A very cool article from Brandon Vogt in an upcoming issue of OSV.
"Imagine showing an iPhone to St. Thomas Aquinas and explaining that it holds his entire Summa Theologica. Picture a shocked St. Augustine seeing you read the Church Fathers on a thin screen, then listen to a homily preached hundreds of miles away. Modern technology provides us Catholics an array of study tools that would leave any saint in awe. Upon seeing our laptops and tablets, smartphones and iPods, they’d marvel at how easy it is for us to explore Sacred Scripture."
You can continue reading this article here
8 comments:
Used to use the very first Logos software in 1990, back in the day when I was a Protestant pastor.
This sounds great except that I am roughly 500.00 short of the price point. Even the monthly fee is well beyond my current reach.
Owen,
It is, for sure, a fantastic resource, but like you I am not sure it is in my family budget right now.
Hello Timothy,
Have you, or any of your readers, tried the free iPad app.
And if so, what are your thoughts? Also, does the free mobile app only contain the Protestant canon?
Thanks in advance.
Pax,
John
John,
I don't know the answer, but I am sure one of my readers will.
I'm a heavy user of Logos; it is really excellent for serious use of the Bible.
Some other great mobile apps are Olive Tree and iPieta (the latter contains exclusively Catholic content.)
To answer Jonathan's question: The free resources available on the Logos app tend to be resources that are in the public domain, so no recent Catholic resources are included (the Vulgate and the SBL Greek Testament are included, though.) The free translations are mostly Protestant, but generally include the Protestant Apocrypha when available. A wide variety of Catholic resources are available for purchase (for example, NABRE was just released today.) There are some packages as well, see here.
It is worth finding a way to get an academic or ministry discount if you plan to buy a lot from Logos -- this will save you an enormous amount of money.
For me Logos is most useful in dealing with original language resources: Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin, Coptic, etc. It is widely used by Bible scholars (other popular packages include Accordance for the Mac, and BibleWorks. Personally, I like Logos best on the PC and I like Olive Tree best on smart phones.
Some other apps that may be interest to Catholic users are iBreviary, iMass, iMissal, the above mentioned iPieta, and Universalis. All of these (as well as Olive Tree and Logos) most seem to be available for other major smartphones (especially Android) and for the Kindle Fire as well.
I did not quite understand Owen's remark about monthly fees; maybe he was thinking of cell phone fees? If you install these apps on an iPod Touch, iPad, or Kindle Fire with WiFi, I think there should be no ongoing monthly fee.
No, one can buy Logos as a lease on a monthly payment plan (say, $120/month), instead of dropping $6k up front. That's what he was talking about.
Hello Theophrastus,
Thank you for your input. As always, it was very helpful.
Like you, I highly recommend iPieta. It's a wonderful resource with a very nice selection of classic Catholic books and Church documents. Well worth the price of $2.99.
Pax,
John
What about esword and Biblia Clerus - both excellent and totally free! A little more limited that Logos, granted, but still...
More and more Catholic modules are appearing for esword all the time, and I use it regularly.
Something else I'm using regularly lately are the resources over at ESVBible.org. I've 'taken on' writing a blog of my own as a Lenten discipline, and have written a brief review of the stuff available thereHERE
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