Bible Software Review Weblog

The new Diccionario Griego-Español del Nuevo Testamento. Análisis semántico de los vocablos (DGENT) - Greek-Spanish Dictionary of the New Testament. Semantic Analysis of the Vocabulary - is an on-going project developed by the University of Córdoba (Spain), under the leadership of Jesús Peláez, who took over from the late Juan Mateos. So far, two fascicles have been published (I, 2000; II, 2003), and the team doing the research is using Accordance Bible Software as one of its basic tools. More information (in Spanish) can be found here and here. A review of this work by Moisés Silva will appear in Biblica shortly. Here is a quick and dirty translation of the first part of the Introduction:

As stated in the subtitle, this Dictionary presents the semantic analyses of the terms included in the NT, following closely the Vollständige Konkordanz zum griechischen Neuen Testament by K. Aland (Berlin-New York, 1983). When these studies are finished, the Dictionary will be published in one volume, and it will comprise a synthesis of the analyses with the addition of grammatical data (verbal forms, among other items), information about the date and use of the terms in the Greek language and, sometimes, bibliographic references.

The studies appearing in this work are larger and richer in contet than the lemmas of the future dictionary, since in them lexemes are categorized and semantically analyzed, broader explanations are given, and the examples are more numerous and all passages where each term appears are generally cited.

The contributions of the present work to the analysis of the terms are varied. First of all, the number of semantic classes is completed by adding their Determination, which is of the utmost importance in order to explain a good number of linguistic phenomena. For the first time, lexemes are categorized each according to their predominant semantic class, thus identifying their primary semantic traits, quite separately from the grammatical category they belong to. Also for the first time, the semantic formula of the lexemes is established, which allows us to understand their structure, and the semic development of the elements of the formula is carried out, establishing thereby all their semantic content and distinguishing each lexeme from others of similar meaning.

As for the glosses of the lexemes and sememes, this Dictionary follows the path initiated by Louw-Nida, distinguishing between the definition of a lexeme and its possible translations, but it goes one step further than these authors in that it builds the definition in the preceding semic developments.

Finally, another novely is to be found in the identification of those contextual factors that give rise to the different sememes.

Fascicle 3 (covering the rest of letter alpha) is scheduled for publication in late 2005. A truly remarkable project, certainly not for the faint-hearted, that makes wide use of the powerful features of Bible software.

A couple of weeks ago, Bob Pritchett blogged about the business side of Bible software. He included a survey with questions on what people felt was fair in competing with other companies. The results are now available for all to see.

One of the questions that people keep asking is how good is the emulation software currently available , and how do different Bible software packages perform when you run them under emulation. The answer is quite simple: If you want to run Mac-based Bible software on a PC get the free program Basilisk II. You can install up to Mac OS 8.1, although System 7.5 will do fine. It is fast and reasonably reliable. On the other hand, if you wish to run Windows-based Bible software on a Mac, you're... er... out of luck... Virtual PC isn't free, and it is painfully slow, no matter how much processing power and RAM you have (obviously, the more the better). Wintel users can run Mac-only applications on their PCs (yes, even on their production machines), whereas Mac users have a very difficult time running Windows-only applications on their Macintoshes.

Personally, I have BibleWorks - a truly fast program - running on my Mac, and it is barely usable. I also have Accordance running on my PC, and it just flies. Yeah, I know, it ain't fair, but that's the way it is. Short of using the "real thing", Mac emulation on Windows boxes IS an alternative (albeit limited to 68K-compatible applications - No PPC and no OS X!). Sadly, the same cannot be said the other way round. Only if you are desperate and really, really patient would I advice you to get a Windows emulation program for your Mac. And if you decide to do that, make sure to max out your RAM and install one of the less demanding incarnations of the Windows OS (e.g., Windows 98).

OakTree Software has just announced that a new demo of Accordance (version 6.1) is available for downloading. The download includes a brand new PDF Tutorial that gives an overview of the program and its features. Notice that this demo runs on any Mac (System 7.1 or above) and also on PCs under emulation.

