The Bible software market for Mac got a little more competitive this summer as Laridian released their long awaited PocketBible for Mac, brining the simplicity of the PocketBible app from years gone by to OSX. This program started out as a Kickstarter campaign and when I learned about it, I quickly pledged to back the program and happily started testing it as a beta app awhile ago.
Accordance Bible Software is a powerful Bible study tool for Windows, Mac, iOS & Android. Whether you are a pastor looking for a sermon prep tool, a scholar studying biblical languages, or a serious Bible reader wanting to go deeper, Accordance can take you to the next level! Bible Search Software 7.0 can be downloaded from our software library for free. This download was scanned by our antivirus and was rated as clean. Bible Search Software belongs to Home & Hobby Tools. The actual developer of the program is Sobolsoft. The size of the latest installer available is 5.9 MB. 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.
No one will confuse PocketBible for an advanced Bible study tool that competes with tools like Logos Bible Software or Accordance, but it does make for a simple to use, speedy way to quickly look up verses, search for that passage you’re trying to find and access your PocketBible books. Most lay Bible students will really enjoy PocketBible and more advanced students should consider adding it to their arsenal for those times they want to quickly find something in the Bible.
If someone already owns a Laridian PocketBible library of books, then he or she should go to http://www.laridian.com and download it today. There’s no good reason not to install it on the Mac. Even owners of other more feature complete tools will want to give PocketBible a serious look since it’s one of the fastest and most Mac-like Bible apps available.
Bible Study Software for Windows PC & MAC with Reference Commentaries & Dictionaries + Full NIV Audio Bible & KJV, NIV, ESV eBook Holy Bibles & Easy Church Worship Software 2018 on USB by UTL Media 3.9 out of 5 stars 21. Nov 20, 2011 Download Bible Study for macOS 10.10 or later and enjoy it on your Mac. Designed for deeper Bible study, join over 4 million users on “The Bible Study App.” Learn from great scholars through thousands of resources including commentaries, maps, and dictionaries all available off-line.
Setting it Up
Open PocketBible and log in using the simple registration screen that shows up upon first launch. Then go into the Cloud Library from the Books menu item, from with the Open Library box that shows up when the user hits the Open Library button on the toolbar, or hit CMD-L on the keyboard.
Here’s one possible area of improvement. I wish the program had a Download All button for instant installation of all of my books. That’s a one-time problem, so it’s not a big deal.
Compile ios app without mac. For those who used Book Builder from Laridian to make their own books, install them by copying the books into this folder:
~/Library/Application Support/com.laridian.PocketBible/Laridian Books
The user must open Finder, hit the Go menu and press the Option key to reveal the Library folder. Then drill down to the Laridian Books folder and copy books there.
The User Interface Hp laserjet m1522nf scan software mac.
PocketBible for Mac looks much like it does on other platforms. There’s the Study Panel on the left with tabs for things like …
- Find – perform advanced Boolean searches
- Bookmarks – find and organize your bookmarks
- Highlights
- Notes
- FindNote – search your notes
- GoTo – navigate books (table of contents)
To use the GoTo section, click in the open book first and it automatically changes to the table of contents for that book.
The default window pane layout includes a larger center pane where most users will place a Bible. On the right find two smaller panes. I opened two of my favorite commentaries. By default, the Bible pane will control the other two. In other words, as I scroll through the book of 1 Corinthians, the two commentaries will follow moving from verse-to-verse and chapter-to-chapter syncing the content.
There’s a toolbar with buttons for the following tasks:
- Study Panel – opens and closes the Study Panel on the left of the main window
- Open Book – opens the library
- Go To – opens the GoTo box in Study Panel to jump to a place in book or Bible
- Search – opens the Search box in Study Panel
- Bookmarks – opens the Bookmarks box in Study Panel
- Back/Forward – moves back and forth in the user’s history
- Today – takes the user to that day’s reading in their chosen devotional
- Cloud Sync – syncs with Laridian’s cloud sync service to back up or download user content like bookmarks, highlights and notes
- Help – opens the Help book
The menu at the top gives users another way to access the various parts of the program.
PocketBible Features
While PocketBible doesn’t offer a large collection of advanced tools, it does what it’s designed to do very well. For example, instead of jumping from page to page by tapping as one does on the mobile version of the app, each book scrolls through the book. That means we don’t need to try and remember which part of the screen to tap, like we do with the tablet or phone version.
To highlight, bookmark or add a note to a passage, right lick inside a verse to show the menu. By default there’s a collection of highlighting styles with all the basic colors plus three styles of underlining.
Bookmarking uses a category system that the user sets up. For example, one might want to set up a category for topics like grace, sin, glory, church, etc. Then right-click and select the bookmark item in the menu and a flare-out menu will show the categories created. Click on a category to add a bookmark to that category.
