Logos Bible Software

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Logos Bible Software

Logos Bible Software 3
Developer:	Logos Research Systems, Libronix Corporation
Latest release:	3.0 / May 1, 2006
OS:	Windows 98/Me/NT4.0(SP6a)/2000/XP
Use:	e-books, digital library, Bible study
License:	Proprietary
Website:	www.logos.com

Logos Bible Software is a company that produces software for biblical analysis. They are best known for producing Logos Bible Software Series X, a bible study application for Microsoft Windows built on the Libronix Digital Library System.

1 Brief history
2 Logos today
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Brief history

Logos Research Systems, Inc. (d.b.a. Logos Bible Software) was founded in 1992 by two Microsoft employees, Bob Pritchett and Kiernon Reiniger, along with Bob’s father, Dale Pritchett. The three quit their jobs to develop Christian software.^[1]

Bob Pritchett and Reigneir produced the first commercial Bible software for Windows: Logos Bible Software for Microsoft Windows v1.0. In 1995, Logos released version 2.0 of the software, which became one of the first commercial applications to use Unicode technology.^{[citation needed]} In 2001, Logos Bible Software Series X product line was introduced, based on a more extensible architecture dubbed the Libronix Digital Library System (Libronix DLS).

[edit] Logos today

Since its inception, Logos Bible Software has grown from an operation run, literally, from the basement of the Pritchett home into the largest developer of software for the Christian market and a key company in multilingual electronic publishing. Libronix DLS is being used to deliver Bible reference libraries to customers in 144 countries^[2] around the world in English, Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian, Afrikaans, and many other languages.

Currently there are more than 5,000 titles^[3] from over 100 publishers formatted for the Libronix DLS, including titles from publishing houses such as Oxford University Press, Eisenbrauns, Brill, Bantam Doubleday Dell, Thomas Nelson, Merriam Webster, T&T Clark International, Continuum, Eerdmans, Moody Press and Baker Books.

Recently, the company has developed and released new tools for studying biblical texts in their original languages. Logos Bible Software 3, launched in May 2006, includes a number of resources developed in cooperation with scholars and organizations from around the world. These include a syntactically tagged Hebrew Bible produced from the files of a lifetime project undertaken by Francis I. Andersen and Dean Forbes; a syntactically tagged Greek New Testament being developed by Dr. Albert L. Lukaszewski; and a second syntactically tagged Greek New Testament from data furnished by the OpenText.org project. Also included in Logos Bible Software 3 are three reverse interlinear Bibles, an unusual format that retains the English translation on the top line and ties each word (or word group) of the underlying Greek or Hebrew text to an English word (or word group). This enables English readers to view and research the corresponding word in the biblical language.

In March 2005, the company announced that a Macintosh version of Logos Bible Software was in development.^[4] When released, Logos for the Mac will bring some 5,000+ digital Bible reference books to the Apple platform, many for the first time.^[5]

Headquartered in Bellingham, Washington, Logos currently has a staff of around 100, with some employees located at a South African subsidiary.^[6] The company was named a 2006 Best Christian Place to Work^[7] as reported in Christianity Today magazine.^[8] In 2005, CEO Bob Pritchett was named a winner of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in the Pacific Northwest for the category Realizing Business Potential.^[9]