Carl Conrad, one of the chairs of B-Greek has mentioned a handful of blogs that may be of interest to members of the list. I appreciate the fact that he thinks some "b-greekers" could find this weblog worth reading. I have been a member of this particular mailing list for quite a number of years, and questions about Bible software are indeed frequent. B-Greek roughly covers Septuagint, NT and Patristic Greek, and since not a few of my comments have some bearing on the original languages, I do hope that the weblog will definitely be of interest to those who happen to subscribe to it.

As many of you know, there has been some debate over the exact identification of certain Qumran fragments (most notably 7Q5). Ernest Muro has been involved in the exchange of scholarly arguments that has taken place at different points in the controversy. One of his pages, entitled "7Q6: Can the Computer be of any Help?", explains how he went about his study of these fragments of papyri with the aid of BibleWorks.

Back in 1999, I had an email exchange with Ernest Muro. I had been researching O'Callaghan's identification of 7Q5 as part of Mark's Gospel (a hypothesis that was also supported by Carsten Thiede) for almost a year, and was interested in using Bible software in order to work on different identifications. We ended up sharing a few searches and some insights. In his former website there was a very interesting article summarizing the results of his analysis. Unfortunately, it is no longer available, as far as I know. The only one I could find that deals with 7Q5 is found here. So what follows is a brief excerpt from our "conversation" on 7Q5:

Ernest Muro: Please let me know your opinions regarding 7Q5 and also regarding the use of BibleWorks in this regard.

Rubén Gómez: Well, my personal feeling after examining the evidence is that 7Q5 does not belong to the Gospel of Mark, but I am not very satisfied (let alone convicted) with many of the other proposed identifications (either Biblical or pseudoepigraphical). At this point I must confess I don't know where this little fragment comes from. Therefore I must suspend my final judgment until further elements come to light.

Concerning the computer searches, what I did was a search based not on the editio princeps, but rather on O'Callaghan's proposed emendations.

I tried an Advanced Search Engine (ASE) query - a new graphical interface available in version 4.0 - for the 7Q5 papyrus fragment identified by José O'Callaghan as Mark 6:52, 53. The query was the equivalent to writing <'KAI *6 *NNHS* *1 *QHSA*> on the Command Line, and the only match was Mark 6:53. There were no hits in the LXX. Incidentally, Accordance for Macintosh returned the same results.

Now, obviously, the point of this particular exercise was to search the GNT/LXX to find out whether there were any verses that met such criteria (provided, that is, that the identification of the letters was correct and the two textual variants proposed by O'Callaghan were right, i.e. DIAPERASANTES would have turned into TIAPERASANTES, and EPI THN GHN would had been left out).

Regarding your own search based on the editio princeps, BibleWorks does not return any exact matches (and textual emendations and stichometric considerations are always highly subjective anyway). So, I'm afraid we are left in the dark again. I think it would probably be quite interesting to perform a search based on the latest edition of the whole Thesaurus Linguae Graece (TLG) CD-ROM, but I do not have access to it.

Finally (...) O'Callaghan's latest book on the subject (1995, and not translated into English as far as I know) is quite interesting, and includes some mathematical studies on the probabilities of the 7Q5 belonging to Mark's Gospel. But, as I said at the outset, in my opinion, the evidence is still inconclusive, one way or the other.

Ernest Muro: I have added more details to my web site for 7Q5 (...) I have given an example of one of the searches that I performed with BibleWorks. The command line was ('*h kai t*).2(*nnh*) This resulted in 9 "hits", which are listed at the web site. Of these 9, Genesis 46:20 was the best by far. However, it is not a suitable identification for 7Q5.

For the record, let me repeat that this exchange took place in 1999, that I never managed to publish my research, and that I haven't made my mind up yet as to the exact identification of 7Q5, though I'm pretty sure it does not belong to Mark (or proto-Mark).

