This is where you can set the font, size, color, style, etc. of text in all your biblical and extrabiblical Text modules. But before I focus on all the specific options in this Preferences panel, let me give you an overview of the various ways you can change the appearance of a Bible text.

Customizing the display of a single pane: Let's say you have a Search tab with two parallel panes: one containing the English Standard Version and the other containing the King James. You want to change the King James text so that it uses an Old English font. To do this, you don't need to go to the Preferences. Simply click the gear menu above the pane containing the KJV and choose Set Text Pane Display… (or use the keyboard shortcut Command-T).

This will open the Set Text Display dialog for that pane. In this dialog, you can choose from a variety of predefined themes, or you can customize a theme to look however you like. To set the text to an Old English font, click the Customize Theme button, then choose the desired font from the Font submenu under Contents.

When you click OK, your Search tab should now look like this:

By simply clicking OK to close the Text Display dialog, we are essentially telling Accordance to apply our font change to that specific text pane and that pane only. Thus, if we were to open a second pane containing the KJV, it would appear with the default font settings rather than the Old English font we chose.

Customizing the default display of a specific Text module: If you want every instance of the KJV to use the Old English font, you need to open the Set Text Pane Display dialog, make your selections, and then click Use As Default. An alert will ask you to confirm that you want to save those settings as the default for that particular Bible text. Click Save, then click OK to dismiss the Set Text Display dialog. From that point on, every time you open the KJV, it will appear in the Old English font.

Customizing the default display of several Text modules: Did you know you can select multiple Text modules in the Library and set the default display of all of them at once? Let's say you want to use the Old English font for other Bibles such as Wycliffe, Tyndale, the Geneva Bible, and the Bishops' Bible. You can simply command-click each of these Text modules in your Library, then choose Set Default Display from the gear menu at the bottom of the Library panel.

When you choose Old English in the dialog and click OK, the Old English font now becomes the default for those Bibles you selected.

Customizing the default display of all Text modules: Now, what if you want to set the default display of all your Text modules in one fell swoop. That's the time to open the Preferences dialog and choose Text Display from the list of settings categories. Make changes here and click OK, and your changes will be applied to every Text module in your Library. For example, if you choose Adobe Garamond in this dialog, all your Text modules will appear in that font. That includes the King James and other older Bibles that you had previously customized to use the Old English font. Once you make a change to the Text Display settings of the Preferences dialog, any custom settings you had for specific Bibles will have to be redone.

It is therefore important that you make any global changes in the Preferences dialog before you customize the default display of individual Text modules.

In my next post, we'll look at the various display options in detail.

This line divides the list of commands into two kinds, and we even have special names for them. The seven commands above the line are what we call connecting commands. The eleven commands below the line are known as stand-alone commands.

Connecting commands do exactly what the name indicates: they connect two search terms in some way, defining the relationship between them. Thus, if I use the <AND> command between the words "Moses" and "Aaron," I am looking for cases where Moses and Aaron appear together. If I use the <FOLLOWED BY> command between the two words, I am looking for cases where Moses and Aaron appear together, and where Moses comes first and Aaron second.

The connecting nature of these commands can even be seen in the angle brackets used to enclose them when they appear in the Search box. They essentially point to the terms they connect. (You see? There really is a method to our madness!)

By contrast, stand-alone commands do not connect other search terms, but stand alone as search terms in their own right. For example, the command [COUNT 1] can be entered by itself to find every word that appears only one time in the search text. Note how the stand-alone commands are enclosed in square brackets—they don't point to anything else.

As search terms in their own right, stand-alone commands can be joined with other search terms by connecting commands. For example, [COUNT 1] <AND> Moses would find any word appearing only one time, together with the word "Moses."

Understanding this simple distinction between connecting commands and stand-alone commands can help you to know when to use each type of command, and when to use them together.

As Accordance users, we are constantly presented with a blank search box, ever ready to be put to use. Experienced users know exactly what to do with it, but new users may experience something of the mockery I feel when trying to fill a blank page. They may conceive of a search they would like to do, but how to construct it? They know Accordance is capable of much more than simple word and phrase searches, but how do they go about learning all the Boolean commands, wildcard symbols, and other tools that make such power-searching possible?

Thankfully, everything you need to fill in that blank search box—and I mean everything—is always readily available through one of the menus at the top of the screen. Can you guess which one?

As I'm sure you guessed, the aptly named Search menu presents you with everything you need to fill in the blank. Not sure what word to search for? Choose Enter Words…. Want to search a Bible with Key numbers for a particular key number? Choose Enter Key Numbers…. If your search text is a grammatically tagged Greek or Hebrew text, these menu items will appear as Enter Lexical Forms… and Enter Inflected Forms….

Beyond simply helping you enter words and key numbers, the Search menu also includes submenus listing every search command (AND, OR, NOT, etc.), every wildcard symbol, and (in the case of tagged texts) every grammatical and syntactical tag. You don't have to memorize these options or go digging through documentation even to realize they're available; just go to the Search menu and browse through the submenus. Not sure what a command or symbol does, but want to try it out? Simply select it from the menu to insert it into the search box.

By making all these options readily available, Accordance does its best to eliminate the potential mockery of the blank search box. And while there are still aspects of these commands and symbols which need to be learned, you always have them listed in a convenient place whenever you need them.

If you've never paid much attention to the Search menu, you now understand it's importance. Just remember to look there whenever you need help filling in the blank.

The resulting graph plotted the frequency of these two lexical forms across the entire New Testament, and I made some observations about what it revealed. I also mentioned, in passing, that when Matthew uses the term "gospel," he is speaking of the "gospel of the kingdom."

Now, by graphing the use of each Greek lexical form separately, the Analysis Graph does not make it easy to see where the two terms are used together in a phrase like "gospel of the kingdom." So how would we see something like that?

It's in situations like this that it helps to know enough about Accordance to know when to zig and when to zag. The Analysis Graph takes whatever search you do and then breaks it down by whatever category you choose. Thus, even if we were to search for the phrase "gospel of the kingdom," the Analysis Graph will never graph the occurrences of that phrase. Instead, it will go right on graphing each occurrence of "gospel" and each occurrence of "kingdom." In short, zigging won't work in this case.

