An email came into my inbox the other day from Logos.com, the company that developed the Logos Bible Software. Now, if you follow this blog at all, you know that I’m not really a great admirer of this program, though I do use it as my primary Bible software currently. I would love to use Olivetree or TW5 or some other free or cost effective program, but they just do not have the features that Logos does. Despite this, I don’t think the tool and feature set that Logos does have really justifies the prices they demand.

So, let’s jump in and see if Logos really does provide “bible tools for every budget”….

My Current Setup and What I Paid

Over the last 15-20 years I’ve used The Word Bible Software exclusively. It was a major step up from e-sword at the time, and its major selling point was it had a free module for the Apostolic Bible Polyglot (a Greek NT/OT).

Unfortunately, despite TW5 serving me well all those years for free, with plenty of good commentaries and other study tools that cost me nothing, I did find as I started my Master’s degree and then went on to my Doctorate that TW5 was really not cutting it. It has limited search capabilities compared to what I was needing. I could not easily import existing ebooks that I had and search them as well. Though not a functional issue, the interface was really dated and the formatting of each module was different, leaving search results hit or miss.

I went out searching for a new program, willing for the first time in my life to pay money for a Bible software. The first thing I recognized right off the bat was the commercial programs required large internal hard drives. For whatever (ridiculous) reason, they could not operate or store modules on external flash drives, etc. This required the purchase of a new laptop ($400) and then the purchase of a program. I initially selected Accordance and what a mistake that was. It is a terrible product put out by really unprofessional people. The most oft used phrase I received on the forum or from tech support was, “No, Accordance doesn’t do that.”

Out of desperation, and after spending around $500 for modules, I abandoned ship and started experimenting with Logos’ free version. After a month or so of watching videos on YouTube I had a good idea what I needed and what the program could do. Here is what I finally ended up with concerning software and modules.

1. Software – Academic Essentials
2. English Bibles – NKJV, EOB, NET, NIV, LES, LEB, NLT, KJV, ESV, etc.
3. Greek Bibles – TR, BYZ, LXX, NA28,
4. Hebrew Bibles – Masoretic
5. Commentaries – Faithlife Study Bible, New CommentaryPulpit, UBS Handbooks, Haydock,
6. Tools – ISBE, Easton’s Bible Dictionary, BDB, Thayer, Eerdmans Dictionary
7. Other – Church Fathers 37vol, various ebooks imported

Overall, I’ve spent just shy of $1000 for everything on the Logos platform. Unfortunately, while the desktop version is quite stable and mature, the android version is neither. Last year, when I switched to using my android phone as my main computer with a bluetooth keyboard attached, I quickly discovered that the android Logos app was severely limited and did not work well with the keyboard. Even basic tasks like copy/pasting text was impossible. After struggling to finish my ThD dissertation with the android logos mobile app, out of desperation, I broke down and purchased yet another laptop (MacBook) just to get back to a functional Bible software.

But, at nearly every turn, I have been priced out of modern tools (this might actually be a blessing). I simply refuse to pay $1000 or more for a commentary set. This limitation has given me the time to be able to thoroughly research these titles (like the Word Biblical Commentary) to ultimately discover they are not really very dependable, consistent, or consistent with a straightforward, plain reading of the text.

If I were to do it again, I would skip the UBS Handbooks. Even at the $299 price I paid for them, they are not really the first place I go to find comment on a verse.

The positives, though, do outweigh the often exorbitant and limiting prices. First, the interface and the font/formatting is quite modern and refreshing. There is a reading mode which works well when doing devotionals. In this latest iteration, I have been able to create a layout that really works with my process. I have the main screen all the way over to the left of the screen, with a search window open and filling the remaining space to the right. I have added several tabs to the search window, namely: TSK, Exegetical Guide, Topic Guide, Cited By, NET Bible Notes (with parallels of all commentaries), New Commentary, Pulpit, UBS Handbooks, and then an index for the Church Fathers. All of these are linked together with the main text in the left side window so everything updates as I move from verse to verse. Back in the left window I have the NKJV (with parallels to all English Bibles), the Greek Texts, The Church Fathers. In the informational pane to the right of this main left side window is the Informational pane, Devotional Reading Schedule, English Bible tab, and then various apparatuses.

Having the main screen basically divided in the middle makes it much easier to look at text while also having my Scrivener window open (which is on the right).

It works currently for my post-doc position where I volunteer as a student mentor and am enrolled in a systematic study program of the 66 books of the Bible. And if I were prepping sermons each week I could see the benefit of some of the tools available, such as the cited by tool, the exegetical tool, and the passage tool, but, thankfully, I am not (I guess there is an argument to be made that each one of my blog posts can be likened to a sermon, but I won’t press that argument).

A Free Option?

