Bible-Discovery: Powerful but Sluggish Bible Study Software

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. Core2 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 dial-up 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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