Back in February I announced that Logos’ Learn to Use Greek and Hebrew 2.0 version — with new content and in the Mobile Ed format — was on pre-pub. The product is now in the final stages of production. That means it’s nearing the time when the pre-pub price will disappear. If you want to learn how to effectively use state-of-the-art tools for working in Greek and Hebrew via English reverse interlinears — as well as learning what the payoffs are for interpretation — you need to act fast.
My Logos colleague Johnny Cisneros and I are the creators / professors for this Mobile Ed course. Johnny did the Greek; I did the Hebrew. We recently shot some video talking about its aims, philosophy, and features. You can watch one of those videos here. It’s a nice summary of our motivation. Videos from both of us that overview our respective course components are located here.
Hello Dr. Heiser. I was reading the promotional videos for Logos 6 and had a question that I hope you can answer. I like reverse interlinear bibles. But I have noticed that in every reverse interlinear that I have found, the Greek is limited to the New Testament. I would like to find a reverse interlinear that would let you do a word search for every instance of a particular Greek word, not only in the Greek New Testament but also in the Greek Septuagint, so that the entire Bible would be accessible — through Greek — to a single word search. Is such a feature available in Logos software? Are Greek words able to be indexed not only in the NT but also in the Greek OT?
The reverse interlinears are made by a hand-linking process — hand linking each word of a translation to the Greek text (and the same for Hebrew and Aramaic in the OT). Consequently, reverse interlinears and their searching parameters for other sources will only be available when other texts are “reverse-interlinearized.” Since we have a traditional interlinear LXX, that corpus would be the closest to having that done (for internal process reasons I won’t bore you with). The Greek Pseudepigrapha is not as far along. If you want to poke this a bit at Logos, you should email Rick Brannan. Tell him I sent you. 🙂
I noticed that the Mobile Ed course works best off the Platinum resources. How restricted will these lessons be if you only have Gold level resources available? I’m debating between getting this or signing up for a Memra course and I’m trying to weigh the options. Thanks!
The lesson content (i.e., the videos of the scholars teaching XYZ) are not at all restricted. The library you have (e.g., less than Platinum) only becomes an issue when linking out to a resource that the professor might quote, or that one of the course designers may have linked to for further information.
I’m curious if you’d recommend this over the MEMRA course? What are the advantages of each of them?
It depends on what you’re after. If you want to be able to translate and, eventually, read Greek and Hebrew, then it’s MEMRA. If you’re wanting (only) to learn grammatical concepts and how to use tools effectively, then it’s Learn to Use, hands down. We view Learn to Use as something ALL biblical students should work through. We think it will encourage certain people to take traditional introductory courses where translation is the goal. Either way you’ll learn grammar, which is crucial for interpretation, but Learn to Use won’t give you vocabulary or translation ability (there’s no memorization like that).
Hi Mr. Heiser,
I recently pre-ordered the Greek and Hebrew Logos Mobil Ed Course but as I was scrolling through your website I came across the MEMRA course that you are offering as well. I was wondering if you could inform me or direct me as to what the difference really is between the two.
Thank you Mr. Heiser!
A lot. MEMRA courses are traditional language courses, aimed at helping you be able to translate and read those languages. That means a lot of memorization. I go through vocab and grammar in videos. Learn to Use is a much broader product that lives within the Logos environment. It’s focus is learning grammatical terms and concepts that will assist in biblical interpretation. There’s no memory work. The course works with Logos’ truckload of software tools. MEMRA has nothing like that. It’s just about delivering a first-year language course with the above stated goal.