General review of the package
It is a privilege for me to review this Logos Academic package. I have been using Logos since 2014 as both a student and a teacher. And in my experience over the years Logos has been a great way to build a personal library that I can carry everywhere in the world. Before we jump into the details, I should point out that this review is focused primarily on Logos 8 Academic Standard and not on Logos 8 in general. I will still highlight some of the Logos 8 features but only in the course of evaluating Academic Standard library and features against its objectives as stated on the Logos website – “Designed for: First Year Seminary Students.”
Probably the planning of every serious project starts with defining its end goal. In this case the end goal is to provide a tool (library and program features) to enhance one’s studies during the first year of seminary. What would a student need during his or her first year? And how Logos can help? These questions we are going to answer in this review.
Many seminaries expect their students to write lots of term papers, so they often offer a class on research methods and writing. Some schools recommend or even provide their students with a citation program. Logos 8 Academic Standard does not include any book on research methods, but it does have a citation tool as part of the software. In the program setting you can chose citation style and make certain other adjustments. When you copy something from a book in the program and paste it into a word document, the program will automatically add a footnote with the book citation arranged according to the chosen citation style. The student just needs to put quotation marks around the quote. It makes research and writing so much quicker and easier. The student still must learn the rules of a particular citation style in order to make adjustments as necessary. If you find all the necessary books in your Logos library this small tool will save lots of time and money since you do not need to buy an extra citation program or manually enter the data.
All courses in the seminary curriculum can be arranged in four broad categories: Biblical Languages and Exegesis, Biblical Studies, Historical and Theological Studies, and Practical Ministry Studies. In the first year, students would most likely have some introductory classes in most of these areas.
The strength of Logos 8 Academic Standard is its library resources for Biblical Languages, Exegesis and Biblical Studies. This package includes primary Hebrew and Greek texts (such as Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia and Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament, 28th Edition), standard lexicons (such as Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon; A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint and Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains) and grammars (such as Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar and Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research). One of my favorite lexical dictionaries in this package is The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (8 vols.). This is probably one of the most comprehensive Hebrew lexical works available in English. This package has many other standard tools for careful exegesis. These tools are not only useful during the first year of studies but go beyond it. Every serious academic work should consult these standard language resources included in Logos 8 Academic Standard. As stated before, this package is designed for introductory level students. To move up to the next level you would need to include in your research such works as, A Greek–English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (3rd ed.), and the Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (5 vols.), which are not included in this package.
Next, this package has some very important primary historical texts (i.e. works of the Apostolic Fathers and Josephus, etc.) and some works on theology. It has a collection of Creeds and Confessions in one volume edited by Rick Brannan. Also, it includes the Lexham Theological Wordbook. It would be nice if Logos 8 Academic Standard would include a volume surveying essential Christian doctrines. This package does not have many direct resources for Practical Ministry Studies.
Overall, Logos 8 Academic Standard delivers on its promise. As stated on the Logos website regarding this package “Dive into the biblical text with Logos 8 Academic Standard, containing everything you need for exegesis and interpretation.” This is very true; this resource is ideal for studying the biblical languages and doing exegesis.
Recommendations and Tips:
In this part of the review I would like to give a few practical recommendations or tips on how a first-year student could use Logos 8 Academic Standard. There are couple of tricks I would like to recommend.
Organize books into categories. As my library grew over the years it was not as easy to find all the books I needed until I discovered that all my books could be organized into various categories, such as commentaries, lexicons, grammars, etc. This makes it quite easy to get an overview of all the books in a selected category and find the ones you need.
Use layouts. You can create as many layouts as you like. For example, you can create one layout for Systematic theology studies, another for Greek grammars etc.
An extended explanation of how to organize your books and make layouts goes beyond of the scope of this review. However, you can easily find online various tutorials on how to do these things.
In a nutshell, here are the pros and cons of Logos 8 Academic Standard:
Pros:
- Rigorous library you can take with you everywhere.
- Ideal for exegesis. Primary sources and standard research tools.
- Helpful in translation work as well.
- Time economy. The program helps to do research and writing much faster.
Cons:
- Price. For some might be hard to afford. However, there is an option of a payment plan.
- Less resources on Systematic Theology and Practical ministry.
I am thankful to Logos Bible Software for providing a copy of Logos 8 Academic Standard for this review.