You can watch the video full screen in HD by clicking on the rightmost icon at the bottom.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7ftjxtudOs

WORDsearch markets a Holman Christian Standard Bible that includes a reverse interlinear.

As shown below, there are many display options available. Original words can be displayed as they appear in the text or according to their dictionary form (with or without English transliteration). There is also an option to hear the pronunciation of the original term (lemma).

Logos 4 offers a number of reverse interlinear English Bibles (ESV, NIV, NASB and NRSV, among others). There are also Hebrew, LXX and Greek interlinears.

It includes the same display options mentioned above, but the NT has an option for displaying Louw-Nida’s Lexicon numbers, which is an excellent addition.

Alternatively, the interlinear can appear at the bottom of the Bible text, rather than inline.

Accordance 9.5 turns any modern Bible tagged with Strong’s numbers (ESV, NIV, NASB, HCSB and KJV, among others –including some in Spanish) or any morphologically tagged text into a dynamic interlinear, capable of displaying all the associated information.

It works seamlessly based on the modules available, and users can choose between a “traditional” and a “reverse” interlinear layout. Besides, syntax information is displayed.

The advantage, in this case, is that any Bible with Strong’s, as well as any tagged Greek NT or Hebrew OT (no LXX currently) can be displayed alongside the regular display fields, and that any customized layout can be saved and retrieved. This allows for an unprecedented flexibility and power.

So, as you can see, there are a number of differences (not so much in the layout but rather in functionality), between the reverse interlinears currently available in the market. At any rate, this is an important tool for those who do not know or aren’t proficient enough in the Biblical languages. The kinds of studies that can be performed with reverse interlinears nowadays are pretty sophisticated.

This year the focus was on applying Bible software to the classroom setting. As usual, the contenders were Logos, Accordance and Olive Tree. I was rather surprised to discover that BibleWorks was not included. In fact, last week I tweeted the following: “I wonder why BibleWorks does not participate in Bible shootout 2 at #sblaar. They have some excellent classroom tips! http://bit.ly/vfvNba.”

Should more articles appear on this session, I’ll try to add a link here.

UPDATE:

Rick Mansfield’s This Lamp
Antoine RJ Wright’s Mobile Ministry Magazine

These kinds of exercises could well become a classic after this past SBL Bible Software Shootout.

Update (March 25): And here is how to do it with Logos Bible Software.

Mark L. Ward posted a pop quiz he set for users of BibleWorks. Nothing terribly difficult, just the kinds of searches many people have to use while studying the Bible. There is a little bit for everyone: English searches, Greek searches (both GNT and LXX), Strong’s searches, Lexicon lookups, graphical analysis of search results… Well, you get the idea.

Sean Boisen has taken up the challenge and showed how to answer the quiz with Logos 4. He actually works for Logos, but makes it very clear that he’s “not trying to start (or fuel) any “my software can beat your software”-type competitions, or take pot shots at other products.” There is nothing of that sort in his post, just step-by-step instructions on how he did the test and the results he got (make sure you read the comments too!).

I took a few minutes (very few, actually) to read Mark’s original quiz, fired up Accordance (since I was on my iMac) and completed the quiz in no time. I then read Sean’s explanations and compared his results with mine (not quite the same as his in some cases). All in all it was an interesting exercise, and it would be great to see how other people go about it performing these tasks with their Bible software. I did not have the opportunity to check the results with BibleWorks, but it would be good if Mark or somebody else would give us their results. I may do it myself, but not today.

BibleWorks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMbWP1Hlm3I

Accordance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jPnkDLOezk

Both applications get the job done, but they do so in widely different ways. Thus, BW uses a text-driven, verse list approach (with references only), and requires a graphical search engine in order to reuse the list of verses, whereas Accordance’s approach is more visual, more Mac-like, displaying references and content, and can run the searches straight from the main search window (although graphical construct windows can be easily used too). Both programs can map the verses to a different Bible version and save them to a file for later use. Finally, only Accordance can use highlighting to both identify biblical passages and include the highlighting style as part of the search argument.

The full list of Q texts has been derived from Robert J. Miller’s edition of The Complete Gospels.

Please notice that these are the first screencasts made available here on BSR, and that they are far from perfect. Hopefully, though, they will be of use to some of you. Comments and feedback are particularly welcome, since I hope to be making many more of these. Thanks!