But, the question remains, does Logos provide a Bible Tool for every budget? Let me run a few hypotheticals:

First off, the very fact that I had to upgrade by just under $1000 is an indication that Logos does not provide Bible Tools for the poor or moderately income levels. The free version of Logos Academic Basic:

1. KJV, LEB, LES,
2. Lex Heb, SBL
3. A Few Bible Dictionaries
4. New Commentary
5. TSK

This package would give you the KJV, which is fine but ridiculously obsolete when it comes to readability (in my opinion). I base this on sitting in a pew as a new believer with an NIV in my hand and every time an obsolete word came up the pastor would take a moment to explain it. It was already corrected in the NIV. Now, I do not recommend anyone use the NIV as their primary Bible, though I did use it for the first year I was a believer and it served me well. But, it’s basic fault is it contains the critical text in the actual text while relegating the majority and textus receptus to the footnotes. You can have the reverse by using the NKJV.

There is provided here, though, the Lexham English Bible which is the equivalent of a modern English translation, though it does not follow the MT, but the critical just like the NIV. So, while, technically, the free package does provide an English translation, they could have thrown a few more in the mix to ease translation pain, or at least add a modern version of the TR English (such as the NKJV).

It does provide more than one Bible dictionary, which are fine. I would prefer the ISBE, but it cost me an additional $17.99 to purchase. In my opinion it is important to have older resources or, at least, have both so you can better gauge the critical creep that most modern commentaries contain.

There is included also a New Testament Greek Apparatus, which is helpful for sorting through the textual variants. And, while it does provide some basic language texts (Hebrew/Greek) it only provides the SBL GNT which is a critical text. Again, they could have included a TR or Majority text as well. With the additional lexicons provided it is possible that the original languages are covered to a point (not the Textus Receipts). A few of these are interlinears or reverse interlinears (which are great since you don’t have to leave your preferred English translation to get at the original languages).

Overall, I think the free program with the free tools is a pricing stunt and cannot actually be recommended as a genuine group of study tools for today. Yes, you can pay a little extra and get a few additions to your lineup (such as a few more English translations to balance the textual issues), but unless you’re willing to spend a few hundred dollars, you will not have any kind of comprehensive references to check in with when you need to.

Inflated Pricing

The reality is, Logos is executing a pricing strategy in both their marketing and operations. They do not genuinely provide a valid group of bible study tools for every budget because their pricing strategy actually zeros out those who have less money in favor of their target customer: wealthy or affluent professing Christians who have a larger disposable income and professional ministry or para-ministry workers who have a large budget to work with. Example: someone I once became acquainted with had spent $32,000 on Logos resources. Yes. I said $32,000. That’s not a typo. That’s almost what my house cost me when I bought at the bottom of the market. I can live on that amount for several years. It’s kind of gross just thinking about it, if I’m honest. But, this is the target customer Logos is looking at attracting.

One way they illustrate this is by how they price their commentaries. Most range between $500 and $1000 with a few at $2000 or more. I, personally, think buying commentaries that are not a complete set are a waste of time and this factor has actually left me rather soured by modern commentary sets. It’s the first thing people say when asking for opinions about a particular set like the New International Commentary or the Word Biblical Commentary, “It’s not consistent. This book is good but that one is not.”

Additional issues with commentary sets with Logos is lack of consistency with complete sets. I purchased the UBS Handbooks because they were highly praised by a few people I was influenced by, and the price surprising dropped down to my “buy” number ($299). After purchasing, though, I discovered at least one book was not included in the series. The book was in print elsewhere, but oddly not included. Nothing was mentioned in the notes about this missing book in the sales copy. The only way I would have know is if I had compared the list included with a list from the Bible (which I now do). But, it just seems a little unethical in my view.

Theoretically, any budget can take advantage of Logos software. Even free of charge. But, while technically correct, practicality would conclude that the person using the free version will have some gaps in their resources, making things more difficult. So, really, the email I received the other day claiming, “Bible Tools on any Budget” is really disingenuous at best and an outright lie at worst. I would argue Logos purposefully makes the free version of their product just uncomfortable enough to encourage users to upgrade. It is a marketing gimmick if nothing else and is akin to purposefully building a failure rate into a product so the customer has to buy a new one down the road.

No Different than any Other Business, But…

But, what might surprise people, Logos or Faithlife (the company behind the program) is actually NOT a ministry at all. They are not a non-profit ministry. Their purpose is not to serve the body of Christ at all, but to bring a product to a particular customer and maximize profit.

Now, there is a lot of talk on the forums and around the Christian community as users makes quick excuses for Logos with things like, “Well, everything is a business” or “They have to pay their bills, too.” The error here does not lie on Logos doing something wrong, but on modern, western Christianity and especially evangelicalism which is a kind of hybrid quasi-religious version of Christianity that has so commingled itself with capitalism that it can no longer tell the difference between the two. And this Logos is counting on. It counts on Christians to think and behave like capitalists, like consumers, and not like biblical Christians.