There is, however, a way to accomplish this by zagging. The Hits Graph is an older, simpler analytic tool which does one thing: plots the frequency of occurrence of the search term. Thus, if you search for a single word, it will plot the frequency of occurrence of that word. If you search for two words connected by an <OR> command, it will plot the frequency of occurrence of both those words together. If you search for a phrase, it will plot the frequency of occurrence of that phrase. You get the idea.

Now, although the Hits Graph doesn't do the kinds of comparisons that are possible with the Analysis Graph, it does include a little known feature that can come in really handy: the Keep button. In the days before the Analysis Graph, this was the only way to compare two different graphs. In the case of our comparison of βασιλεια (kingdom) and ευαγγελιον (gospel), we would have first done a search for one of those terms and then done a HITS graph. Now, because the HITS graph is dynamically linked to the search tab, it will automatically update when you do a new search—that is, unless you click the Keep button on the graph before doing the new search. Thus, we would search for βασιλεια, open a HITS graph, click the Keep button, return to the search tab and search for ευαγγελιον. The resulting HITS graph will look the same as the Analysis Graph we did the other day, showing the frequency of occurrence of each term separately.

Obviously, the Analysis Graph is easier to use than the HITS Graph for comparing two lexical forms like this, which is why few Accordance users even bother with the Keep button any more. But it still comes in handy, like when you want to compare the use of a phrase like "gospel of the kingdom" (εὐαγγέλιον τῆς βασιλείας). After doing a HITS graph of βασιλεια, clicking the Keep button, and doing a new search for ευαγγελιον, simply click the Keep button a second time, and search for εὐαγγέλιον τῆς βασιλείας. The resulting HITS Graph will look like this:

Here we can see that the three occurrences of the phrase "gospel of the kingdom" correspond exactly to the first three occurrences of the word for "gospel" in Matthew. Nowhere else is this phrase used, though Matthew frequently uses "kingdom" outside the phrase "gospel of the kingdom."

If you find yourself wanting to compare the frequency of phrases like this, the Analysis Graph won't work because it wants to break everything down into individual words, but a HITS Graph with the Keep button will let you compare each phrase you search for. In Accordance, even when zigging won't work, there's usually a way to zag.

It was a lively, interesting, and collegial discussion. The speakers all agreed that the Pauline epistles use the word "gospel" more frequently than the Gospels themselves, and that the Gospels use the word "kingdom" more frequently than Paul. But they disagreed with the notion that we misread the Gospels by reading them through a Pauline lens, along with the related notion that we ought instead to read Paul through the interpretive lens of Jesus' message about the coming of the kingdom. They argued that the difference in vocabulary between the Gospels and Paul does not indicate two conflicting messages, and that any attempt to give one priority over the other represented the formation of a canon within a canon. In fact, Carson pointed out that the language of "kingdom" is likewise infrequent in the Gospel of John, so this line of reasoning leads to the Synoptic Gospels becoming a "canon within a canon within a canon." He then pointed out that the belief that Matthew and Luke were dependent on Mark ends up leading to Mark becoming the "canon within a canon within a canon within a canon!"

All this made me curious about the data on which they were basing these observations, and of course, Accordance makes gathering that data a breeze. So when the session was over I returned to our booth and searched the Greek New Testament for βασιλεια <OR> ευαγγελιον. I then chose Analysis Graph from the Stats and Graphs icon of the Search tab.

The Analysis Graph shows the frequency of occurrence of various criteria across your search range. By choosing Lex (for lexical form) from the pop-up menu at the top right, I can compare the use of βασιλεια (kingdom) and ευαγγελιον (gospel) throughout the New Testament.

Looking at this graph, we see that "kingdom" is indeed far less frequent in John than in the other gospels. Yet we also see that while "kingdom" appears frequently in Luke, it is relatively infrequent in the other Lukan book of Acts.

Another interesting thing to note is how much more frequent "kingdom" is in Matthew and Luke than in Mark. It would appear from this that rather than Mark, it is the hypothetical source known as Q, which allegedly contained the sayings of Jesus common to Matthew and Luke, which would comprise the "canon within a canon within a canon within a canon" which Carson mentioned.

With respect to "gospel," it certainly does receive more attention in the Pauline corpus than anywhere else, and is almost completely absent from the General Epistles and the writings of John (for whom "kingdom" isn't a major emphasis either). Interestingly, of all the Evangelists, Mark is the one who places the greatest emphasis on "gospel." Matthew, on the other hand, is interesting because almost all of his uses of the term refer to "the gospel of the kingdom."

I will leave it to the scholars to draw meaningful conclusions from all these observations, and of course, this search might need to be supplemented with searches for other related terms. Still, I hope you can see how analytic tools like this can make it easy to spot phenomena in the Bible worth exploring.

What about you? Can you spot any interesting aspects of the above graph which I've failed to mention?

The first three options all have to do with the look and behavior of workspace zones. The active zone in a workspace is highlighted with a certain color. You can change this color by choosing a new one from the pop-up menu labeled Active Zone Color.

The next option lets you specify the maximum number of zones that can be opened in any given workspace. If you have a small screen, you may find that the third, fourth, or fifth zone that opens is too just too small to be useful. If you set the Default Maximum Zones pop-up to two, then Accordance can open no more than two zones in that workspace. If you open a resource that requires a third zone, Accordance will display that new zone in a separate workspace.

Now, even if you choose to set a maximum number of zones, that only prevents Accordance from opening more than that number of zones in a workspace. You are still free to drag a tab into a separate zone in order to create more zones than your default maximum.

Another option for small screens (or even those with large screens who like to save a little space) is Hide tab area if only a single tab. When you check this option, Accordance will show only a small title area for zones that only contain a single tab. As soon as a second tab is opened in that zone, the zone title area will increase in height to accommodate the two tabs.