Update (December 1): Less than 24 hours after I posted my screencast, BibleWorks has already increased the size of custom search limit ranges so that it is now possible to paste the whole list of references into the Range text box and set a search range for all of Q. Is this great customer service or what?!

Note to self: I should do screencasts more often and take the opportunity to hint at some areas for improvement. This seems to encourage developers to actually implement nice enhancements…

Let me emphasize that the ability provided by some Bible software programs to search a Bible tagged with Strong’s numbers is important for a number of reasons (despite other opinions).

First of all, it allows us to search on English and Hebrew/Greek words at the same time. Thus, it is possible to find “master” only when it is a translation of the Greek term κύριος (Strong’s number 2962). This automatically excludes from the search any verse where “master” is used to translate another Greek word (δεσπότης, διδάσκαλος, ῥαββί, and so on).

It also gives us the opportunity to study how different translations have decided to render a particular word or sentence in a given context. This gives us a hint about the different translation philosophy (literal, dynamic, etc.) followed in each particular case.

It is also noteworthy that words without a corresponding Strong’s number (i.e., “untagged”) have their importance. Many of these are often understood or implied in the original, or else are simply supplied in the modern language translation for stylistic reasons.

Using Boolean operators, mixed phrases (that is, Strong’s numbers combined with English words) and wild cards can greatly enhance these types of searches and allow for a greater amount of flexibility.

Having said that, do keep in mind the caveats I have mentioned in my previous posts. In this regard, you might want to check David Lang’s series of posts “Contra Strongnosticism” (parts 1, 2, 3 and 4).

Today I would like to focus on the implementation of Strong’s searches in Accordance 8.2.3, BibleWorks 8 and Logos Bible Software 3.0f. These three high-end programs can do pretty much anything we require them to do.

In the table below I have listed a sample of searches and the different syntax used by each one of the programs. I have limited the examples to text searches, although there are alternate ways to build these kinds of searches in a graphical environment.

^* In Logos one can use “@” instead of ANDEQUALS and “!@” in place of NOTEQUALS. Other search symbols are also accepted (“&” – AND, “|” – OR, “!” – NOT, for example). On a side note, in order to get Logos to return roughly the same results as Accordance and BibleWorks, the syntax shown here has to be tweaked. Thus, unless term modifiers like nostem, marks, etc. are used, results will generally be way too broad due to stemming.

Accordance never displays Strong’s numbers in the Bible window. All the related information (number, English translation, original language word and English transliteration) appears in the Instant Details box instead when the mouse rests on a tagged word. To set up a search, Hebrew numbers must be preceded by an “H” and Greek numbers by a “G.” This is not necessary, of course, if we run the search by right-clicking or control-clicking a tagged text. On the other hand, by opening an original language text in parallel with a Bible keyed with Strong’s numbers, the original text will highlight as we move the cursor on the corresponding English term.

If using the NASB, Logos includes a somewhat similar feature whereby right-clicking on the English text one can navigate to the associated Greek word (in NA27), but it is not highlighted automatically.

BibleWorks can display Strong’s numbers inline (right after the word it is attached to) or hide them altogether, and offers the ability to do studies of word groups “associated” with a particular Strong’s number when the option “Extend <> Tags to All Words” is on. As for typing searches, a zero must precede OT numbers, and no prefix is needed for NT numbers. I should also say that BW can run cross-language searches (but only with the Graphical Search Engine [GSE]) and automatically highlight all the occurrences in both the English and Greek (or Hebrew text). Thus, we could easily find verses with Strong’s number 435 when it has been translated as “husband*” and the Greek version has some form of ἀνήρ.

Accordance can do that with two windows linked by the [CONTENTS] command. As for Logos, the way to do it is via a Reverse Interlinear, by writing the search syntax greekstrongs=435 ANDEQUALS husband AND lemma: ανηρ in a Bible Search window.

Logos can display Strong’s numbers inline, in an interlinear format (below the English text), or hide it from one’s view. A nice touch is the fact that when there is more than a single search term, each one of them is highlighted with a different color.

Further reading:

For a slightly outdated but still relevant article on the various ways to work with Strong’s numbers with Mac-based Bible software, see Getting the Bible’s Numbers, by David Lang.

To know more about how to work with Strong’s numbers in BibleWorks, check out the appropriate Study Guide from within BW8.

Finally, Logos has two recent blog posts on how to use Strong’s numbers, here and here.