I read a terrible article that made me want to post a response entitled “5 Reasons to never read [Fill in offending website's name]“. It was so bad it inspired me to do something I don’t do a lot – defend Logos Bible Software.
I’m a Logos user but I’ve critiqued the popular Bible software company and their products lately. Yet after reading this ridiculous review, I had to say something.
The review offers what the reviewer calls 5 reasons to not buy Logos. Here they are with my response:
Thousands of Books You’ll Never Use
Many Bible software packages do the same thing Logos does – offer lots of books you won’t use. The maker includes a bunch of books so they can brag about the fact that they offer “hundred of titles” in each of their base packages. I get that the writer of the original post might not think all the tools available in some Logos packages are useful. One man’s wasted tool is another man’s treasure. I don’t use Matthew Henry’s commentary in any form, but I know others who love it. To me it would just waste hard drive spice. To others, they wouldn’t buy Bible software if it didn’t include it. I love the Holman Christian Standard Bible, but others wouldn’t want it on their hard drive.
Logos offers some interesting collections and throws in a lot of added content. Some will find the added content more useful than others. Is that a reason to not buy an application? Of course not. It’s a reason to say, “Cool! They have a lot of stuff and in that content I’ll find some useful tools.”
Thousands of Dollars You’ll Never Save
I can understand not wanting waste a lot of money on tools you’ll never use. I hang around the user forums for a number of Bible software programs and find that many users buy just about any new book available. One user in one forum literally owns everything available. That program offers more content than on person can read or use in a lifetime.
The original post’s complaint is not a fair complaint to make about Logos. It is a good thing to remember when buying Bible software. Don’t throw good money away on added content unless you think it will be useful.
As for Logos, if you buy software from them and find it’s not useful, they have a fair and generous return policy.
Thousands of Hours You Would Never Spend
The writer of the original post complains that Logos returns too many results when you search. That’s a problem? Sure, only if you don’t understand how to prioritize the tools in Logos.
When I run what’s called a Passage Guide search on my next sermon passage, Logos returns a huge list of useful tools that I can read to study that passage. The same holds true for the Exegetical Guide, which focuses on language study tools, while the Passage Guide focuses more on tools you would use after doing your language study.
Logos provides too much for me to effectively study in a reasonable amount of time. It also gives me a way to list the most important tools first. I go into my library and prioritize my favorite tools. That way those tools show up at the top of the list. If for some reason I’ve exhausted all of those and still can’t get a handle on the message of a passage I have the extra content to fall back on for further study. Doesn’t happen often, but with Logos I have the help I need.
This problem would still exist no matter what Bible study tool you own, if you own a lot of tools. The original writer brags about Bibleworks. It’s a great tool for Windows users. I used it all the time when I was a Windows user. It also has more content than I can use. So does WORDsearch, PC Study Bible, QuickVerse and Accordance.
You Can Only Read One Book at a Time
Not true! I’m reading about five books right now, not including my Bible and the reference works I access each week as I prepare my Bible studies, sermons and Preaching class. True I can’t literally read more than one book at a time, but I can read a little out of book one, then out of book two and then out of book three before I study my Bible, read a commentary and consult a few Bible dictionaries.
To do all that reading with physical books, I’d need to be Superman to carry it all. On my iPad, iPhone and Kindle Fire I can carry those book and hundreds more.
Sometimes I’ll refer to a book I read last month. With Logos and other iPad apps, I can pull out that book and show it to the person I’m telling about the book.
Technology Changes
True. It’s the reason Bibleworks doesn’t add a lot of extra content and recommends physical books. Books don’t change. They are heavy and gather dust. It can make it hard to transfer from one place to another when you move or travel.
The writer of the original post said he or she is a missionary in a country dangerous enough to make it unwise to name him or herself. I would think that such a person would like the ability to carry Bibles inconspicuously. I’d also think such a person could like to save time and money transferring a library oversees. If I served as an International Missionary, I wouldn’t bring my physical library with me. I’d carry my laptop, my iPad and iPhone and a good backup of my books on a flash drive. That’s it.
Don’t get me wrong. I love books. I have hundreds of them. I just don’t buy them much anymore because I love digital books.
Digital books I bought for use in STEP from QuickVerse years ago are useless to me now. When QuickVerse upgraded and no longer offered STEP as a tool, they did offer to let me transfer them to their new format. WORDsearch did the same. Logos upgraded their format a few times and every time they gave users a new copy of their books for free.
Technology changes and I’m glad. I still own the same books I had before it changed much.
Final Thoughts
I was pretty hard on the review in my opening paragraphs. You should’ve sent he original draft; it was worse. That’s because this review introduced the review in sensationalistic way as link bate, the practice of writing just to get links from other sites. I won’t like to the review. Instead you can find it if you see the wonderful website BS Review the author of which had a similar response.
I must admit that I’ve offered negative comments about Bible software, Logos included. I’ll be more careful after reading this ill-advised screed.