Version 1 of MacSword (The Holy Bible for Mac OS X) is available for downloading. MacSword is a free and open source application based on the SWORD Project. This is a Mac OS X-only application. For other platforms, check out the website of the Crosswire Bible Society.

One correspondent who uses PC Study Bible in Virtual PC comments that he finds it "...not as fast as I would like, but usable for study...". This, of course, brings up the question of how each one of us perceives the relative speed of the software, and what the threshold of our patience is. I'm afraid there will be as many answers as people you ask. In his review on Windows Software for Bible Study, H. Van Dyke Parunak has a whole section on Timing, where he says, among other things:

One of the most important characteristics of a Bible software package for me personally is searching speed. I often build searches incrementally, starting with a simple search, then refining it to narrow in on what I want. If each search takes more than a second or two, my thought process is interrupted. This experience is in line with research in computer interface design. A recognized authority on website design describes 0.1 second response as ideal, 1 second as maximum acceptable, and 10 seconds as likely to cause users to leave a site and look elsewhere. In one experiment, if a process lasted longer than 8.5 seconds, users assumed the computer had frozen and rebooted.

This is probably one of the areas where I find it difficult to agree with him a hundred per cent. Not that searching speed isn't important, but I am probably willing to wait a little bit if I like other important aspects of the package (important to me, that is! - see how much subjectivity comes into play?). After all, I don't think surfing the net is quite the same as waiting for a Bible search to be performed. Well, anyway, what is "usable" for someone will probably be considered "unusable" by somebody else.

Further to my previous entry on emulation, I should add that I run Virtual PC on a 600 MHz iBook with 640 MB RAM, and BibleWorks 5 running on Windows 98 is "barely usable", but usable still. As for Basilisk II, it runs on a 2,4 GH Pentium IV with 512 MB RAM, and Accordance 6.1.2 with Mac OS 7.5 runs very fast. Two caveats: I haven't tried BibleWorks 6 with VPC yet, and yes, the program would run better if I had a G4 (VPC is optimized for machines with G4 microprocessors). You're welcome to share your own results and experiences. On one thing we all seem to agree: Libronix Digital Library System, to name just one, cannot be used efficiently on a Mac.

I have just posted a new interview with Bob Pritchett, president of Logos Bible Software. I hope you find this section of the website both informative and estimulating. Incidentally, if you think you should have received a copy of this survey but you haven't yet, or feel you would like to participate, please let me know. I may have overlooked your name by mistake.

Computers can be a wonderful help... when they work properly. I am still having some hardware problems, as a result of which I am being delayed in my work. Given the fact that I am usually working under some sort of NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement), I cannot give you details about what I am currently doing (hint: it's got to do with Bible software ;-)), but the point is that these problems are a real pain in the neck. Have you ever felt frustrated by the fact that your hardware or software (or both!) have let you down? No platform is perfect, to be sure, but PCsand Windows have become a constant source of headaches. Never had a single problem with my Macs, though they do have them (so I'm told). One of these days I'll take the plunge and install Linux on one of my PCs. Okay, okay, you probably couldn't care less about my woes, but hey, the truth is that I feel much better now...

Apparently, Bible Companion Software as such is out of business. The website has been unavailable since late last year, and I have updated my links accordingly. I'd love to hear from Corey Spagnoli. Meanwhile, some "unofficial" information can be found here.

[Ed.] Sorry, the link is no longer active.

I've just come across this blog dealing with different aspects of inductive Bible study. Last entry is from May 2004, but you may be interested in some of the information. The author seems to be a software engineer.

Larry Pierce, creator of Online Bible, has answered our survey. Here are his thoughts. Enjoy!

In case you want to read a little bit more about him, a 1995 interview is posted here (mirrored in this site), and there is yet another one here about other aspects of his work.

