Bible Study Software

060

Despite claims that the World Wide Web will make it as obsolete as vinyl records and 8-track tapes, CD-ROM technology still has a long and useful life ahead of it. This is especially true of CD-ROM programs for Bible study. These programs enable you to study various Bible translations, perform word searches (some in Greek and Hebrew), consult reference works and take notes as you go. Some programs allow you to update material by connecting to the Web, and most include Bible-related maps and photographs.

CD-ROM software for Bible study has been available for several years, but thanks to recent improvements, you can now perform Bible research much more quickly and easily than ever before. Moreover, the number of texts offered by the various software packages has multiplied. Today there are hundreds: not just numerous versions of the Bible, but also dictionaries, reference works, historical documents and theological treatises. The list of available texts is constantly growing and users can usually purchase additional material directly from the Web.

Here we will look at five of the leading Bible study programs: Bible Explorer 3, BibleWorks 5, PC Study Bible, Logos Scholar’s Library and WORDsearch/BART (Biblical Analysis Research Tool). All of them run on Microsoft Windows,^a and are readily available and user-friendly. I evaluated each program based on ease of installation and navigation, usefulness as a study aid and how helpful each program is to someone interested in Biblical archaeology.

Before we start, a caveat: These programs are, on the whole, targeted at a Christian audience, and the selection of texts and background materials often reflects a theological position. And, alas, the programs make little use of archaeological findings (computer-savvy readers, take heart: past issues of BAR will soon be available on CD-ROM). Of course, BAR readers are interested not only in archaeology, but also in the Bible itself and its role in civilization. So 062these products still have much to offer.

I enjoyed using all of the programs. I even got a bit addicted to them—hours would fly by while I “studied” on my computer. Deciding which one was my favorite proved very difficult.

Bible Explorer 3 Premium Edition

Bible Explorer 3 is probably the most user-friendly of the five software programs. It’s simple to load from the installation CD-ROM and the window that pops up on the screen is well organized. Bible Explorer 3 allows you to participate in discussion groups such as the “Community,” a Christian forum on the Web, or just explore the digital library. Browsing through books is easy. You can have several books open at the same time, and if you set up a link between two books, you can read them side by side. If you’re reading, say, Barne’s Notes on the New Testament together with the Bible, your Bible will automatically scroll down to match your place in Barne’s. When you’re reading any secondary text, just point to a Biblical reference, and the relevant Bible verses will appear on the screen.

Users can perform simple searches (to find, for example, verses that mention Abraham) and more sophisticated ones (verses that mention Moses and/or Aaron). But I ran into trouble when I started searching for very common words. The word “Israel” caused a major computer error, and I had to shut down the whole program! This happened whenever I searched for a word that appears very often in the Bible. Bible Explorer 3 is not suitable for multilingual research—almost all of its resources are in English. You can look up transliterated Greek and Hebrew words in the digital dictionaries, however.

Bible Explorer 3 includes some appealing “extras,” such as engravings by Gustave Doré, photographs of Israel and an atlas. The photographs are high-quality, but their captions read like an odd cross between a modern tourist brochure and the Bible. For example, the caption to a photograph of Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee, reads: “You can dine at restaurants on the shoreline or eat from the booths and carts of the many street vendors … It was near Tiberias that Jesus performed the miracle of feeding a crowd of 5000 men.”

Indeed, many of the “extras” (for example, The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life and John Milton’s Paradise Lost) are largely unrelated to Bible study and certainly to Biblical archaeology, and, like the discussion groups, seem to be aimed at evangelical Christians. Nevertheless, this program is a good bet for anyone in search of a user-friendly study tool.

One final note on Bible Explorer 3: It’s best used in conjunction with the Internet. In addition to discussion groups, the program provides links to Web sites of interest and to the company’s own site for more information. If you’re not connected to the Web, you’ll miss out on some of the fun.

BibleWorks 5

To the novice user, BibleWorks 5 will seem a little daunting. The box declares, “Software for Biblical Exegesis and Research.” Even the packaging is intimidating—at first I thought I’d have to spend hours figuring out how to use the program. I certainly didn’t get off to a good start—I couldn’t find the product registration number (it’s on the title page of the user’s manual, in case you were wondering).

As it turned out, I did spend hours on this program—happy hours, not frustrating ones. BibleWorks 5 allows users to customize their searches (for example, you can look for every time a particular word is used as a direct object) and do in-depth linguistic study. It offers dozens of important translations of the Bible, in German, Italian and even Russian. I was also impressed to find the Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh, which uses the traditional Hebrew text and verse numbering of the Hebrew Bible. While browsing the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, a standard scholarly edition of the Hebrew Bible, I discovered that I could just click on a word to learn its morphology, how often it occurs in the text and the location of each occurrence. My search of the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, yielded fast and precise results. Without a doubt, the search engine of BibleWorks 5 is the product’s most outstanding feature.

Clearly, BibleWorks 5 was designed with serious researchers in mind. It contains secondary literature with tools for linguistic study, but no maps or photographs. Also, the program eats up a lot of hard drive space. But for people who want a program that’s not faith-oriented, this may be the right choice.

