Today, the movie "2012" -- a film based on the prediction that the world will end in 2012 -- began to be shown in our cinemas. Providentially, yesterday and today, the Gospel readings from Luke refer to the day of the Son of Man, and so I had the opportunity to speak about how Christians should prepare for the last day. I reminded our congregation that the last day coincides with the return of Christ and the revelation of the sons of God. Hollywood distorts the picture when it only shows the end of the world and does not include the renewal of creation and the final establishment of the reign of God in Christ, just as the book of Revelation describes it. Fortunately too, next Sunday's Gospel will be on the coming of the Son of Man and based on Mark 13:24-37

Fear and panic should not be the Christian's reaction to the end of the world, since the Lord himself has said that when the end comes, it will be sudden and no one will be able to avoid it. All that the Christian can do is to watch and pray and cling to the Lord. A nice classical sermon on the matter is Augustine's Sermon 97.

The Sermon's Outline

Below is an outline of Sermon 97 showing the main threads of Augustine's arguments.

1. Heed the warning about keeping watch for the last day

2. "Have mercy on me Lord, for man has trampled on me (Psalm 56:2)"

3. All our other goods and ills are uncertain, only death is certain

4. Let us not love the world

Sermon Summary

The Sermon is on Mark 13:32-37 but with emphasis on one's life as a preparation for death.

Each one of us should be thinking about our own last day or else perhaps while are remarking or supposing that the last day of this world and age is a long way off, your last day may catch you napping

After clarifying what is meant by the passage in Mark 13:32, Augustine picks up the theme from the responsorial psalm of that day, Psalm 56:1, focusing on the words "Have mercy on me Lord, for man has trampled on me." Augustine will return to this verse towards the end of the sermon, but in the meantime, he picks up another verse from Psalm 82:6-7

I have said: You are gods and all of you sons of the Most High
But you like men shall die, and shall fall like one of the princes

The man who lives according to God's standards is the one referred to as "gods, sons of the Most High"; when these become reprobates and live according to their own lights, they "like men shall die; they shall fall like one of the princes". Augustine then uses this reference to man's mortality to move on to the argument about making good use of it.

Let us make good use of our punishment, brothers and sisters, let us make good use of our life so that they may turn to our good.

The certainty of death -- Augustine says -- should prompt us to be watchful as long as we live and be discerning about the goods that we are going to keep in the future. Since what we sow here, is what we also reap in the after life. Referring to the story of Dives and Lazarus (Luke 16), Augustine says:

That rich man, when he finished with an illness of delights, came into one of torments. That poor man, on the other hand, finished with illness and arrived at perfect health. But what he got afterward, he chose here; and what he reaped there, he sowed here. (3)

The certainty of death should also be the reason why we are not to love the world. Augustine here, I think, alludes to the whole of Mark 13 where the dissolution of creation (which begins with the destruction of the Temple) is the background of the Son of Man's return. Edmund Hill thinks that Augustine is referring to the fall of the Roman Empire.

Just look, the world is falling to pieces; the Christian stands firm because Christ is not falling to pieces.

The world is unstable and should not be the object of one's delight. Christ is stable and therefore can be trusted and loved. And the Christian, instead of being afraid should rejoice, as the Lord himself says so (John 16:33): "Rejoice, because I have conquered the world." Christ has fought and conquered in His incarnation, death and resurrection. And because of the guarantee given for our own resurrection, we can say "Have mercy on me, Lord, because man has trampled on me" (Ps. 56:1).

Psalm 56 is presented as a prayer of David to God while he was prisoner among the Philistines (1 Sam. 21:12-14). The prayer arises because of the threat of death, he, being in the power of his enemies.

If what you say is true, take a look at yourself; because you are afraid of man's threats, your fear is trampling on you; and because you wouldn't be afraid unless you were a man, man is trampling on you.

