Bible-Discovery: Powerful but Sluggish Bible Study Software
Charles W. Moore - 2007.07.30
Bible study has been revolutionized by personal computers.
For Bible reading, I'm partial to a hold-it-in-your-hand copy of
the King James Version (KJV) and a comfortable chair. However, for
Bible study or reference, I like to compare several translations,
and while parallel editions of the Bible have been around for
decades, allowing the reader to compare several versions in
side-by-side columns, computer Bible programs make the process
slicker - many allow the addition of multiple translation versions,
and the best of all have search engines.
Mac OS X Bible software apps include Accordance, Online Bible, iBible, Bible Reader
Free, MacSword, and
Java-based Bible-Discovery.
Incidentally, for quick online lookups in a mind-boggling selection
of translations in many languages, it's hard to beat BibleGateway.com.
Even with electronic Bibles, the KJV remains my anchor
translation. Its majestic and poetic cadences resonate through my
synapses, as they do through the English language, and I have great
difficulty applying phrase searches to any other translation
because it's the KJV phrases that are imprinted on my memory.
However, once the desired verse or passage has been located, I
can instantly switch to other, more contemporary versions if
desired.
Another dimension in electronic Bible study tools is
computerization and cross-referencing of the Strong's
Number system. Strong's Numbers were assigned to individual
words in the Bible by Dr. James Strong for his Exhaustive
Concordance, first published in 1890, but have become vastly more
convenient to use with computers
By searching the corresponding Strong's Number, you can obtain
the following information about words in the Bible:
- The original Greek or Hebrew words from which the Bible was
translated
- The pronunciation of the original word
- The definition of the original word
- References to other appearances of the word in the Bible
Using Strong's Numbers, you can easily find other appearances of
a word or the location of a phrase, if you know parts of the phrase
but not its exact location in the Bible.
Bible-Discovery
As
noted above, there is happily a good selection of Bible
applications for the Mac (although not as many as are available for
Windows), and one very interesting offering is a freeware
Java-based app that supports Strong's Numbers and comes in a Mac
OS X version.
Bible-Discovery is complex Bible studying software by developed
by Hungarian programmer Miklos Zsido with the following
features:
- Several Bible translations.
- English translation: King James Version (KJV).
- Original Bible in Greek (TR - Textus Receptus 1550/1894).
- Original Bible in Hebrew (WLC - Westminster Leningrad
Codex).
- Hungarian translation by Gaspar Karoli.
Other Bible translations can be downloaded from the
Bible-Discovery home page and used after installation.
Dictionaries
- Digital Ancient Hebrew-English dictionary.
- Digital Ancient Greek-English dictionary.
Tools for helping to understand the texts in original
language.
- Strong's numbers for the original Greek (TR) Bible. (Strong's
number: etyma of the words in the original text sorted
alphabetically, numbered)
- Strong's numbers for the KJV English Bible
- The original Greek/Hebrew lexical meanings of the words can be
checked by clicking them.
- LXX - Greek Old Testament: Septuagint with Strong's
Numbers.
- Bookmarks can be organized into categories. Verse lists can be
compiled by topics.
- Complex, quick search feature. The program can be used as a
concordance. The search results are showed in 1 second (1 GHz
CPU).
- Customizable font size and colour. Visually impaired users can
customize the display of the text.
- The original Bible in Greek, readable phonetically.
- The original Bible in Hebrew, readable phonetically.
- Bible translations can be imported from text files.
- Parallel and comparative Bible read feature.
- Runs on Windows, Linux, MacOS, Solaris.
- User interface in English or Hungarian.
The following parts or modules are planned to be added within a
year:
- Chronological read feature.
- Several Bible translations.
- Quick bookmarks to complement the categorizable bookmark
system.
- Add your own comments to Testaments, chapters, verses.
- Bible quiz (game).
- Projector module for speeches and performances, even for
praises and songs.
- User interface in Slovak, Czech etc.
- Maps of Bible scenes.
- Several copyrighted dictionaries, Bible translations and Bible
tools, which can be installed as separate plug-ins and can be
purchased after the trial period expired.
The Bible-Discovery main window has four panes. The books of the
Bible are located in a scrolling column to the left. Bible verses
are displayed in the large top middle pane, with dictionaries in
the pane below it. The search pane is located in the far right
column and is bifunctional, being able to search both the selected
Bible translation and the dictionary.
The panes can be resized: Some panes can be enlarged, and some
of them can be hidden for better readability. The panes may be
minimized and maximized by clicking the little triangular arrow
buttons on the pane separator bars. You can switch to another Bible
by clicking the tabs.
