Nota Bene is a word-processing program and not an electronic concordance, but it is so powerful and handy for Bible scholars that it bears special mention. It is a DOS-based (that is, not Windows) system with various add-ons that let you work in all Biblical languages, footnote material easily and prepare bibliographies. It is the ne plus ultra of word-processing programs for Biblical studies and all graduate work, specifically written with Bible and religion scholars in mind. It was designed by Steve Siebert, then a graduate student in religion at Yale, who made sure that it contained extremely sophisticated features for footnotes and bibliographies. If you have a modem, you can also reach several dozen research libraries around the world, pick their electronic card catalogues’ brains, download all the references you need, automatically add them to your own database, footnote them and include them in your bibliography at will, without ever having to type a single reference other than the page numbers you want to note. You can also do all your note taking within the program, index all your notes, even print them on 3-by-5-inch file cards, and call them up in separate windows at will as you are writing your scholarly article.
Nota Bene allows you to add a specific Biblical quotation in accented Greek or pointed Hebrew right into your document, which is an enormous advantage for those of us who need to quote the Bible frequently, often in difficult-to-type foreign languages. Eventually it will also be available in Windows format as well, but probably at some cost in speed because everything in “Wind-Doze” seems to take longer. Nota Bene’s capabilities were very important to Gene’s and my study together.