Early in the sermon, Augustine explained the word "man" in Psalm 56:1 as referring to those who live according to their lights. Thus here, we find Augustine applying the passage to those who fear because they have turned away from God. Instead of remaining in this state of fear and insecurity, we should cling to God.

So what's the remedy? O man, cling to God, by whom you were made a man; cling to him, rely on him call upon him, let him be your strength. Say to him, "In you, Lord, is my strength". And in response to the threats of men you will sing; and the Lord himself tells you what you should sing at the end of it all: "In God will I hope, I will not fear what man may do to me." (Psalm 56:11)

Conclusion

The end of the world will come on a day and an hour no one expects. The date December 21, 2012 is a highly sensationalized prediction comparable to the predictions made in the past. The end may come today, or tomorrow or the next day. Just remember that the end of the world will also be the beginning of something new. The Mayans thought that after the 12th cycle, everything will be reset. This is in keeping with their cyclical conception of history. The Scriptures tell us something else. Here, history does not return to the beginnings but moves forward to what is new. Thus when the end of this world comes, there will be a new beginning. John's Apocalypse announces something beautiful. "Rejoice, I have conquered the world", the Lord tells his disciples. Augustine reminds us of it and therefore also tells us that fear and panic should not get the better of us. Instead, we should have the peace and the assurance based on the Lord's promises for He will come according to His words: "I will come again, and will take you to myself; that where I am, you also may be" (Jn. 14:3)

The application found at BibleWebbApp is still under development.  John Dyer informs me that he will be housing both apps at http://biblewebapp.com in the future.

Personally, I find the Greek and Hebrew Bible Reader despite its limitation:  it does not have Septuagint.  The text of the New Testament is based on the Tischendorf text with morphology; the Hebrew text is based on the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (morphology, not functional.)

One can study bible verses line-by-line or in context.  The text can be copied as formatted to the clipboard and pasted to MS Word for printing.  I have been doing this for creating Sentence Flows based on either the Hebrew or Greek text.  This web application complements Biblia Clerus which I use for preparing sermons and modules for our parish’s BEC Advanced Training.

Biblia Clerus is the bible software offered by the Congregation for the Clergy and is downloadable for free.  Biblia Clerus is useful for reading Scriptures according to the liturgy.  Texts from the Fathers, Doctors and the Magisterium are also offered for helping one read Scriptures in eodem Spiritu in quo scripta erant.

One other limitation of the web applications of John Dyer is the absence of the Search feature.  For this, one will need The Word (http://theword.gr).  It is a bible software offered for free by a Greek Orthodox programmer.  The program allows one to access the Septuagint, Masoretic text and three flavors of the Greek NT (Stephanus, Tischendorf, Wetcott-Hort), apart from the texts used by the Greek Orthodox Church many modern translations.

I had a glimpse of the contents of the book through the scanned pages that were presented for viewing -- a very small percentage of the 880 pages printed. And I found the book intriguing. Here is a quote that can also explain the title of the work:

Reform and reformation, the constant endeavor to bring to reality Augustine's cultural ethic of brotherly love and living for God: there is the story. Political power and intrigue, moral exhortaitons, incarceration, theological speculation, impassioned preaching, a striving for observance, coercion, persuasion, conviction: the sons of Augustine, from Giles of Rome to Martin Luther, were striving with all means to do whatever they could to make real in their daily lives the ideal and the hope that the members of the Order and of all Christendom ... in their common fight with the devil would finally indeed be changed and transformed by the holy. That it never came about, that it was never realized, was not for lack of effort. The reformation of the Order evolved into the reform of society precisely as society was being torn asunder by the very platform the Order had initiated and pursued. A battle for observance, a battle for religion, the impact of theology ... In the tensions between reform and reformation something had to give way. It did. The world had become another, and the highway to heaven had unknowingly unleashed the horrors of hell. (p. 675)

I've been an Augustinian for twenty-five years but never have I read anything about "an Augustinian platform". The last line of the quote makes it sound as if the Order of St. Augustine was a juggernaut that created a lot of damage in Medieval Europe despite their good intentions. Frightening. Right now there is an atheistic line of argument that blames religion for all the ills of society, declaring that religion has done nothing positive for humanity. Is Saak giving this line of thinking ammunition with his evaluation of the so-called "Augustinian platform"?

