From Ars Technica:

Specifically, the texts will include pages from Oxford’s Bodelian Libraries and the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (BAV). The digitized pages will include early printed books—called incunabula—from Rome and the surrounding area; Greek manuscripts including early church texts and works by Homer, Sophocles, Plato, Hippocrates; and Hebrew manuscripts from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. “With approximately two-thirds of the material coming from the BAV and the remainder from the Bodleian, the digitization effort will also benefit scholars by uniting virtually materials that have been dispersed between the two collections over the centuries,” a statement from Oxford read.

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It’s called Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics (BAGL). You can find the full text of the first handful of articles at their site, and there is also an RSS feed here.

HT: Rod Decker

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Cambridge has made high quality scans of Codex Bezae available to the masses. Check it out here.

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Google just officially announced and released their competitor to iBooks and the Kindle platform. You can check out the announcement and details here and the actual store here.

There are four things I like about this, even though I have a growing collection of Kindle books. First, it encourages competition and development. Second, Google includes a web-based reader, which means I don’t need any kind of device other than a computer to read my books. Third, finding free (open-domain) books is much easier with Google than with the Kindle. Finally, I love that all the open-domain books that Google has been scanning over the years (such as random volumes of the Patrolagiae Graeca Hodge’s Systematic Theology) are all freely readable on any device that Google Books runs on (which is, like, all of them).

And Apple’s iBooks might as well be dead to me, since it only runs on one device. It’s the prettiest and easiest, but also the least accessible.

Your opinions?

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Google translate now offers Latin translations. Church historians rejoice!

Via: New York Times

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Here’s a handy trick when you want to look up some bible verses in a snap.

For those who don’t know, Google’s Chrome Browser allows you to search popular sites straight from the address bar. Many sites provide search functionality by default, and Chrome automatically adds those sites to its database. But any site that is searchable can be added to Google Chrome. Here’s how to do it for the ESV Bible online.

• First, go to the ESV website here.
• Right click on Chrome’s address bar and then click on “Edit Search Engines…”
• This will bring to a new dialog box. Click “Add…”

• This will bring up yet another box, with three text boxes. For “Name” type something like “ESV Bible.” For “Shortcut” type in something short and memorable, like “b” or “esv” or “bible.” Then the real magic, for the “URL” box copy and paste the following text:

http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/search/?q=%s

• Click “OK” and you’re ready to go.
• Now try it out. Open up a new tab and click on the URL bar. Type the keyword you entered in the previous step and then press “TAB.” Now type in what you want to search. The result should be like the picture below. Pressing return will load up the ESV Bible webpage with the results of your search.

• For Firefox: You can do the same in Firefox, but the process is slightly simpler. Just go to the ESV website here. Then in your search box click on the left hand side drop-down arrow. You will see a list of search options, at the bottom of which will be “Add ESV Bible.” Click on that and it will be added. You can now search the esv by selecting it in the search bar. To search from the URL bar you need to set a shortcut. Click on the search engine dropdown, then “Manage Search Engines,”  then select “ESV Bible,” then “Edit Keyword,” and set that to your keyword of choice. Now type the keyword in the address bar, then your search, then return. Easy!
• If you’re interested in this sort of thing, check out my posts on adding the Westminster Bookstore and Westminster Library to your search bar.

Related posts:

1. Getting More Use out of Firefox’s Search Bar
2. Subscribe to ESV Bible Reading Plans
3. Add the Westminster Seminary Library to your Browser Search Bar

David Stark at New Testament Interpretation reports on the (still beta) roll-out of Biblia.com, an excellent web resource for Biblical Studies. Check out the full report here, or if you’d just like to see the goods, check that out here.

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1. Göttingen Septuagint in Logos Pre-Pub
2. Discourse Analysis Software from Logos
3. New Features at Bible.Logos.com

The always interesting Phil Gons has a wonderful guide to blogging in Greek and Hebrew. You can find that here.

Looks like he is prioritizing Gentium as a Greek font, which is also my font of choice. And if you don’t know how to type in (Unicode) Greek and Hebrew, make sure you check out this post.

Related posts:

1. New Polytonic Greek Font
2. New Digital Freely Available Greek NT in the Works
3. Fonts for Polytonic Greek

Now that I am (interim) pastoring at Christ the King PCA I find that I am spending a lot more time in prayer. I also find it difficult to keep track of all that I am praying for, and for how those the situations were resolved.

I started with a pen and paper prayer journal, but I have found that I never have it when I need it, and since I tend to lose things I worry that it might fall into the “wrong hands” if I try to carry it everywhere. So I am now experimenting with a new system. I am treating prayer like I treat other parts of my life—prayer is something that I need to prepare for, that I need to keep track of, and most importantly, that I need to do. It is a (blessed, glorious, holy) task. So, like other tasks, I have begun putting prayer requests into my Remember The Milk (RTM) list. (For an introduction to using RTM for Getting Things Done (GTD), see this.)

I have a “Pastoring” list where all prayers get added (along with other churchy things). All prayer requests get tagged with the “@prayer” context tag (I use the @ in RTM to create contexts; if you’re familiar with Getting Things Done that probably makes sense to you, if not try here). If the prayer is about a person, I stick their phone number in a note, and if they have a tag in my system (my wife gets a tag, and so do co-workers and other people I interact with regularly) that tag gets added as well. I also add the date of the prayer request to the note. If the prayer has an expected end date (“pray that my stressful event Friday goes well”) I give it a due date, if it is more open-ended I don’t. I use the notes feature of RTM to keep track of how it all develops. When the prayer is answered, I “complete” the prayer, but I can still go back to it later because RTM will let you see completed tasks—all your answered prayers.

This system is secure (RTM’s servers are super encrypted, and my passwords are super weird and long), it is available to me anywhere (I love my new phone!), and it works almost exactly like most prayer-journaling systems I hear about. The biggest downside is… well, it feels weird. Prayer is such a sacred thing, and pen-and-paper seems more personal/appropriate/holy.But is pen and paper more sacred than bits and pixels?

I have talked to a couple of pastor friends regarding this but have yet to find a system that works for me. Does anyone have any suggestions, pen-and-paper or otherwise? Is there anyone out there who uses technology to keep track of their prayer life? Anyone think that sounds, for lack of a better word, weird? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Related posts:

1. Getting Things Done with Remember the Milk
2. How I use drop.io for Sermons, Papers, and GTD

Everyone who’s anyone is familiar with Facebook, and most people probably know about other social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter. Well if your in the academy you can add yet another social network to your list: Academia.edu.

Similar to LinkedIn, Academia.edu allows users to establish networks of contacts specializing in their field. You can fill in your credentials, upload papers, add information about the rest of your department (which might be problematic…), and a whole host of other thinks.

The site looks pretty slick, though I noticed a good deal of sluggishness and some less-than-attractive interface problems (text going off-screen, etc). There also seemed to be some privacy bugs to work through. For example, the front page of the site shows you a structural tree of a variety of Universities. It appears that you can add your name anywhere you like, provided you have an email address from that University. That could be problematic as the information included is now not only about you, but also about the University in question. How does the site verify the information entered? Or is that the responsibility of the University? That’s not so much of a problem for LinkedIn–your lies stay on your page–but for something like this fact-checking seems to be more necessary. Since I could not find answers to those questions on the site, I thought it best to refrain from taking part. Perhaps more information will be released soon, or perhaps Nerdlets readers who have taken the plunge can provide some info in the comments.

In short, while this might be promising, but I’m holding off for now.

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1. Dropbox: Part Sync, Part Backup, All Good