063

Logos Scholar’s Library

Of all the Bible study programs currently available, the Logos Scholar’s Library is the one that looks prepared to add the most texts to its collection. Logos has built up an extensive library of resources and has fully integrated its software with the Web. Consequently the Logos Scholar’s Library offers a wide array of texts—more that 2,500 books—and the list is growing. On the other hand, it’s not always easy to use. I didn’t like the annoying way it continually reset itself to default settings, and the “My Library” button kept referring me to books that weren’t available. So I took drastic measures—I actually read the advice in the “Help” section. I also e-mailed the manufacturers, who promptly sent me a fax with tips on getting started.

The Logos Scholar’s Library takes more time to set up than the other packages. If you want to browse through books quickly, you’ll have to download the books from the CD-ROMs onto your hard drive. This is time-consuming, and even so, searching is often slow. There are “topic tags” that are supposed to facilitate searching, but in practice these aren’t very helpful.

Unlike the other programs, the Logos Library is loosely structured—the resources aren’t closely linked together. This has its advantages, however, in that it places fewer constraints on the user. If you want to conduct more open-ended research, this package might offer the flexibility you want.

Logos is completely up to date technologically, so users can easily integrate materials downloaded from the Web into the program. As long as the designers continue to keep up with technological developments, the Logos Scholar’s Library will have great potential to be upgraded for long-term use.

PC Study Bible

PC Study Bible kept me engaged longer than any of the other programs because it’s so straightforward to use. Several on-screen menus will help you perform searches, browse through texts and take notes. There’s a handy timeline that pops up, and plenty of links to reference works. PC Study Bible includes Greek and Hebrew study tools, but these aren’t adequate for the needs of serious scholars. Many of the Greek and Hebrew texts are transliterated into the Roman alphabet; as far as I can tell, the transliteration scheme is consistent, so users who don’t know Greek or Hebrew well can nevertheless study and compare texts in those languages.

The PC Study Bible package includes the high-quality Moody Atlas and Timeline and lots of photographs. Like Bible Explorer 3, however, this program seems to assume that the Bible is literally true, and that the Old Testament anticipates the coming of Jesus. Non-Christian buyers, be warned.

I did encounter a few problems with this software: My computer didn’t have enough memory to open every resource. But overall, I found the PC Study Bible to be a worthwhile study aid. I’d recommend it to anyone who wants a user-friendly program and doesn’t need to conduct original research.

WORDsearch and BART (Biblical Analysis Research Tool)

WORDsearch and BART are two parts of a three-part Bible study package produced by iExalt Software (the third component, LessonMaker, is an aid for planning Bible lessons or sermons; I won’t discuss it here). While the other products I’ve reviewed here share many common features, WORDsearch and BART are distinctive. This was apparent from the moment I launched WORDsearch. Immediately, a digital “bookshelf” flashes on the screen, with books arranged according to topic; you can browse them by clicking on their spines. A desktop appears, too, enabling users to take notes as they read. One of the things I liked best about WORDsearch and BART is that they’re compatible with Microsoft Word, so you can paste your notes into Word documents without having to convert them into another format.

There’s something else that’s different about WORDsearch: You have to use the program’s “Find” command to search text, using one command to search for a word, a different command to search for a topic and a third command to search for a Biblical reference. This is awkward at first, but I got used to it quickly. I found the searching to be effective, although WORDsearch doesn’t recognize variant spellings of proper nouns or place names.

If you want to open up multiple Bibles, WORDsearch, like Bible Explorer 3, can automatically link them together. But only in WORDsearch does this make for easier reading and navigation. Another great feature of WORDsearch is that it allows you great flexibility in arranging the windows on your screen. Numerous maps and background materials—again, mostly targeted at a Christian audience—come with the WORDsearch package.

I do have one complaint about WORDsearch: The software hasn’t been updated to make full use of the Web or the newer features of Windows. For example, I have a newer type of mouse, a scrolling mouse, and I couldn’t use it with WORDsearch. The program is not terribly user-friendly or technologically up to date. But if you have an older computer with limited hard drive space, that may not matter.

Although WORDsearch can’t be used for multilingual research, its sister program, the Biblical Analysis Research Tool (BART), can. BART provides a number of Greek and Hebrew tools for searching and studying, including Greek text alongside an English translation and parsed Hebrew text. Although BART’s search tools are strong enough for scholars, laypeople will find that BART can help them study Greek and Hebrew texts in the original languages.

And the Winner Is…

All of these programs have strengths and weaknesses, so making a final recommendation is difficult. For academics, I would recommend BibleWorks 5, because of its powerful search engine. The Logos Scholar’s Library is probably the best package for anyone interested in Biblical archaeology. It’s not the easiest to use, but it has a huge (and growing) library and many study tools; it also makes better use of the Internet than other programs. Besides, there’s another good reason to choose Logos. You can now buy Biblical Archaeology Society slide sets and, starting in October, back issues of BAR and link them to the Logos Scholar’s Library. That means you’ll be able to simultaneously search everything in the BAS slide sets, the BAR back issues and the Logos Scholar’s Library. Those without Logos software need not worry—the BAS slide sets and BAR back issues can be used independently of Logos.

Whichever study program you decide on, your knowledge of the Bible will be vastly increased. Make your choice and start exploring!

Despite claims that the World Wide Web will make it as obsolete as vinyl records and 8-track tapes, CD-ROM technology still has a long and useful life ahead of it. This is especially true of CD-ROM programs for Bible study. These programs enable you to study various Bible translations, perform word searches (some in Greek and Hebrew), consult reference works and take notes as you go. Some programs allow you to update material by connecting to the Web, and most include Bible-related maps and photographs. CD-ROM software for Bible study has been available for several years, but thanks to […]