Logos 9 Review
Alright guys, so…Logos 9.
If you’re friends with me on Facebook, you’ve no doubt seen me post a couple times a month about the various deals and features available with Logos.
I’ve had Logos since 2015, when I first got the Basic (free) version of Logos 5. It was a little clunky, and to be honest, I still got more use out of BibleHub (then Biblos), so I didn’t use it much. Every now and then I would check the website for the free book of the month, but that was about it.
And let’s be honest: the sticker shock was substantial. Hundreds of dollars, or in some of the higher packages even thousands!? For BIBLE SOFTWARE!?
Then in June of 2020, my wife bought me Logos 8 Messianic Jewish Gold for Father’s Day. I mean, technology + Bible? It was basically made for me.
From there, I started down the Logos path and man, let me tell you: I’m a believer. It was a bit silly of me to think of it simply as Bible software, now that I look back. Because it’s not just Bible software, it’s an entire Scripture study ecosystem. If you use e-Sword or BibleHub and can’t imagine paying so much money for Bible study…I suggest you buy a package and try it for 30 days. You can always get your money back. If you put in the time, it will definitely be worth your while. It’s not just an electronic Bible. It’s not just for searching for English words and phrases and getting results. It’s infinitely more than that, as I hope to describe below.
First off, let me say: I am a Faithlife (the parent company) affiliate. I am not employed by them, but I do share affiliate links, and if someone makes a purchase through one of those links I do get a small compensation (most often about 5%, every now and then more). But the reason I became a Faithlife affiliate was because I LOVE their software products. In fact, at Nehemiah Restoration Fellowship – my local fellowship community where I serve as co-pastor and overseer – we use multiple Faithlife products, because that’s how great they are. But I’ll get to more of that below.
For me, I use a number of features, and I often feel like I’ve hardly even scratched the surface. As a Grad School student, I use it for research. Logos will even create the citation for you when you copy and paste from it, and you can choose how to have the citation formatted (Turabian, APA, MLA, etc.).
I also use Logos for my own personal study, and have used it to research for basically all of my writings - be it blog posts, answering questions people have asked, sermons, grad school papers, or even just as a digital ebook reader.
On the sermon note, Logos actually has a Sermon Builder tool that lets me type out a teaching and quickly insert references and quotes and notes into it. It's like a word processor (think MS Word, LibreOffice), and even has some spell-check features, bullet points, lists, formatting, and more. That sermon can then be published online instantly with the click of a button. At Nehemiah Restoration Fellowship, we use Faithlife Sites for our congregational website, and Faithlife Give for our online giving portal, and Faithlife Proclaim for presentations. Since all of these (like Logos) are Faithlife products, they are all integrated. Now that may not mean much to many of you, but to anyone in congregational leadership, this is huge. It means I can type up the transcript of my Sabbath teaching and have it published directly to our website. Not only that, but I can create slides in-line with my teaching, without needing to create a separate PowerPoint document for it. I can then publish those teaching slides directly to Proclaim, which will import them into the sermon section of our Shabbat presentation (after worship and liturgy and announcements and prayer requests and blessing the children). All of this times savings is huge for me. I don’t have to type my teaching, THEN create a PowerPoint presentation, THEN upload and format it for our website. I type it up in Logos, click a couple buttons, and the rest is done for me. As a full-time employed, full-time graduate student, co-pastor, and father of 5, I’ll take all the time savings I can get.
So there’s my shpiel about all the other things that are great about using Logos 9 and Faithlife products aside from just Logos 9 itself. So now let’s start the review of Logos 9, now that it’s been available for 6 months. If you used Logos 8, you likely noticed that it was pretty speedy, but had moments where it lagged. To be sure, part of this was likely due to hardware. While that will always be the case when you’re running high-octane software on older hardware, Logos 9 definitely improved in that area. I upgraded from 8 to 9 on launch day, and the speed improvements were noticeable (even though I used the same computer, an ASUS ROG gaming laptop).
Oh, and there’s a Dark Mode now! That was one of my top features I was requesting, as silly as that may sound. It saves the eyes when you're sitting in a dimly lit home office.
The top three features that I use – and indeed, that you will likely use as well if you’re like me – are:
I’ll address each of these in order.
Passage Guide
Here you enter a reference, like Mark 11:23, and then Logos will bring up a bunch of resources for you to review. For me most of the time, there are three things I’m interested in. Commentaries, Parallel passages, and Rabbinic / Apocryphal works. These three sections will include any links that address either the same verse or topic, from your library. (It’s worth noting here that the more resources you have, the more Logos can do. If you only have Bibles, then you won’t see any references to Rabbinic works, but you will see cross-references. But if you purchase the Talmud, then cross-references to the Talmud will show up in Passage Guide, and will link to places where the Talmud discusses a similar topic to the verse in question).
