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Even with electronic Bibles, the KJV remains my anchor translation. Its majestic and poetic cadences resonate through my synapses, as they do through the English language, and I have great difficulty applying phrase searches to any other translation. However, once the desired verse or passage has been located, I can instantly switch to other, more contemporary language versions if desired.
Another dimension in electronic Bible study tools is computerization and cross-referencing of the Strong's Number system. Strong's Numbers were assigned to individual words in the Bible by Dr. James Strong for his Exhaustive Concordance, first published in 1890, but which have become vastly more convenient to use with computers
By searching the corresponding Strong's Number, you can obtain the following information about words in the Bible:
The original Greek or Hebrew words from which the Bible was translated
The pronunciation of the original word
The definition of the original word
References to other appearances of the word in the Bible
Using Strong's Numbers, you can easily find other appearances of a word, or the location of a phrase if you know parts of the phrase but not its exact location in the Bible.
Bible Discovery 1.5
As noted above, there is happily a good selection of Bible applications for the Mac (although not as many as are available for Windows), and there is now a new Java-based app that supports Strong's Numbers and comes in a Mac OS X version.
Bible-Discovery is complex Bible studying software by Developed by Hungarian programmer Miklos Zsido with the following features:
Several Bible translations.
English translation King James Version (KJV).
Original Bible in Greek (TR - Textus Receptus 1550/1894).
Original Bible in Hebrew (WLC - Westminster Leningrad Codex).
Hungarian translation by Gaspar Karoli.
Other Bible translations can be downloaded from the Bible Discovery home page and used after installation.
Dictionaries.
Digital Ancient Hebrew-English dictionary.
Digital Ancient Greek-English dictionary.
Tools for helping to understand the texts in original language.
Strong's numbers for the original Greek (TR) Bible. (Strong's number: etyma of the words in the original text sorted alphabetically, numbered)
Strong's numbers for the KJV English Bible
The original Greek/Hebrew lexical meanings of the words can be checked by clicking them.
LXX - Greek Old Testament: Septuagint with Strongs Numbers.
Bookmarks can be organized into categories. Verse lists can be compiled by topics.
Complex, quick search feature. The program can be used as a concordance. The search results are showed in 1 second (1 GHz CPU).
Customizable font size and colour. Visually impaired users can customize the display of the text.
The original Bible in Greek, readable phonetically.
The original Bible in Hebrew, readable phonetically.
Bible translations can be imported from text files.
Parallel and comparative Bible read feature.
Runs on Windows, Linux, MacOS, Solaris.
User interface in English or Hungarian.
The following parts or modules are planned to be added within 1 year:
Cronological read feature.
Several Bible translations.
Quick bookmarks to complement the categorizable bookmark system.
Protestant cross-reference system.
Several other cross-reference systems.
Add your own comments to Testaments, chapters, verses.
Bible quiz (game).
Projector module for speeches and performances, even for praises and songs.
User interface in German, Slovak, Czech, Romanian etc.
Maps of Bible scenes.
Several copyrighted dictionaries, Bible translations and Bible tools, which can be installed as separate plug-ins and can be purchased after the trial period expired.
The Bible Discovery main window has four panes. The books of the Bible are located in a scrolling column to the left. Bible verses are displayed in the large top middle pane, with the dictionaries in the pane below it. The search pane is located in the far right column, and is bifunctional, being able to search both the selected Bible translation and the Dictionary.
The panes can be resized, some panes can be enlarged, some of them can be hidden for better readability. The panes may be minimized and maximized by clicking the little triangular arrow buttons on the pane separator bars. You can switch to another Bible by clicking the tabs.
You can select the Greek (TR) Bible, the protestant Gaspar Karoli translation, the English King James (KJV) translation or even the Hebrew Bible. The preinstalled versions can be extended to include a wide selection of translations in many languages. English language translations you can add include:
Language: en - English
AKJV: American King James Version
ASV: American Standard Version
BBE: Bible in Basic English (1949/1964)
KJV: King James Version (1769) with Strongs Numbers and Morphology (included in the installer)
RWebster: Revised Webster Version (1833)
Tyndale: William Tyndale Bible (1525/1530)
WEB: World English Bible Bible
Webster: Webster Bible
You can also display up to four different translations in parallel columns.
