Periodic Reminder

I’m the semi-official Logos Bible Software representative for BJU. Honestly, I’d rather your money go through the Campus Store, but there are some details which haven’t fallen into place there yet.

Here is the discount link for BJU faculty, staff, and students:

http://www.logos.com/academic/bju/2010

I recently heard my pastor say that if he were training for ministry today he would go electronic. I highly recommend the Platinum package to anyone who can work up to it or buy it outright. You get several quality commentary sets and many other excellent resources (along with some detritus and certain works that are great but you won’t use—but don’t let that dissuade you).

Let’s run through a quick study of what Logos Platinum includes that a ministerial student would likely buy anyway if he went analog (not necessarily what he should buy, as in the case of the TDNT, IMHO). I was very conservative, leaving out many other things you might be interested in and just picking a few commentaries where you would want to pick more. What follows is the best price I found for each item in a very quick check:

• One Greek Interlinear: $15
• Hebrew Bible*: $18 pb
• LXX: $30
• BDAG: $130
• Holladay’s Concise Hebrew Lexicon: $25
• BDB: $20
• Abridged TDNT: $35
• Metzger’s Textual Commentary: $27
• BECNT on Lk, Rom, 1Cor, Php, Rev: $200
• NIGTC on Php: $40
• Pillar on Mk, Jn, Eph, Jas: $108
• NAC on Ex, Jsh, Jdg-Rth, Prov+Ecc+Sng, Gal, 1+2Pet+Jude: $134
• A Bible Dictionary like the NBD: $30
• Archer’s OT Intro: $27
• Biblical Foundations for Manhood and Womanhood:  $12
• Concise Theology: $10
• Hodge’s ST or Strong’s ST: $30
• Josephus: $12

*You get a GNT (actually several), of course, but you’ll still want a paper copy for the textual critical notes and other reasons. But most seminarians will not need the marginalia in a  Hebrew Bible like they need it for the GNT.

There are also a few resources you wouldn’t buy in print but you will definitely want electronically in some format—they might as well be in Logos. That would include the morphologically analyzed (that is, parsed) GNT, Hebrew OT, and LXX. You may also end up using some of the syntactically analyzed original language texts. I’m going to put the value of these kinds of resources—conservatively—at $100.

I left out a few things that are nice to have in Logos but are free elsewhere such as the Apostolic Fathers and Calvin’s Institutes. But to be fair, it’s really nice to have these searchable and indexed on your own hard drive in a familiar format. So let’s add another $40 of value.

I’d like to add one more intangible: convenience. That includes portability and searchability. I’m going to peg that at $100, though its actual value may be much greater to you—say, if you become a missionary and can avoid shipping costs.

Now let’s take out a value of $43 because you can’t lend your books out  or read them in bed without hassle, and because your wife and kids can’t stumble across good books in your library as easily—and because that makes my math work out better. The value I’ve given to all of these intangibles is highly disputable, but you need to take them into account somehow.

I got a total value of $1100, and that is just a bit below what Platinum will cost a student with the BJU discount. I highly recommend going Platinum.