Biblical software

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Biblical software or Bible software is a group of computer applications designed to read, study and in some cases discuss biblical texts and concepts. Biblical software programs are similar to e-book readers in that they include digitally formatted books, may be used to display a wide variety of inspirational books and Bibles, and can be used on portable computers. However, biblical software is geared more toward word and phrase searches, accessing study bible notes and commentaries, referencing various modern translations, cross-referencing similar passages and topics, biblical dictionaries, original language texts and language tools, maps, charts, and other e-books deemed relevant to understanding texts from a philological approach.

Contents

Bible software varies in complexity and depth, depending on the needs of users, just as the purposes of the users vary from devotional reading and personal study to lesson and sermon preparation, inspirational publishing and even further research tools and translations. Basic Bible software is typically aimed at mobile phones, and is designed to simply display the text of a single Bible translation, with word and phrase searches as the only available tool. More advanced packages run on personal computers and boast far more features, display a wider variety of theological resources (see above), and may offer features such as synopses and harmonies of the Gospel narratives, morphological and syntactical searches of original texts, sentence diagramming, user notes, manual and dynamic highlighting, lectionary viewers, etc.

History

Interest in using computers to quickly search the Bible and copy sections of the text quickly into lessons and sermons emerged in the early 1980s.

Verse Search is said to have been "the very first Bible study program available for home computer users", around 1980[ citation needed ] or 1981, released on the Apple II. [1] [2]

Bible-Reader was made available around 1985, using the King James Bible text and was supplied as free shareware. Programmed by Philip Kellingley in the UK, it was delivered on 5 x 5.25 inch floppy disks which expanded onto the hard drive of an IBM PC. As space was at a premium the program and data only occupied about 1 MB. It was a success, with most shareware distributors rating it as a "best-seller".[ citation needed ]

In 1988, John W. Ellis, M.D. ("Doc Ellis") of Oklahoma City introduced The Bible Library 1.0, the first electronic compilation of multiple Bibles and reference texts. The original CD-ROM contained 9 Bibles and 21 References and was fast and powerful at a time when there were only a couple of slow single Bibles requiring multiple 5¼ floppy disks. [3]

In 1989, Dallas Theological Seminary produced CDWord: The Interactive Bible Library for Windows 2.x. This application featured a library of English Bibles and scholarly works, including a Greek lexicon, a Bible dictionary, and a commentary. [4] The $595 package required a CD-ROM drive, which most users had to purchase and install separately. In 1991, facing financial shortfalls, the DTS board voted to sell the technology to Logos Bible Software, which incorporated the electronic texts into a new version of its product and still sells them today. [5]

Bible software was much faster than traditional study tools in a book forms. Early Bible software was aimed simply at word and phrase searches in different modern translations. Later, as computers improved in handling foreign language fonts, the original Hebrew Old Testament and Koine Greek New Testament texts of the Bible were added. When working with the original biblical languages, one of the first capabilities was morphology or parsing, providing information on the parts of speech of various words to assist in understanding the intent of the text. At this point many Bible software programs emerged which are still in publication today. [6]

Library building

Most Bible software publishers offer a variety of initial packages from basic, to intermediate, to advanced levels, ranging in price from free, to well over the price of the computer it runs on. [7] Bible software producers commonly offer customers expandability—that users can build on their initial monetary investment with the purchase of additional resources such as dictionaries, commentaries, translations, and other inspirational books. Initial packages normally include many bundled works, while add-on titles represent a more significant investment. Normally, the advanced packages include all the features of the more basic packages, though a customer may benefit from two or more bundles by purchasing packages from different publishers—especially those which work seamlessly in the same format.

Desktop Bible software

Software for research

The Open Source SHEBANQ project is an initiative of the Eep Talstra Centre for Bible and Computer (ETCBC) of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. [8] [9] The basis of the project is the ETCBC-database of the Hebrew Bible. The database contains the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible, which is richly encoded on the levels of morphology and syntax. On their website shebanq.ancient-data.org the text and its features can be inspected and lexical and grammatical queries can be made in the Mini Query Language (MQL), to which one can refer in other publications. The website also shows which other projects based on the ETCBC database have been initiated. The Python package text-fabric [10] is a platform independent research tool with which one can preprocess data from the ETCBC database and store them in any desired format. The SHEBANQ project is based on the specific demands of research. These demands were formulated during the Lorentz conference, held in Leiden 2012. [11]

Linux/Unix

macOS

Programming API

Windows

Mobile platform

Mobile Bible apps can be best categorized by two primary uses - reading and studying. Many apps will offer little more than the text of the Bible designed for casual reading. Other apps add specialized tools designed to help the student study a passage by accessing original Greek and Hebrew language resources, Bible commentaries, dictionaries, atlases and other supporting material.

Android

Apple iOS

Blackberry

Java

Palm OS

Windows Mobile (formerly Windows CE)

See also

Operating Systems
Scripture Markup Languages
Online tools

Further reading

Related Research Articles

A study Bible is an edition of the Bible prepared for use by a serious student of the Bible. It provides scholarly information designed to help the reader gain a better understanding of and context for the text.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The SWORD Project</span>

The SWORD Project is the CrossWire Bible Society's free software project. Its purpose is to create cross-platform open-source tools—covered by the GNU General Public License—that allow programmers and Bible societies to write new Bible software more quickly and easily.

An application program is a computer program designed to carry out a specific task other than one relating to the operation of the computer itself, typically to be used by end-users. Word processors, media players, and accounting software are examples. The collective noun "application software" refers to all applications collectively. The other principal classifications of software are system software, relating to the operation of the computer, and utility software ("utilities").

Mobipocket SA was a French company incorporated in March 2000 that created the .mobi e-book file format and produced the Mobipocket Reader software for mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDA) and desktop operating systems.

