Verbum Bible Software (the Catholic version of Logos Bible Software) is the backbone of my research and writing on religion. It allows me to drill into massive amounts of data with ease. Scripture, original language resources, church documents, history, papal writings, theology, philosophy, commentaries, and, most important of all, a huge amount of patristic material is all part of my Verbum library. I can highlight, annotated, clip, export, compare, and do almost anything I need to do with text. I can’t imagine doing some of the work requires for my masters without it. Most recently, the ghost series drew heavily on Verbum.
Version 6 was just rolled out, and it adds some very nice new features. This video provides an overview, but some of the things added are
The Psalm Browser was the new feature that really caught my eye. It allows you sort psalms by type, author, and more using visual tools.
Ancient Literature Tools gather all ancient resources that refer or relate to a passage.
Timeline and Atlas: These tool allows you situation Bible books and events in a historical context, and locate them geographically.
Cultural Concepts is a search result that gather references to ancient cultural ideas (such as anointing or hospitality) found in scripture.
Bible Book Guides provide various kinds of introduction and background material for each book of the Bible.
Word Sense does a good job at distinguishing among various meanings of the same word.
Factbook functions like a heavily linked encyclopedia within Verbum, pulling up information, links, references, and resources for topics and individuals, such as “carpenter” or “St. Thomas Aquinas.”
Media resources have been expanded with some powerful search features and some nifty new items, such as aerial views of locations as they look in Bibles times, and as they look now.
There are more robust search and language tools, enhanced introductions to Greek and Hebrew, and much more in the update. I’m loving it so far, and plan to write about a couple of features in more depth.
You can buy or upgrade Verbum here, and see the full line of Logos/Verbum 6 tutorials here.
Wonderful Things 