But Saak does provide some interesting data for a friar who got his History of the Order of St. Augustine from Balbino Rano with some tidbits from David Guttierez. I read with relish Chapter Two dealing with how the Hermits made Augustine their Father. Saak discusses this under the theme of myth-creation and the forging of the Augustinian identity. The table of contents for this section is indicative:

Chapter Two Creating Religious Identity: The Myth of Augustine
I. From Reality to Myth: The Politics of Augustine's Body
II. The Medieval Augustine

The whole chapter explains how the Augustinians got custody of the remains of St. Augustine from the Canons Regular of St. Augustine. As a student at St. Monica, I read an article by FX Martin, OSA on how the early Augustinians so made Augustine their own Father with the result that they even got custody of his remains from the Canons Regular. That event was the conclusion of a process whereby the Hermits defined themselves as "Augustinians." Saak had his eyes on the politics and "myth-making" behind the event. Balbino Rano mentioned in our history lessons the spurious "Sermon of Augustine to the Brothers in the Hermitage" and its role in Augustinian myth-making. He even opined that it may have been the creation of Jordan of Quedlinberg himself. Saak gives more. He analyzes the texts that created the image of the Medieval Augustine from Possidius to the Legenda Aurea. He does the same for those texts that were used by the Augustinians in showing how they and no other are the true sons of Augustine. In this section, Saak refers to many of the names I already know: Arbesmann and Rano, especially.

Another section which I would have relished reading is the one on "the Passion of Christ." The "Pasyon" as we know it in the Philippines was introduced by an Augustinian. The text that we use even now during Holy Week dates back to the 1800s. Saak's book has the following on the topic:

Chapter Five Passion and Piety: Catechesis and The Power of Images in the Later Middle Ages
I. Passion for Passion
II. Jordan of Quedlinburg's Meditationes de Passione Christi
III. Reading the Passion: Exegesis, Catechesis and Devotion to the Passion in the Later Middle Ages

There is also an Appendix that shows how Jordan of Quedlinburg's Meditationes compares with other "Passion" texts.

Finally, I should mention a Chapter that Saak dedicates to Pastoral Theology, and specifically, Augustinian Pastoral Theology in the Middle Ages and the Studia from which it derived. Here Google preview does not provide any pages. Below is a snapshot of the table of contents for this section

I tried to see whether the book can be purchased from the web. Amazon doesn't have it; nor do the other bookstores that have links on the Google page of the preview. I wonder whether it is already available at least in the Order's library. In any case, at this time when we are trying to recapture our own heritage as a Mendicant Order, this book is going to be valuable. It fills a vacuum for English readers in the Order.

Erik L. Saak. "Highway to Heaven: The Augustinian Platform Between Reform and Reformation 1292-1524" in Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, vol. 89 (Brill: 2002) 880 pp

This volume reveals the political, religious, theological, institutional, and mythical ideals that formed the self-identity of the Augustinian Order from Giles of Rome to the emergence of Martin Luther. Based on detailed philological analysis, this interdisciplinary study not only transforms the understanding of Augustine's heritage in the later Middle Ages, but also that of Luther's relationship to his Order. The work offers a new interpretative model of late medieval religious culture that sheds new light on the relationship between late medieval Passion devotion, the increasing demonization of the Jews, and the rise of catechetical literature. It is the first volume of a planned trilogy that seeks to return late medieval Augustinian theology to the historical context of Augustinian religion. (Quoted from Google)

"So how come he is not ordained?" asked one parishioner pointing to a friar whom I introduced as a class mate. "Why did he enter the religious life if he wouldn't want to be ordained a priest?"