Accordance is a Bible study program for Apple Macintosh and iPhone, and now Windows and Android, developed by OakTree Software, Inc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Logos Bible Software</span>

Logos Bible Software is a digital library application developed by Faithlife Corporation. It is designed for electronic Bible study. In addition to basic eBook functionality, it includes extensive resource linking, note-taking functionality and linguistic analysis for study of the Bible - both in translation and in its original languages.

Olive Tree Bible Software creates Biblical software and mobile apps, and is an electronic publisher of Bible versions, study tools, Bible study tools, and Christian eBooks for mobile, tablet, and desktop devices. The firm is headquartered in Spokane, Washington and is a member of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA). Olive Tree currently supports Android, iPad, iPhone, Macintosh, Windows, and personal computer devices.

The Blue Letter Bible (BLB) project is an initiative of Sowing Circle, a United States-based, non-denominational Christian ministry that has created a study Bible and Bible study tools stated to "make reading, searching and studying the Bible easy and rewarding". The study Bible and associated resources are provided in CD format, via Internet, and via apps. Sowing Circle, a California 501(c)(3) Private Operating Foundation, was founded in November 1995. The Project supports 12 English Bible translations, Hebrew and the Septuagint for the Old Testament, and the Greek Textus Receptus and Westcott-Hort versions for the New Testament. Integrated study tools include Gesenius' Lexicon for the Old Testament, and Thayer's Lexicon for the New Testament, as well as English and Strong's Concordances for the entire Bible. Dozens of Biblical commentaries are also available.

The following is a comparison of e-book formats used to create and publish e-books.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Salem Web Network</span>

Salem Web Network is a Christian website company, headquartered in Richmond, Virginia with offices in Dallas and Nashville. The company is owned and operated by Salem Communications.

WORDsearch Bible Software, based in Austin, Texas, was one of the oldest and largest publishers of software and digital books specifically for Christian pastors, Bible teachers, and students. WORDsearch became part of the ministry of B&H Publishing Group of LifeWay Christian Resources of Nashville, Tennessee, but was sold to competitor Faithlife in 2020. Upon the announcement of the sale, it was also announced that Wordsearch would be retired and transitioned to Logos Bible Software, with users receiving Logos for free. WORDsearch produced specialized study programs under the brands WORDsearch, QuickVerse, and myWSB and a compatible library of over 5,000 digital books on Windows, MacIntosh, iPad, Android, and web browsers. It was developed under the academic division of B&H Publishing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bible Analyzer</span>

Bible Analyzer is a freeware, cross-platform Bible study computer software application for Microsoft Windows, Macintosh OS X, and Ubuntu Linux. It implements advanced search, comparison, and statistical features of Bible texts as well as more typical Bible software capabilities. It received a high rating for version 4.4 from download.com. The Macintosh edition has also received positive reviews.

Ultralingua is a single-click and drag-and-drop multilingual translation dictionary, thesaurus, and language reference utility. The full suite of Ultralingua language tools is available free online without the need for download and installation. As well as its online products, the developer offers premium downloadable language software with extended features and content for Macintosh and Windows computer platforms, smartphones, and other hand held devices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Word Bible Software</span>

theWord is a free Bible study software application for Microsoft Windows. It was first released in 2003 and developed by Costas Stergiou. It offers Bibles, commentaries, dictionaries, general books, maps, search capabilities, and support for Bibles in several languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Calibre (software)</span> E-book management and editing software

Calibre is a cross-platform free and open-source suite of e-book software. Calibre supports organizing existing e-books into virtual libraries, displaying, editing, creating and converting e-books, as well as syncing e-books with a variety of e-readers. Editing books is supported for EPUB and AZW3 formats. Books in other formats like MOBI must first be converted to those formats, if they are to be edited. Calibre also has a large collection of community contributed plugins.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to software:

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the Perl programming language:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SABDA</span> Indonesian Bible study software

SABDA or SABDA Bible Software is an Indonesian integrated Bible study platform that's based on the Online Bible engine, with multilingual Bibles available in the program.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Foliate (software)</span> E-book reading application for Linux

Foliate is a free e-book reading application for desktop Linux systems. The name refers to leaves, meaning "(getting) leafy" or "…-leaved".

References

  1. ↑ Reviews of Bible Study Software Archived 2011-11-23 at the Wayback Machine
  2. ↑ Bible Research Systems History Archived 2011-11-23 at the Wayback Machine
  3. ↑ Bible Library - Powerful, Yet Easy and Fun to Use Bible Software
  4. ↑ Deegan, Marilyn (April 2009). Transferred Illusions: Digital Technology and the Forms of Print . Ashgate. p.  26. ISBN   978-0-7546-7016-2.
  5. ↑ "25 Years of Digital Bible Initiatives at DTS From CDWord to Logos Bible Software". DTS Magazine. 31 January 2014. Archived from the original on 2014-04-28. Retrieved 27 April 2014.
  6. ↑ "Bible Software History 101". Hall Harris. 2008-02-06. Archived from the original on 2008-03-23. Retrieved 2008-03-09.
  7. ↑ Scholar’s Library: Gold (JG) - Logos Bible Software
  8. ↑ "SHEBANQ | EADH - The European Association for Digital Humanities". eadh.org. Retrieved 2021-03-03.
  9. ↑ "SHEBANQ". shebanq.ancient-data.org. Retrieved 2021-03-03.
  10. ↑ "Text-Fabric". github.com/annotation/text-fabric. Retrieved 2022-08-11.
  11. ↑ "LorentzLeiden". www.lorentzcenter.nl/biblical-scholarship-and-humanities-computingdata-types-text-language-and-interpretation.html. Retrieved 2022-08-11.
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