Workspace with "Hide tab area" option unchecked

Workspace with "Hide tab area" option checked

The next three options have to do with how the Library and Instant Details panels operate. First, you can choose to have the Library always open as a popover rather than as a panel. Whenever you have a workspace that is too narrow or has too many zones to allow room for the Library to open as a panel, Accordance will automatically open the Library as a panel. If you want the Library to appear that way no matter how much room there is, simply check this option. Whatever your preference, you can always override it by holding down the shift key when you click the Library icon in the toolbar. In other words, if your default is to have the Library display as a panel, you can always force it to display as a popover by holding the shift key. If your default is to have it display as a popover, you can likewise force it to display as a panel.

Workspace with Library displayed as a panel

Workspace with Library displayed as a popover

If you would like the Library to be open whenever you create a new workspace, leave the previous option unchecked and check Add Library to new workspaces. If you would like the Instant Details to be displayed whenever you create a new workspace, check Add Instant Details to new workspaces.

The final option is to Limit window size of new workspaces. With this option checked, Accordance will open new workspaces at a specific size rather than having them fill the screen. If you have a really large monitor and you want Accordance to remain in one portion of the screen, you might want to consider this option.

Then I went to seminary, where I took Greek and Hebrew again. There I was surprised to find that to a man (and woman), my fellow seminarians firmly regarded Greek as the easier of the two languages. I thought they were all crazy, until I began to see the differences between their initial experience of Greek and my own. They were learning Biblical Greek, with its much simpler (and often much like English) sentence structure. The vocabulary was limited to words in the New Testament, and many of these words were already familiar to those who grew up hearing them in sermons and Bible studies. Finally, there was the motivation factor: if they learned Greek, they would be able to speak with the same authority as their pastor or favorite theologian. But how many pastors and theologians had they heard spit out words like chesed and chaim?

For these seminarians, Greek was at least somewhat familiar, while Hebrew was entirely foreign: read from right-to-left, with strange consonants and even stranger vowels, some of which represented unusual sounds. Even the grammatical terminology was different, with binyanim, "aspect," and "construct state" instead of tense, voice, mood, and case. Thus, they saw it as self-evident that Hebrew is harder to learn than Greek.

I'm here to tell you it's not. Hebrew is a fun language to learn and a relatively simple one to get started learning. If you can get past its apparent foreignness, you're well on your way.

That's one of the things I like about The First Hebrew Primer by EKS Publishing. Billed as “The adult beginner’s path to learning Biblical Hebrew, this grammar takes the time to help you get past the apparent foreignness of the language. For example, most Hebrew grammars will cover the consonants in one chapter and the vowels in a second, presenting you with a chart to memorize and lots of facts about which letters are silent, what a dagesh is and how it affects the pronunciation of some letters, etc. The student then has to absorb all this information just to get started. The First Hebrew Primer takes a different approach, teaching a handful of consonants and vowels together and then showing how you could use them to write simple English words like "Bob" and "odd." The Accordance module also incorporates the "audio companion" to the grammar, which you can play to hear how all of the Hebrew is pronounced. If you're trying to learn Hebrew outside a classroom setting, that help is invaluable.

Another thing I personally like about The First Hebrew Primer is that it teaches the script or cursive form of Hebrew in addition to the block letters you typically see in print.

I learned to write in script in college, and found it made writing Hebrew much quicker than trying to use block letters. That in turn, made doing the exercises much less painful. Over the years, I've forgotten many of the script letters, and when I was in Israel a few years ago I found myself struggling to make out the street signs and graffiti that were written that way. I'm personally glad to now have a refresher in script, and would recommend you take the time to learn it before you do too many of the exercises.

Beyond the alphabet, The First Hebrew Primer introduces just enough of certain concepts to get you reading Hebrew as quickly as possible. By chapter four, you're already reading simple sentences in Hebrew. The exercises in the Primer help you to put the concepts you've learned into practice, and the answer key at the back will help you to gauge your progress.

If you've ever wanted to teach yourself Hebrew, I strongly recommend you try The First Hebrew Primer. If you do, I think you'll come to agree with me that learning Hebrew is much easier than it looks. You can then wink at those Greek-biased seminarians and say, "Aw, what are you complaining about? Hebrew ain't hard!"

The First Hebrew Primer, which includes the text, the answer book, and the audio companion is normally $79.99, but is now on sale for just $64.99. Don't wait, though. The sale ends April 15, 2013.

The Appearance preferences present you with a number of broad ways you can change the look of Accordance. While this is not the place to go to change the font used in your various texts and tools (click Text Display or Tool Display for that), Appearance is the place to go when you want to make more fundamental changes, such as the maximum width of a line of text or how quickly to auto-scroll.

The options under Text Appearance let you make some interesting typographic changes. The first of these lets you specify the maximum width of text in a window. For example, if you have a wide screen and a workspace with only one tab, you may end up with a very wide column of text.

Since this can be hard to read, you may want to specify that a column of text can be only six inches wide. To do that check Limit text width and then drag the slider to six inches. When you click OK, even the widest window will show a column of text no wider than six inches. Any additional space will appear as white space to the left and right of the text.

The next text display option is to use ligatures in fonts that support it. Ligatures are combinations of letters that share common elements, such as fl and fi. The following screen shots show the same text with the use ligatures option unchecked and checked:

Without ligatures

With ligatures

Remember that ligatures are only supported in certain fonts, so you won't see a difference with older, legacy fonts.

Another text appearance option is to use European verse notation. With this option checked, Accordance will display verse references according to European conventions. It will also interpret verse references in searches accordingly.

A similar option is to have Accordance use SBL standard abbreviations for Bible book names. Check this option, and Accordance will display book names using SBL abbreviations.

In addition to the Text Appearance options just mentioned, Accordance offers a few Other appearance options. Here you can set the font size of text in Browser panes such as the Library and the Tool window's Table of Contents. You can also adjust the speed of auto-scrolling, choose to use a white background for pictures instead of the default black, and turn on or off the automatic widening of the Tool window's Table of Contents browser when you mouse over it.

In addition to letting you choose how you want Accordance to start up and what information dialogs you want to have displayed, the General settings let you tweak Accordance's amplify behavior.