You can select the Greek (TR) Bible, the Protestant Gaspar
Karoli translation, the English King James (KJV) translation, or
even the Hebrew Bible. The preinstalled version selections can be
extended to include a wide selection of translations in many
languages. English language translations you can add include:
- AKJV: American King James Version
- ASV: American Standard Version
- BBE: Bible in Basic English (1949/1964)
- KJV: King James Version (1769) with Strong's Numbers and
Morphology (included in the installer)
- RWebster: Revised Webster Version (1833)
- Tyndale: William Tyndale Bible (1525/1530)
- WEB: World English Bible Bible
- Webster: Webster Bible
To find a particular book, chapter, and verse reference, you can
summon the Verse Chooser dialog from the toolbar.
You can also display up to four different translations in
parallel columns.
Using the "Compare" configuration, individual verses will be
displayed in discrete boxes with up to four versions as well.
The user interface isn't especially pretty, having a dated and
somewhat drab Windows-ish look, and being a Java app, it doesn't
follow Mac conventions. For example, the Bible-Discovery menus are
located in the application's window rather than in the OS X
Menu Bar. Another annoyance is that the Mac command for "Copy"
(cmd-c) isn't supported. You have to use an icon on the toolbar to
copy highlighted text.
You can also opt to copy highlighted text to a Copy Verses
window, where it can be edited before pasting.
By using the right click contextual menu in the Bible and
dictionary panes. You can search for words in the Bible or the
dictionary immediately, or the selected verse can be added to the
Bookmarks.
Bible-Discovery's Advanced Search (accessed from the program's
Bible Menu) dialog is similar to the Search pane of the main
window, with the main functional difference between them being that
you can preview the selected verse in a box. The program can be
used as a concordance as well.
Strong's Numbers may be toggled on and off using a button on the
toolbar or from the Bible Pane settings submenu in the Options
Menu, along with font and color preferences and a variety of other
interface attributes.
The toolbar also contains various navigation buttons and text
zoom buttons
This is a powerful tool for serious Bible study, with a rich
slate of useful features that work as they're supposed to, albeit
sometimes very slowly.
My main complaint about Bible-Discovery is that, like many
cross-platform Java applications, it can be mighty sluggish
executing some tasks. I found that on my 17" PowerBook 1.33 GHz with 1.5 GB
of RAM, switching among different Bible versions was maddeningly
slow, although menus and such were reasonably responsive. Core 2 Duo
power would no doubt speed things up significantly.
There is no online Help within the program, but a set of
excellent multimedia tutorials is available on the Bible-Discovery
website.
Flash Player must be installed on your computer to watch the
tutorials. If you're on a dialup connection like me, there is a
bit of a wait for them to load, but the content is first rate.
New in version 1.9
Changes:
- You can copy verses, search results, and bookmarks to the
clipboard with character formatting.
- Ctrl-c copying now also copies character formatting with
texts.
- You can use words surrounded by quotes to search for complete
phrases.
- You can use special and separator characters only isolate and
with quotes.
- In a search expression, the "AND", "OR", and "NOT" keywords
must be uppercase.
- A bubble help appears in the dictionaries if you move the mouse
pointer over a Strong number.
- More dictionaries were added.
- BDB - Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew Lexicon
- Thayer - Thayer's Greek Lexicon
- GreekHebrew - Greek to Hebrew Dictionary of Septuagint
Words
- HebrewGreek - Hebrew to Greek Dictionary of Septuagint
Words
- ISBE - International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
- Smith - Smith's Bible Dictionary
- Torrey - R. A. Torrey's New Topical Textbook
- More Bible translations were added.
- RST: Russian Synodal Translation
- FreDarby: French Darby Bible
- FreLSG: French Louis Segond (1910)
- The Strong dictionary now is a freeware module, not a shareware
module.
The program engine with its numerous features is totally free,
however a shareware plugin is also installed during the setup,
which provides the following features:
- Ancient Hebrew-English dictionary
- Ancient Greek-English dictionary
You can support the development of Bible-Discovery by purchasing
this plugin.
If you support the development by purchasing the registration
code, you will receive registrations of the new plugin version free
for six months from the purchase date. (The plugin version is not
equal with the program version, its number changes only few
times.)
Purchased or gifted registration codes will not expire; you can
unlock the related shareware plugin (currently version 1.0) at any
time.
Price of the plugin is $29.
System requirements: Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, Solaris
Link: Bible-Discovery
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