I am absolutely shocked by the series of terrorist attacks that have taken place today at the height of Madrid's rush hour (between 7:30 and 8:00 AM CET). As I'm writing these lines, the number of victims exceeds 150 people, and almost 500 are injured. The Basque terrorist group ETA have brutally hit civilian population indiscriminately (latest news coverage here). This day has already been labeled "Spain's September 11". I can hardly blog, I can hardly express all the pain and indignation I am feeling right now. This, friends, is not off topic. I could have been on that train. One of my children could have been killed. You could have been there on vacation... The horror of terrorism IS our business. It is my conviction that we have to take a firm stand against all form and manner of terror. When I place my ballot on Sunday (general elections) I will keep in mind that many people have given their lives so that we may enjoy freedom and democracy. I pray that God will have mercy on us, and that he will comfort all those who are mourning.

When Hitler attacked the Jews I was not a Jew, therefore I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the Catholics, I was not a Catholic, and therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the unions and industrialists, I was not a member of the unions and I was not concerned. Then, Hitler attacked me and the Protestant church -- and there was nobody left to be concerned.

Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984), a Pastor in the Confessing Church (Congressional Record 14 October 1968, page 31636)

UPDATE (March 12): At least 198 people died and over 1,400 were injured in yesterday's blasts. It seems that al Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the bombings, while other clues point to a possible joint attack, but nothing has been officially confirmed yet. Today, millions of people across Spain will participate in demonstrations against terrorism and in solidarity with the victims. Thank you for your prayers and support.

UPDATE (March 14): The terrible death toll has reached 200 people already, but over a dozen more are still in critical condition. Everything seems to indicate that al Qaeda is behind the terrorist attack. More than 11 million Spaniards attended the demonstrations last Friday. The main one took place in Madrid, with 2,3 million in attendance. I've never seen anything like that! Today we hold general of selections. We are grieved, but not defeated. Together we shall overcome terror. Thanks so much for your solidarity. I deeply appreciate all your heartfelt words of sympathy, in particular those from fellow bloggers Mark Goodacre and Jim Davila. Thank you!

For some unknown reason the blog hasn't been available intermittently. I haven't received any notice, but I am almost sure it has to do with Haloscan's Comment and Trackback system. I have temporarily disabled this feature until the service is restored. Sorry for the inconveniences caused.

Seems like the problems have been solved, and you can once again use the Comment and Trackback features powered by Haloscan.

After the recent tragic events you have all heard about, things are settling down to relative normality. We will never forget, but we must go on. Blogging must also continue, and I'll try to catch up on things in the next few days.

Yale University Divinity School Library has an interesting website with a Bible Reference Tools Tutorial which offers interesting introductory information about most of the reference works that are usually available in different Bible software packages. Some examples are taken from BibleWorks and Libronix Digital Library System -- not necessarily the latest versions! --, but it makes good reading irrespective of the software you may be using. I recommend this link because I've noticed that some people don't really know how to make full use of concordances, lexicons, etc., and that is absolutely crucial if we want to study and do research with Bible software adequately. The more we know about the tools of our "trade", the better.

OakTree Software just announced that the Morphological LXX (version 3.01) for Accordance is now available for downloading. This new release includes further corrections to the tagging by Bernard Taylor and Dale Wheeler. Also, BibleWorks has released the NET Bible for users of version 6.

The issue of whether or not Strong's numbers, or other similar schemes, are helpful for those who are not versed in the original languages has been hotly debated. The potential for misuse is probably very high, but there are also a number of advantages associated with its correct use. David Lang has just posted an informative article about the practical use of these numbers in Bible software, from a Mac perspective. Except for the test cases, everything else should be relevant to users of Bible software packages for Windows.

The purpose of all these numbering systems (Strong's, revised Strong's, or Goodrick-Kohlenberger's) is to allow the user who has no familiarity with Greek and Hebrew to carry out some research on the underlying original terms behind some English translations of the Bible. We keep coming back to the well-known and often discussed "a little knowledge of Greek or Hebrew is a dangerous thing", but I'm afraid that just about anything can become a source of exegetical fallacies (e.g., the popular use made by some modern preachers of the Amplified Bible -- a.k.a. the totality-transfer fallacy). So, I guess the bottom line is this: any system or method is as good as the people who use it. We probably need to stress the importance of a good solid preparation in the field of the humanities -- including classical languages and a fair amount of critical thinking. This, I think, is woefully lacking in most churches and seminaries today.