When you select a word or verse reference in Accordance, you can then choose to search for that selected text in any Accordance resource. This is the process we call amplifying. For example, let's say you select the Greek word λόγος in John 1:1, then choose BDAG from the Amplify menu on the Toolbar. A new tab containing BDAG will automatically be opened to the entry on λόγος.

There's something else to notice about this search: in addition to searching for the selected word in the Greek Entry field, Accordance has also searched the Scripture field for John 1:1. This makes it easy to click the down Mark button to find where John 1:1 is cited in this long article.

Doing a search for both the selected word and the verse in which it appears can also help to distinguish among homographs: words that are spelled the same but mean different things.

This two-pronged searching when you amplify is almost always a good thing, especially since Accordance will still find the selected word even if the current verse is not cited. Still, there are some users who just want to search for the selected word without also including the verse reference. Consequently, the General preferences has a checkbox labeled Include reference when amplifying from text to tool. Uncheck that box, and Accordance will only search for the selected word without including the verse reference.

Another Amplify setting you can choose is Require selection for amplifying. If this box is checked, you must drag or double-click to select a word or verse reference before amplifying. If this box is unchecked, you can simply click in a word or verse reference so that the cursor is blinking inside it, and Accordance will regard that as a valid selection. Thus, you could simply click inside the word λόγος in John 1:1 to select it. Many users like this convenience: you can simply click to select something and then amplify. However, others find it too easy to click something and select it without meaning to. If you're in the latter camp, check this box to make sure you must do more than just click to select something.

The last Amplify option in the General preferences is Confine amplify to the same workspace. If you find yourself opening more than one workspace at a time, you may want to consider this option. Let's say I have one workspace for New Testament studies, and I amplify a word in the Greek New Testament to look it up in a Greek lexicon. In another workspace, I have the Greek Septuagint text, and I decide to amplify one of those words to look it up in that same Greek lexicon. Because I already have a copy of that lexicon open in the New Testament workspace, Accordance will look up my Septuagint word there, in my NT Studies Workspace.

If, however, I have Confine amplify to the same workspace checked, Accordance will open a second copy of my lexicon in the same workspace as my Septuagint text. That way, each workspace will have its own copy of my lexicon that will only be used when I amplify from a word in that workspace.

The last section of the General settings offers two more general options. When drag and drop text editing was first introduced, some long-time Mac users found it disconcerting, so we allow you to disable it. Also, the default behavior of the Accordance Slide Show mode is to advance to the next slide when the mouse is clicked. If you don't want mouse clicks to advance slides, you can specify that they be ignored.

That's it for the General preferences. Next we'll look at the Appearance settings.

Over the past two decades of development, we've added numerous options you can set in order to tailor Accordance to your specific needs. Most of them can be found by choosing Preferences… from the Accordance menu. This will open the Preferences panel.

On the left side of the Preferences panel, you'll see a list of setting categories. Let's start with the General settings.

The first option you can choose is how you want Accordance to start up. You have the following options:

Default Search Tab: Accordance will open with a single workspace showing a single tab containing your default Bible. It's clean and simple, but you then have to open any additional resources yourself. (Note: You can set your default Bible in the Search Tabs settings.)

Default Session: If you find yourself spending a few minutes each time you launch Accordance opening the same group of resources and arranging them a certain way, you would do better to set things up the way you want them and then save that setup as a Default Session. Then that setup would come up every time you launch Accordance. When you choose the Default Session option, the Set Default Session button will become active. Click this button after you have set Accordance up the way you want, and the current arrangement of workspaces, zones, and tabs will now appear each time Accordance starts up.

Last Session: This is the setting I use. Whenever you quit Accordance, whatever you have open will be saved. When you launch Accordance again, you'll pick right back up where you left off.

Daily Reading: Want Accordance to start up with today's reading from your favorite devotional? Choose the Daily Reading option. (Note: You can set which devotional you want as your default in the Reading/Search All settings.)

In addition to choosing how you want Accordance to start up, you can choose to suppress certain kinds of information dialogs.

Suppress opening splash screen: When you first launch Accordance, you'll see the opening splash screen with our lovely artwork and copyright info.

Naturally, we leave it up there for a moment so you can appreciate the artwork and read the info. But if you would like to shave a second or two off the time it takes to launch Accordance, check Suppress opening splash screen and you'll never have to see it again. (Don't worry, if you want to see it again, you can always choose About Accordance from the Accordance menu.)

Suppress opening text information: This option is now checked by default, but it used to be that the first time you opened a new module, a window would appear showing that module's copyright information. This made the copyright holders happy, but it was a waste of your time. If you still have these dialogs appear, check the option to suppress them. (When you want the copyright info for a module, you can still get it by clicking the info icon next to its name in the Library, or by choosing About the Text… from the Accordance menu.)

Suppress save warnings: If you open a resource and perform a search or make some other change, then decide to close that resource, Accordance will ask you if you want to save that tab. Yet if you use Accordance like I do, you're constantly opening resources, searching them for information, and then closing them when you no longer need them. If I actually want to save some complicated search, I'll do that by choosing Save… from the File menu. The rest of the time, I don't want to be interrupted with save warnings. So I have the Suppress save warnings option checked. Just be warned that if you check this option, you could accidentally close some elaborate construct window and lose your work without warning.

Suppress information tips: There are a handful of tips that appear when you use certain aspects of Accordance. For example, the first time you apply a highlight style, you may get a tip informing you that you can use the keyboard shortcut command-8 to apply that same style to other words you select. These tips are relatively infrequent, so I recommend leaving this option unchecked. Still, if they get in your way, you can easily suppress them.

I'll cover the rest of the General preferences in my next post, and I'll cover other settings categories in future posts.

In addition to the iPad Mini, we are giving away the Accordance 10 Essential Collection due to its fantastic assortment of English, Greek, and Hebrew Bible study tools. Here are just some of the highlights:

• ESV, NIV, NRSV, HCSB, NKJV, KJV Bibles
• Hebrew Bible and lexicons
• Greek New Testament and lexicons
• Greek Septuagint and lexicon
• Eerdmans Bible Dictionary
• Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary
• IVP New Bible Commentary
• Tyndale Commentary set (49 volumes)
• Life Application Study Bible
• Bible Lands PhotoGuide
• Over $6,000 in print value!