Exegetical Guide
Similar to the Passage Guide, you’ll select a passage and click enter. The result will seem similar in that it is broken into multiple sections. But here, you will see a breakdown of the passage into its original language (Greek, in the case of Mark 11:23), with interlinear and parallel language resources. Below that is shown word from the original language, with its definition from whatever Lexicon is your preferred one (there are many available, but I most recommend the BDAG/HALOT bundle). After this breakdown of each word, it will list the “important” words found in the passage. For example, using the exegetical guide on Isaiah 56:4 highlights the words Shabbat, shamar, and יהוה, given their prominence in the passage. Below that are listed cross-references that relate to the passage, as well as other Scriptures that have a high correlation to those “important words.”
Word Study Tool
Lastly, is the Word Study tool. This will be the favorite of a lot of people reading this, most likely. You can search for an English word as it appears in whatever translation you’re using. Or you can search for the Hebrew or Greek word directly. It will tell you how that word is translated in any of the translations you own; it will also break down the number of places it is used, and how it is translated in each place. Further, if searching for a Hebrew word, you can see how the LXX translated it in a given place (provided, of course, you own a Septuagint resource in Logos. I recommend the Lexham English Septuagint for that).
You can get information about grammatical usage, such as how many times a word is the subject or object of a sentence. You can get information about its semantic range (such as how many times the word is the action of an agent, or of God; or how many different “themes” are associated with that same word). And for the language nerds like me, you can even click to hear the word pronounced through your speakers.
Docs
I already pretty much explained the Sermon Builder, and how you can create a sermon while simultaneously creating your presentation slides. You can also create others sorts of documents, and anything you have in a Word document you can import as a Personal Book. If you’ve written books before, or articles, or really anything that you would like to be imported into Logos, you can do so with Personal Books. Any .docx file that you’ve got you can import and use alongside your Logos books.
Free Resources
Additionally, as I already somewhat mentioned, Logos gives away a free book every month. Verbum – the Catholic version of Logos – also does the same, and so does Faithlife Ebooks. This means even if you don’t spend any money on books, you can slowly build your library 3 books per month, at no cost. And once you own a book, it’s yours. Forever. It’s a digital license, so it’s just like having the physical copy on your shelf. As a quick side note, if the "Catholic" bit there makes you nervous (or makes you think, "There's no way I'd need this"), you'd actually be surprised. For example, some of the Catholic resources that I've purchased on a monthly sale include some of Brant Pitre's works. He has done incredible work on the Jewish origins of the Last Supper, and on Paul as a New Covenant, Torah-Observant Jew. If you just read the books, you wouldn't have thought they were written by a Catholic scholar. So at any rate, a free book is a free book.
Other Apps
The mobile app is a great ebook reader, and has a few of the more popular tools built into it as well. The three I mentioned – Passage Guide, Exegetical Guide, and Word Study – are all available on the free mobile app. All your resources will be available via the cloud, but if you want to keep them for offline reading, you can download any (or all) of your resources to your mobile device. I love being able to read any of my books anywhere at any time, but research is much easier on a tablet or especially PC (like my setup, with a laptop and two extra monitors).
There is also the web app, which has a few additional tools than the mobile app, but not quite as many as the full desktop app. It can be accessed from your browser, and has all your resources available via the cloud. Great for accessing everything on a computer that isn’t your primary computer, or from a Chromebook or some other small, lightweight laptop.
Closing Remarks
All in all, it’s incredible software. I’ve demonstrated and convinced multiple people to invest in it, and no one has yet complained that it wasn’t worth it.
Lastly, a few pieces of advice if you’re considering purchasing.
Thanks for reading my review.
Shalom.
If you’re friends with me on Facebook, you’ve no doubt seen me post a couple times a month about the various deals and features available with Logos.
I’ve had Logos since 2015, when I first got the Basic (free) version of Logos 5. It was a little clunky, and to be honest, I still got more use out of BibleHub (then Biblos), so I didn’t use it much. Every now and then I would check the website for the free book of the month, but that was about it.
And let’s be honest: the sticker shock was substantial. Hundreds of dollars, or in some of the higher packages even thousands!? For BIBLE SOFTWARE!?
Then in June of 2020, my wife bought me Logos 8 Messianic Jewish Gold for Father’s Day. I mean, technology + Bible? It was basically made for me.