Dove Booksellers offers a limited quantity of copies of Perseus 2.0 (both the Complete and Concise edition) at reduced prices while supplies last. Here is a brief description of the product taken from DoveNews:

Named for the Hellenic hero who explored the world to its most distant reaches, Perseus is a remarkable, award-winning digital resource that is revolutionizing the study of ancient Greece by expanding the ways in which ancient Greek literature, history, art, and archaeology can be examined. Now available for the first time for PCs and Windows-based computers, Perseus has been widely praised as one of the most innovative educational tools ever published Perseus is the work of a collaborative team including philologists, historians, and archaeologists.

Perseus 2.0 is the most comprehensive collection of primary sources and supporting reference materials on ancient Greece ever created. It contains over 380 texts in Greek and in translation, representing all of the major authors of the classical period and others, extensive morphological tools, art and archaeology resources, and much more. Superb navigational tools and hypertextual links make searching this enormous resource quick, intuitive, and effective. This unparalleled program supports teaching and study in literature, art, history, and language and is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the ancient world. Comprehensive EditionFour CD-ROMs contain the complete textual database, encyclopedia, lexicon, and atlas, plus the complete visual database of 25,000 full-screen images.

Concise EditionOne CD-ROM provides the complete textual database, encyclopedia, lexicon, and atlas with 5,200 full-screen images and an online catalogue of all 25,000 images in small format (1.3" x 1.1") for reference.

I could certainly do with some help in the area of Bible software for the different Linux distros. Is there anybody out there who's actually using any Bible package developed specifically for Linux systems? I would love to hear from you! I openly confess that my experience with Linux is rather limited, although I do like what I've used.

Today I'd like to draw your attention to The SWORD Project, which I think is one of the most exciting open-source endeavors currently taking place. The CrossWire Bible Society is pursuing a number of projects, and their aim is "to produce a free, open-source, cross-platform Bible software engine: the SWORD API." I welcome the idea and personally feel it's got a great potential. I am finishing a review on MacSword (hope to post it soon!), which is the Mac OS X front-end for their search engine, and another one will follow on The Sword Project for Windows.

The whole thing works this way: different developers volunteer to build applications and graphical interfaces for the various platforms. Each application is OS-specific (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.), but it is based on the same search engine and the same collection of electronic texts. This has a number of advantages. Although I would not say any of the incarnations of the core engine that I've seen and used is a "finished" product yet (particularly if you compare them with the commercial packages -- or even some of the more sophisticated freeware/software alternatives), we'll have to follow future enhancements very closely. It does look promising.

Logos what?! If that is your first reaction you definitely need to read the Wiki Getting Started Faq and the Wiki Wiki Web Faq. Logos has launched a Logos wiki. According to Bob Pritchett, "It's an open, freely editable web site where anyone can contribute and add content." A longer general description goes like this:

Wiki is a discussion medium, a repository, a mail system, and a chat room! It's a tool for collaboration. In fact, we don't really know what it is, but try it and explore some links - it's a fun way to communicate! The concept may seem weird at first, but you will come to love it! The name 'Wiki' may seem strange too -- what does it mean, and where does it come from? The WikiWikiWebFaq answers this and other questions, but the short answer is that "wiki-wiki" is Hawaiian for "quick". Watch the pages grow and refine here; watch the discussions that surround the process. Watch information automagically crystallize before your eyes!

Whatever it is, it is available to users of Logos Bible Software, and should prove to be an interesting collaborative effort. Hey, man, this is Internet at its best!

Following my previous entries on emulation here and here, this link will give you all the information and help you need to get your Accordance for Macintosh up and running on your Wintel box.