Other features available through the right-click include…
- Adding notes
- Looking up the selected word or phrase in PocketBible
- Searching Google
- Copying the passage or phrase
- Starting speech which reads the text
- Close the pane or split it vertically/horizontally
PocketBible also handles daily Bible reading. Click on the Today button to open the chosen devotional or reading plan. When a user finishes that day’s reading or devotional, they can “tap” which means to click on it. This seems to be a holdover from the tablet days.
Customize the layout by choosing the View menu and clicking on Change Layout…. A window of optional layouts appears after a dialogue box asks if you want to discard the current layout. The result will be an empty layout. Click one of the empty panes and then click on Open Book button to open a book. Click the next pane and repeat until books populate all the panes. To close a pane, right-click on the pane and close it from the menu.
If a user would like, they can customize the toolbar to put things like a Close Pane or Close Book button the toolbar. Right-click any blank part of the toolbar and choose Customize Toolbar…. Then add buttons from the window that appears by dragging them into place.
3 Minor Areas of Improvement and 1 Major Suggestion
Here’s a few minor areas of improvement I’d like to see in the first update. First, a user can’t close book with COMMAND+W like most Mac programs. This would make things faster for experienced Mac users who like to use keyboard shortcuts.
Some of the available buttons don’t appear on the toolbar by default, and I they should, like the Close Book button and the Close Pane button.
Finally, I wish I could save a layout with specific books and give it a name. For example, I’d like to open the ESV, the ESV Study Bible and my favorite commentary in a three-pane layout. I can’t see a way to save this arrangement. I can open the three-pane layout, but then I must reopen the three books manually.
The major change I’d like to see is a study helper option like other programs offer. WordSearch, Logos, and Olive Tree all offer a feature where the user can, with the lick of a button, show a window that lists all of their books pointing to a particular passage. It’s like having a research assistant go to your library and get all your books on 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 and then open them in a stack on your desk.
Conclusions
If you’re a Mac owner and already own books in Laridian’s PocketBible or used to use one of their mobile apps for Palm, PocketPC or some other platform, then drop everything and download PocketBible for Mac. Windows users who want to switch to make, but didn’t because they own a large Laridian library, now’s the time. There’s nothing holding you back.
Users who want to get started using a digital library, should give Laridian’s PocketBible a look. It’s a simple program that won’t take long to learn to use. It’s not the most advanced and doesn’t include as many features as some of the other Bible software programs, but I like it a lot and will make it my Go To program when I just want to quickly open the Bible and read or search for a particular passage. That’s because it’s lightning fast and simple to master. I’m a satisfied Kickstarter backer.
Free Bible Software For Mac
Bible students who plant to go deep and want something that can grow with them, may want to look at Accordance or Logos on the Mac. The two best Mac programs for advanced Digital Bible Study.
(Redirected from Bible study software)
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.
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[edit]
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[1] or 1981, released on the Apple II.[2][3]
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.[4]
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.[5] 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.[6]
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 HebrewOld Testament and Koine GreekNew 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.[7]
Library building[edit]
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.[8] 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[edit]
Software for research[edit]
Best Bible Software For Mac
The Open Source SHEBANQ project is an initiative of the Eep Talstra Centre for Bible and Computer (ETCBC) of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. 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 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.
Linux/Unix[edit]
- Bible Analyzer – A freeware Bible study and analysis application with Advanced Searching, Bible Statistics, Parallel Text Generator, Text-To-Speech, Audio, and more. Many free modules available with immediate download of premium modules;
macOS[edit]
- Accordance – It is well known for its extensive library collection, extensive tools, ease of use, affordability and reliability. Accordance dynamically links ties the Biblical texts to other user works in a library, a user accessing various dictionaries or commentaries are able to search in another text, parallel passages, harmonies, automatic citation for bibliographies, complex to simple search techniques, maps, timelines, graphic resources, are all available. Charts, graphs, diagrams, and powerful analytical tools are all available in Accordances powerful search tools. Generally considered to be the high-end Bible Study software for Mac[9]
- Bible Analyzer – A freeware Bible study and analysis application with Advanced Searching, Bible Statistics, Parallel Text Generator, Text-To-Speech, Audio, and more. Many free modules available with immediate download of premium modules.
- BibleReader – Olive Tree Bible Software has long been a provider of mobile Bible study software. Their BibleReader platform is now available for your Mac desktop. With customizable features, enhanced study tools and an easy to use interface. BibleReader offers excellent cross platform support with the ability to share notes, personalizations, highlights and books between their mobile and desktop offerings. Olive Tree offers a large collection of both free and pay for resources making it easy to get started in building a library within BibleReader.[10]
- Logos Bible Software – Mac version of Logos, first released December 2008; synchronizes with Logos for Windows and mobile applications;
- STEP Bible STEP Bible was released for Mac in October 2014 and offers a large range of resources including the NIV and ESV.