From there, I started down the Logos path and man, let me tell you: I’m a believer. It was a bit silly of me to think of it simply as Bible software, now that I look back. Because it’s not just Bible software, it’s an entire Scripture study ecosystem. If you use e-Sword or BibleHub and can’t imagine paying so much money for Bible study…I suggest you buy a package and try it for 30 days. You can always get your money back. If you put in the time, it will definitely be worth your while. It’s not just an electronic Bible. It’s not just for searching for English words and phrases and getting results. It’s infinitely more than that, as I hope to describe below.
First off, let me say: I am a Faithlife (the parent company) affiliate. I am not employed by them, but I do share affiliate links, and if someone makes a purchase through one of those links I do get a small compensation (most often about 5%, every now and then more). But the reason I became a Faithlife affiliate was because I LOVE their software products. In fact, at Nehemiah Restoration Fellowship – my local fellowship community where I serve as co-pastor and overseer – we use multiple Faithlife products, because that’s how great they are. But I’ll get to more of that below.
For me, I use a number of features, and I often feel like I’ve hardly even scratched the surface. As a Grad School student, I use it for research. Logos will even create the citation for you when you copy and paste from it, and you can choose how to have the citation formatted (Turabian, APA, MLA, etc.).
I also use Logos for my own personal study, and have used it to research for basically all of my writings - be it blog posts, answering questions people have asked, sermons, grad school papers, or even just as a digital ebook reader.
On the sermon note, Logos actually has a Sermon Builder tool that lets me type out a teaching and quickly insert references and quotes and notes into it. It's like a word processor (think MS Word, LibreOffice), and even has some spell-check features, bullet points, lists, formatting, and more. That sermon can then be published online instantly with the click of a button. At Nehemiah Restoration Fellowship, we use Faithlife Sites for our congregational website, and Faithlife Give for our online giving portal, and Faithlife Proclaim for presentations. Since all of these (like Logos) are Faithlife products, they are all integrated. Now that may not mean much to many of you, but to anyone in congregational leadership, this is huge. It means I can type up the transcript of my Sabbath teaching and have it published directly to our website. Not only that, but I can create slides in-line with my teaching, without needing to create a separate PowerPoint document for it. I can then publish those teaching slides directly to Proclaim, which will import them into the sermon section of our Shabbat presentation (after worship and liturgy and announcements and prayer requests and blessing the children). All of this times savings is huge for me. I don’t have to type my teaching, THEN create a PowerPoint presentation, THEN upload and format it for our website. I type it up in Logos, click a couple buttons, and the rest is done for me. As a full-time employed, full-time graduate student, co-pastor, and father of 5, I’ll take all the time savings I can get.
So there’s my shpiel about all the other things that are great about using Logos 9 and Faithlife products aside from just Logos 9 itself. So now let’s start the review of Logos 9, now that it’s been available for 6 months. If you used Logos 8, you likely noticed that it was pretty speedy, but had moments where it lagged. To be sure, part of this was likely due to hardware. While that will always be the case when you’re running high-octane software on older hardware, Logos 9 definitely improved in that area. I upgraded from 8 to 9 on launch day, and the speed improvements were noticeable (even though I used the same computer, an ASUS ROG gaming laptop).
Oh, and there’s a Dark Mode now! That was one of my top features I was requesting, as silly as that may sound. It saves the eyes when you're sitting in a dimly lit home office.
The top three features that I use – and indeed, that you will likely use as well if you’re like me – are:
- Passage Guide
- Exegetical Guide
- Word Study tool
I’ll address each of these in order.
Passage Guide
Here you enter a reference, like Mark 11:23, and then Logos will bring up a bunch of resources for you to review. For me most of the time, there are three things I’m interested in. Commentaries, Parallel passages, and Rabbinic / Apocryphal works. These three sections will include any links that address either the same verse or topic, from your library. (It’s worth noting here that the more resources you have, the more Logos can do. If you only have Bibles, then you won’t see any references to Rabbinic works, but you will see cross-references. But if you purchase the Talmud, then cross-references to the Talmud will show up in Passage Guide, and will link to places where the Talmud discusses a similar topic to the verse in question).
Exegetical Guide
Similar to the Passage Guide, you’ll select a passage and click enter. The result will seem similar in that it is broken into multiple sections. But here, you will see a breakdown of the passage into its original language (Greek, in the case of Mark 11:23), with interlinear and parallel language resources. Below that is shown word from the original language, with its definition from whatever Lexicon is your preferred one (there are many available, but I most recommend the BDAG/HALOT bundle). After this breakdown of each word, it will list the “important” words found in the passage. For example, using the exegetical guide on Isaiah 56:4 highlights the words Shabbat, shamar, and יהוה, given their prominence in the passage. Below that are listed cross-references that relate to the passage, as well as other Scriptures that have a high correlation to those “important words.”
