From the Good Book to the Good Disk

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Gutenberg would be proud. In about 1456, his invention, the printing press, put Bible knowledge into the hands of laypeople. Now, nearing the end of the 20th century, print products of all types are taking electronic form on diskette, CD-ROM, commercial online services and the international Internet. Some of the best products—in the tradition of Gutenberg—aim to help individuals study scripture more effectively.

Publishers of books, magazines, newspapers and academic journals perceive a gold rush in the electronic frontier. By “going digital” they can eliminate paper, printing and mailing costs as well as the lengthy lead times that print production requires. But the main reason to do so is to broaden readership.

Material that’s published electronically is immediately available to anyone with a computer and an online account. (Right now that’s at least 10 million people, by the most conservative count.) A person doesn’t even have to know exactly what he or she is looking for, because search programs let Internet users “surf,” or skim, through programs that reveal the depths of information available from each source. Search the Internet’s World Wide Web for “Talmud,” for instance, and a “Web browser” program will suggest a list of more than 20 “Web sites” to explore for references to the Talmud. (The wildly popular Web is growing at the astounding rate of 65 percent per month.)

In this article we’ll look at the past year’s developments in commercial software for studying the Bible and related religious literature. We will also describe the vast and fast-spreading ocean of free information that’s appearing on the Internet and commercial online services such as CompuServe and America Online.

The Bible on Disk

For some people, reading the scriptures with a computer may take some getting used to because, unless you have a laptop, you can no longer curl up in an armchair with the Good Book. Most people will sit at a desk, read in the glow of a video-display monitor and occasionally peck at a keyboard or shuffle a mouse around on a mousepad. In short, there’s good and bad news about reading the Bible on a computer: You can’t read in bed, but you can read in the dark.

Aside from the issue of reading habits, however, computer-based Bible study offers tremendous advantages:

• For serious students of the Bible, the efficiencies of computer-aided text retrieval and word processing alone justify the purchase of a computer. This is especially true when you consider that one $300 Bible product on CD-ROM (a compact disc for computers) contains texts and reference materials that could fill more than 100,000 pages, weigh 1,000 pounds if hardbound—and cost thousands of dollars.

• Even if you have never used a computer before, most Bible programs are user-friendly enough to get you up and running right away. (Rank novices may want to have the dealer or a friend do the installation if it looks too technical to tackle, especially if they have a PC and a CD-ROM drive that need to be set up first. Macintosh computers are much easier to set up, but IBM PC-compatible machines have a small edge in the number of products offered.)

• A Bible study program can search its component texts (Bible translations, original-language editions, dictionaries, commentaries and the like) with blinding speed. If you have not seen a Bible program in action, do so; you’ll doubtless want to buy your own copy soon afterward.

• Bible study programs will pull up every instance of every word or reference you seek. Even if you don’t remember part or all of the reference you need, the computer can find it, present it in a list or in context, and then let you copy what you want into the program’s “notepad” or transfer it to your favorite word processor as you draft a paper, sermon, lesson plan or whatever. Most programs also let you attach notes to specific scriptures—a kind of electronic Post-it note.

Intended for serious Bible study, and also for devotional reading, computer-based programs are now considered a necessity for three main reasons:

• computers are widespread and affordable, with used machines priced as low as $300;

• Bible programs’ speed and efficiency are clearly superior to flipping paper pages;

• the texts that come with most programs make the price truly right.

Some programs, moreover, let you highlight passages with colored markers—and undo the highlighting later on. You can’t do that on paper!

Making the Best Choice

In updating last year’s presentation in BAR,^a we can’t review every product. So we’ll briefly survey 17 developers’ products that are new or have been updated in the past 12 months. We’ll also present a chart (see the sidebar “Bible Software Comparison Chart”) that summarizes products in terms of:

• which operating system(s) run(s) them—Macintosh, DOS, Windows or Windows 95;

• which English-language translations they include or provide as add-ons—whether KJV, NIV, RSV or others;

• which study aids they include or make available as add-ons—whether Strong’s Concordance, the Thompson Chain Reference, maps or the ability to use Hebrew or Greek.

Where several editions of a product exist (for instance, the Family, Student and Teacher editions of Bible Companion), the chart names the most comprehensive edition and includes study aids available as add-ons. Third-party add-ons are noted if study aids from other companies will work with the product.

The chart should help in choosing a particular Bible study product. Before turning to the chart you should decide:

• what kind of computer, whether Macintosh or IBM PC-compatible, you will be using;

• whether you want to study the Bible in Greek or Hebrew or only in English translation;

• which English-language Bible translations you must have;

• which Bible study aids you must have or would like to have.