- WORDsearch – Offers a large library of English resources. Can search Greek, Hebrew and other languages;
Programming API[edit]
- The SWORD Project A comprehensive open source multi-lingual Bible project. The project is a programming platform and a collection of resources. Several front end programs are available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, various PDAs, etc.
Windows[edit]
- Accordance – It is well known for its extensive library collection, extensive tools, ease of use, affordability and reliability. Accordance dynamically links ties the Biblical texts to other user works in a library, a user accessing various dictionaries or commentaries are able to search in another text, parallel passages, harmonies, automatic citation for bibliographies, complex to simple search techniques, maps, timelines, graphic resources, are all available. Charts, graphs, diagrams, and powerful analytical tools are all available in Accordances powerful search tools. Generally considered to be the high-end Bible Study software for Mac, Accordance added native Windows compatibility in late 2013.
- Bible Analyzer – A freeware Bible study and analysis application with Advanced Searching, Bible Statistics, Parallel Text Generator, Text-To-Speech, Audio, and more.
- Logos Bible Software – multi-format desktop and mobile applications. Offers an extensive library of 40,000+ titles by Thomas Nelson, Zondervan, Eerdmans, Baker, and others.
- Online Bible – Bible Software Package around since 1987. Extensive library of material in English and other languages;
- STEP Bible STEP Bible was released for Windows in September 2014 and offers a large range of resources including the NIV and ESV.
- SwordSearcher – An inexpensive but simple bible study program. Includes mostly public domain modules. Suitable for original languages study (Textus Receptus).
- The Word – free comprehensive Bible study software with features including Bibles in many languages, non-Bible study resources (including maps), cross-referencing system, more.
- WORDsearch – Offers a large library of English resources for free and for additional purchase. Greek, Hebrew and other languages are searchable. WORDsearch Basic (previously called Bible Explorer) is a free, light version of WORDsearch.
Mobile platform[edit]
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[edit]
- Accordance – OakTree Software, released in 2018
- BibleReader – Olive Tree Bible Software
- Logos for the Android – Logos Bible Software;
- MyBible – Free Bible app.
- YouVersion – Free Bible reading app from Life.Church
Apple iOS[edit]
- Accordance – OakTree Software
- Bible! – Logos Bible Software
- BibleReader – Olive Tree Bible Software
- WORDsearch – WORDsearch Bible Software
- YouVersion – Free Bible reading app from Life.Church
Blackberry[edit]
- BibleReader – Olive Tree Bible Software
- YouVersion – Free Bible reading app from Life.Church
Bible Study Software Mac
Java[edit]
- Go Bible – for JavaME mobile phones
Palm OS[edit]
- BibleReader – Olive Tree Bible Software (no longer supported)
- MyBible – Laridian, Inc. (no longer supported)
- Palm Bible Plus – open source fork of Bible Reader for Palm
Windows Mobile (formerly Windows CE)[edit]
- BibleReader – Olive Tree Bible Software (no longer supported)
See also[edit]
- Operating Systems
- Scripture Markup Languages
- Online tools
- Christian Classics Ethereal Library — Defined as a Christian library (like Libronix). Bible study interface with various bible versions and commentaries available.
Further reading[edit]
- Hughes, John, J. (1987). Bits, Bytes and Biblical Studies: A Resource Guide for the Use of Computers in Biblical and Classical Studies. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan/Academie Books. ISBN978-0310285816.
- Hsu, Jeffrey (December 1993). Computer Bible Study: Up-To-Date Information on the Best Software and Techniques. Dallas, TX: Word Publications. ISBN978-0849933721.
References[edit]
- ^25th Anniversary for Bible Software is Celebrated with New Release. - Free Online Library
- ^Reviews of Bible Study SoftwareArchived 2011-11-23 at the Wayback Machine
- ^Bible Research Systems HistoryArchived 2011-11-23 at the Wayback Machine
- ^Bible Library - Powerful, Yet Easy and Fun to Use Bible Software
- ^Deegan, Marilyn (April 2009). Transferred Illusions: Digital Technology and the Forms of Print. Ashgate. p. 26. ISBN978-0-7546-7016-2.
- ^'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.
- ^'Bible Software History 101'. Hall Harris. 2008-02-06. Archived from the original on 2008-03-23. Retrieved 2008-03-09.
- ^Scholar’s Library: Gold (JG) - Logos Bible Software
- ^E.g. E-Search the ScripturesArchived 2011-01-02 at WebCite, 2004, Evangelical Fellowship of Canada
- ^Mac Bible Study and the Bible for Mac - BibleReader Overview: Mobilize Your Bible Study on Apple Mac - Olive Tree Bible Software
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