That in essence is the difficulty of lay people in understanding that strange friar called the "religious brother"; they think that anyone who gets consecrated as a friar should also be ordained a priest. If that were the case, then even religious nuns should be ordained. But in fact, the male counterpart of the religious nun is not the ordained priest -- as some would think -- but the "religious brother."

The religious brother is a male religious who, consecrated with the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, live his life in accordance with the Rules and Constitutions of the congregation to which he belongs. This is what I and my classmate became when we took our religious vows after a year in the novitiate. Some religious brothers, however, receive an additional consecration to the ministry and become priests. This is what happened to me, but not to my classmate. So what is the difference: why me and not him? The answer is because the vocation to the priesthood is something different from the religious life. As not all priests are religious (like the diocesan priest), so too, not all religious are priests. I was deemed to have the vocation to the priesthood and so I was entrusted with the ministry after I have been living the religious life for some time. My classmate didn't get ordained because he was convinced he was not for the priesthood.

Mistaken Conceptions

The current difficulty in understanding the identity of the religious brother (sometimes also known as "religious lay brother" as distinct from the brother who is categorized under the hierarchical priesthood) is linked to the crisis of religious life itself. Religious life is an extension of the baptismal consecration. As such it is the life of the Christian but regulated by vows according to a Rule that is approved by the Church. It is not primarily an apostolate or a visible ministry but a mode of living the Christian life. One does not become a religious so as to do something; one is consecrated to the religious life to fully live one's Christian vocation like the poor, chaste and obedient Christ in a community of like-minded persons. In other words, the consecration of the religious builds on that of baptism. Whether male or female, the religious lives that consecration with special bonds of religion -- poverty, chastity and obedience -- in a regime that is recognized and approved by the Church as her own life lived through a particular charism. Anyone who wishes to enter the religious life for example, does not do so primarily to become a priest (because this involves a different vocation) but because one sees that one's baptismal consecration can best be lived out within a particular spirituality that will allow one to be poor, chaste and obedient.

What "Dignity"?

One of the problems that a religious congregation with both ordained and lay brothers can have is the crisis in the identity of this latter. Right now, for example, one obvious defect in our vocation promotions program is the place given to religious brothers. Emphasis is placed more on the "need" for priests, as if the congregation lives for service outside itself only. Even our formation program has been set up so as to produce more priests with the result that the number of our lay brothers are steadily on the decrease. Perhaps, one of the reasons for this is that the traditional duties of religious brothers in a convent have been given to lay employees. Another reason, more grievous, is the conception of "dignity" that has been developing in the minds even of religious themselves -- an understanding of "dignity" tied up with an office held, titles and accomplishments. Because of this idea of dignity, the traditional lay brother is made into a second class citizen within the congregation and therefore attempts are made to "rehabilitate" him and bring up his status to a level that is equivalent to the ordained brother (who can gain certain offices, titles and achieve some accomplishments). But does the lay brother need rehabilitation? Is his consecration not enough? Isn't it rather a mistake to measure the "dignity" of the lay brother against a standard that is rather worldly and -- even among religious -- temporary and perishable?

The Religious Brother

The religious lay brother is greatly misunderstood. The laity see him as an underdeveloped priest. But the religious brother -- compared to the priest -- is the one who enters the life of religion without expecting any other fringe benefit apart from the Lord. He is the one who can truly say: "You are the God of my heart, the God who is my portion forever" (Ps. 73:26). The religious priest has the privilege of celebrating the Mass, and that makes up for whatever "sacrifice" he may have made when he entered the life of religion. The religious brother does not have that perk; all they have is the knowledge that the life they have embraced is a life that allows them to follow the Lord more closely to the Cross with an intensity that only love can limit. And because they are freed even from the possibility of expecting something in return in this life for what they have left behind, they exemplify those referred to as "the pure of heart" -- undivided in affections, integral in oblation. And you know what the Lord says about those who are "pure of heart." He says: "Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God."(Matthew 5:8)