It would be one thing if Logos (Faithlife) claimed to be doing a ministry service for the Church. But, even if they did that they would still find good company in the plethora of “ministries” that operate no different than a secular corporation. Most modern Churches today are not biblical but corporate entities with the expressed mission of reaching the world but practicality would say their real goal is to gather, sate, and extract from the middle class. Yes, yes. I hear all the protesting. We need a place to meet. Pastors need to feed their families. How can we give if we don’t combine our resources? I’ve heard all the excuses. The problem is “pastor” is not an actual biblical term (it’s only used once in the Bible in Ephesians 4:11, but it’s for the Greek word for elder or shepherd). Rid the pastor parasite from the fellowship and you free up 60% sometimes 80-90% of the churches ongoing resources. Light a match to that godawful “meeting room” and you now really have something to “use for the poor.”

But, the Angel in Revelation is pretty clear, “He who is unjust, let him be unjust still; he who is filthy, let him be filthy still; he who is righteous, let him be righteous still; he who is holy, let him be holy still” (Re 22:11).

Best Overall Commentary on Logos

I did want to mention, as I do frequently, that I did find a serendipitous surprise shortly after switching over to Logos from TW5. In that previous program I was able to take advantage of Lange’s Commentary, JFB Commentary, and a few others like the Cambridge Commentary and the Cambridge Greek NT and Meyer’s Exegetical Commentary on the NT. When I switched over to Logos, though, these commentaries were quite expensive (sounds familiar). While Meyer’s and the Cambridge GNT was affordable, the others were hovering around $250 – $300. That’s just too much for any one commentary in my view. Plus, by this point, I’d had a few years with each of these titles and knew their weaknesses quite well.

In the process of the first few months of using Logos and filling in the holes, I stumbled onto the Pulpit commentary. To my surprise, it was quite affordable (I think $79) and it is one of the few commentaries to be verse by verse, book by book, does not seem to squeeze a preconceived agenda, is not hamstring by critical interpretive techniques, and actually covers all 66 books in a rather consistent way.

Over the first year of using it, I was shocked to find its depth was truly outstanding. It deals with the original languages when it needs to, exceptionally so, and does not use unnecessary academic jargon to make it feel important. I’ve found pairing the Pulpit Commentary with the UBS Handbooks and the other free single volume commentaries from Logos (especially the Faithlife Study Bible Notes and the NET Bible Notes) and then also maximizing utility of all my resources (including imported titles which I have quite a few) by using the Cite By tool (especially helpful getting as much out of a huge library like the 37 vol of the Church Fathers allows me to get an overview of any verse or passage in the Bible from my entire library almost instantaneously. Additionally, having the ability to do a deep dive into any resource with the Reading Mode is quite nice. I can also make extensive use of the advanced search capabilities of Logos (one of the main reasons I bought a MacBook and went back to the desktop version) and the system is quite universal and uniform in its presentation of those texts. I actually used this feature extensively during my ThD dissertation and found I could look up a word, phrase, or execute relational searches between keywords in a variety of configurations and the flexibility of the system allowed me to open all of these search results (the ones I manually selected) into a separate floating window that could be full-screened for further exploration.

But, hands down, the greatest tool so far that I’ve been able to take advantage of since switching to Logos has been the Pulpit Commentary. Personally, I do wish the Word Bible Software developers had plans to modernize their product and add some uniformity to the module displays and add some advanced search capabilities. If they did I would stay with them the rest of my life. But, when it became apparent that TW5 had no plans of new iterations in the future, Logos became my next best option.

Conclusion

Logos is certainly no prize when it comes to it’s business tactics, its unethical marketing strategies, or it’s claims to be “serving” the Church when in fact it is operating no different than any other for-profit organization on the planet. But, because it is not a ministry and is just a secular corporation, it really needs to be examined based on that criteria, not a ministry one. It has a product. It costs a certain amount. There are many different options and does cater to a wide spectrum of people on the economic class scale. But, it certainly does not provide Bible tools for every budget. But, then again, maybe I’m an outlier. I am in most other respects so why not here too.

If someone is doing basic searches, basic reading, and has no need for importing titles they already own, you actually will do much better with a free program like TW5. You can get quite a balanced set of tools that will allow you to dig into the text like you can’t with paper tools (even if you drag around a duffel bag on wheels full of books like I used to in my 20’s). But, if you needs something more advanced, like you are a pastor (I would rethink that occupation if I were you), or a professor, or you teach in your church, or you are a seminary student getting your MTS, ThM, PhD, or ThD, I would recommend Logos and an eclectic base package + add ons that costs no more than $1000 (actually you can spend as much as you want, I’m not your mother). Like I said above, I would avoid the newer, flashier (and ridiculously expensive) commentaries available, or at least combine them with older commentary sets for comparison. There is a whole lot of twisting of the Scriptures going on today, so you really need to be careful what well you draw from. And, for heaven’s sake, I do not recommend you even try Accordance. It is a pitiful program put out by a company with terrible customer service. Save yourself 6 months of aggravation and just use Logos or TW5.

Until my next post….

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