In Search of Good Bible Software

Years ago, even though I was not then a Christian, I bought a cheap Bible software and installed it on my computer. The cool thing about it was that I could search for any word and it would come out with a list of verses where that word was found. Bible scholars would use this to study topics such as circumcision or salvation, I used it to look up words like 'wizard' and 'dragon', just for fun.

Nowadays I am not only back to being a Christian, but I am a Catholic. And I have just begun on a non-fiction writing project which requires me to dive into the study of the Bible. Now, I took a lot of theology courses in college, and spent lots of my free time immersed in the theology section of the library. But that was many years ago, and I spent the intervening years without much of the Bible in my life.

I decided I needed to beef up my tiny theological library. I looked at Dave Armstrong's blog to see if he had anything in the way of a list of recommended theological books. Dave is a convert to Catholicism who was previously a Protestant campus missionary, so I thought anything he'd use would be just about right for me as well.

What I found on his page was a link to Verbum, the new Catholic Bible software from the makers of Logos, the premiere Protestant Bible software maker.  Verbum is cool, it's an entire theological library for your computer--- but the cost of the cheapest version is $270.

I could look up some of the commentaries and such and see if I can find them for free online. You see, the theological libraries in software like this is mostly old, classic works that are now in the public domain.

I still wanted a Bible software package I could use now, so I searched for free Bible software. I found e-Sword, which is evidently a Protestant operation, though they didn't feel the need to mention that at their web site. I am downloading that software and will report back on how useful it is.

Some of my readers may wonder why anyone needs special Bible software. Can't they just read a Bible for that information?

The problem is that the Bible is not just some simplistic little book. It is a wide variety of ancient text, written in three languages--- Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic--- and from historical eras quite distant from our own. To really be knowledgeable about any given Bible text, you either have to go to a seminary for years to learn the original languages and the historic context, or you have to use books that can give you a similar amount of knowledge.

Bible software can simplify that process. In my old Bible software, I could go from any given Bible verse to the things that different Bible scholars had written about that verse in commentaries. They were, of course, all Protestant Bible scholars, and that software did not at all include the entire Catholic Bible, but omitted certain books of the Old Testament of the Bible that most Protestants have rejected. (Some Protestant groups still keep these books in their Bibles, but put them in a 'neutral zone' between the Old and New Testaments.)

Even if you are a non-Christian writer--- heck, even if you have an anti-Christian bias--- Bible software can be very useful in coming up with a Bible verse for your characters to quote or misquote. That's what I bought my old Bible software for, after all. I had most firmly rejected Christianity and had no intention of ever going back to that misguided point-of-view.