As no doubt many of you know, e-Sword is a freeware/donationware Bible software program for Windows. Unlike other products, the application and all the available texts can be downloaded from the website for free (although you can get a CD containing most of the material in exchange for a small donation). The number and quality of modules available is worthy of note. Besides, there are three add-ons that can currently be bought at a reasonable price: The New American Standard Bible Study Set (including Updated NASB, Updated NASB with Strong's numbers, and Hebrew and Greek Dictionaries from the NAS Exhaustive Concordance), The Amplified Bible, and The Complete Word Study Dictionary (Old and New Testament) by Spiros Zodhiates. These last two items have just been made available this month.

Not so long ago, Bible software packages (in fact most software packages) included a printed user manual. Today, the vast majority of software companies do not publish any manual at all. Supposedly it's all found in the online Help so, they say, there is no need to duplicate efforts. I could give you dozens of examples, but let's take just one:

Zondervan states that "in the interest of being environmentally responsible, there is no print manual with this software", in reference to their Bible Study Library line of products. And then they add, "The entire manual is included under the Help Menu in the program. You are welcome to print it from there if you desire." I beg your pardon! Do you mean to say that you want to be "environmentally responsible" but that it is okay if I, the user, spend hundreds of pages of paper and a good bit of ink printing the online help? Doesn't seem to make much sense to me! I know that different people have different tastes and study habits, but I for one deeply regret the fact that most Bible software vendors (with some notable exceptions!) are no longer providing detailed printed manuals. I can think of a good number of reasons why printed manuals are valuable:

a) Reading from a book is a lot easier on your eyes than reading from your screen, particularly when you reach a certain age ;-)
b) Most online helps aren't very complete anyway, to say the least. While ideally a printed manual should be comprehensive.
c) Printed manuals should offer, IMO, a good deal of information about the tagging/hypertexting philosophy that's being followed, as well as the rationale of the search engine (i.e., why do we get the results we get when we do what we do). d) Considering the price of most commercial applications, expecting to receive a manual seems quite reasonable.
e) I like reading books... Any problem with that? ;-))
f) There are many more, no doubt, but I have to go now...

And yes, the fact that many users don't bother to read the manual (any manual) and keep calling or writing tech support doesn't mean that manuals are useless. In fact, reading a good manual will go a long way towards mastering any software and overcoming the much-feared "learning curve".

I have posted new reviews of MacSword and iLumina. There is also an About Us section available. Enjoy!

I was looking at some interesting tables on John's vocabulary at this site. In it, the author, Dale Loepp, compares John's use of certain words related to the family with the total number of occurrences in the NT and each of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). But what really hit me was the thought of how easy it is to get all those results in a very short time with some of today's Bible software programs. I happened to be browsing the net with my Mac, so I fired up Accordance and opened a search window set to Words with the Greek NT in it. I then chose [All text] as the search field (NT would have also been fine), and duplicated that same window four times. Next, I changed the search fields of those four windows to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, respectively. All that I needed to do before running the search was to link all five windows (by using the LINK command in the last four). The whole operation took slightly over a minute (maybe less), and I was all set to do the searching. I just wrote ἀγαπάω, pressed the Enter key, and in the blinking of an eye each window showed the results (143 times in the NT, 8 in Matthew, 5 in Mark, 13 in Luke, and 37 in John).

Getting a detail of the references in John was simply a mouse-click away with the Concordance feature, as were many other statistical and analytical tools. I thought I could make regular use of this particular layout, so I saved the session. Now, whenever I want to see the distribution of some Greek word across the NT, the Synoptics and John, all I have to do is write the term in one window and click OK. Yes, a single search is all you need! FYI, I could have used a Workspace (i.e., one window) with five tabs, but in this particular case I preferred the "clutter", so that I could see all the numbers at a glance (or maybe I was just too lazy to use Control-Tab or Shift-Control-Tab to cycle through open tabs?).

Incidentally, the data offered for the word ἀδελφός (26-3-5-3-6) is wrong. The right figures are as follows: 343 hits in the NT, 39 in Matthew, 20 in Mark, 24 in Luke and 14 in John. I'll let you find the refs. in John's Gospel all by yourselves :-)