Using the "Compare" configuration, individual verses will be displayed in discrete boxes with up to four versions as well.
The user interface isn't especially pretty, having a dated and somewhat drab Windowsish look, and it being a Java app, it doesn't follow Mac conventions. For example, the Bible Discovery menus are located in the application's own window rather than in the OS X Menu Bar. Another annoyance is that the Mac command for "Copy" isn't supported. You have to use an icon on the toolbar to copy highlighted text.
By using the right click contextual menu in the Bible and dictionary panes. You can search for words in the Bible or the dictionary immediately, or the selected verse can be added to the Bookmarks.
Bible Discovery's Advanced Search (accessed from the program's Bible Menu) dialog is similar to the Search pane of the main window, with the main functional difference between them being that you can preview the selected verse in a box. The program can be used as a concordance as well.
Strong's Numbers may be toggled on and off using a button on the toolbar or from the Bible Pane settings submenu in the Options Menu, along with font and color preferences and a variety of other interface attributes.
The toolbar also contains various navigation buttons, text zoom buttons
This is a powerful tool for serious Bible study, with a rich slate of useful features that work as they're supposed to. My main complaint about Bible Discovery is that like many cross-platform Java applications, it can be mighty sluggish executing some tasks. I found that on my 17" PowerBook 1.33 MHz with 1.5 GB of RAM, switching among different Bible versions especially was maddeningly slow, although menus and such were reasonably responsive. Core Duo power would likely speed things up significantly.
There is no online Help contained within the program, but a set of excellent multimedia tutorials are available on the Bible Discovery Website. Macromedia Flash Player is required to be installed on your computer to watch the tutorials. If you're on a dial-up connection like me, there is a bit of a wait for them to load, but the content is first rate.
New in version 1.5
Changes:
Bubble help for displaying lexical descriptions of Strong's numbers.
Morphology tags for the Greek Textus Receptus Bible.
Greek inflection tables.
The WLC (Hebrew) Bible has been reimported from crosswire.org.
The Bible translations import function has been improved with a new file syntax.
There are more push buttons in the program for better convenient usage.
New Bible translation: LXX - Greek Old Testament: Septuagint with Strongs Numbers (without accents)
The program engine with its numerous features is totally freeware, however, a shareware plug-in is also installed during the setup, which provides the following features:
Ancient Hebrew-English dictionary
Ancient Greek-English dictionary
If you support the development by purchasing the registration code, you will receive registrations of the new plug-in version free for 6 months from the purchase date. (The plug-in version is not equal with the program version, its number changes only few times.)
Purchased or gifted registration codes will not expire, you can unlock the related shareware plug-in (currently version 1.0) at any time.
Price of the plug-in: $29.00
System requirements:
Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, Solaris
For more information, visit:
http://www.bible-discovery.com/
MacSword 1.2.1 Bible Research & Study Tool
MacSword is a free and open-source application facilitating research and study of the Bible as well as resource, commentary, lexicon, devotional and book materials, developed specifically for Macintosh computers running Mac OS X. It is essentially a Mac front end to the cross-platform open source Sword Project.
MacSword allows you to read and browse many different Bibles translations in different languages from Hebrew to Albanian. As well as reading devotionals, commentaries, dictionaries and lexicons, it also supports searching and advanced features such as Services so that you can access the Bible in any Services-savvy program.
As noted, MacSword uses modules from the Sword project at http://www.crosswire.org/sword/ . This is an open source project whose purpose is to "to create an ever expanding software package for research and study of God and His Word". This provides the back-end functionality to handle the Bible texts and provide features such as searching.
Sword module Add-ins include some two dozen different English language Bible or New Testament translations, which is one of the big advantages of MacSword. The program downloads with a King James Version module. One caveat is that most of the recent translations are not in the public domain, so while the modules exist, they are not available for public download.
