I have been using the newly released Logos 9 for the last week or so, and I am here to write about it. Let me say right up at the front end that I received the upgrade in exchange for a review, but no restrictions whatever were placed on the content of the review. I am at complete liberty to say whatever I think of this program, which I will now proceed to do.
I love using Logos. I have been a user for a long time now. I think I was even pretty young when I started.
Now to be frank, I don’t come anywhere close to using all the features available, but as with many programs that are this robust, I find that it is possible to figure out your favorite features, and start using it in accordance with your own routines and idiosyncrasies.
One of the things I have found myself doing is drawing from the serendipitous discoveries that are becoming increasingly common for me. Today is Friday, and let me give you an example of a preaching point that fell out of a word search I was doing just this last Wednesday during my sermon prep.
I am going to be preaching through Psalm 121 this coming Lord’s Day, and one of the striking elements of that psalm is the emphasis on Jehovah keeping us. YHWH is our keeper (v. 5). As I was drafting my outline, I found myself wanting to make the point that God keeps us because God is the God who keeps covenant. God keeps covenant by keeping us. I knew that the phrase keepeth covenant was out there in Bible land, so I went to Logos and typed in keepeth covenant. Three relevant verses popped up, and the first thing I noticed was that all three of them (Deut. 7:9; Neh. 9:32; Dan. 9:4) had an additional phrase — keepeth covenant and mercy. A quick right click on each mercy told me that it is the same Hebrew word (hesed), and there I am, typing away on my outline, muttering something like look at that.
And the KJV renders the same Hebrew word in the Psalm in two different ways. In the first half of the psalm we find keep and in the second half we find preserve. In my background reading, this was pointed out by a commentator, which I was able to instantly confirm with that ever available right click.
A new feature of Logos 9 is the usability of their Factbook. In the text of Scripture as you are reading it in Logos 9, a number of words are now underlined. Double click on such a word, and their Factbook entry for that word pops up immediately. Factbook entries are like a report from a research assistant who hands you a manila folder full of background information on just that word. So I just double clicked on keeper (Ps. 121:5), and in less than a second I have a full report on that particular word open up in a new pane. In Factbook, I have an entry from Harper’s Bible Dictionary, a media collection of images of keepers, key passages about keepers, word studies of Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek words that are used for keepers and, as they say on television when selling gizmos that chop up vegetables, much, much more.
With each new upgrade, Logos has gotten more and more usable, for the most part. Here would be the place where I register my one quibble, and it may actually turn out to be a quibble about Logos 8. On the last upgrade, the check box feature for your prayer list disappeared on the mobile app. It was still available on the desktop, but I use my tablet for my morning devotions. And here is my grievance — I had to pray for people without having a little box to click. But maybe they will fix that soon and try to do better.
Seriously, Logos Bible Software has been a huge help to me, and things just keep getting better. Here is an intro video for you to check out. And here is another one, for those of you who gotta have more. If you would like to purchase anything—and why wouldn’t you?—here is a link to do it with.
“And here is my grievance — I had to pray for people without having a little box to click.”
Truly we must suffer many things to enter the Kingdom!