." Everything was much more intuitive for me. That said, I'd add that once you become an intermediate or advanced user, both do what you want and need them to do. I'd say that Logos is MUCH more friendly out of the gate.
3. Size - There is no way around the fact that Logos is the giant of the Bible Software market. As someone alluded to earlier, just compare the user forum numbers (though feel free to pick any other matrix and Logos will out do the rest of the players). What this means is that Logos has a massive in-house, in the office, development team. Because of this, you see a lot of great additions to the desktop app, like the iPhone/pad app and biblia.com. You are seeing opportunities to access your library in multiple locations. Logos is aggressively seeking out the best and the brightest to take the software to the next level and beyond.

Final thoughts (I've been holding this one back for a little while)... Accordance prides itself on being "mac native since ...." and that they are "the only software built just for mac" but these catch phrases always seemed lame to me. I don't care if you were built for mac just this morning or by Jobs himself. I care even less that you have pigeon holed yourself to one market and one platform. The fact is that Accordance is a small company, with modest revenue, and a narrow vision (from what I see) for the future of Bible Software. Logos is driven to be on the cutting edge and deliver the best digital Bible study tools on the plant... That's the sort of software I get excited about as a user and why I go with Logos 4 (and whatever Bob and the team have up their sleeve next).

Luomat:

You raise an interesting and, for me at least, important question. As a seminary professor teaching the Old Testament on the basis of the Hebrew text I am often asked by students and pastors what bible software I recommend. I started using software to study the bible back in the early 1980s, and through the years I have used almost everything that has come along. I was exposed to Gramcord while it was still under development in the early 80s, and I began using Accordance, which implemented Gramcord for the Macintosh as soon as it became available in 1994. So I have used it extensively for 16 years now, and am heavily invested in it. I purchased Logos as soon as it became available for the Macintosh, mostly so that I could be familiar with it in order to answer student questions but also to access a few resources that I had received from publishers in Logos format. The following observations are based on my own use of bible software over a long period of time. I have no connections to Logos, Accordance, BibleWorks, or any other software publisher, except as a customer.

For most of the last 20 years or so I have responded to the question of which bible software students should buy by saying that they should try all of the software available for their hardware and choose the one that they felt most comfortable with. I thought the best bible software was the bible software students would actually use. As the software as evolved from the mid-90s to the mid-00s, I judged that there was not enough of a difference between the packages to justify making a strong categorical recommendation in favor of any one package over another. They all did more-or-less the same thing, and more-or less-equally well. As I said above, I used Accordance as my own primary tool, and I enthusiastically recommended it to Mac users who wanted something to help with original-language study. And I know for a fact that I ‘sold’ a lot of copies of Accordance to students and colleagues. When Logos v. 1 for the Mac became available I encouraged students to take a look at it, but frankly I was not particularly impressed with it, and still preferred Accordance.

All of that changed for me when I first saw Logos 4 in the fall of 2009. At that time it was only available for Windows, but Logos announced that they would be doing a Mac version that would be feature-equivalent to the Windows version. I downloaded the first alpha that was available, and have worked with it ever since. (To be fair, I worked mainly with the Windows version running under Parallels until we got to about Alpha 23, when I judged the Mac version to be far enough along that I could use it as my primary tool.) Beginning in the spring of 2010 I started strongly advising students and colleagues to use Logos instead of Accordance (or BibleWorks for Windows users) and continue to do so. Since the release of Logos 4 it is clear to me that Logos now stands head and shoulders above everything else.  Here are the four main reasons for my recommendation:

(1)  Logos is better at what the average parish pastor needs to do. 

Virtually all of my own bible study is study of the text in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek. All of the students that I teach in our M.Div. program are required to learn Hebrew and Greek. Nevertheless, I recognize that even our students will spend most of their study time with English translations, and they will be preparing to teach Christians who almost exclusively read the bible in English. Life in the modern world being what it is, pastors have a lot of demands on their time, and are not always able to set aside as much time as they should to devote themselves to the study of the Word. Thus, they need a tool that both supports their English-language study and supports their original-language study, and does so in a way that helps them maximize the benefit of their study and preparation time. Logos 4 does this better than anything else. The Passage Guide, Exegetical Guide, and Bible Word Study Guide jump-start a pastor’s preparation (or a layman’s study time), and point them directly and quick to the most relevant and helpful resources that they have available (depending, of course, on what they own). The Biblical People, Places, and Things tools bring together a lot of information quickly and point the way to avenues for further study. And the platform provides a vast array of resources to support both the study of the Word and, equally important, the teaching of the Word. Even though I am a 'professional exegete', I realize that the average parish pastor needs something different than I need from bible study software. Easy and efficient access to the program’s features is quite important to pastors, and Logos excels in this regard. Fortunately it does both what parish pastors need, and what we 'professional exegetes' need. That's a rare and good thing.

(2) Its About the Resources, Stupid.