In addition to this Grand Prize, we are also giving away 19 Accordance gift cards ranging from $10 to $250 dollars. This means we get to choose 20 winners in total, which is decidedly more fun than just choosing one. It also means you have a better chance of winning something, which is always a good thing.

If you haven’t entered yet, there is no time like the present. Everyone who enters will receive a unique link that earns you five additional entries anytime someone else enters the giveaway using your link. Those who enter early have more time to share their unique link, which means they have more time to gain additional entries. So go ahead, it’ll only take a minute to enter for a chance to be one of our 20 winners!

In order to avoid the confusion that might be caused by these different parsing orders, I decided to have Accordance follow Mounce's suggested order. It will require a bit of adjustment on my part, since I'm used to Accordance's default order, but I figure that's better than making my wife and kids switch between two slightly different methods of parsing.

Thankfully, customizing the parsing in Accordance is easy. Just open the Preferences and choose Arrange Tags in the list of settings. You'll see a list of tags for Greek and for Hebrew.

To rearrange the order in which any given tag is listed, just drag it up or down the list. I want case to appear before gender and number, so I'll drag it up in the list above gender. I also want gender to appear after number, so I'll make that change as well. Since the gender, number, and case of participles is handled separately, I'll rearrange those tags as well. When I'm finished, my new tag order looks like this:

Now I just need to click OK to save my changes, and the new parsing order will be used in the Instant Details.

I began by hovering my mouse over a word in the Greek New Testament to show how its lexical form and parsing is automatically displayed in the instant details box. I then triple-clicked a word to show how Accordance automatically searches a default lexicon for the lexical form of the word rather than for the particular inflected form I happened to triple-click.

They were, of course, amazed at these very basic Accordance features, and they seemed for a moment to have a deeper appreciation for what I do for a living. Then my plan backfired. When they saw how easy it was to have Accordance do all these things they are working hard to learn, one of the kids voiced what they all must have been thinking: "So we really don't need to learn this stuff!"

I laughed and explained that they had hit on one of the great dangers of using Accordance: it can give us the false assurance that we know Greek better than we do. I went on to explain that the value of learning Greek is that it enables us to use tools like Accordance more responsibly. I think they bought it.

Then again, it's probably good that I didn't tell them about the Mounce Greek Study System, a bundle of video lectures and Accordance resources designed to teach you how to use more robust language tools without having to take full-blown Greek language courses. If they knew that option was available, I might lose half my students!

"Palindrome" is a fancy term for a word that reads the same way both forward and backward, such as the name "Hannah." (There's a popular children's book with the title Hannah is a Palindrome.) Since we can have Accordance find words with matching letters, we can easily find all the palindromes in the Bible.

Let's start with three-letter palindromes. To find those, enter three question marks, and place (=1) after the third question mark. Like this: ???(=1)

To find a four-letter palindrome, you would enter four question marks, placing (=2) after the third question mark, and (=1) after the fourth: ???(=2)?(=1)

For a five letter palindrome, simply add another question mark to the beginning of the previous search: ????(=2)?(=1). The third question mark does not need to match any other letters.

You get the idea. If you want to get a list of all the palindromes in the Bible, try this search: ???(=1) <OR> ???(=2)?(=1) <OR> ????(=2)?(=1) <OR> ????(=3)?(=2)?(=1). I tried searching for seven-, eight-, nine-, and ten-letter palindromes, but didn't find any in the translation I searched. Can anyone else find a Biblical palindrome longer than six letters?

Once you've done this search, select Analysis from the Stats & Graphs icon to get a list of all the palindromes in the Bible.

Note that because the question mark can represent any letter or number, our search found numbers as well as words. Can anyone come up with an easy way to exclude the numbers?

Update: Not ten minutes after I posted this, my youngest daughter pointed out that today's date is 3/1/13 (when written using the American convention of month/day/year). It would appear this post on palindromes was more timely than I realized!

Now, you Hebrew students could use extra credit too, so far be it from me to leave you out. Here's a search that is sure to impress your first semester Hebrew prof. In Hebrew, there's a class of verbs known as geminates. These are verbs in which the second and third letters of the lexical form are the same. Perhaps the most famous example would be הלל, "to praise." Why not ask your professor if you can spend the weekend putting together a list of every geminate verb in the Hebrew Bible? It sounds appropriately difficult—like the kind of thing only the most ambitious Hebrew student would attempt.

Now, to define this search, start by entering three question marks in the search entry box. The question mark, like the asterisk, is a wildcard symbol which can stand for any letter or number. Yet where the asterisk can represent any number of characters, the question mark can only represent a single character. For example, if I do an English search for love*, Accordance will find any word that begins with "love," no matter how many other letters it has: words like "loves," "loved," "lover," "lovers," "lovely," etc. If, on the other hand, I search for love?, Accordance will find only words that have a single letter after "love", such as "loves" and "lover." See the difference?

Because each question mark stands for a single character, whatever that character happens to be, entering three question marks into the search field means you want to find only three-letter words.

Now we need to specify that the third letter must be the same as the second letter. To do that, place parentheses after the third question mark. (Be sure to enter the right parenthesis followed by the left, since everything is reversed in Hebrew). Inside the parentheses, place an equals sign followed by the number 2. Your search argument should now look like this: (2=)???.

Placing parentheses after a question mark lets you specify which characters that question mark can be. For example, b?(ae)t will find "bat" and "bet," but not "bit" or "but," since we have specified that the question mark can only be an "a" or an "e." Returning to our Hebrew search, placing (2=) after the third question mark means that it can be any character, so long as it is the same character as that found by the second question mark. In other words, the second and third letters can be any letter, but they must be the same.

