First published: Methodist Recorder/Joint Church Press, 26 August 1999
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
I remember over 10 years ago using a Bible study software program on an Amstrad CPC 64k computer - it amounted to a single book of the Bible, was slow, and predated Windows 'cut and paste'. In 1987 the Online Bible first began to design a DOS program that would access the electronic version of the King James Version. Things have moved on. Now I can get dozens of Bible versions, commentaries, lexicons and dictionaries, on one Windows CD, with lightning fast search speeds, full original language 'cut and paste' to my word processor and all for little more than the cost of a leather Study Bible. I regularly travel to Sinai, the land where 3500 years ago it took 2 large stone tablets to record just ten lines of text, but I take with me a laptop the size of a paperback book with more than 500 works of Biblical reference tucked away on a hard disk smaller than a cigarette packet.
IMPROVED RANGE OF SOFTWARE
If one searches the Internet for "Biblical Software" the response extends to thousands of web sites dedicated to reviewing and providing Christian software to the Minister, Bible student and lay believer, alike. In fact, the growth in availability of Christian software has been phenomenal. Everything from clipart to church management, Bible study to the Bible Code, Dictionaries to the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Greek tutors to Hebrew word processors, is now available on CD-Rom. But choice can bring confusion, when there are literally dozens of competing Bible study programs.
One cannot hope to review all these titles here, others such as the Church Computer Users Group offer regular reviews of software and many Christian software sites have posted independent media reviews on their sites. There are several paths to building yourself an electronic Christian library and I will outline just two possible routes.
A BASIC CHRISTIAN LIBRARY
The studious believer who wants to know and understand his Bible better, prepare weekly Bible studies, or preach lay sermons can equip him or herself for less than a £100 with nearly 500 books on just 2 CDs. As a starting point the economically priced Online Bible 8 (£30) contains over a dozen English Bible versions, mainly of the literal rather than paraphrase variety, and more than 40 European language versions besides. Accompanying the Bibles are the Apocrypha, Greek and Hebrew dictionaries linked to Strong's Concordance numbers, Robertson's NT Word Pictures, Treasuries of David and of Scripture Knowledge, Commentaries by Matthew Henry, the superlative Dr John Gill's 10 million word commentary from Jewish and other ancient sources, Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Easton's Bible Dictionary, Apologetic, Creation and Archaeological material, maps, books by Bunyan, Spurgeon and Edersheim, and more. Even without knowing the original Bible languages one can click on Bible texts linked to Strong's numbers for grammatical and lexical definitions. The material is unashamedly evangelical and provided by an ongoing project to furnish the believer with economical accessible Biblical material. The CDs are expanded every couple of months with more material and for the price one could afford to give an existing copy away and then purchase the latest one.
In addition to Bible study in all its versions and languages, the next greatest help is a library of Christian literature. This is best furnished by the Master Christian Library 6 with over 400 resources on one CD. Perhaps the most useful of these is a series of 39 volumes containing the entire writings of the first five centuries of the Christian church. I spent several years collecting these in secondhand bookshops for about £10 each, they take up 6 feet on my bookshelf, and now I have them all on a CD for £63, with ten times as much material thrown in for extra measure. To be able to search through the history of the church for the first use of say the term 'trinity', or see how the apologist Justin Martyr used messianic texts in dialogue with Judaism, or read the arguments on both sides surrounding the establishment of the Church's creeds is incredible. But this CD does not stop there, the history of the Church did not end at Nicea and so the Master Christian Library contains works by Luther, Calvin, Wesley and Spurgeon, Anglicans, Baptists, puritans and evangelicals, and revivalists such as Finney, Moody and Edwards. All these and more made available cheaply as they are out of copyright. In the words of their own advertising it is "the most comprehensive and inexpensive Christian library available on one CD-Rom".
AN ADVANCED CHRISTIAN LIBRARY
For the more serious student, scholar or minister, the lack of original language accents and pointing, or a Greek Septuagint, may frustrate users of the Online Bible. Rather than examine all the available software in between, since we have examined the cheapest, lets examine next, the best. Bibleworks Hermeneutika 4 is undoubtedly a scholar's dream package, and so it should be at £230 or more. In addition to the basic Bible versions, as found on the Online Bible this package contains 8 NT Greek texts, 3 OT Greek Septuagint texts, 5 Greek dictionaries, Latin Vulgate and BHS Hebrew (fully pointed with vowels, also with morphological parsing). Hebrew lexicons include BDB, Gesenius, and the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament. The built in editor allows for basic Greek and Hebrew typing and file export. Bible dictionaries and encyclopedias are also included.
The only scholastic resources needed beyond this might include a multilingual word processor for Hebrew and Greek. A number are available but each incompatible with each other. Two high end software packages, Universal Word and OnePen, include the ability to type in English, Biblical Hebrew and Greek, as well as Arabic, Syriac, Ugaritic and 150 modern languages, assuming you already know the language in the first place! For those interested in further Biblical background, the Dead Sea Scrolls are available on CD-Rom as are the complete writings of the Jewish rabbis from the Mishnah, through the Talmud, to the Midrashim.
OLD PC? - LATEST SOFTWARE
So, whether you are an enquiring believer or a theological professor, Biblical software now caters for all your needs. What is more, many of these products will in fact run on aging 386 computers, so whilst your computer may have been outdated just months after you bought it, your reference software can remain right up to date. This is in direct contrast to the bloatware of commercial software production which requires a near supercomputer to run the latest programs.
Article by Jonathan Went (BMSoftware)
jon@bmsoftware.com
DIRECTORY OF SOFTWARE PROVIDERS
LINKS TO AUTHOR'S SITES
Web Hosting, Design & Promotion: www.bmsoftware.com/webdesign
Biblical and multilingual software: www.bmsoftware.com
Biblical Hebrew correspondence course: www.biblicalhebrew.com
Christian study courses, resources and articles: www.biblicalstudies.co.uk
Roots and Branches - the Hebraic Journal: www.rootsandbranchespress.com
Christ for England Bible School: www.cfebibleschool.org.uk
Christian Comment: www.christiancomment.com
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