Pardon my being blunt (and don't take it personally), but it is very easy to get caught up in the ‘flashy lights syndrome’, the tendency to focus on pretty, but largely irrelevant distractions. In the world of software, this largely takes the form of a focus on ‘features’, as if piling up lots of features makes for good software. What matters in bible study software is that the software not only has lots of easy-to-use features (see above), but also that those features actually lead you somewhere. In this case, that ‘somewhere’ is the library of resources. Accordance (and to a much lesser extent BibleWorks) have done a decent job of providing their users with a reasonable library of basic resources, but neither can compete with Logos. As a result of their arrangements with most major publishers of theological works, Logos gives the student of the bible the opportunity to build a substantial theological library of more than 10,000 volumes. And even more importantly, all of these resources are inter-linked within the software and work together. For most of this material, Logos is the only source for these resources in electronic form. To give a real-world example, I am a Lutheran, as are most of the students that I teach. Logos is the only platform that has any significant resources for the study of Lutheran theology, or the interpretation of the Bible by Lutheran interpreters. And not only are these valuable resources available within Logos, but they work automatically within the framework of the software, so that as soon as the student runs a tool or conducts a search, the software automatically incorporates these resources and points my students to valuable insights from within the Lutheran theological tradition (assuming they have purchased these resources) without having to do any additional work. Contrast this with BibleWorks, which has so few resources available for its users that its website actually discourages users from buying electronic resources in favor of paper ones – a great example of attempting to make a virtue out of a necessity! Given its substantial library of resources, and the way in which they work together, Logos has no rival for supporting the serious study of theology and pastoral practice. None at all. 

(3) Syntax Searching

The first generation of bible software enabled us to search the text, to quickly find a vaguely-remembered passage or discover a passage that we did not know at all. The second generation of bible study software added the ability to search original-language texts morphologically, to find specific forms or words in Greek or Hebrew, and to compare the usage of a Hebrew or Greek word across a variety of contexts. Logos revolutionized bible study for those who don’t know Hebrew or Greek by making it possible for them to access information based on original-language data from within an English-only environment. However, one major weakness of all bible software is that it tends to reinforce the idea that the meaning of a text is somehow hidden within the meaning of individual words or forms. Morphological searching is very valuable, but it can also be misleading if the nature of the information provided is not well-understood by the interpreter. Simply understanding the form of a word (morphology) or how the word has been used by others (etymology and lexicography) do not of themselves provide magic keys to understanding the meaning of a passage. Understanding the meaning of a passage is ultimately dependent upon understanding how each word is used in relation to the other words in the passage. This requires contextual competence (the ability to understand how words are being used together in a literary context). And this kind of contextual competence requires an understanding of syntax and, ultimately, a degree of literary awareness. We are still a long way from the ability of bible software to help us with literary awareness. Today, the third generation of bible software has begun to make it possible for computers to support the study a text syntactically. This is a major advance, and Logos pioneered the move. We are still in the early days of this technology, but Logos has developed a number of significant resources in this direction, and more are on the way. Accordance has begun to catch up, insofar as version 9 now implements syntax searching. But the much more limited resources available — as of this writing only one resource, and that limited to Genesis and John — means that Accordance lags quite a ways behind, and is likely to continue to do so for the foreseeable future. BibleWorks is not in the game at all at this point.

(4) Flexibility

Over the course of my 30+ years of computer use, I have owned and/or used virtually every major operating system available. A long time ago I reached the point where I stopped being interested in tinkering with computers as a hobby and have focused on using them as tools to support my real work. I predominantly use a Macintosh because it lets me get my real work done with the least hassle. But I have no illusions that the Mac, as much as I love it, is the last word in the development of computerized technology. Ten years from now I may be using something else. And this is a last major reason that I now recommend Logos to my students. Logos 4 is the only bible software platform that runs on both Windows and the Macintosh. This is important to me, not only because it helps to preserve my investment in the resources that I have purchased, but also because it gives me confidence in knowing that I am protecting the investment of my students. I know that the students that I am teaching now will eventually be using something other than what they currently use. Windows users will become Mac users, and a few may even go the other way.  A few years from now I and they may be exclusively using an iPad or something like it, or something no one has imagined yet. Logos is committed to providing excellent tools on a variety of platforms. Not only does Logos 4 run on the Macintosh and Windows, but there is a great subset of these tools available for the iPhone and iPad. I am pretty confident that if there is a sufficient market to sustain it, they will provide tools for the Android or other systems as well down the road. The point is that the world changes, and Logos knows it and is committed to keeping up with it. Since with Logos you buy the books, not the software (per se), the resources are portable, and you can use them on all the supported hardware platforms. This is a huge advantage for pastors, schools, and churches that are interested in being good stewards of the resources available to them, and is a major reason that I recommend Logos 4 to my students and to pastors that ask me.

To wrap up, it is only fair to say that there are still a few things that Accordance does a little better than Logos 4. The interface for morphology searching makes it easier to do complex morphological searching in Accordance, though the same results can be obtained from Logos. The timeline module in Accordance is better than the corresponding resources in Accordance. And while Logos provides a great set of maps to support biblical study, I find that I keep going back to the map tool in Accordance when I want to generate a map to use for my teaching. It is simply much more flexible and easier to customize. While the speed of Logos 4 is greatly improved over its predecessor, Accordance is still a bit faster, especially for morphology searching. But all of these are largely picking at details around the edges. We could compare other features, and we might find some that are better in one software and others that are better in another. The bottom line is that for all of the functions that are most important to most students of the bible, Logos is simply much better than everyone else.

I am sorry to have gone on for such a long time, but since you asked a serious question I assume that you are interested in a substantial answer. Then again, that is probably a professional hazard of seminary professors.

David L. Adams
Concordia Seminary
St. Louis, Mo., USA

David Adams said:

I am sorry to have gone on for such a long time, but since you asked a serious question I assume that you are interested in a substantial answer. Then again, that is probably a professional hazard of seminary professors.

Thank you Sir for taking the time. Your post is very informative!