Now all we need to do is specify that the word we're searching for must be a verb. To do that, make sure the cursor is blinking to the right of the search argument, then choose Verb… from the Enter Command submenu of the Search menu. A dialog will appear enabling you to select specific grammatical details, but since we want to find any verbs, just click OK to dismiss the dialog. Accordance will then add the Verb tag to your search argument, and all you need to do is hit Return to perform the search.

As sophisticated as this search is, your results should be instantaneous. Now just choose Analysis from the Stats and Graphs icon to get an alphabetical list of all the geminate verbs in the Hebrew Bible, and print it out!

Just be warned: while this search may help you garner some extra credit, it may also raise your prof's expectations for you. You might find that he now treats you as a star pupil. And we all know what that means: you can probably count on getting called on more often in class!

For example, in showing how to use the COUNT command, I'll search the tagged Greek New Testament for [COUNT 1]. (You'll find the COUNT command in the Enter Command submenu of the Search menu.) This powerful search finds every word which only appears one time in the Greek New Testament.

These rarely used words are known as hapax legomena, and in the days before Accordance, there was no easy way to find them.

Once we've done this search, I then have the seminar attendees select Analysis from the Stats & Graphs icon to get an alphabetized list of all NT hapax legomena.

All this takes no more than a few seconds.

It's then that I show the "practical" value of such a search. I tell all the beginning Greek students to approach their professor on a Friday and say, "Prof, if I spend the weekend finding all the hapax legomena in the Greek New Testament, can I get some extra credit?" Then I instruct them to go home, do the search and analysis I just showed, print out the analysis tab, and bring that in on Monday morning. If they really want to sell it, they should look particularly worn out and disheveled when they turn it in.

Now, this might have been more likely to work in the days before Bible software was capable of advanced research, but even today, it might work if your professor doesn't happen to use Accordance. If he uses something else, maybe he won't suspect that it only took you a few seconds!

Tomorrow, I'll give you Hebrew students a search you can use to garner extra credit.

This is not the first time I've heard Timothy described in such unflattering terms, and it bothers me that he seems to get such a bad rap. While it is certainly possible that Timothy was naturally reserved and cautious, I find it just as likely that he was facing an extremely challenging situation that might call for the kind of encouragement Paul offered in his letters—even if Timothy's natural temperament was to say, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" After all, I imagine even David Farrugut needed a word of encouragement now and then!

I'm not suggesting that Timothy was one who found it easy to rush in where angels fear to tread, but neither am I convinced that he was naturally timid just because Paul wrote to encourage him to be bold. I'm not convinced he was a "mama's boy" just because his mother and grandmother were his main spiritual influences. And frankly, I don't understand how we can conclude Timothy had a nervous stomach just because Paul urged him to drink a little wine for his stomach.

On the one hand, I was impressed that the men in this Bible study were approaching the text of 1 Timothy with some knowledge of the letter's intended audience. They (or the preachers they had heard these things from) had picked up some details about Timothy and pieced them together into a picture of the man, which of course is good exegetical practice. The problem comes when we jump to conclusions without considering alternative possibilities or the wider historical context.

A few years ago, Dr. J did a podcast episode explaining how to study a person from the Bible. In it, he describes the three logical steps of identification, investigation, and evaluation. Where most people fall down in this kind of study is that they fail to do enough investigation and so ignore much of the available evidence. Or they may gather enough evidence, but then fail to evaluate it properly. Dr. J does a great job of showing how to gather and evaluate the available evidence.

The letters to Timothy mention his mother and grandmother along with the aforementioned stomach condition, and contain numerous exhortations to boldness and perseverance. Those limited details could be evidence of a timid man who needed to be brought out of his shell, but those facts need to be interpreted in the light of the other things we know about Timothy. For example, we know from Acts 16:1-5 that Timothy had a Jewish mother and Greek father, and that after meeting Timothy, Paul wanted him to accompany him on his missionary journeys. We also know that Paul had Timothy circumcised so that he would have credibility with the Jews in the region. Against the view that Timothy was a "mama's boy", the fact that he was uncircumcised as an adult shows that his father had enough influence in his life to make sure he was raised as a Greek. And the fact that Timothy was willing to be circumcised as an adult for the sake of his ministry shows that he had some measure of courage and willingness to endure hardship.

Another factor that needs to be considered is the situation in Ephesus when Paul asked Timothy to remain there. While it is not altogether certain when 1 Timothy was written, it was probably written some time after Paul left Ephesus in the wake of the riot started by Demetrius (Acts 19:23–41). Whether Paul instructed Timothy to remain at Ephesus shortly after the riot, or years afterward, it is likely that Ephesus remained a challenging place to serve as pastor. Thus, Paul's exhortations to boldness and perseverance need not be seen as prompted by Timothy's timidity, but by the challenges Paul knew Timothy was facing.

While it may be true that Timothy was naturally timid, we ought to be cautious not to stereotype Biblical figures until we have done a thorough investigation and careful evaluation of the evidence. Otherwise, we might be tempted to read the pastoral epistles and think, "That exhortation isn't for me. That's for timid guys like Timothy." It may just be that it's intended for anyone faced with a challenging ministry situation!

What about you? Do you ever cringe over how certain Biblical figures get stereotyped? If you were going to investigate Timothy or some other Biblical figure, what Accordance resources would you turn to for information?

My basic set up is a workspace with two zones. One contains Mounce's grammar and the other contains the Greek New Testament. I spend most of my time just showing the grammar, and I make it full screen by choosing Enter Reading Mode from the Gear menu of the Tool tab. Since I want them all to be able to read along with me, I crank the font size up quite a bit using the text size buttons.

Occasionally, I find I want to explain something by typing a little Greek myself. So I've created a user tool named "Greek Class" which I basically just use as a kind of scratch pad. When I want to type some Greek, I display that user tool and then choose Edit User Tool from the Selection menu. In the user tool edit window, I choose the Helena font and a large font size (30 point) and just begin typing what I need. Because Accordance automatically handles the correct placement of accents and final forms, it's relatively easy to show them anything I want to.