"Where is the site for Ten Augustinian Values?" I've been asked this question several times and in several ways for the past few months. The reason is that the website that used to house the article called "Ten Augustinian Values" yields an empty directory. This is because I stopped paying the hosting services for AngFrayle.Net . After Yahoo ownership changed, the hosting services became so expensive for me that I simply had to stop using it. So I transferred the article "Ten Augustinian Values" to AgustinongPinoy (http://www.agustinongpinoy.net/values) where it can be accessed now. So now you know where it can be found...

Since posting the article on the web in 1999, I've seen how it has been used in some parts of the Order as a working paper on Values Education. Ideas can have a life of their own once they get out. Apart from the work being done by other friars in this area, I have also published a slightly modified version of the article in the CSA-Bacolod Research Journal (2004, if I remember rightly) and have written articles about those values at AgustinongPinoy. Below is a list of these articles:

• Ten Augustinian Values Revisited (2007)
• Ten Augustinian Values: A Diagram (2005)
• Ten Augustinian Values Revisited I (2005)
• Being Church: Lay Augustinian Spirituality I (2005)
• Being Church: Lay Augustinian Spirituality II (2005)

All the above are accessible through this page. Apart from these, I was maintaining a blog on "Augustinian Values" which went down with the old AngFrayle.Net. I can no longer retrieve the content of those blogs because the data were contained in flat files that I didn't care to back up (so stupid of me, I know). Work on the Sunday readings at Res Biblica (http://biblista.net/main) , the daily readings (http://biblica.frih.org) and the Bible Workshop (http://bws.biblista.net) has prevented me from doing any further work on the Augustinian Values. Perhaps the next line of work on the subject would be to present the biblical passages -- as preached by Augustine -- that are related to each value. Pilch and Malina published a book on Values that showed how the social values of biblical Israel shaped some of the concepts we find in the Scriptures. Perhaps it would be a good idea to see how Augustine understood and preached on what we now call "Augustinian values" and how Augustine's understanding of such values created an impact on the saints of the Order of St. Augustine in particular and on the spirituality of the Order as a whole. But that would be an encyclopedic work. Another line of work -- more observational and less wordy -- would be to see how these values are becoming recognizable in a group that is "Augustinian". "Augustinian" here means any group that bears the quality which Paul VI called "Augustinian-ness", the love for Augustine and things Augustinian -- and not just because of any association with an Augustinian, friar or community. I think that if Balbino Rano were still alive today (God rest his soul) he'd be able to explain this meaning of "Augustinian-ness". I can't. The last time I brought up the subject, I was laughed at. And it is a word that even appears in one of Paul VI's speeches to the Augustinians gathered for a General Chapter!

But that is beside the point.

The point is that when an Augustinian friar works with the laity, whether in the parish or at school, some aspect of his "Augustinian-ness" will be caught. Most often, it is the spirit of community, as in the case of the students and teachers that the friars left behind in Bonner High. It is after all the charism of the Order. But then, other people would also mention "friendship", and others still "service", and so on. In Europe, people recognize in us not only "fraternal friendship" but also "science and knowledge" (discussed in Ten Augustinian Values as "the pursuit of wisdom and truth") "humility" and "service". In fact, there was a king who described the Augustinian friars as "small in words but big in works"! What I am saying is that it would be a good idea if we can come up with a study -- socio-psychological, perhaps? -- that illustrates how the Augustinian values become recognizable in groups that are "Augustinian" and see how these values can be used as a means for making Augustinian spirituality (and theology) contribute to the maturation of the members of these groups in the Christian life. The Jesuits have their "Exercises"; perhaps Augustinian spirituality can be made to impact the Christian life through group dynamics and values formation. I guess this is what they are already doing at Villanova and in the schools run by the Spanish Augustinians in the Philippines. I am trying out this possibility in the Basic Ecclesial Communities in our parish. Perhaps, who knows, it is in such communities that Augustinian spirituality as lived from "Augustinian values" can flourish.

