Bible Software Review Weblog

SwordSearcher 4.5 was released yesterday. You can find the details on the redesigned website. Two new commentaries have been added: A. T. Robertson's New Testament Word Pictures and John Wesley's Bible Notes, while the most significant feature addition seems to be the English-Strong Indexer, a tool that shows which Greek or Hebrew words from Strong's Lexicon were originally translated into a given English word in the King James Version. For a complete contents list of the Deluxe CD-ROM go here. For a summary of features see this page. For those interested, the full User Manual is also made available as a PDF download. Finally, a free 25-day evaluation download (with a limited amount of resources) is available here.

I could not find a listing of the new
resources and program features included in version 4.5 anywhere on the
site. I just guessed what was new based on my previous experience with
4.4. It would be nice to be able to see the incremental changes this
excellent piece of shareware software has gone through.
Update (August 4): Brandon Staggs emails me to kindly point out that there is in fact a revision history page here. It is difficult to spot the link, so he'll try to make it more prominent. Thanks!

Mark Goodacre points to this most interesting site. Peter Coad is the developer of this innovative tool, which aims at helping students learn the Greek vocabulary found in Bill Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek. By means of cartoons and a simple color system we are introduced to the most common words used in the Greek New Testament. Visual Greek is a work-in-progress, but the latest PDF (17 MB) can be downloaded here. The author welcomes feedback from readers.

Also, if you happen to be a user of Libronix Digital Library System, you can download a custom-made workspace and visual filter
which includes the Visual Greek Color System. Please note that for the
workspace to work properly, you'll need to have resources from the
Scholar's Library Edition, the Biblical Languages Supplement, and the
BDAG Lexicon. Failing that, the site recommends The Bible Tool
for online reading.
All in all, an excellent resource, with hundreds of mnemonic devices,
that is supposed to be complete later this year. I highly recommend it.
Update (August 6): Eric Weiss left a comment which I reproduce here because of its interest:

Peter
Coad's "Visual Greek" system is very similar to J. Lyle Story's and
Cullen I.K. Story's GREEK TO ME system, which has been around for many
years (Story's curriculum teaches all words occurring 25x or more,
though, which nearly doubles the vocabulary that students learn over
the same timeframe if using Mounce's book). For more Info: http://www.geocities.com/dbcgreek/ntgreek/resources.htm

This is from the latest B-Hebrew Digest (posted by Christopher V. Kimball):

A trial version of a site showing the Hebrew text of the Torah with markings of the Documentary Hypothesis is available at:

http://users.ntplx.net/~kimball/DH/Tanach.xml

The site is compatible with the Unicode/XML Tanach from the Westminister Leningrad Codex (WLC) currently available at:

http://users.ntplx.net/~kimball/Tanach/Tanach.xml

Comments are solicited to improve this resource.

http://www.cvkimball.com/Tanach/Tanach.xml

As you can see, I have not been blogging much these past few days. No, I'm not on vacation... Problem is that I am extremely busy, and I don't foresee any dramatic changes in this situation any time soon (i.e., until the end of August).

I'll do my best to keep up with the most interesting developments in Bible software and related areas, but don't expect to hear much from me until next month. Thanks for your patience and understanding!

I thought my Epson Perfection scanner was doing quite well, until I read this article from Logos!

Amazing book scanner and good reading for those who want to know a little bit more about the actual process of digitizing books.

Logos has launched a self-publishing tool called Personal Book Builder. There are two editions: for private use and standard. It allows users to create Libronix compatible books that integrate seamlessly with the Libronix Digital Library System.

It is meant as a non-commercial tool, and some restrictions apply. For more info, check out the links above. You can also find the PBB Tutorial here.

There is an interesting online article by Don Parris on free and open source software for Christians (Thanks to Don A. Elbourne, Jr. for the info).

Version 2 of AccordIt, a text processing utility intended for use with Accordance Bible Software has been released. It now runs natively in OS X (but there are also versions for 68K Macs/PCs with Mac emulator, as well as for OS 9), and can access texts formatted for Accordance 6.x. This utility allows users to:

- display verses from any Bible installed in Accordance
- edit the text using Accordance fonts and text capabilities
- copy and paste text into a word processor
- save text as a text file or RTF file
- import documents with LaserHebrew or LaserGreek, and convert those fonts to Accordance fonts.

AccordIt can be downloaded here, and the updated AccordIt Guide is found here.