Virtually every program we name includes stock features such as multiple-window views allowing Bible text and study aids to be viewed together, bookmarks, attached notes, personalized notes and sophisticated search capabilities; at this point it’s just a matter of how well they do these things. Talk to the companies whose products most interest you, and then make the choice that you can best live with for a long time—because, as with your marked-up paper Bible, it’s not easy to switch.

It’s also a good idea to discuss how much the programs you want will cost with the companies once you’ve narrowed down your choices and chosen which features you’re interested in. Prices vary significantly depending on what you include in your software packet, but most Bible software costs between $30 and $300. One last hint, shop around—the cost of any particular program can vary widely from store to store.

Bible Software Summary: From acCordance to WORDsearch

acCordance 1.1, which is available only for the Macintosh, is easily the most advanced Bible study program of all. Unlike every other product, acCordance doesn’t rely on word strings of command that resemble equations. Instead it allows the user to drag and drop logical operator symbols to create a search-strategy flowchart. acCordance is fast, offering a wide range of Bible translations—including ASV, NKJV, NRSV (with the apocrypha as a separate text), Darby’s translation, Young’s Literal translation, the JPS Tanach—and works with Greek and Hebrew texts and scripts. (Not all programs do.) A later version due this year will add Greek and Hebrew audio pronunciation; study modules are slated for 1996.

Bible Explorer is a new Windows-only 073program, shipping in October with a Windows 95 version planned for mid-1996. It represents a very good value at $69.95 and contains 200-plus color photos of the Holy Land.

Bible Windows is a respected program complete with Greek and Hebrew capabilities. Bible Windows will adopt a Windows 95 look with version 3.5, which should be out by the time you read this, with a CD-ROM version to follow in November. This version will be faster, more efficient, easier to use and easy to install and customize.

BibleWorks for Windows 3.2 runs neck and neck with PC Study Bible 2.0 and Logos 2.0 for elegance of software and breadth of available add-ons. Its developer constantly adds new features as users request them. BibleWorks lets users type Greek and Hebrew within their notes and includes Friberg’s Analytical Lexicon among its wealth of study tools.

Gramcord for Windows should be an impressive product and out by year’s end, but Gramcord Institute couldn’t say more than that it will include most of the features in acCordance save that program’s Mac-specific ways of operating. Gramcord 4.0 for DOS users has long won the highest grades among academic Bible study programs. The Gramcord search engine also comes on the Teacher’s Bible Companion CD-ROM.

Logos 2.0 is a popular product with lots of momentum. It offers a huge library of study materials that’s growing fast. The CD-ROM includes 74 add-on study tools (which Logos calls “books”); 130 more are ready for release. The Anchor Bible Dictionary and other study aids, including the Ante-Nicene Fathers, the works of Luther and Calvin, and a five-book Catholic Collection will be released soon. Books cost from $4.95 (for the works of R.C. Sproule) to $99.95 (for the Septuagint, with morphology, the study of word forms). Users can search and annotate any book using the Logos Library System—multilingually, mixing left-to-right and right-to-left text—and generate correctly formatted bibliographical citations.

There’s also an electronic-document standard comparable to Logos 2.0 named STEP. Developed by the creators of Verse Search, STEP allows publishers to convert books for use within Verse Search and any STEP-aware program.

The Online Bible 2.5.2 has the most comprehensive Bible study aids of any Macintosh program. It offers Greek and Hebrew capabilities, is very fast and is easy to learn and use.

PC Study Bible2.0 is a strong PC-only product with a wealth of Bible study tools and smooth integration.

QuickVerse 3.0 is an elegant and super-fast program that began as a devotional aid and has since expanded to include Nave’s Topical Bible, Strong’s Bible Dictionary, Holman’s Bible Dictionary and the PC Bible Atlas.

WORDsearch is an attractive and practical $9.95 CD-ROM program that works on both Macintosh computers and IBM PCs and provides extensive study materials plus Life Application Notes and LESSONmaker. You can also “try and buy” additional study aids as you wish.

Two new products are not on the chart because they take a simpler approach. The Venture Bible from Augsburg Fortress Publishers (612/330-3300) and The New Oxford Annotated Bible: Electronic Edition from Oxford University Press (800/451-7556) will include the NRSV with apocrypha, on disk only, in Windows and Macintosh versions. The Venture Bible should ship before the end of 1995 and will include maps and other study materials. The Oxford Windows version will arrive in November, the Macintosh version in January 1996.

Another important company not on the chart, Davka Corp. (800/621-8227), produces a number of Judaic CD-ROMs: Soncino Midrash Rabbah (Windows, Macintosh), Encyclopedia of Judaism & Dictionary of Jewish Biography (Windows), Judaic Classics Limited CD-ROM (Windows, Macintosh), CD-ROM Bible (Windows, Macintosh) and more. Torah Educational Software (914/356-1485) and Torah Productions, Inc. (414/723-2840) also offer a number of Judaic study products.