Cartoons can be a great way to bring across the message of the Scriptures. This it does through a rereading of the Biblical message and present it to a "visual" generation in an attractive way. But there is also a price to be paid, since "rereadings" can distort rather than enhance. "The Flying House" is a cartoon series intended to bring the Bible closer to a generation that is attracted to cartoons. In this particular sequence on the Temptation of Eve, Genesis 3:1-24 is rendered into a cartoon with Tim Curry playing the role of the Snake. The presentation fills in some gaps in the biblical narrative which is terse and lacking in details (since it is characteristic of biblical narration to allow the audience to exercise the imagination). For example, the cartoon sequence makes us understand that Eve has been gathering fruits that day when she met the Snake. Second, it was not until she met the Snake that Eve recognizes the "forbidden fruit." Later, Adam will realize he had eaten from the fruit already indicated as "verboten" by God because of the lightning that occurs after he bites on it. The darkening of the skies and the lightning becomes an indication that something wrong has occured. Third, Adam was out working tending the olives, says Eve, when the Serpent asks her about him. The absence of Adam in the Temptation of Eve is a notable absence but in the cartoon rendering it becomes excusable. In the Genesis account, it is precisely this absence that makes him guilty of "sin". By not doing his job as "shomer" -- protector of his garden -- Eve -- from the wiles of the crafty "Enemy", he contributed to their fall from grace. His eating from the fruit only confirmed a "sin" that was yet to become revealed. Fourth, the phrase "forbidden fruit" does not appear in the Genesis narrative, but it has become popular culture's way of squeezing in just a few words a reference to "the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." By that appellation, it becomes easier to remember an important detail in the narrative; at the same time the appellation also distorts the overall intended effect of the story. In the story from Genesis, the eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge (read "experience") of good and evil, ushered into human history all that was ambiguous. Where there was only life before, now there is both life and death; where there was only truth before, now there is both truth and falsity; where there was happiness alone, now there is both happiness and suffering. The ambiguity of existence now becomes patent because of the disobedience of Adam and Eve.

In the cartoon sequence itself there are a few elements that misinforms. For example, there is a short sequence that somehow tells the audience that the Snake in the Genesis account should not be identified with the snakes that we see around us. The same sequence, however, can become misinformation when it becomes an occassion for trivializing the biblical symbol of the Enemy. Second, there is misinformation in the explanation that Adam made coverings for himself and his wife. In the Genesis account, the coverings were made my God, symbol of his continuing care and affection for the two persons who have banished themselves from the Garden of Life. This self-banishment became effective when they chose ambiguity and ambivalence over the one desire of God. Finally, a third source of misinformation: the protoevangelion is rendered as if "the Seed" of the woman is in the plural: God was made to say to the snake that its children will be at enmity with the woman's children. This contemporary rendering does make the phrase "Seed" understandable to children but it limits to a high degree an understanding of it that is meant to allow connections with other passages about "the Seed" throughout the Scriptures themselves: e.g. with the oracle about the Immanuel, Revelations 12, Jesus's saying about the grain of wheat in John 12 and Paul's interpretation of Abraham's seed in Galatians.

In short, while the episode from "Flying House" is a good way of attracting the attention of a cartoon-crowd and familiarize them with the story of the Fall of Adam and Eve, it can also become a source of misinformation. It is the duty of catechists and teachers of the faith to notice these possible pitfalls and deepen the understanding gained through popular culture.

Biblioscape: What is it?