Word Study Tool
Lastly, is the Word Study tool. This will be the favorite of a lot of people reading this, most likely. You can search for an English word as it appears in whatever translation you’re using. Or you can search for the Hebrew or Greek word directly. It will tell you how that word is translated in any of the translations you own; it will also break down the number of places it is used, and how it is translated in each place. Further, if searching for a Hebrew word, you can see how the LXX translated it in a given place (provided, of course, you own a Septuagint resource in Logos. I recommend the Lexham English Septuagint for that).
You can get information about grammatical usage, such as how many times a word is the subject or object of a sentence. You can get information about its semantic range (such as how many times the word is the action of an agent, or of God; or how many different “themes” are associated with that same word). And for the language nerds like me, you can even click to hear the word pronounced through your speakers.
Docs
I already pretty much explained the Sermon Builder, and how you can create a sermon while simultaneously creating your presentation slides. You can also create others sorts of documents, and anything you have in a Word document you can import as a Personal Book. If you’ve written books before, or articles, or really anything that you would like to be imported into Logos, you can do so with Personal Books. Any .docx file that you’ve got you can import and use alongside your Logos books.
Free Resources
Additionally, as I already somewhat mentioned, Logos gives away a free book every month. Verbum – the Catholic version of Logos – also does the same, and so does Faithlife Ebooks. This means even if you don’t spend any money on books, you can slowly build your library 3 books per month, at no cost. And once you own a book, it’s yours. Forever. It’s a digital license, so it’s just like having the physical copy on your shelf. As a quick side note, if the "Catholic" bit there makes you nervous (or makes you think, "There's no way I'd need this"), you'd actually be surprised. For example, some of the Catholic resources that I've purchased on a monthly sale include some of Brant Pitre's works. He has done incredible work on the Jewish origins of the Last Supper, and on Paul as a New Covenant, Torah-Observant Jew. If you just read the books, you wouldn't have thought they were written by a Catholic scholar. So at any rate, a free book is a free book.
Other Apps
The mobile app is a great ebook reader, and has a few of the more popular tools built into it as well. The three I mentioned – Passage Guide, Exegetical Guide, and Word Study – are all available on the free mobile app. All your resources will be available via the cloud, but if you want to keep them for offline reading, you can download any (or all) of your resources to your mobile device. I love being able to read any of my books anywhere at any time, but research is much easier on a tablet or especially PC (like my setup, with a laptop and two extra monitors).
There is also the web app, which has a few additional tools than the mobile app, but not quite as many as the full desktop app. It can be accessed from your browser, and has all your resources available via the cloud. Great for accessing everything on a computer that isn’t your primary computer, or from a Chromebook or some other small, lightweight laptop.
Closing Remarks
All in all, it’s incredible software. I’ve demonstrated and convinced multiple people to invest in it, and no one has yet complained that it wasn’t worth it.
Lastly, a few pieces of advice if you’re considering purchasing.
- Payment plans are available, if you want to pay monthly over a time instead of shelling it all out at once. That’s how I got Messianic Jewish Gold. $80/mo is a lot more palatable than $800 all at once.
- Affiliates can always get you a discount. While I would LOVE if you used my links for all your Logos purchases, I understand you probably won’t. However, if you’re ever in the market for a base package, make sure you contact an affiliate, because even when Logos isn’t running a sale, affiliates can get you 10% off or more at any time.
- Make sure you check the Logos website every month, as sales change around 1pm EST on the first day of every month. Additionally, affiliates often hear of new sales a few days in advance and may be able to help you out if you’re looking for something specific.
- If you’re enrolled in an accredited college / university, DEFINITELY apply for the student discount. All you’ll have to do is email Logos a copy of your transcript or enrollment documents for proof, and you’re set for 6 months. During those 6 months, you can get awesome discounts on resources, some all the way up to 50% off. After those 6 months are up, if you’re still actively enrolled, just update your documents and they’ll renew it for another 6 months.
- Be sure to go through the training videos. There are plenty covering all the basics on the Logos website. But if you need more, there are companies like Logos Daily and Morris Proctor Seminars that exist solely to offer technical training. You can even get free sessions from them in some cases, or custom tailor a class to your needs. Need help doing original language research? Or getting the most out of the maps features? Or getting a better grasp on the 100+ datasets? Maybe you want to learn more about Sermon Builder? Whatever it is, you need to make sure you invest the time – and possibly $20 or so – on training. Like buying your first handgun; it’s great, and you can figure most of it out, but it really pays to have proper training.
Thanks for reading my review.
Shalom.