Has anyone found any good online commentaries written/managed by someone in the Lord's church?

Has anyone come across any discussion about trying to get such a project together?

Seems like there should be enough of us computer guy (gal) types to start such a project and spend the next five years building it if there isn't something underway already.


...b

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Butch Adams
Blue Ridge, VA
http://daleridgechurchofchrist.net
http://mydailypause.org

OUTSTANDING!!!! YES, we MUST do this! This has topped my interest level and think we must all seriously think of how to put this together.

We need to make sure the information cannot be edited by just anyone, like wiki is though.

Good job brother bringing this up!

There are some commentaries we can pull from that are from brethren that are older and may be out of publication. We may be able to utilize them too.

Well - I've given it a great deal of thought already because I have been teaching our teen class for the last year in a pure Bible reading and "quick commentary" format. We have read Acts, The "T's" (Thess. Timothy. Titus), Corinthians and now we're working on Philippians. They are responsible for each chapter's gist and a memory verse or two. (We are memorizing Philippians 4:4-13 right now - We did 1 Cor 13 last quarter)

The quandry has been providing them with consistant reference material. I've been a Christian since 1975 so I can manage fine with me, a Bible, and a Strong's numbers. Some of my brothers that need to also be teaching or learning to teach a class aren't so well versed. Since we limit the pulpit and teachers to reading from ASV, KJV(preferred) or NKJV, those that use something else to study from aren't comfortable teaching (that is an excuse anyway)

So we need a commentary that we can recommend without saying "That's a good one except for _________________ "

The Wikipedia Software (MediaWiki) is free and is capable of being locked down to the Nth degree so limiting the contributors is no problem.

I think the hardest part of the technical nature would be the layout. ie. How do you comment on a verse or a section of verses and keep it organized?

The task seems daunting until you realize that if 100 people give 100 hours, we have 10,000 hours of sound scripture contemplation searchable in Google for the world to find.

__________________
Butch Adams
Blue Ridge, VA
http://daleridgechurchofchrist.net
http://mydailypause.org

Here's Coffman's NT commentaries online: http://www.searchgodsword.org/com/bcc/

__________________
--Laura

O Lord, I know the way of man is not in himself; It is not in man who walks to direct his own steps.
Jeremiah 10:23 (NKJV)

This does not intimidate me at all. In the preachers files and BTF alone, we have thousands of pages in a short time of study and articles.

It would be a site that would grow over time to become a huge resource. This kind of resource has already been forming in the sites themselves but this could be on a different level. We have many of the core people in place that can get this launched fairly soon too. Brother Hersey has been working on Revelation.

@ Laura - Thanks .... I was not aware of this person or his commentaries. I'll check them out.

@ Steven - Now that you mention it I imagine there is a great deal of good stuff in a few of these forums and blogs that would make the beginning of the effort grow very fast through copy and paste. The trick then is to get the blessings of all the stakeholders of the sites to work together (probably just a formality) to pull the info together.

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Butch Adams
Blue Ridge, VA
http://daleridgechurchofchrist.net
http://mydailypause.org

We could begin a decent skelton fairly quickly. Once the bones are there, we can begin to build meat. We can make it very complete eventually.

Abilene Christian University Press published this. I wonder if they hold the rights. One thing for sure, I do not want to publish Coffman's commentaries in ours if we have to post the Abilene publishing group's name also.

I will not be part of anything that has Abilene Christian University Press's name on it as part of my work for God.

We can make a commentary just as good anyway if this is the case.

We can make ours a printable book version also. I would like to have bible class materials as well be printable that go along with it.

I found another site that had hosted it and it said they were working w/ ACU to get relicensed to use host it.

Amen

Concur.

I have the mediawiki software at http://daleridgechurchofchrist/commentary in order to learn to use it and figure out the layout. I don't think this account has the bandwidth available without upgrading to do a full blown effort, but anyone is welcome to check out the software for testing and learning.

...b

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Butch Adams
Blue Ridge, VA
http://daleridgechurchofchrist.net
http://mydailypause.org

I suspect they (Abilene) hold the copyright. The OT used to be published on the net, but it was taken down due to some copyright issues. I personally would like to have the commentaries in a format that e-Sword or JSword can read. I haven't found any.