Biblioscape is a research information manager. It is designed

• for researchers working in different fields
• to take in notes of different kinds
• to facilitate gathering data through the web or from traditional sources (e.g. the library)
• to help organize those notes through categories, links
• to help the researcher retrieve those notes
• to process the data like a word processor (given the type of license one has purchased)

Features I Like about Biblioscape

1. It is easy to use. It just took me a few minutes to figure out how to use it and afterwards produced a 1,000 word article with it.
2. Associating notes to categories and linking one note to another.
3. The Rich Text Format (RTF) note editor.
4. The possibility of browsing the web using Biblioscape's native browser and capturing data from a webpage for automatic inclusion in one's notes.
5. The possibility of creating different kinds of notes: whether text notes and reference notes which one can then associate with one another.
6. In the professional edition, to collect notes into an outline and export it or print it out.
7. The interface icons that makes the classification of notes easy.
8. The ability to take in graphics that are pasted onto a note.
9. Outline creation and one-click draft generation
10. Quick search and retrieval of data.

How I've Managed Three Articles with Biblioscape

To date, I have already created two articles from Biblioscape which I installed in my computer about five days ago. It is not the first notes manager I've come across. What makes Biblioscape different from other index-card-like note managers is its ability to integrate in one user interface all its features. Biblioscape is not difficult to learn. If one has worked with index cards and notebooks while doing research, the software makes research doubly easy: first, it compresses the work area into a small space. Second, it makes the retrieval of data very quick. I don't have to explain how Biblioscape makes the workspace small. After all one needs only a laptop that covers a few square inch of space to use the software. The retrieval system of Biblioscape is a combination of both traditional and contemporary methods. The contemporary method is through the use of a search engine. Biblioscape has a very fast search engine that makes a list of data depending on a keyword. The traditional means is something that the software allows through "Collections" and "Categories".

One begins note-taking through a "Collection" within a "Container". A "Container" is like a mega--folder that can contain another "Container", "Notes", "Task Lists", and "References" and others. A "Notes Collection" is like a smaller folder that would contain the notes for a particular topic or subject. This is your basic index cards collection. In Biblioscape, it can contain a variety of content: a quotation, a paraphrase, a summary, a claim, an evidence for a claim, etc. A "Task Collection" would be the researcher's notes for following-up certain ideas. The "Reference Collection" would be for the books, magazines or documents that one makes use of in one's paper.

When one creates a note, one begins from a particular collection. Biblioscape automatically creates a link between Collection and individual note. Once the note is saved, it will appear each time the Collection from which it was created is clicked.

Biblioscape also allows the association of this note to a "Category" that one creates. Categories (or Taxonomy) can be colorcoded so that one can easily see a note with more than one category associations. Thus a card I created about "Food Restrictions" in Acts 15 can be linked to a category I created under "Apologetics" and another one under "NT (New Testament)". This would make manual retrieval easier later on.

Biblioscape and Word Processing

Unfortunately, the word processing functionality is available only for the Librarian and Professional edition. After one has gathered enough notes and is now ready to put together a paper, one need only to go to "Compositon", pick up the notes from the "Categories" to which to the notes are associated, create an outline and click "Generate Draft." From there, one can continue to edit one's work on the interface of Biblioscape or export the draft into an RTF file for editing in another more powerful Word Processor like MS Office Word or Open Office.

Personal Evaluation and Rating

Biblioscape is one real research information manager. It is designed to work with a lot of data and intended to be used for serious work. Still however, it has room for a lot of improvements.

1. Although one can create charts through it, one cannot create graphic files with it. It would be a great help Biblioscape has a graphic editor -- even if it were as simple as WinPaint -- so that one can associate notes with sketches or drawings.
2. Word processing is only possible through the Librarian and Professional editions which are quite expensive.
3. Customization is very limited. One cannot add more colors nor icons to the Categories, nor can one add to the Note-types.
4. It is still buggy at some points. Sometimes, an item under one category appears in another as if it were linked to it. When one tries to remove the link, Biblioscape gives an error message saying in effect that one can remove links only in linked items.

Given these limitations, I would give Biblioscape a rating of 7 out of a possible 10.

Check out Biblioscape at its website.