For example, when trying to explain that sigma takes a different form at the end of a word, I began typing the word ἀπόστολος. When I typed ἀπός, I pointed out that Accordance inserted the final sigma because it was currently the last letter of the word, but that as soon as I typed another letter, Accordance changed the final sigma to a medial sigma. Seeing that dynamic on the screen helped to solidify in their minds the difference between the two forms.

Several days later, we worked through an exercise in which we were supposed to divide various Greek words into syllables. I typed each of those words ahead of time, and then after we discussed where each word should be divided, I simply inserted a vertical bar (|) into each word to show the syllable divisions. Doing it this way was quick and easy, and it visually reinforced the point of the lesson.

Now we're beginning to learn some vocabulary, and Bill Mounce's included audio pronunciations of each word are proving helpful. I'm not sure why, but somehow hearing Dr. Mounce pronounce the words seems more authoritative to my family than when I do it!

At the end of each lesson, I switch to the Greek New Testament where we've been memorizing the beginning of the Gospel of John. We've got verses 1 and 2 down pretty well now, and we started on verse 3 today. As we recite, I show the verses on the screen and try to drag my cursor over each word as we read it.

Each word is highlighted as I hover over it so it's a bit like one of those follow-the-bouncing-ball sing-along videos for children. Reading and reciting a real Greek passage is helping to solidify their understanding of the Greek alphabet and Greek pronunciation. I've also used this passage to introduce them to the concept of noun case endings, to explain accents and breathing marks, etc. This way, they're getting exposed to the language inductively as well as deductively.

While Jo Jo is generally playing during these lessons, even he is picking up a few things. He can recite John 1:1-2 as well as any of us, and just the other day, I asked him to turn on the φῶς. His only question was which "light" I wanted him to turn on!

The easiest thing to do is simply to hide my main workspace using the Hide command. You'll find that command in the Window menu, and choosing it does just what you would expect: it hides, or makes invisible, the front window without actually closing it.

When you hide a window, its name will still appear at the bottom of the Window menu. A diamond will appear next to the name to indicate that the window is hidden. To show the window again, simply select its name, or choose the Show All command.

It's that easy, and you can use the Hide command any time you want to reduce clutter without actually closing something.

To start, we have two resources that you will want to pick up by February 18, 2013 in order to take advantage of introductory specials. The first of these resources is the Life in the Spirit New Testament Commentary. In addition to being an excellent one-volume commentary for Pentecostal and charismatic Accordance users, this commentary is great for fans of our Lighting the Lamp podcast, because our own Dr. Timothy Jenney wrote the commentary on the book of Revelation. If you enjoy our podcast and would like to read some of Dr. J's theological insights, you can pick up this commentary for over 28% off until February 18, 2013!

The second introductory special is on The Eerdmans Companion to the Bible. This handbook is a wonderful resource for those who want an accessible guide to the people, places and books of the Bible. This resource also includes over two hundred maps, charts, and graphics that will help bring the text of the Bible to life. Order this resource by February 18, 2013 to receive 25% off the regular price!

In addition to these introductory specials, we have nine other new releases that cover a wide variety of genres and topics.

Photography lovers will want to check out Views That Have Vanished—a collection of 700+ photographs from Israel, Jordan, Greece, and Rome from the 1960’s, taken by David Bivin and published by BiblePlaces.com.

Grasping God’s Word is ideal for those who want to learn how to read, interpret, and apply the Bible for themselves. This resource even includes practical, hands-on exercises that guide students through the interpretive process.

Andrews Study Bible is a must-have for Seventh-day Adventist Accordance users, thanks to its 12,000 study notes and 65,000 cross references. It also includes a unique, linked reference system that highlights major themes of the Bible.

Pastors and counselors should check out Competent to Counsel, and its companion book, The Christian Counselor’s Manual. Both of these resources by Jay Adams deserve a place in the Christian counselor's library.

The Gagging of God is a Gold Medallion Award-winning work by D.A. Carson that addresses the question “Is Jesus the only way to God?” Carson affirms the deep need for the Gospel’s exclusive message in today’s increasingly pluralistic global community.

Jesus Under Fire is a direct response to the Jesus Seminar and the increasing scrutiny over the historical Jesus. Michael Wilkins and J.P. Moreland examine this issue and present evidence supporting a traditional biblical view of Jesus.

History buffs can check out two fantastic works by Ruth Tucker. Parade of Faith is an engaging history of the Christian Church, while From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya is a history of the past 2,000 years of world missions.

We hope you enjoy these new releases, and we look forward to bringing you more great Bible study resources soon!

We released the New Testament volumes of the Revised EBC last October, with a promise to release the Old Testament volumes "in a few more weeks." As weeks stretched into months, we've received more and more "When?" questions via phone, email, and forums. If you've ever wondered why we are usually so reluctant to forecast release dates, now you know: it's just too easy for those dates to slip, and we are unwilling to sacrifice quality just for the sake of meeting a deadline.

On the other hand, I'm personally encouraged that we received so many requests for the release of the Old Testament volumes. It shows that many of you are preaching and teaching portions of the Hebrew Bible, rather than neglecting it in favor of the New Testament. Those of you who are should be very pleased with the addition of these new volumes, while those of you who are currently focused on the New Testament will also benefit from this update, which now includes extensive hyperlinking to other Accordance resources.

All in all, those of you who have already purchased the Revised EBC will find that your patience has been rewarded with an excellent commentary in a super-convenient form. Just choose Check for Content Updates… from the Accordance menu to download the completed commentary.

As for those of you who haven't yet picked up the new EBC, what are you waiting for?

The unusual thing about this search result is that it found one occurrence of the preposition εἰς which has an acute accent. Since εἰς does not usually take an accent, it's natural to want to check out the accented occurrence. But how can you find it?

Now that you've read through all the posts of the previous blog series, you should be able to figure out how to construct a search for the one occurrence of the inflected form εἴς, but it's easier just to have Accordance do it for you. To do that, simply select the form εἴς in the Analysis window, then choose Search Current Resource from the Amplify button of the Toolbar.

This will open a new search tab with the search already defined for you and the result displayed.