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For students of the Hebrew and English-language texts approved by the Hebrew Society, Bible Land Software (800/925-6853) sells Bible Scholar (DOS) and Old Testament (Macintosh disk and CD-ROM).

The Bible Online

It would take a thick book to mention every Jewish, Christian or Bible-related resource that’s available online. Here we’ll give some advice on how to access the Internet, describe a few key World Wide Web resources (the Web has become almost synonymous with the Internet) and tell you how to open an account. Lastly, we’ll describe some relevant resources on CompuServe and America Online.

Newsgroups

Like any frontier, Bible-related resources are all over the online map. The Internet, long the domain of academics, has a wealth of public discussion forums called “newsgroups”—but increasing ranks of “newbies” unschooled in online manners, or “netiquette,” tend to post comments in the wrong areas, or post irrelevant or antagonistic remarks. Commercial online services are not so laissez-faire as the Internet; there, each forum’s “sysop” (short for system operator), or moderator, controls postings and helps enforce proper use of discussion areas. America Online offers indexed access to newsgroups and high-speed access at no extra cost to its members.

Mailing Lists

When the number of people who want to start a newsgroup is too small to justify making it available to the global public, a mailing list can automatically forward comments submitted by each participant to all subscribers in the form of electronic mail. Mailing lists cover topics like New Testament Greek, Old Testament Hebrew and Jewish studies as well as almost any topic imaginable. Two examples include ELENCHUS, covering early Christian thought and writing, and MERTON-L, designed to facilitate research into the contemplative life.

Gopher Sites

A class of software called Gopher organizes, searches and retrieves files from thousands of libraries and information archives around the world called “Gopher sites.” If you have the proper version of Gopher for your computer or just a good Web browser, you can access most of the information now available from Internet file transfers that, like Info-Mac Archive’s sumec-aim.stanford.edu, contain a wealth of electronic reference works pertaining to Christianity, Judaism and Greco-Roman and Semitic studies.

File Transfers

Like Gopher, “anonymous FTP” (File Transfer Protocol) lets you riffle through software and document archives—like Harry Plantinga’s Christian literature site, 076which contains the full text of works by G.K. Chesterton, St. John of the Cross and other writers in formats for PC, Mac and Newton computers. However, you generally have to know an FTP site’s address first; so stick to Web browsing, which also lets you locate and retrieve from FTP sites.

Web Sites

Most of the above methods of Internet access yield files that can reside on your computer. (Newsgroups, the chief exception, reside on the computer where the user has an account because of the files’ immense size.) In contrast, “Web sites” only let you browse—as in a retail store, where you can examine anything that interests you—and you can leave “bookmarks” so you can return to interesting sites as they are updated periodically. Try http://www.gospelcom.net or the University of Chicago’s http://WWWoi.uchicago.edu/OI/DEPT/RA.ABZU/Abzu.HTML. Generally, you can’t save or print the information at a Web site, but many Web pages offer links to FTP and Gopher archival sites where you can retrieve information in order to keep a copy of it.

Jewish Web Sites

If you look for sites that mention “Jewish studies” with a Web search engine such as Webcrawler (webcrawler.com), you’ll get more than 200 places to browse—many of them in Israel. One site offers the A-Z of Jewish & Israel-Related Resources (www.ort.org/anjy/resource/a-z.htm). A better place to start, however, might be a general religion Web index page called Finding God in Cyberspace (www.dur.ac.uk/~dth3maf/gresham.html), which lists online guides, FTP sites, Gopher sites, journal tables of contents, libraries, Web sites, electronic journals and electronic conferences for many religions. For a listing of Jewish sites only, point your Web browser to Judaism and Jewish Resources (shamash.nysernet.org/trb/judaism.html); it contains Judaic software libraries, calendars, texts, maps, gallery and museum information and civic guides to Israel.

Christian Hot Lists

“Hot lists” are fast becoming a Web tradition as Web site builders flag other sites they think will be of interest to their users. (Web sites can be linked so that one click of a mouse will quickly jump a user from one site to the next—whether the site is in the U.S., Finland or Australia.) Following are four Christian hot lists that index or highlight a wide range of Web pages:

• Christian Cyberspace Companion (www.bakerbooks.com/ccc) promotes the Baker Book House title of the same name but indexes a good number of scholarly and general-interest Christian Web sites.

• Guide to Christian Resources on the Internet (iclnet93.iclnet.org/pub/resources) is perhaps the leading Web index to Christian sites, with links to dozens of mailing lists, FTP sites and Gopher sites ranging from patristic literature to the pro-life movement.

• The Oxford List of Language Lists (sable.ox.ac.uk/departments/langcentre/langlists.html) lists hundreds of Internet mailing lists that deal with language learning and scholarship, from Amharic to Coptic to Gaelic to American Sign Language.

