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Review: A survey of five major Bible software programs Part 1
By admin | April 28, 2008
Review: A survey of five major Bible software programs Part 1
I keep shaking my head in amazement. I’ve been examining five major Bible study software packages and am astonished at what these new tools will do. They’re not all alike. Some work better than others. They’re not cheap, but they are all fascinating. And they can change and improve the way pastors study for preaching and teaching.
If you don’t use Bible software to study—even if you are using software that is five years old—you can’t imagine what you’re missing. The ease of use, the sophisticated procedures, and the vast array of additional resources put today’s generation of software in a different league.
If you don’t use Bible software to study—even if you are using software that is five years old—you can’t imagine what you’re missing.
In this article I will focus on these five software programs, all being the most recent versions:
- Biblesoft’s PC Study Bible Version 5 (Professional Reference Library)
- BibleWorks 7
- Logos Bible Software 3 (Scholar’s Library: Gold)
- QuickVerse 2008 (Platinum Edition)
- Zondervan’s The Teacher’s and Pastor’s Library 6.0 for Windows (Pradis-based)
There are many other Bible software packages. One good place to browse through all of them is at www.bitsbytescomputer.com, an online source of “trustworthy tools for biblical studies.” For this project I enlisted the help of several seminary students and pastors. Some use study software all the time; others almost never. Some are skilled in biblical languages; some are not. Some are very computer savvy; others not so much. Our purpose was to consider how these various software packages would help average pastors do their work.
Bible software provides help in two ways. First, these programs help you study the text of Scripture using various translations, Greek and Hebrew resources, and cross-references. Second, they provide a digital library of books and resources in easy-to-search forms to vastly expand your study and personal growth. I will compare the various ways these programs help you study the Scripture directly. Then I will provide more information about the libraries you can acquire. Finally, I’ll spell out the costs and offer some suggestions.
Benefit #1: Studying the text of Scripture
For old school guys like me, throwing away books is akin to trashing a flag. But if you have any of these software packages, you might as well clear out your Strong’s and Young’s concordances and all those other behemoth reference works that list every use of this-or-that in the Bible. In each software package, you can find any word, or group of words, in any order, in multiple Bible translations or the original languages. But that’s old news. Bible software has been doing that for a long time. Here’s what’s new:
Multiple versions: The programs all provide many different translations and paraphrases. BibleWorks also provides the Bible in dozens of other modern languages. All the packages tend to puff up their list of Bible translations with a few versions you probably wouldn’t bother having on your shelf. Surprisingly, QuickVerse does not provide the NIV in their Platinum edition, though they’re happy to sell you an add-on of the NIV, TNIV, and NIrV for $40.
Various Greek, Hebrew, and English versions can be displayed in parallel fashion, as many or as few as you want to see. It is easy to cut and paste from them into other programs. Two programs—Biblesoft’s PC Study Bible and Logos—provide especially quick and ingenious tools for pasting biblical text into other documents, like MS Word.
Searches: You don’t really need these packages to do English word searches. You can do that in several translations for free at various Internet sites. Where these programs are really valuable is in tracking, for example, all the uses of certain Greek or Hebrew words or phrases in the Bible. Even if you do not know the languages, you can still use the tools. Two of the packages—BibleWorks and Logos—do far more than simple word searches in the original languages.
What these two programs do is astonishing. They don’t do the same thing, and space does not allow me to spell out the intricacies of their systems (and they are intricate). Each allows you to search for a particular kind of grammatical construction, regardless of the word. In fact, each has a long list of the various ways you can search and the kinds of things you can search for. In Logos, for example, you could look for every verse where the Holy Spirit communicates in any way—speaking, announcing, or calling. Logos and Biblesoft have numerous training video clips at their websites that show how various features work. This is a feature I wish the others had. It helps you see what you would be getting for your money.
Of all the other resources, those who are comfortable working in the original languages seem to prefer BibleWorks, Logos, or both. BibleWorks has been a favorite for the scholars at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School near me, though Logos’s recent improvements have won them accolades from professors and students of biblical languages also.
Zondervan’s Pradis allows you to search for either the root form of a word (all the uses of agape as either a noun or agapao as a verb) or it’s particular morphological form (a certain tense or voice, for example). Biblesoft and QuickVerse allow searches, but they are more difficult and are pegged to the very old, but still serviceable, Strong’s numbering system.