To that end, I think it would be worthwhile to not only have sound commentaries in Wiki format but also in a standard format that can be read by these Bible software packages.

__________________
--Laura

O Lord, I know the way of man is not in himself; It is not in man who walks to direct his own steps.
Jeremiah 10:23 (NKJV)

This is good advice because these platforms are the future direction of commentary study tools. We can study what software is best for this. Laura, can you research a bit more into this?

Sure. If I remember correctly, there is an open standard that would probably be best, but let me see if there is more than one...

__________________
--Laura

O Lord, I know the way of man is not in himself; It is not in man who walks to direct his own steps.
Jeremiah 10:23 (NKJV)

Here is J.W. McGarvey's commentary, The Fourfold Gospel online
http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/texts...ffg/FFG000.HTM

Thanks Craig.

I think we can find commentaries like these and some of them will be happy to work with us. As you can see, the format is rough and restrictive. I want ours to look very professional.

@ Craig Thanks ...

I actually have this link for JWM's stuff
http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/people/jwmcgarvey.html

@ Steven

I agree with you there. I wonder how integrating some of the classic stuff that is in public domain would work. I imagine if there was to be a print edition it would be huge

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Butch Adams
Blue Ridge, VA
http://daleridgechurchofchrist.net
http://mydailypause.org

I've looked a small bit into the format issue, and it's not looking very good so far. There appear to have been two efforts to produce a common format so that one can encode a work once and have it work in all the software. The first was STEP, which was an effort by a small consortium of folks. QuickVerse and e-Sword support this format. I am not sure about the other vendors. I personally have *never* found anything in STEP format that I wanted to use. I found reference to it on the net where it was said to be "dying".

OSIS is the second standard format attempt that is newer. It is from the Open Source community. The Sword project (to include JSword) supports this format, but so far, I've not seen any others support it. There is supposed to be a piece of software you can get that will convert OSIS to e-Sword format, but I have yet to get it working. The good thing about OSIS is that it is XML based. It would be relatively simply to write converters for it IF you had access to the required format specs for your target Bible software.

I'm going to write each of the vendors and see where they stand with STEP and OSIS. Perhaps I'll offer to write converters for them if they will share their format specs.

__________________
--Laura

O Lord, I know the way of man is not in himself; It is not in man who walks to direct his own steps.
Jeremiah 10:23 (NKJV)

Outstanding work sister. I look forward to your update. Baby steps brother Butch, baby steps...

I ran across a mark-up format when I was trying to figure out how to import the Bible into MySQL. That was a couple of years ago now, but it seemed pretty promising. I'll check back through my notes when I get home to see if I can come up with the name.

I thought e-sword was an Access database with a password. It's been awhile since I looked under the hood though.

...b

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Butch Adams
Blue Ridge, VA
http://daleridgechurchofchrist.net
http://mydailypause.org

It is. To write an importer, one would have to know the DB format and write something that would take an input file, convert it to DB statements and insert... UNLESS there is some intermediate format that e-Sword uses to import files into the DB. I just need to do a bit more homework. STEP might be the answer, but the Open Source Sword project doesn't appear to be "open" to using STEP. Maybe an OSIS to STEP converter? That would get OSIS into QuickVerse too...

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--Laura

O Lord, I know the way of man is not in himself; It is not in man who walks to direct his own steps.
Jeremiah 10:23 (NKJV)

I am interested to see how this progresses. I think the idea is a good one and would be a great source of information. I am also willing to offer my software development skills if needed.

BTW. I will need some sample text to play with to get anything to work and evaluate options. Might as well use something real rather than dummy text to be thrown away. Any suggestions on public domain text? Coffman is not public domain although I'd love to have his stuff in this format. I am tempted to use my father's work on The Revelation, which is not public domain either, but for which I basically have the copyright (I have and edited the manuscript and had the books printed). I'd want to check with him first and see if he's okay with that. I suspect he would be. Other suggestions?

__________________
--Laura

O Lord, I know the way of man is not in himself; It is not in man who walks to direct his own steps.
Jeremiah 10:23 (NKJV)

COOL!

__________________
--Laura

O Lord, I know the way of man is not in himself; It is not in man who walks to direct his own steps.
Jeremiah 10:23 (NKJV)

Of course brother! We all need each other.