They are not at all comparable. Logos is designed as an electronic
library environment, featuring various kinds of links and lookup
capabilities among potentially infinite combinations of books. Its
version of the NA26 Greek Testament contains an old set of the
Gramcord parsing tags associated with each word. However, its search
engine IS NOT AT ALL DESIGNED TO DO WHAT GRAMCORD'S DOES (I just
raised my voice a little; I didn't really shout). Logos lets you look
up individual words by some combination of lexical root and parsing
data (e.g. all the optatives, or all the perfect participles from
GINWSKW), and you can do rudimentary proximity and wildcard searches.
But only Gramcord (and to a considerable extent BibleWorks for
Windows, and, of course, Accordance for the Mac) lets you construct
an elaborate description of a construction based on a combination of
root forms, parsing data, and position within a clause or in relation
to other words. For example, in looking for potential dative and
accusative absolute constructions, you can specify in Gramcord that
you want passages where a dative or accusative participle lacks an
agreeing article within, say, the three previous words, but is
preceded by a noun or pronoun agreeing with the participle. (Notice
that I'm saying "agreeing": no program contains data identifying
syntactical relations. The databases don't know which adjective
modifies which noun. They only know the gender, number, and case of
each so that you can locate those that (happen to) agree.) Logos
won't let you specify words to be excluded or select two or three of
the cases (you can only specify one or use a wildcard for "any").
There is much more that could be said, but this should get the main
idea across. Tom, if you'd like a review describing Logos and
BibleWorks more in-depth (with some reference to Gramcord), email me
with the subject line "Software Review" and you'll get a copy of the
review by automatic reply. Others, of course, are also welcome to a
copy, but most list members have already received this invitation a
couple of times over the past year or so.
Incidentally, an article in the current BAR by Alan Segal has a
sidebar discussing some software packages, and a footnote mentions
Harry Hahne's web site and my review available via email. I'll betray
my ignorance in order to satisfy my curiosity: can someone tell me
who Alan Segal is? He didn't contact me prior to inviting BAR readers
to email me for the review (that's no problem), and I've not heard
his name otherwise. He writes as though he is well known to the BAR
audience, so I figure my Fundamentalist head-in-the-sand stance is
catching up with me here. (Actually, the problem is not that my head
is intentionally in the sand but rather that I simply lack the
capacity to keep up with everything I'd like to keep up with).
****************************
In Love to God and Neighbor,
Randy Leedy
Bob Jones University
Greenville, SC
RLeedy@bju.edu
****************************