Exegetical analysis: Each of these programs will parse Greek words and quickly provide basic lexicon definitions. Only BibleWorks, Logos, and Zondervan offer help with Hebrew, including Hebrew text and word morphology. BibleWorks and Logos, once again, are extraordinary. In BibleWorks, for example, as you draw the mouse over the English text of an Old Testament passage, a small window appears with each word showing the Hebrew word and its meaning. Meanwhile, in the adjoining column, a much more complete analysis of each word appears, with even more links to word study books and grammar tools.
Logos arranges things a bit differently, with every word in the selected text appearing in a column that shows the word as it is in the text, the lexical (basic) spelling, a brief definition, an ingenious tiny bar chart showing usage of that word in each book of the Bible, and links to various lexicons and word study tools—all in a about a half inch of screen space. Logos’s exegetical strong suit is providing semantical range of meaning. They have tapped into the Louw and Nida lexicon that’s based on semantic domains. For example, that means you can search for all the words that have to do with “thinking,” and even that is broken into sub-categories.
Several of these packages also provide books in their libraries to help you brush up on grammar and syntax or even tools to teach you these languages. BibleWorks, for example, will give you vocabulary flashcards.
Cross-references: Four of the five packages provide links to the venerable The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, a classic compendium of 500,000 cross-references. You simply point at a reference and a window pops up with that verse. Zondervan’s program does not have this book, but it does have its own cross-reference system (though not as extensive as TSK). What surprises me is that none of these packages use the superior New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, compiled by Jerome H. Smith. Logos does offer it as a download for $40.
Diagramming: I recall diagramming the entire book of 1 Peter for a Greek class in seminary. It was painstaking and laborious. Now, both BibleWorks and Logos allow you to do that much quicker. The BibleWorks program was flat-out fun (if you like diagramming), and then I discovered that they already have the entire New Testament diagrammed for you!
Note taking: Most programs have a simple notepad for taking notes as you study, linking the notes to the particular passage you’re in. Gradually you could build a kind of commentary of your own. In fact, QuickVerse allows you do to just that—write your own commentary—and even share it with others in their system. While most of these notepads are pretty basic formats, BibleWorks and Logos again come through with very sophisticated capabilities. In BibleWorks, for example, you can edit virtually as you would in MS Word, plus pasting in hyperlinks and bitmap files. Logos has an ingenious system for marking texts, as I often do, with digital color pencils and pens. You can define certain colors or lines to indicate a certain subject (e.g. salvation subjects circled in red). This feature was another fun surprise that had me wanting to stay and play awhile.
But is it easy and intuitive? Most of us want to download the software and use it 15 minutes later. One of the big changes in this new generation of software is friendliness. The graphic appearance is inviting and often intuitive. But here’s the thing about “intuitive”—it only works if you’re looking to do something you’ve thought of already. These programs often do things you have never been able to do before in a paper-and-pen world. That means a new user needs to take the time to watch or read the tutorials. I found the help provided by Biblesoft, Logos, and BibleWorks to be very helpful and clear. Zondervan and QuickVerse need work.
Biblesoft’s PC Study Bible and QuickVerse both have very inviting and intuitive arrangements of tool bars and tabs. QuickVerse mimics Microsoft’s Office 2007 look, and Biblesoft has bright, clear buttons and a very clean look. Zondervan’s program is weakest in this area and needs a design makeover. I found it klutzy and old-fashioned.
Logos has done a great job with design, but its very complexity—the enormous range of things it does—means you must use their tutorials. A pastor friend of mine told me he bought Logos (the previous version) for over $1,000, but hasn’t used it, because he couldn’t figure it out. By his own admission, he hasn’t watched or read the tutorials. If you don’t want to take the time to learn the way these programs work, don’t buy them!
BibleWorks is notorious for being difficult to learn. One of my student assistants put it this way: “The basic way you use BibleWorks is you start the program, open the help menu, and tell it what you want to do.” The icons are cryptic and tiny. On the other hand, learning to use a tool that sophisticated is bound to be challenging, and many users have learned how to do it. Once you watch the tutorials, it all seems pretty easy. Use it for a week, and you’ll have the essence of it and be thrilled with all it helps you do.
Topics: Technology |
July 10th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
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