Modules I use in my copy of MacSword are the King James Version (1611), American Standard Version (1901), Revised Standard Version (1952 edition, I detest the politically-corrected '90s edition), World English Bible (1997), and the International Standard Version.
A version of the KJV with Strongs Numbers and Morphology is available, and a new feature introduced with MacSword version 1.2 is that you can now display two or more version texts side-by-side in parallel columns, which makes comparing translation nuances very easy and convenient. To display another translation (or commentary) in parallel, just click the + icon beside the pop-up menu displaying the currently active module. Another module pop-up menu will appear, allowing you select whatever module you want to display. To remove a module, click "Remove" from the menu containing that module's name.
Bible text modules that are available for download include:
The Apostles' Bible
A Conservative Version
American King James Version
Analytical-Literal Translation
American Standard Version (1901)
Bible in Basic English (1949/1964)
Bible in Worldwide English
The Common Edition: New Testament
Douay-Rheims American Edition (1899)
Douay-Rheims Bible, Challoner Revision
Darby Bible (1889)
English Majority Text Version
GOD'S WORD Translation
Hebrew Names Version of the World English Bible
International Standard Version
Jewish Publication Society Old Testament
Green's Literal Translation
The Living Oracles NT
Green's Modern King James Version
Montgomery New Testament
James Murdock's Translation of the Syriac Peshitta
Revised King James New Testament
Restored Name King James Version
Revised Standard Version
Revised Webster Version (1833)
Twentieth Century New Testament
William Tyndale Bible (1525/1530)
World English Bible
Webster Bible
Weymouth NT (1912)
Young's Literal Translation (1898)
Abbott Illustrated New Testament
Downloadable Bible Commentaries include:
Barnes' New Testament Notes
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible
Darby Translation Notes
Family Bible Notes
Geneva Bible Translation Notes
Jamieson Fausset Brown Bible Commentary
John Lightfoot Commentary
Luther's Commentary on Galatians
Matthew Henry's Complete Commentary on the Whole Bible
Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary on the Whole Bible
The People's New Testament
Personal Commentary
Robertson's Word Pictures
Scofield Reference Notes, 1917 Edition
Tischendorf's Spurious Passages of the GNT
C. H. Spurgeon's Treasury of David
The Fourfold Gospel and Commentary on Acts of Apostles
Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
John Wesley's Notes on the Bible
Sermons on Gospel Themes by Charles G. Finney (1792-1875)
Heretics by Gilbert K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
Calvin's Institutes
Josephus: The Complete Works
The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee (1903-1972)
Orthodoxy by Gilbert K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan (1628-1688)
The Practice of the Presence of God: The Best Rule of Holy Life by Brother Lawrence (Nicholas Herman, 1605-1691)
SWORD Module Add-ins also include:
Lexicons / Dictionaries
Glossaries
Daily Devotionals
General Books
Cult / Unorthodox / Questionable
A floater window allows you to select among modules stores in the program's Modules" folder:
The program includes the ability to display Bible text contiguously with verse references interpolated:
With each verse displayed individually:
Or with footnotes interpolated.
There is also an option to highlight the words of Jesus in red:
A Cocoa drawer, toggled from the toolbar, which is user-customizable:
The "Find" function in Version 1.2 adds indexed searching,. Boolean operators are supported, as are standard wildcard symbols, such as the asterisk (*) for multiple characters and the question mark (?) for single characters.
MacSword now also allows you to create your own commentary/user notes modules. Select New Module from the File menu and save a new commentary file to a location on your computer's hard drive, preferably the Modules folder in the MacSword folder.
System requirements:
MacSword should run on any computer with Mac OS X v10.2 with Safari 1.0 and later or with Mac OS X v10.2.7 and later
System support:
MacSword is currently PowerPC only and runs in Rosetta emulation on MacIntel machines.
MacSword is an excellent and versatile little Bible software program with a n attractive Aqua interface and speedier perfromance than Bible Discovery, but the two programs are more complimentary than competitive with each other.
You can get modules from:
http://www.crosswire.org/sword/modules/
MacSword is freeware
For more information, visit:
http://www.macsword.com/
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Charles W. Moore
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