• Catholic Source Documents (www.cs.cmu.edu:8001/Web/People/spok/catholic.html) describes itself as the most comprehensive index to Web-accessible documents and archival sites of interest to Catholics, with links to Vatican and patristic documents and the works of authors like John Newman and Thomas Merton.

The index pages listed above include links to Web sites that offer searchable Bible texts in public-domain English translations such as the RSV and KJV, in addition to translations that range from Spanish to Swedish to Swahili. (Scholars who have a particular interest in Bible translation should make sure to visit the Summer Institute of Linguistics Web site [www.sil.org], the academic arm of Wycliffe Bible Translators.)

Signing Up

The simplest way to get Internet mail and Web access is to order the free software from a commercial online service such as America Online (800/827-6364) or CompuServe (800/848-8199). A cheaper way is to request a new-account disk from a national Internet service provider like PSI (800/82-PSI-82, info@psi.com) or Netcom (408/983-5950, info@netcom.com). However, small-town and rural folks may be out of luck if these big-name providers don’t have a suitably fast local number for dial-up. (Don’t mess with Web access at speeds lower than 14,400 bits per second.)

To meet demand and offer competitive pricing—somewhere between $25–$35 for 80–120 hours of use per month—Internet service providers are popping up like mushrooms; my area, the Twin Cities, already has a couple dozen. You can research your local connection choices by browsing the Web, calling your state or regional Internet center, checking with your local university’s computer-services center or looking through the ads of regional computer magazines like ComputerUser or Computer Currents.

A text-based “shell” dial-up account may be cheapest, but you’ll find it frustrating to learn and use. Instead request a “graphical” dial-up account with preconfigured Windows or Macintosh software. This will make it easier for you to access the wealth of information that made you want to be on the Internet in the first place.

As packed with offerings as the Internet is, many computer users prefer to get their feet wet with a commercial online service because the software is simpler to set up, as are the parental controls (for locking out R- and X-rated material). Right now the race is a dead heat between America Online and CompuServe, though the appearance of the Microsoft Network this fall will certainly tip the spheres of influence.

You do not do Bible study on America Online (AOL) or CompuServe. Instead, you find files in the software archives, such as The Online Bible (distributed as try-before-you-buy “shareware”), that are mainly means of getting Internet access as well as participating in the Christian and Jewish forums available there. AOL’s Christian Computing Magazine area is also a good place to discuss Bible software products.

America Online

Christianity Today anchors America Online’s Religion and Ethics area with its own forum of message boards, chat rooms, information centers for selected products and resources and ministries, and of course Christianity Today. Christian Computing Magazine and the Christian Macintosh User Group have sections within the messages area. After you receive your America Online startup disk, dial in, sign up, then enter the keyword CT to reach this fairly active and growing forum.

CompuServe

To reach the Christian Interactive Network on CompuServe, sign on and type GO CIN. You must be a member 077to gain access; cost is in addition to CompuServe charges at $6 per month for five hours, $2.95 per hour for additional time. Forums include Publisher’s Corner (reviews, author conferences, access to publishers and a pastor-to-pastor message area) and an Israel forum accessed by entering GO ISRAEL. A Seminary/Education forum of resources and a Christian Online Mall is planned.

Pricing plans vary by hours, speeds and usage patterns, but in general CompuServe is more expensive than America Online. Internet access is a built-in option with either service because commercial online services know they may not survive without offering it. AOL’s Internet access has the edge on CompuServe’s with the best blend of ease of use, higher speeds and lower costs. However, CompuServe draws a more professional crowd than America Online—partly because home computer users can’t afford it. As a result, the questions and answers you find on CompuServe forums tend to be more considered—possibly because members use their real names and not “handles,” as on AOL and, often, the Internet.

As you can see, the electronic revolution has come to Bible reading with as much vigor as the flurry of printing activity that followed Gutenberg’s invention. By year end 1995, every likely publisher will have shipped a Bible-software product; and packages that have been on the market for a while will jockey for greater respect with up-to-date features and ever broader selections of add-on texts, as the Logos Library System best exemplifies. It’s likely that some products will drop out of the market in coming years, so choose carefully. You’ll want to enjoy the package you buy for some time to come.

Gutenberg would be proud. In about 1456, his invention, the printing press, put Bible knowledge into the hands of laypeople. Now, nearing the end of the 20th century, print products of all types are taking electronic form on diskette, CD-ROM, commercial online services and the international Internet. Some of the best products—in the tradition of Gutenberg—aim to help individuals study scripture more effectively. Publishers of books, magazines, newspapers and academic journals perceive a gold rush in the electronic frontier. By “going digital” they can eliminate paper, printing and mailing costs as well as the lengthy lead times that […]