From this we can see that the preposition εἰς is accented because it is immediately followed by an enclitic—that is, a word that causes the preceding word to be accented. That's the kind of thing that is only important to die-hard Greek geeks, but I hope you can see the convenience of amplifying from the Analysis tab. Whenever you see a word or form listed that you just want to explore further, simply select it and go to the Analysis button of the toolbar. It's quick, it's slick, and it's easy.

• Part 1: To search for a Greek lexical form, simply enter the word and hit return. To keep things simple and minimize mistakes, Accordance ignores breathing marks, accents, vowel points, and case—even if you happen to enter them.
• Part 2: To make sure Accordance uses breathing marks, accents, etc. to distinguish one lexical form from another with the same spelling (such as εἰς rather than εἷς), simply put an equals sign in front of the word.
• Part 3: Explained that when you search for a Greek word, Accordance assumes you are entering the lexical form of that word and that you want to find every inflected form of that lexical form.
• Part 4: To search for a particular inflected form rather than all inflections of a lexical form, simply put quotes around it.

In Part 4, we searched for "=εἷς", using both the quotes to indicate we were looking for an inflected form and the equals sign to make sure Accordance paid attention to the breathing mark and accent.

I then asked what would happen if we removed the equals sign and just used the quotes. In this post, I want to answer that question. My hope is that it will help cement in your minds the difference between the quotation marks and the equals sign.

Go ahead and remove the equals sign from the previous search so that your search argument looks like this: "εἷς". When you hit Return, you should see something like this:

Remember that we had set up an Analysis tab to list all the inflected forms beneath each lexical form. With this search, we have found every inflected form spelled epsilon-iota-sigma, regardless of its accent or breathing mark. The presence of the quotes tells Accordance we are searching for inflected forms, but the absence of the equals sign tells Accordance to ignore the accents, breathing marks, and case. Accordance therefore finds five different inflected forms from two different lexical forms—inflected forms which differ with respect to case, accent, and breathing mark.

Thus, if you're wanting to find an inflected form with a specific spelling and accentuation, you'll want to include both the quotes (to indicate inflected form) and the equals sign (to indicate that you want the accents considered).

Now, you need to understand that such a specific search might exclude some occurrences which are accented in an unusual way. For example, look at the inflected form εἴς in the screenshot above. Normally, the preposition εἰς does not take an accent, but in one case it does take an accent because it happens to be followed by an enclitic. I'll show you how to find that rare occurrence in my next post, but for now I want you to understand that searching for exact inflected forms by including both the quotes and the equals sign may exclude cases you may not want to exclude, such as when a form is capitalized, takes an iota subscript, or is otherwise accented in an unusual way.

This last point brings us back full circle to the reason Accordance ignores all that stuff by default: it's just too easy to miss something if you always have to consider every combination of case, accent, and breathing mark. So while Accordance gives you the tools to construct very precise searches, you don't need to know those 'ace' techniques in order to use Accordance effectively.

Here we see that the lexical form εἷς occurs 345 times in a variety of forms. We also see that 96 of those times, the lexical form εἷς is actually inflected as εἷς, rather than as ἓν, μία, or some other inflection.

So what if you want to find a particular inflected form? How can you narrow your search so that it finds just the form you enter and no other inflections? Simply enclose your search term in quotation marks, like this: "=εἷς." When we perform this search, we find only the 96 occurrences of the inflected form εἷς.

So remember:

• To search for a Greek lexical form, simply enter the word and hit return.
• To make sure Accordance uses breathing marks and accents to distinguish one lexical form from another with the same spelling (such as εἰς rather than εἷς), simply put an equals sign in front of the word.
• To search for a particular inflected form rather than all inflections of a lexical form, simply put quotes around it.

Now, I want you to notice something about the inflected form search we just did. In this case, I used both quotation marks (to indicate an inflected search) and the equals sign (to make sure Accordance paid attention to the breathing mark and accent). Is the equals sign really necessary here? What would happen if we removed it?

I'll answer that question in my next post.

In this post, I want to show you another little wrinkle. Let's start by doing the opposite of what we did last time. Let's enter =εἷς to find only the occurrences of that word. When the search is finished, choose Analysis from the Stats and Graphs pop-up to open the Analysis tab. You should now see something like this:

As you can see from the Analysis tab, this search found only the 345 occurrences of εἷς. Yet if we look at the highlighted words in the Search tab to the left, we don't see the form εἷς at all. Instead, we see words like ἓν and μία.

This is because the lexical form εἷς takes a variety of inflected forms to indicate things like gender, number, and case. If you look down at the Instant Details in the screenshot above, you can see that ἓν is the neuter singular nominative of εἷς.

This distinction between "lexical forms" and "inflected forms" is important. Basically, a lexical form is the form of a word you would typically look up in a Greek lexicon: such as the nominative singular of most nouns or the present active indicative of most verbs. When you enter a Greek word in the search entry box, Accordance assumes that you are entering a lexical form and that you want to find every occurrence of that lexical form, no matter how it happens to be inflected.

To see how many different ways the lexical form εἷς is inflected in the Greek New Testament, go to the gear menu of the Analysis tab and choose Customize Display.

This will open a dialog that lets you decide exactly what information you want the Analysis to display.

The columns in the middle of this dialog represent each word in your search. Note how they all contain the LEX item. That's why the Analysis defaults to listing every lexical form found by your search. To have the Analysis list other criteria, you simply drag the desired items into the appropriate column. Since we only searched for one word, only the first column applies here, so we'll drag an INFLECT item into the first column underneath the LEX item.

When we click OK, the Analysis will now show every inflected form that was found underneath each lexical form.

Again, be sure you understand the distinction between lexical and inflected forms. The lexical form is the dictionary form of the word which represents every inflected form. Thus, the lexical form εἷς occurs 345 times in a variety of forms. From the Analysis we see that 96 of those times, the lexical form εἷς is actually inflected as εἷς, rather than as ἓν, μία, or some other inflection.

Now, what if we want to narrow our search so that it finds only those 96 occurrences of the inflected form εἷς? How do we do that? I'll answer that question in my next post.